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CORRESPONDING SECRETARY OF THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY.
"Cecy est un livre de bonne Foy." MONTAIGNE.
VOL. II : THEOLOGY.
VOL. I
: SCIENCE
NEW YORK :
J. W. BOUTON , 706 BROADWAY .
LONDON : BERNARD QUARITCH .
1877 .
WERE it possible, we would keep this work out of the hands of many Christians whom its perusal would not benefit, and for whom it was not written. We allude to those whose faith in their respective churches is pure and sincere, and those whose sinless lives reflect the glorious example of that Prophet of Nazareth, by whose mouth the spirit of truth spake loudly to humanity. Such there have been at all times. History preserves the names of many as heroes, philosophers, philanthropists, martyrs, and holy men and women; but how many more have lived and died, unknown but to their intimate acquaintance, unblessed but by their humble beneficiaries! These have ennobled Christianity, but would have shed the same lustre upon any other faith they might have professed for they were higher than their creed. The benevolence of Peter Cooper and Elizabeth Thompson, of America, who are not orthodox Christians, is no less Christ-like than that of the Baroness Angela Burdett-Coutts, of England, who is one. And yet, in comparison with the millions who have been accounted Christians, such have always formed a small minority. They are to be found at this day, in pulpit and pew, in palace and cottage; but the increasing materialism, worldliness and hypocrisy are fast diminishing their proportionate number. Their charity, and simple, child-like faith in the infallibility of their Bible, their dogmas, and their clergy, bring into full activity all the virtues
that are implanted in our common nature. We have personally known such God-fearing priests and clergymen, and we have always avoided debate with them, lest we might be guilty of the cruelty of hurting their feelings; nor would we rob a single layman of his blind confidence, if it alone made possible for him holy living and serene dying.
An analysis of religious beliefs in general, this volume is in particular directed against theological Christianity, the chief opponent of free thought. It contains not one word against the pure teachings of Jesus, but unsparingly denounces their debasement into pernicious ecclesiastical systems that are ruinous to man's faith in his immortality and his God, and subversive of all moral restraint.
We cast our gauntlet at the dogmatic theologians who would enslave both history and science; and especially at the Vatican, whose despotic pretensions have become hateful to the greater portion of enlightened Christendom. The clergy apart, none but the logician, the investigator, the dauntless explorer should meddle with books like this. Such delvers after truth have the courage of their opinions.
PREFACE
. . . . . . . .
iv
Mrs. Elizabeth Thompson and Baroness Burdett-Coutts.
THE "INFALLIBILITY" OF MODERN RELIGION.
Church statistics . . . 1
Catholic "miracles" and spiritualistic "phenomena" . . . 4
Christian and Pagan beliefs compared . . . 10
Magic and sorcery practised by Christian clergy . . . 20
Comparative theology a new science . . . 25
Eastern traditions as to Alexandrian Library . . . 27
Roman pontiffs imitators of the Hindu Brahm-βtma . . . 30
Christian dogmas derived from heathen philosophy . . . 33
Doctrine of the Trinity of Pagan origin . . . 45
Disputes between Gnostics and Church Fathers . . . 51
Bloody records of Christianity . . . 53
Sorceries of Catherine of
Medicis . . . 55
Occult arts practised by the clergy . . . 59
Witch-burnings and auto-da-fe of little children . . . 62
Lying Catholic saints . . . 74
Pretensions of missionaries in India and China . . . 79
Sacrilegious tricks of Catholic clergy . . . 82
Paul a kabalist . . . 91
Peter not the founder of Roman church . . . 91
Strict lives of Pagan hierophants . . . 98
High character of ancient "mysteries" . . . 101
Jacolliot's account of Hindu
fakirs . . . 103
Christian symbolism derived from Phallic worship . . . 109
Hindu doctrine of the Pitris . . . 114
Brahminic spirit-communion ... 115
Dangers of untrained mediumship . . . 117
Resemblance between early
Christianity and Buddhism . . . 123
Peter never in Rome . . . 124
Meanings of "Nazar" and "Nazarene" . . . 129
Baptism a derived right . . . 134
Is Zoroaster a generic name? . . . 141
Pythagorean teachings of Jesus . . . 147
The Apocalypse kabalistic . . . 147
Jesus considered an adept by some Pagan philosophers and early Christians . . .
150
Doctrine of permutation . . . 152
The meaning of God-Incarnate . . . 153
Dogmas of the Gnostics . . . 155
Ideas of Marcion, the "heresiarch" . . . 159
Precepts of Manu . . . 163
Jehovah identical with Bacchus . . . 165
Discrepancies in the Pentateuch
. . . 167
Indian, Chaldean and Ophite systems compared . . . 170
Who were the first Christians? . . . 178
Christos and Sophia-Achamoth . . . 183
Secret doctrine taught by Jesus . . . 191
Jesus never claimed to be God . . . 193
New Testament narratives and Hindu legends . . . 199
Antiquity of the "Logos" and "Christ" . . . 205
Comparative Virgin-worship . . . 209
En-Soph and the Sephiroth . . .
212
The primitive wisdom-religion . . . 216
The book of Genesis a compilation of Old World legends . . . 217
The Trinity of the Kabala . . . 222
Gnostic and Nazarene systems
contrasted with Hindu myths . . . 225
Kabalism in the book of Ezekiel . . . 232
Story of the resurrection of Jairus's daughter found in the history of Christna
. . . 241
Untrustworthy teachings of the early Fathers . . . 248
Their persecuting spirit . . . 249
Decisions of Nicean Council, how
arrived at . . . 251
Murder of Hypatia . . . 252
Origin of the fish-symbol of Vishnu . . . 256
Kabalistic doctrine of the Cosmogony . . . 264
Diagrams of Hindu and Chaldeo-Jewish systems . . . 265
Ten mythical Avatars of Vishnu . . . 274
Trinity of man taught by Paul . . . 281
Socrates and Plato on soul and spirit . . . 283
True Buddhism, what it is . . . 288
Nazareans, Ophites, and modern
Druzes . . . 291
Etymology of IAO . . . 298
"Hermetic Brothers" of Egypt . . . 307
True meaning of Nirvana . . . 319
The Jayna sect . . . 321
Christians and Chrestians . . . 323
The Gnostics and their detractors . . . 325
Buddha, Jesus, and Apollonius of Tyana . . . 341
The Sohar and Rabbi
Simeon . . . 348
The Order of Jesuits and its relation to some of the Masonic orders . . . 352
Crimes permitted to its members . . . 355
Principles of Jesuitry compared with those of Pagan moralists . . . 364
Trinity of man in Egyptian Book of the Dead . . . 367
Freemasonry no longer esoteric . . . 372
Persecution of Templars by the Church . . . 381
Secret Masonic ciphers . . . 395
Jehovah not the "Ineffable Name" . . . 398
The age of philosophy produced
no atheists . . . 530
The legends of three Saviours . . . 537
Christian doctrine of the Atonement illogical . . . 542
Cause of the failure of missionaries to convert Buddhists and Brahmanists . . .
553
Neither Buddha nor Jesus left written records . . . 559
The grandest mysteries of religion in the Bagaved-gita . . . 562
The meaning of regeneration explained in the Satapa-Brβhmana . . . 565
The sacrifice of blood interpreted . . . 566
Demoralization of British India by Christian missionaries . . . 573
The Bible less authenticated than any other sacred book . . . 577
Knowledge of chemistry and physics displayed by Indian jugglers . . . 583
The phenomenon of the so-called spirit-hand . . . 594
Difference between mediums and adepts . . . 595
Interview of an English ambassador with a reincarnated Buddha . . . 598
Flight of a lamas astral body related by Abbι Huc . . . 604
Schools of magic in Buddhist lamaseries . . . 609
The unknown race of Hindu Todas . . . 613
Will-power of fakirs and yogis . . . 617
Taming of wild beasts by fakirs . . . 622
Evocation of a living spirit by a Shaman, witnessed by the writer . . . 626
Sorcery by the breath of a Jesuit Father . . . 633
Why the study of magic is almost impracticable in Europe . . . 635
Conclusion . . . 635
PART TWO. RELIGION
CHAPTER I.
"Yea, the time cometh, that whomsoever killeth you, will think that he doeth God service." Gospel according to John, xvi. 2.
"Let him be ANATHEMA
. . .
who shall say that human Sciences ought to be pursued in such a spirit of
freedom that one may be allowed to hold as true their assertions even when
opposed to revealed doctrines." Ecumenical Council of 1870.
"GLOUC. The Church! Where is it?" King Henry VI., Act i., Sc. 1.
IN the United States of America, sixty thousand (60,428) men are paid salaries to teach the Science of God and His relations to His creatures.
These men contract to impart to
us the knowledge which treats of the existence, character, and attributes of our
Creator; His laws and government; the doctrines we are to believe and the duties
we are to practice. Five thousand (5,141) of them,* with the prospect of
1273 theological students to help them in time, teach this science according to
a formula prescribed by the Bishop of Rome, to five million people. Fifty-five
thousand (55,287) local and travelling ministers, representing fifteen different
denominations, each contradicting the other upon more or less vital
theololical questions, instruct, in their respective doctrines, thirty-three
million (33,500,000) other persons. Many of these teach according to the canons
of the cis-Atlantic branch of an establishment which acknowledges a daughter of
the late Duke of Kent as its spiritual
* These figures are copied from the "Religious Statistics of the United
States for the year 1871."
These are: The Baptists, Congregationalists, Episcopalians,
Northern Methodists, Southern Methodists, Methodists various,
Northern Presbyterians, Southern Presbyterians, United
Presbyterians, United Brethren, Brethren in Christ, Reformed Dutch, Reformed
German, Reformed Presbyterians, Cumberland Presbyterians.
head. There are many hundred thousand Jews; some thousands of Orientals of all kinds; and a very few who belong to the Greek Church. A man at Salt Lake City, with nineteen wives and more than one hundred children and grandchildren, is the supreme spiritual ruler over ninety thousand people, who believe that he is in frequent intercourse with the gods for the Mormons are Polytheists as well as Polygamists, and their chief god is represented as living in a planet they call Colob.
The God of the Unitarians is a bachelor; the Deity of the Presbyterians, Methodists, Congregationalists, and the other orthodox Protestant sects a spouseless Father with one Son, who is identical with Himself. In the attempt to outvie each other in the erection of their sixty-two thousand and odd churches, prayer-houses, and meeting-halls, in which to teach these conflicting theological doctrines, $354,485,581 have been spent. The value of the Protestant parsonages alone, in which are sheltered the disputants and their families, is roughly calculated to approximate $54,115,297. Sixteen million (16,179,387) dollars, are, moreover, contributed every year for current expenses of the Protestant denominations only. One Presbyterian church in New York cost a round million; a Catholic altar alone, one-fourth as much!
We will not mention the multitude of smaller sects, communities, and extravagantly original little heresies in this country which spring up one year to die out the next, like so many spores of fungi after a rainy day. We will not even stop to consider the alleged millions of Spiritualists; for the majority lack the courage to break away from their respective religious denominations. These are the back-door Nicodemuses.
And now, with Pilate, let us inquire, What is truth? Where is it to be searched for amid this multitude of warring sects? Each claims to be based upon divine revelation, and each to have the keys of the celestial gates. Is either in possession of this rare truth? Or, must we exclaim with the Buddhist philosopher, "There is but one truth on earth, and it is unchangeable: and this is that there is no truth on it!"
Though we have no disposition whatever to trench upon the ground that has been so exhaustively gleaned by those learned scholars who have shown that every Christian dogma has its origin in a heathen rite, still the facts which they have exhumed, since the enfranchisement of science, will lose nothing by repetition. Besides, we propose to examine these facts from a different and perhaps rather novel point of view: that of the old philosophies as esoterically understood. These we have barely glanced at in our first volume. We will use them as the standard by which to compare Christian dogmas and miracles with the doctrines and phenomena of ancient magic, and the modern "New Dispensation," as Spiritualism is called by its votaries. Since the materialists deny the phenom-
ena without investigation, and since the theologians in admitting them offer us the poor choice of two palpable absurdities the Devil and miracles we can lose little by applying to the theurgists, and they may actually help us to throw a great light upon a very dark subject.
Professor A. Butlerof, of the Imperial University of St. Petersburg, remarks in a recent pamphlet, entitled Mediumistic Manifestations, as follows: "Let the facts (of modern spiritualism) belong if you will to the number of those which were more or less known by the ancients; let them be identical with those which in the dark ages gave importance to the office of Egyptian priest or Roman augur; let them even furnish the basis of the sorcery of our Siberian Shaman; . . . let them be all these, and, if they are real facts, it is no business of ours. All the facts in nature belong to science, and every addition to the store of science enriches instead of impoverishing her. If humanity has once admitted a truth, and then in the blindness of self-conceit denied it, to return to its realization is a step forward and not backward."
Since the day that modern science gave what may be considered the death-blow to dogmatic theology, by assuming the ground that religion was full of mystery, and mystery is unscientific, the mental state of the educated class has presented a curious aspect. Society seems from that time to have been ever balancing itself upon one leg, on an unseen tight-rope stretched from our visible universe into the invisible one; uncertain whether the end hooked on faith in the latter might not suddenly break, and hurl it into final annihilation.
The great body of nominal Christians may be divided into three unequal portions: materialists, spiritualists, and Christians proper. The materialists and spiritualists make common cause against the hierarchical pretensions of the clergy; who, in retaliation, denounce both with equal acerbity. The materialists are as little in harmony as the Christian sects themselves the Comtists, or, as they call themselves, the positivists, being despised and hated to the last degree by the schools of thinkers, one of which Maudsley honorably represents in England. Positivism, be it remembered, is that "religion" of the future about whose founder even Huxley has made himself wrathful in his famous lecture, The Physical Basis of Life; and Maudsley felt obliged, in behalf of modern science, to express himself thus: "It is no wonder that scientific men should be anxious to disclaim Comte as their law-giver, and to protest against such a king being set up to reign over them. Not conscious of any personal obligation to his writings conscious how much, in some respects, he has misrepresented the spirit and pretensions of science they repudiate the allegiance which his enthusiastic disciples would force upon them, and which popular opinion is fast coming to think a natural one. They do
well in thus making a timely assertion of independence; for if it be not done soon, it will soon be too late to be done well." * When a materialistic doctrine is repudiated so strongly by two such materialists as Huxley and Maudsley, then we must think indeed that it is absurdity itself.
Among Christians there is nothing but dissension. Their various churches represent every degree of religious belief, from the omnivorous credulity of blind faith to a condescending and high-toned deference to the Deity which thinly masks an evident conviction of their own deific wisdom. All these sects believe more or less in the immortality of the soul. Some admit the intercourse between the two worlds as a fact; some entertain the opinion as a sentiment; some positively deny it; and only a few maintain an attitude of attention and expectancy.
Impatient of restraint, longing for the return of the dark ages, the Romish Church frowns at the diabolical manifestations, and indicates what she would do to their champions had she but the power of old. Were it not for the self-evident fact that she herself is placed by science on trial, and that she is handcuffed, she would be ready at a moment's notice to repeat in the nineteenth century the revolting scenes of former days. As to the Protestant clergy, so furious is their common hatred toward spiritualism, that as a secular paper very truly remarks: "They seem willing to undermine the public faith in all the spiritual phenomena of the past, as recorded in the Bible, if they can only see the pestilent modern heresy stabbed to the heart."
Summoning back the
long-forgotten memories of the Mosaic laws, the Romish Church claims the
monopoly of miracles, and of the right to sit in judgment over them, as being
the sole heir thereto by direct inheritance. The Old Testament, exiled
by Colenso, his predecessors and contemporaries, is recalled from its
banishment. The prophets, whom his Holiness the Pope condescends at last to
place, if not on the same level with himself, at least at a less respectful
distance, are dusted and cleaned. The memory of all the diabolical
abracadabra is evoked anew. The blasphemous horrors perpetrated by
Paganism, its
* H. Maudsley: "Body and Mind."
"Boston Sunday Herald," November 5, 1876.
See the self-glorification of the present Pope in the work entitled,
"Speeches of Pope Pius IX." by Don Pascale de Franciscis; and
the famous pamphlet of that name by the Rt. Hon. W. E. Gladstone. The latter
quotes from the work named the following sentence pronounced by the Pope: "My
wish is that all governments should know that I am speaking in this strain. . .
. And I have the right to speak, even more than Nathan the
prophet to David the king, and a great deal more than St.
Ambrose had to Theodosius"!!
phallic worship, thaumaturgical wonders wrought by Satan, human sacrifices, incantations, witchcraft, magic, and sorcery are recalled and DEMONISM is confronted with spiritualism for mutual recognition and identification. Our modern demonologists conveniently overlook a few insignificant details, among which is the undeniable presence of heathen phallism in the Christian symbols. A strong spiritual element of this worship may be easily demonstrated in the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mother of God; and a physical element equally proved in the fetish-worship of the holy limbs of Sts. Cosmo and Damiano, at Isernia, near Naples; a successful traffic in which ex-voto in wax was carried on by the clergy, annually, until barely a half century ago.*
We find it rather unwise on the part of Catholic writers to pour out their vials of wrath in such sentences as these: "In a multitude of pagodas, the phallic stone, ever and always assuming, like the Grecian batylos, the brutally indecent form of the lingham . . . the Maha Deva." Before casting slurs on a symbol whose profound metaphysical meaning is too much for the modern champions of that religion of sensualism par excellence, Roman Catholicism, to grasp, they are in duty bound to destroy their oldest churches, and change the form of the cupolas of their own temples. The Mahody of Elephanta, the Round Tower of Bhangulpore, the minarets of Islam either rounded or pointed are the originals of the Campanile column of San Marco, at Venice, of the Rochester Cathedral, and of the modern Duomo of Milan. All of these steeples, turrets, domes, and Christian temples, are the reproductions of the primitive idea of the lithos, the upright phallus. "The western tower of St. Paul's Cathedral, London," says the author of The Rosicrucians, "is one of the double lithoi placed always in front of every temple, Christian as well as heathen." Moreover, in all Christian Churches, "particularly in Protestant churches, where they figure most conspicuously, the two tables of stone of the Mosaic Dispensation are placed over the altar, side by side, as a united stone, the tops of which are rounded.. . . The right stone is masculine, the left feminine." Therefore neither Catholics nor Protestants have a right to talk of the "indecent forms" of heathen monuments so long as they ornament their own churches with the symbols of the Lingham and Yoni, and even write the laws of their God upon them.
Another detail not redounding
very particularly to the honor of the Christian clergy might be recalled in the
word Inquisition. The torrents
* See King's "Gnostics," and other works.
Des Mousseaux: "La Magie au
XIXme Siθcle,"
chap. i.
Hargrave Jennings: "The Rosicrucians," pp. 228-241.
of human blood shed by this Christian institution, and the number of its human sacrifices, are unparalleled in the annals of Paganism. Another still more prominent feature in which the clergy surpassed their masters, the "heathen," is sorcery. Certainly in no Pagan temple was black magic, in its real and true sense, more practiced than in the Vatican. While strongly supporting exorcism as an important source of revenue, they neglected magic as little as the ancient heathen. It is easy to prove that the sortilegium, or sorcery, was widely practiced among the clergy and monks so late as the last century, and is practiced occasionally even now.
Anathematizing every manifestation of occult nature outside the precincts of the Church, the clergy notwithstanding proofs to the contrary call it "the work of Satan," "the snares of the fallen angels," who "rush in and out from the bottomless pit," mentioned by John in his kabalistic Revelation, "from whence arises a smoke as the smoke of a great furnace." "Intoxicated by its fumes, around this pit are daily gathering millions of Spiritualists, to worship at 'the Abyss of Baal.' " *
More than ever arrogant, stubborn, and despotic, now that she has been nearly upset by modern research, not daring to interfere with the powerful champions of science, the Latin Church revenges herself upon the unpopular phenomena. A despot without a victim, is a word void of sense; a power which neglects to assert itself through outward, well-calculated effects, risks being doubted in the end. The Church has no intention to fall into the oblivion of the ancient myths, or to suffer her authority to be too closely questioned. Hence she pursues, as well as the times permit, her traditional policy. Lamenting the enforced extinction of her ally, the Holy Inquisition, she makes a virtue of necessity. The only victims now within reach are the Spiritists of France. Recent events have shown that the meek spouse of Christ never disdains to retaliate on helpless victims.
Having successfully performed her part of Deus-ex-Machina from
behind the French Bench, which has not scrupled to disgrace itself for her, the
Church of Rome sets to work and shows in the year 1876 what she can do. From the
whirling tables and dancing pencils of profane Spiritualism, the Christian world
is warned to turn to the divine "miracles" of Lourdes. Meanwhile, the
ecclesiastical authorities utilize their time in arranging for other more easy
triumphs, calculated to scare the superstitious out of their senses. So, acting
under orders, the clergy hurl dramatic, if not very impressive anathemas from
every Catholic diocese; threaten right and left; excommunicate and curse. Per-
* Des Mousseaux: "Hauts Phιnomenes de la Magie."
ceiving, finally, that her thunderbolts directed even against crowned heads fall about as harmlessly as the Jupiterean lightnings of Offenbach's Calchas, Rome turns about in powerless fury against the victimized proteges of the Emperor of Russia the unfortunate Bulgarians and Servians. Undisturbed by evidence and sarcasm, unbaffled by proof, "the lamb of the Vatican" impartially divides his wrath between the liberals of Italy, "the impious whose breath has the stench of the sepulchre," * the "schismatic Russian Sarmates," and the heretics and spiritualists, "who worship at the bottomless pit where the great Dragon lies in wait."
Mr. Gladstone went to the trouble of making a catalogue of what he terms the "flowers of speech," disseminated through these Papal discourses. Let us cull a few of the chosen terms used by this vicegerent of Him who said that, "whosoever shall say Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell-fire." They are selected from authentic discourses. Those who oppose the Pope are "wolves, Pharisees, thieves, liars, hypocrites, dropsical children of Satan, sons of perdition, of sin, and corruption, satellites of Satan in human flesh, monsters of hell, demons incarnate, stinking corpses, men issued from the pits of hell, traitors and Judases led by the spirit of hell; children of the deepest pits of hell," etc., etc.; the whole piously collected and published by Don Pasquale di Franciscis, whom Gladstone has, with perfect propriety, termed, "an accomplished professor of flunkeyism in things spiritual."
Since his Holiness the Pope has such a rich vocabulary of invectives at his
command, why wonder that the Bishop of Toulouse did not scruple to utter the
most undignified falsehoods about the Protestants and Spiritualists of America
people doubly odious to a Catholic in his address to his diocese: "Nothing,"
he remarks, "is more common in an era of unbelief than to see a false
revelation substitute itself for the true one, and minds neglect the
teachings of the Holy Church, to devote themselves to the study of divination
and the occult sciences." With a fine episcopal contempt for statistics, and
strangely confounding in his memory the audiences of the revivalists, Moody and
Sankey, and the patrons of darkened seance-rooms, he utters the unwarranted and
fallacious assertion that "it has been proven that Spiritualism, in the United
States, has caused one-sixth of all the cases of suicide and insanity." He says
that it is not possible that the spirits "teach either an exact science, because
they are lying demons, or a useful science, because the character
* Don Pasquale di Franciscis: "Discorsi del Sommo Pontefice Pio
IX.,"
Part i., p. 340.
"Speeches of Pius IX.," p. 14. Am. Edition.
of the word of Satan, like Satan himself, is sterile." He warns his dear collaborateurs, that "the writings in favor of Spiritualism are under the ban"; and he advises them to let it be known that "to frequent spiritual circles with the intention of accepting the doctrine, is to apostatize from the Holy Church, and assume the risk of excommunication"; finally, says he, "Publish the fact that the teaching of no spirit should prevail against that of the pulpit of Peter, which is the teaching of the Spirit of God Himself"!!
Aware of the many false teachings attributed by the Roman Church to the Creator, we prefer disbelieving the latter assertion. The famous Catholic theologian, Tillemont, assures us in his work that "all the illustrious Pagans are condemned to the eternal torments of hell, because they lived before the time of Jesus, and, therefore, could not be benefited by the redemption"!! He also assures us that the Virgin Mary personally testified to this truth over her own signature in a letter to a saint. Therefore, this is also a revelation "the Spirit of God Himself" teaching such charitable doctrines.
We have also read with great advantage the topographical descriptions of Hell and Purgatory in the celebrated treatise under that name by a Jesuit, the Cardinal Bellarmin. A critic found that the author, who gives the description from a divine vision with which he was favored, "appears to possess all the knowledge of a land-measurer" about the secret tracts and formidable divisions of the "bottomless pit." Justin Martyr having actually committed to paper the heretical thought that after all Socrates might not be altogether fixed in hell, his Benedictine editor criticises this too benevolent father very severely. Whoever doubts the Christian charity of the Church of Rome in this direction is invited to peruse the Censure of the Sorbonne, on Marmontel's Belisarius. The odium theologicum blazes in it on the dark sky of orthodox theology like an aurora borealis the precursor of God's wrath, according to the teaching of certain mediζval divines.
We have attempted in the first part of this work to show, by historical examples, how completely men of science have deserved the stinging sarcasm of the late Professor de Morgan, who remarked of them that "they wear the priest's cast-off garb, dyed to escape detection." The Christian clergy are, in like manner, attired in the cast-off garb of the heathen priesthood; acting diametrically in opposition to their God's moral precepts, but nevertheless, sitting in judgment over the whole world.
When dying on the cross, the martyred Man of Sorrows forgave his enemies. His last words were a prayer in their behalf. He taught his disciples to curse not, but to bless, even their foes. But the heirs of
St. Peter, the self-constituted representatives on earth of that same meek Jesus, unhesitatingly curse whoever resists their despotic will. Besides, was not the "Son" long since crowded by them into the background? They make their obeisance only to the Dowager Mother, for according to their teaching again through "the direct Spirit of God," she alone acts as a mediatrix. The cumenical Council of 1870 embodied the teaching into a dogma, to disbelieve which is to be doomed forever to the 'bottomless pit.' The work of Don Pasquale di Franciscis is positive on that point; for he tells us that, as the Queen of Heaven owes to the present Pope "the finest gem in her coronet," since he has conferred on her the unexpected honor of becoming suddenly immaculate, there is nothing she cannot obtain from her Son for "her Church." *
Some years ago, certain travellers saw in Barri, Italy, a statue of the Madonna, arrayed in a flounced pink skirt over a swelling crinoline! Pious pilgrims who may be anxious to examine the regulation wardrobe of their God's mother may do so by going to Southern Italy, Spain, and Catholic North and South America. The Madonna of Barri must still be there between two vineyards and a locanda (gin-shop). When last seen, a half-successful attempt had been made to clothe the infant Jesus; they had covered his legs with a pair of dirty, scollop-edged pantaloons. An English traveller having presented the "Mediatrix" with a green silk parasol, the grateful population of the contadini, accompanied by the village-priest, went in procession to the spot. They managed to stick the sunshade, opened, between the infant's back and the arm of the Virgin which embraced him. The scene and ceremony were both solemn and highly refreshing to our religious feelings. For there stood the image of the goddess in its niche, surrounded with a row of ever-burning lamps, the flames of which, flickering in the breeze, infect God's pure air with an offensive smell of olive oil. The Mother and Son truly represent the two most conspicuous idols of Monotheistic Christianity!
For a companion to the idol of the poor contadini of Barri, go to the
rich city of Rio Janeiro. In the Church of the Duomo del Candelaria, in a long
hall running along one side of the church, there might be seen, a few years ago,
another Madonna. Along the walls of the hall there is a line of saints, each
standing on a contribution-box, which thus forms a fit pedestal. In the centre
of this line, under a gorgeously rich canopy of blue silk, is exhibited the
Virgin Mary leaning on the arm of Christ. "Our Lady" is arrayed in a very
dιcolletι blue satin dress with short
* Vide "Speeches of Pope Pius
IX.," by Don Pasq. di Franciscis;
Gladstone's pamphlet on this book; Draper's "Conflict between Religion and
Science," and others.
sleeves, showing, to great advantage, a snow-white, exquisitely-moulded neck, shoulders, and arms. The skirt equally of blue satin with an overskirt of rich lace and gauze puffs, is as short as that of a ballet-dancer; hardly reaching the knee, it exhibits a pair of finely-shaped legs covered with flesh colored silk tights, and blue satin French boots with very high red heels! The blonde hair of this "Mother of God" is arranged in the latest fashion, with a voluminous chignon and curls. As she leans on her Son's arm, her face is lovingly turned toward her Only-Begotten, whose dress and attitude are equally worthy of admiration. Christ wears an evening dress-coat, with swallow-tail, black trousers, and low cut white vest; varnished boots, and white kid gloves, over one of which sparkles a rich diamond ring, worth many thousands we must suppose a precious Brazilian jewel. Above this body of a modern Portuguese dandy, is a head with the hair parted in the middle; a sad and solemn face, and eyes whose patient look seems to reflect all the bitterness of this last insult flung at the majesty of the Crucified. *
The Egyptian Isis was also represented as a Virgin Mother by her devotees, and as holding her infant son, Horus, in her arms. In some statues and basso-relievos, when she appears alone she is either completely nude or veiled from head to foot. But in the Mysteries, in common with nearly every other goddess, she is entirely veiled from head to foot, as a symbol of a mother's chastity. It would not do us any harm were we to borrow from the ancients some of the poetic sentiment in their religions, and the innate veneration they entertained for their symbols.
It is but fair to say at once that the last of the true Christians died with the last of the direct apostles. Max Mόller forcibly asks: "How can a missionary in such circumstances meet the surprise and questions of his pupils, unless he may point to that seed, and tell them what Christianity was meant to be? unless he may show that, like all other religions, Christianity too, has had its history; that the Christianity of the nineteenth century is not the Christianity of the middle ages, and that the Christianity of the middle ages was not that of the early Councils; that the Christianity of the early Councils was not that of the Apostles, and that what has been said by Christ, that alone was well said?"
Thus we may infer that the only
characteristic difference between modern Christianity and the old heathen faiths
is the belief of the former in a personal devil and in hell. "The Aryan nations
had no devil," says Max Mόller. "Pluto, though of a sombre character, was a very
* The fact is given to us by an eye-witness who has visited the church
several times; a Roman Catholic, who felt perfectly
horrified, as he
expressed it.
Referring to the seed planted by Jesus and his Apostles.
"Chips," vol. i., p. 26, Preface.
respectable personage; and Loki (the Scandinavian), though a mischievous person, was not a fiend. The German Goddess, Hell, too, like Proserpine, had once seen better days. Thus, when the Germans were indoctrinated with the idea of a real devil, the Semitic Seth, Satan or Diabolus, they treated him in the most good-humored way."
The same may be said of hell. Hades was quite a different place from our region of eternal damnation, and might be termed rather an intermediate state of purification. Neither does the Scandinavian Hel or Hela, imply either a state or a place of punishment; for when Frigga, the grief-stricken mother of Bal-dur, the white god, who died and found himself in the dark abodes of the shadows (Hades) sent Hermod, a son of Thor, in quest of her beloved child, the messenger found him in the inexorable region alas! but still comfortably seated on a rock, and reading a book.* The Norse kingdom of the dead is moreover situated in the higher latitudes of the Polar regions; it is a cold and cheerless abode, and neither the gelid halls of Hela, nor the occupation of Baldur present the least similitude to the blazing hell of eternal fire and the miserable "damned" sinners with which the Church so generously peoples it. No more is it the Egyptian Amenthes, the region of judgment and purification; nor the Onderah the abyss of darkness of the Hindus; for even the fallen angels hurled into it by Siva, are allowed by Parabrahma to consider it as an intermediate state, in which an opportunity is afforded them to prepare for higher degrees of purification and redemption from their wretched condition. The Gehenna of the New Testament was a locality outside the walls of Jerusalem; and in mentioning it, Jesus used but an ordinary metaphor. Whence then came the dreary dogma of hell, that Archimedean lever of Christian theology, with which they have succeeded to hold in subjection the numberless millions of Christians for nineteen centuries? Assuredly not from the Jewish Scriptures, and we appeal for corroboration to any well-informed Hebrew scholar.
The only designation of something approaching hell in the Bible is Gehenna or Hinnom, a valley near Jerusalem, where was situated Tophet, a place where a fire was perpetually kept for sanitary purposes. The prophet Jeremiah informs us that the Israelites used to sacrifice their children to Moloch-Hercules on that spot; and later we find Christians quietly replacing this divinity by their god of mercy, whose wrath will not be appeased, unless the Church sacrifices to him her unbaptized children and sinning sons on the altar of "eternal damnation"!
Whence then did the divine learn
so well the conditions of hell, as
* Mallet: "Northern Antiquities."
12
ISIS UNVEILED.
to actually divide its torments into two kinds, the pna damni and pζnζ sensus, the former being the privation of the beatific vision; the latter the eternal pains in a lake of fire and brimstone? If they answer us that it is in the Apocalypse (xx. 10), we are prepared to demonstrate whence the theologist John himself derived the idea, "And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are and shall be tormented for ever and ever," he says. Laying aside the esoteric interpretation that the "devil" or tempting demon meant our own earthly body, which after death will surely dissolve in the fiery or ethereal elements,* the word "eternal" by which our theologians interpret the words "for ever and ever" does not exist in the Hebrew language, either as a word or meaning. There is no Hebrew word which properly expresses eternity; ~lw[ oulam, according to Le Clerc, only imports a time whose beginning or end is not known. While showing that this word does not mean infinite duration, and that in the Old Testament the word forever only signifies a long time, Archbishop Tillotson has completely perverted its sense with respect to the idea of hell-torments. According to his doctrine, when Sodom and Gomorrah are said to be suffering "eternal fire," we must understand it only in the sense of that fire not being extinguished till both cities were entirely consumed. But, as to hell-fire the words must be understood in the strictest sense of infinite duration. Such is the decree of the learned divine. For the duration of the punishment of the wicked must be proportionate to the eternal happiness of the righteous. So he says, "These (speaking of the wicked) shall go away eiί kovlasin aiw'nion into eternal punishment; but the righteous eiί zwhn aiwniun into life eternal."
The Reverend T. Surnden, commenting on the speculations of his
predecessors, fills a whole volume with unanswerable arguments, tending to show
that the locality of Hell is in the sun. We suspect that the reverend
speculator had read the Apocalypse in bed, and had the nightmare in
consequence. There are two verses in the Revelation of John reading
thus: "And the fourth angel poured out his vial upon the sun, and power was
given him to scorch men with fire. And men were scorched with great heat, and
blasphemed the name of God." This is simply Pythagorean and kabalistic
allegory. The idea is new neither with the above-mentioned author nor with John.
Pythagoras placed the "sphere of purification in the sun," which sun, with its
sphere, he moreover
* Ether is both pure and impure fire. The composition of
the latter comprises all its visible forms, such as the "correlation of forces"
heat, flame, electricity, etc. The former is the Spirit of Fire. The
difference is purely alchemical.
See "Inquiry into the Nature and Place of Hell," by Rev. T. Surnden.
Revelation xvi. 8-9.
locates in the middle of the universe,* the allegory having a double meaning: 1. Symbolically, the central, spiritual sun, the Supreme Deity. Arrived at this region every soul becomes purified of its sins, and unites itself forever with its spirit, having previously suffered throughout all the lower spheres. 2. By placing the sphere of visible fire in the middle of the universe, he simply taught the heliocentric system which appertained to the Mysteries, and was imparted only in the higher degree of initiation. John gives to his Word a purely kabalistic significance, which no "Fathers," except those who had belonged to the Neo-platonic school, were able to comprehend. Origen understood it well, having been a pupil of Ammonius Saccas; therefore we see him bravely denying the perpetuity of hell-torments. He maintains that not only men, but even devils (by which term he meant disembodied human sinners), after a certain duration of punishment shall be pardoned and finally restored to heaven. In consequence of this and other such heresies Origen was, as a matter of course, exiled.
Many have been the learned and truly-inspired speculations as to the locality of hell. The most popular were those which placed it in the centre of the earth. At a certain time, however, skeptical doubts which disturbed the placidity of faith in this highly-refreshing doctrine arose in consequence of the meddling scientists of those days. As a Mr. Swinden in our own century observes, the theory was inadmissible because of two objections: 1st, that a fund of fuel or sulphur sufficient to maintain so furious and constant a fire could not be there supposed; and, 2d, that it must want the nitrous particles in the air to sustain and keep it alive. "And how," says he, "can a fire be eternal, when, by degrees, the whole substance of the earth must be consumed thereby?"
The skeptical gentleman had evidently forgotten that centuries ago St. Augustine solved the difficulty. Have we not the word of this learned divine that hell, nevertheless, is in the centre of the earth, for "God supplies the central fire with air by a miracle"? The argument is unanswerable, and so we will not seek to upset it.
The Christians were the first to
make the existence of Satan a dogma of the Church. And once that she had
established it, she had to struggle for over 1,700 years for the repression of a
mysterious force which it was her policy to make appear of diabolical origin.
Unfortunately, in manifesting itself, this force invariably tends to upset such
a belief by the ridiculous discrepancy it presents between the alleged cause and
the effects. If the clergy have not over-estimated the real power of
* Aristotle mentions Pythagoreans who placed the sphere of fire in the sun,
and named it Jupiter's Prison.
See "De Coelo," lib.
ii.
"De Civit. Dei," I, xxi., c. 17.
"Demonologia and Hell," p. 289.
the "Arch-Enemy of God," it must
be confessed that he takes mighty precautions against being recognized as the
"Prince of Darkness" who aims at our souls. If modern "spirits" are devils at
all, as preached by the clergy, then they can only be those "poor" or "stupid
devils" whom Max Mόller describes as appearing so often in the German and
Norwegian tales.
Notwithstanding this, the clergy fear above all to be forced to relinquish
this hold on humanity. They are not willing to let us judge of the tree by its
fruits, for that might sometimes force them into dangerous dilemmas. They
refuse, likewise, to admit, with unprejudiced people, that the phenomena of
Spiritualism has unquestionably spiritualized and reclaimed from evil courses
many an indomitable atheist and skeptic. But, as they confess themselves, what
is the use in a Pope, if there is no Devil?
And so Rome sends her ablest advocates and preachers to the rescue of those
perishing in "the bottomless pit." Rome employs her cleverest writers for this
purpose albeit they all indignantly deny the accusation and in the preface
to every book put forth by the prolific des Mousseaux, the French Tertullian of
our century, we find undeniable proofs of the fact. Among other certificates of
ecclesiastical approval, every volume is ornamented with the text of a certain
original letter addressed to the very pious author by the world-known Father
Ventura de Raulica, of Rome. Few are those who have not heard this famous name.
It is the name of one of the chief pillars of the Latin Church, the ex-General
of the Order of the Theatins, Consultor of the Sacred Congregation of Rites,
Examiner of Bishops, and of the Roman Clergy, etc., etc., etc. This strikingly
characteristic document will remain to astonish future generations by its spirit
of unsophisticated demonolatry and unblushing sincerity. We translate a fragment
verbatim, and by thus helping its circulation hope to merit the blessings of
Mother Church: *
"MONSIEUR AND EXCELLENT
FRIEND:
"The greatest victory of Satan was gained on that day when he succeeded in
making himself denied.
"To demonstrate the existence of Satan, is to reλstablish one of the fundamental dogmas of the Church, which serve as a basis for Christianity, and, without which, Satan would be but a name. . .
"Magic, mesmerism, magnetism, somnambulism, spiritualism, spiritism, hypnotism . . . are only other names for SATANISM.
"To bring out such a truth
and show it in its proper light, is to unmask the enemy; it is to unveil the
immense danger of certain practices, reputed innocent; it is to deserve
well in the eyes of humanity and of religion.
"FATHER
VENTURA DE RAULICA."
* "Les Hauts Phenomenes de la Magie," p. v., Preface.
Amen!
This is an unexpected honor indeed, for our American "controls" in general, and the innocent "Indian guides" in particular. To be thus introduced in Rome as princes of the Empire of Eblis, is more than they could ever hope for in other lands.
Without in the least suspecting that she was working for the future welfare of her enemies the spiritualists and spiritists the Church, some twenty years since, in tolerating des Mousseaux and de Mirville as the biographers of the Devil, and giving her approbation thereto, tacitly confessed the literary copartnership.
M. the Chevalier Gougenot des Mousseaux, and his friend and collaborateur, the Marquis Eudes de Mirville, to judge by their long titles, must be aristocrats pur sang, and they are, moreover, writers of no small erudition and talent. Were they to show themselves a little more parsimonious of double points of exclamation following every vituperation, and invective against Satan and his worshippers, their style would be faultless. As it is, the crusade against the enemy of mankind was fierce, and lasted for over twenty years.
What with the Catholics piling up their psychological phenomena to prove the existence of a personal devil, and the Count de Gasparin, an ancient minister of Louis Philippe, collecting volumes of other facts to prove the contrary, the spiritists of France have contracted an everlasting debt of gratitude toward the disputants. The existence of an unseen spiritual universe peopled with invisible beings has now been demonstrated beyond question. Ransacking the oldest libraries, they have distilled from the historical records the quintessence of evidence. All epochs, from the Homeric ages down to the present day, have supplied their choicest materials to these indefatigable authors. In trying to prove the authenticity of the miracles wrought by Satan in the days preceding the Christian era, as well as throughout the middle ages, they have simply laid a firm foundation for a study of the phenomena in our modern times.
Though an ardent, uncompromising enthusiast, des Mousseaux unwittingly transforms himself into the tempting demon, or as he is fond of calling the Devil the "serpent of Genesis." In his desire to demonstrate in every manifestation the presence of the Evil One, he only succeeds in demonstrating that Spiritualism and magic are no new things in the world, but very ancient twin-brothers, whose origin must be sought for in the earliest infancy of ancient India, Chaldea, Babylonia, Egypt, Persia, and Greece.
He proves the existence of "spirits," whether these be angels or devils, with such a clearness of argument and logic, and such an amount
of evidence, historical, irrefutable, and strictly authenticated, that little is left for spiritualist authors who may come after him. How unfortunate that the scientists, who believe neither in devil nor spirit, are more than likely to ridicule M. des Mousseaux's books without reading them, for they really contain so many facts of profound scientific interest!
But what can we expect in our own age of unbelief, when we find Plato, over twenty-two centuries ago, complaining of the same? "Me, too," says he, in his Euthyphron, "when I say anything in the public assembly concerning divine things, and predict to them what is going to happen, they ridicule as mad; and although nothing that I have predicted has proved untrue, yet they envy all such men as we are. However, we ought not to heed, but pursue our own way."
The literary resources of the Vatican and other Catholic repositories of learning must have been freely placed at the disposal of these modern authors. When one has such treasures at hand original manuscripts, papyri, and books pillaged from the richest heathen libraries; old treatises on magic and alchemy; and records of all the trials for witchcraft, and sentences for the same to rack, stake, and torture, it is mighty easy to write volumes of accusations against the Devil. We affirm on good grounds that there are hundreds of the most valuable works on the occult sciences, which are sentenced to eternal concealment from the public, but are attentively read and studied by the privileged who have access to the Vatican Library. The laws of nature are the same for heathen sorcerer as for Catholic saint; and a "miracle" may be produced as well by one as by the other, without the slightest intervention of God or devil.
Hardly had the manifestations begun to attract attention in Europe, than the clergy commenced their outcry that their traditional enemy had reappeared under another name, and "divine miracles" also began to be heard of in isolated instances. First they were confined to humble individuals, some of whom claimed to have them produced through the intervention of the Virgin Mary, saints and angels; others according to the clergy began to suffer from obsession and possession; for the Devil must have his share of fame as well as the Deity. Finding that, notwithstanding the warning, the independent, or so-called spiritual phenomena went on increasing and multiplying, and that these manifestations threatened to upset the carefully-constructed dogmas of the Church, the world was suddenly startled by extraordinary intelligence. In 1864, a whole community became possessed of the Devil. Morzine, and the awful stories of its demoniacs; Valleyres, and the narratives of its well-authenticated exhibitions of sorcery; and those of the Presbytere de Cideville curdled the blood in Catholic veins.
Strange to say, the question has been asked over and over again,
why the "divine" miracles and most of the obsessions are so strictly confined to Roman Catholic dioceses and countries? Why is it that since the Reformation there has been scarcely one single divine "miracle" in a Protestant land? Of course, the answer we must expect from Catholics is, that the latter are peopled by heretics, and abandoned by God. Then why are there no more Church-miracles in Russia, a country whose religion differs from the Roman Catholic faith but in external forms of rites, its fundamental dogmas being identically the same, except as to the emanation of the Holy Ghost? Russia has her accepted saints and thaumaturgical relics, and miracle-working images. The St. Mitrophaniy of Voroneg is an authenticated miracle-worker, but his miracles are limited to healing; and though hundreds upon hundreds have been healed through faith, and though the old cathedral is full of magnetic effluvia, and whole generations will go on believing in his power, and some persons will always be healed, still no such miracles are heard of in Russia as the Madonna-walking, and Madonna letter-writing, and statue-talking of Catholic countries. Why is this so? Simply because the emperors have strictly forbidden that sort of thing. The Czar, Peter the Great, stopped every spurious "divine" miracle with one frown of his mighty brow. He declared he would have no false miracles played by the holy icones (images of saints), and they disappeared forever.*
There are cases on record of
isolated and independent phenomena exhibited by certain images in the last
century; the latest was the bleeding of the cheek of an image of the Virgin,
when a soldier of Napoleon cut her face in two. This miracle, alleged to have
happened in 1812, in the days of the invasion by the "grand army," was the final
farewell.
* Dr. Stanley: "Lectures on the Eastern Church," p. 407.
In the government of Tambov, a gentleman, a rich landed proprietor, had
a curious case happen in his family during the Hungarian campaign of 1848. His
only and much-beloved nephew, whom, having no children, he had adopted as a son,
was in the Russian army. The elderly couple had a portrait of his a
water-color painting constantly, during the meals, placed on the table in
front of the young man's usual seat. One evening as the family, with some
friends, were at their early tea, the glass over the portrait, without any one
touching it, was shattered to atoms with a loud explosion. As the aunt of the
young soldier caught the picture in her hand she saw the forehead and head
besmeared with blood. The guests, in order to quiet her, attributed the blood to
her having cut her fingers with the broken glass. But, examine as they would,
they could not find the vestige of a cut on her fingers, and no one had touched
the picture but herself. Alarmed at her state of excitement the husband,
pretending to examine the portrait more closely, cut his finger on purpose, and
then tried to assure her that it was his blood and that, in the first
excitement, he had touched the frame without any one remarking it. All was in
vain, the old lady felt sure that Dimitry was killed. She began to have masses
said for him daily at the village church, and arrayed the whole household in
deep mourning. Several weeks later, an official communication was received from
the colonel of the regiment, stating that their nephew was killed by a fragment
of a shell which had carried off the upper part of his head.
18 ISIS UNVEILED.
But since then, although the three successive emperors have been pious men, their will has been respected, and the images and saints have remained quiet, and hardly been spoken of except as connected with religious worship. In Poland, a land of furious ultramontanism, there were, at different times, desperate attempts at miracle-doing. They died at birth, however, for the argus-eyed police were there; a Catholic miracle in Poland, made public by the priests, generally meaning political revolution, bloodshed, and war.
Is it then, not permissible to at least suspect that if, in one country divine miracles may be arrested by civil and military law, and in another they never occur, we must search for the explanation of the two facts in some natural cause, instead of attributing them to either god or devil? In our opinion if it is worth anything the whole secret may be accounted for as follows. In Russia, the clergy know better than to bewilder their parishes, whose piety is sincere and faith strong without miracles; they know that nothing is better calculated than the latter to sow seeds of distrust, doubt, and finally of skepticism which leads directly to atheism. Moreover the climate is less propitious, and the magnetism of the average population too positive, too healthy, to call forth independent phenomena; and fraud would not answer. On the other hand, neither in Protestant Germany, nor England, nor yet in America, since the days of the Reformation, has the clergy had access to any of the Vatican secret libraries. Hence they are all but poor hands at the magic of Albertus Magnus.
As for America being overflowed
with sensitives and mediums, the reason for it is partially attributable to
climatic influence and especially to the physiological condition of the
population. Since the days of the Salem witchcraft, 200 years ago, when the
comparatively few settlers had pure and unadulterated blood in their veins,
nothing much had been heard of "spirits" or "mediums" until 1840. * The
phenomena then first appeared among the ascetic and exalted Shakers, whose
religious aspirations, peculiar mode of life, moral purity, and physical
chastity all led to the production of independent phenomena of a psychological
* Executions for witchcraft took place, not much later than a century
ago, in other of the American provinces. Notoriously there were negroes executed
in New Jersey by burning at the stake the penalty denounced in several States.
Even in South Carolina, in 1865, when the State government was "reconstructed,"
after the civil war, the statutes inflicting death for witchcraft were found to
be still unrepealed. It is not a hundred years since they have been enforced to
the murderous letter of their text.
as well as physical nature. Hundreds of thousands, and even millions of men from various climates and of different constitutions and habits, have, since 1692, invaded North America, and by intermarrying have substantially changed the physical type of the inhabitants. Of what country in the world do the women's constitutions bear comparison with the delicate, nervous, and sensitive constitutions of the feminine portion of the population of the United States? We were struck on our arrival in the country with the semi-transparent delicacy of skin of the natives of both sexes. Compare a hard-working Irish factory girl or boy, with one from a genuine American family. Look at their hands. One works as hard as the other; they are of equal age, and both seemingly healthy; and still, while the hands of the one, after an hour's soaping, will show a skin little softer than that of a young alligator, those of the other, notwithstanding constant use, will allow you to observe the circulation of the blood under the thin and delicate epidermis. No wonder, then, that while America is the conservatory of sensitives the majority of its clergy, unable to produce divine or any other miracles, stoutly deny the possibility of any phenomena except those produced by tricks and juggling. And no wonder also that the Catholic priesthood, who are practically aware of the existence of magic and spiritual phenomena, and believe in them while dreading their consequences, try to attribute the whole to the agency of the Devil.
Let us adduce one more argument, if only for the sake of circumstantial evidence. In what countries have "divine miracles" flourished most, been most frequent and most stupendous? Catholic Spain, and Pontifical Italy, beyond question. And which more than these two, has had access to ancient literature? Spain was famous for her libraries; the Moors were celebrated for their profound learning in alchemy and other sciences. The Vatican is the storehouse of an immense number of ancient manuscripts. During the long interval of nearly 1,500 years they have been accumulating, from trial after trial, books and manuscripts confiscated from their sentenced victims, to their own profit. The Catholics may plead that the books were generally committed to the flames; that the treatises of famous sorcerers and enchanters perished with their accursed authors. But the Vatican, if it could speak, could tell a different story. It knows too well of the existence of certain closets and rooms, access to which is had but by the very few. It knows that the entrances to these secret hiding-places are so cleverly concealed from sight in the carved frame-work and under the profuse ornamentation of the library-walls, that there have even been Popes who lived and died within the precincts of the palace without ever suspecting their existence. But these Popes were neither Sylvester II., Benedict IX., John XX., nor
the
VIth and
VIIth Gregory; nor yet the famous Borgia of toxicological
memory. Neither were those who remained ignorant of the hidden lore friends of
the sons of Loyola.
Where, in the records of European Magic, can we find cleverer enchanters than
in the mysterious solitudes of the cloister? Albert Magnus, the famous Bishop
and conjurer of Ratisbon, was never surpassed in his art. Roger Bacon was a
monk, and Thomas Aquinas one of the most learned pupils of Albertus. Trithemius,
Abbott of the Spanheim Benedictines, was the teacher, friend, and confidant of
Cornelius Agrippa; and while the confederations of the Theosophists were
scattered broadcast about Germany, where they first originated, assisting one
another, and struggling for years for the acquirement of esoteric knowledge, any
person who knew how to become the favored pupil of certain monks, might very
soon be proficient in all the important branches of occult learning.
This is all in history and cannot be easily denied. Magic, in all its
aspects, was widely and nearly openly practiced by the clergy till the
Reformation. And even he who was once called the "Father of the Reformation,"
the famous John Reuchlin,* author of the Mirific Word and friend
of Pico di Mirandola, the teacher and instructor of Erasmus, Luther, and
Melancthon, was a kabalist and occultist.
The ancient Sortilegium, or divination by means of Sortes
or lots an art and practice now decried by the clergy as an abomination,
designated by Stat. 10 Jac. as felony, and by
Stat. 12 Carolus II excepted out of the general pardons, on the
ground of being sorcery was widely practiced by the clergy and monks.
Nay, it was sanctioned by St. Augustine himself, who does not "disapprove of
this method of learning futurity, provided it be not used for worldly purposes."
More than that, he confesses having practiced it himself.
Aye; but the clergy called it Sortes Sanctorum, when it was they who
practiced it; while the Sortes Praenestinζ, succeeded by the Sortes
Homericζ and Sortes Virgilianζ, were abominable
heathenism, the
worship of the Devil, when used by any one else.
Gregory de Tours informs us that when the clergy resorted to the Sortes
their custom was to lay the Bible on the altar, and to pray the
Lord that He would discover His will, and disclose to them futurity in one of
the verses of the book. Gilbert de Nogent writes that in his days
*
Vide the title-page on the English translation of Mayerhoff's
"Reuchlin und Seine Zeit," Berlin, 1830. "The Life and Times of John Reuchlin,
or Capnion, the Father of the German Reformation," by F. Barham, London, 1843.
Lord Coke: 3 "Institutes," fol. 44.
Vide "The Life of St. Gregory of Tours."
(about the twelfth century) the custom was, at the consecration of bishops, to consult the Sortes Sanctorum, to thereby learn the success and fate of the episcopate. On the other hand, we are told that the Sortes Sanctorum were condemned by the Council of Agda, in 506. In this case again we are left to inquire, in which instance has the infallibility of the Church failed? Was it when she prohibited that which was practiced by her greatest saint and patron, Augustine, or in the twelfth century, when it was openly and with the sanction of the same Church practiced by the clergy for the benefit of the bishop's elections? Or, must we still believe that in both of these contradictory cases the Vatican was inspired by the direct "spirit of God"?
If any doubt that Gregory of Tours approved of a practice that prevails to this day, more or less, even among strict Protestants, let them read this: "Lendastus, Earl of Tours, who was for ruining me with Queen Fredegonde, coming to Tours, big with evil designs against me, I withdrew to my oratory under a deep concern, where I took the Psalms, . . . My heart revived within me when I cast my eyes on this of the seventy-seventh Psalm: 'He caused them to go on with confidence, whilst the sea swallowed up their enemies.' Accordingly, the count spoke not a word to my prejudice; and leaving Tours that very day, the boat in which he was, sunk in a storm, but his skill in swimming saved him."
The sainted bishop simply confesses here to having practiced a bit of sorcery. Every mesmerizer knows the power of will during an intense desire bent on any particular subject. Whether in consequence of "co-incidents" or otherwise, the opened verse suggested to his mind revenge by drowning. Passing the remainder of the day in "deep concern," and possessed by this all-absorbing thought, the saint it may be unconsciously exercises his will on the subject; and thus while imagining in the accident the hand of God, he simply becomes a sorcerer exercising his magnetic will which reacts on the person feared; and the count barely escapes with his life. Were the accident decreed by God, the culprit would have been drowned; for a simple bath could not have altered his malevolent resolution against St. Gregory had he been very intent on it.
Furthermore, we find anathemas fulminated against this lottery of fate, at the council of Varres, which forbids "all ecclesiastics, under pain of excommunication, to perform that kind of divination, or to pry into futurity, by looking into any book, or writing, whatsoever." The same prohibition is pronounced at the councils of Agda in 506, of Orleans, in 511, of Auxerre in 595, and finally at the council of Aenham in 1110; the latter condemning "sorcerers, witches, diviners, such as occasioned death by magical operations, and who practiced fortune-telling by the
holy-book lots"; and the complaint of the joint clergy against de Garlande, their bishop at Orleans, and addressed to Pope Alexander III., concludes in this manner: "Let your apostolical hands put on strength to strip naked the iniquity of this man, that the curse prognosticated on the day of his consecration may overtake him; for the gospels being opened on the altar according to custom, the first words were: and the young man, leaving his linen cloth, fled from them naked." *
Why then roast the lay-magicians and consulters of books, and canonize the ecclesiastics? Simply because the mediζval as well as the modern phenomena, manifested through laymen, whether produced through occult knowledge or happening independently, upset the claims of both the Catholic and Protestant Churches to divine miracles. In the face of reiterated and unimpeachable evidence it became impossible for the former to maintain successfully the assertion that seemingly miraculous manifestations by the "good angels" and God's direct intervention could be produced exclusively by her chosen ministers and holy saints. Neither could the Protestant well maintain on the same ground that miracles had ended with the apostolic ages. For, whether of the same nature or not, the modern phenomena claimed close kinship with the biblical ones. The magnetists and healers of our century came into direct and open competition with the apostles. The Zouave Jacob, of France, had outrivalled the prophet Elijah in recalling to life persons who were seemingly dead; and Alexis, the somnambulist, mentioned by Mr. Wallace in his work, was, by his lucidity, putting to shame apostles, prophets, and the Sibyls of old. Since the burning of the last witch, the great Revolution of France, so elaborately prepared by the league of the secret societies and their clever emissaries, had blown over Europe and awakened terror in the bosom of the clergy. It had, like a destroying hurricane, swept away in its course those best allies of the Church, the Roman Catholic aristocracy. A sure foundation was now laid for the right of individual opinion. The world was freed from ecclesiastical tyranny by opening an unobstructed path to Napoleon the Great, who had given the deathblow to the Inquisition. This great slaughter-house of the Christian Church wherein she butchered, in the name of the Lamb, all the sheep arbitrarily declared scurvy was in ruins, and she found herself left to her own responsibility and resources.
So long as the phenomena had
appeared only sporadically, she had always felt herself powerful enough to
repress the consequences. Super-
* Translated from the original document in the Archives of Orleans, France;
also see "Sortes and Sortilegium"; "Life of Peter de Blois."
"Miracles and Modern Spiritualism."
stition and belief in the Devil were as strong as ever, and Science had not yet dared to publicly measure her forces with those of supernatural Religion. Meanwhile the enemy had slowly but surely gained ground. All at once it broke out with an unexpected violence. "Miracles" began to appear in full daylight, and passed from their mystic seclusion into the domain of natural law, where the profane hand of Science was ready to strip off their sacerdotal mask. Still, for a time, the Church held her position, and with the powerful help of superstitious fear checked the progress of the intruding force. But, when in succession appeared mesmerists and somnambulists, reproducing the physical and mental phenomenon of ecstasy, hitherto believed to be the special gift of saints; when the passion for the turning tables had reached in France and elsewhere its climax of fury; when the psychography alleged spiritual from a simple curiosity had developed itself and settled into an unabated interest, and finally ebbed into religious mysticism; when the echoes aroused by the first raps of Rochester, crossing the oceans, spread until they were re-percussed from nearly every corner of the world then, and only then, the Latin Church was fully awakened to a sense of danger. Wonder after wonder was reported to have occurred in the spiritual circles and the lecture-rooms of the mesmerists; the sick were healed, the blind made to see, the lame to walk, the deaf to hear. J. R. Newton in America, and Du Potet in France, were healing the multitude without the slightest claim to divine intervention. The great discovery of Mesmer, which reveals to the earnest inquirer the mechanism of nature, mastered, as if by magical power, organic and inorganic bodies.
But this was not the worst. A
more direful calamity for the Church occurred in the evocation from the upper
and nether worlds of a multitude of "spirits," whose private bearing and
conversation gave the direct lie to the most cherished and profitable dogmas of
the Church. These "spirits" claimed to be the identical entities, in a
disembodied state, of fathers, mothers, sons, and daughters, friends and
acquaintances of the persons viewing the weird phenomena. The Devil seemed to
have no objective existence, and this struck at the very foundation upon which
the chair of St. Peter rested.* Not a spirit except the mocking manni-
* There were two chairs of the titular apostle at Rome. The clergy,
frightened at the uninterrupted evidence furnished by scientific research, at
last decided to confront the enemy, and we find the "Chronique des Arts" giving
the cleverest, and at the same time most Jesuitical, explanation of the
fact. According to their story, "The
increase in the number
of the faithful decided Peter upon making Rome henceforth the centre of his
action. The cemetery of Ostrianum was too distant and would not suffice for
the reunions of the Christians. The motive which had induced the Apostle to
confer on Linus and Cletus successively the episcopal character, in
order to render them capable of sharing the solicitudes of a church whose extent
was to be without limits, led naturally to a multiplication of the places of
meeting. The particular residence of Peter was therefore fixed at Viminal; and there was established that mysterious Chair, the symbol of power
and truth. The august seat which was venerated at the Ostrian Catacombs was not,
however, removed. Peter still visited this cradle of the Roman Church, and
often, without doubt, exercised his holy functions there. A second
Chair, expressing the same mystery as the first, was set up at Cornelia, and it
is this which has come down to us through the ages."
Now, so far from it being
possible that there ever were two genuine chairs of this kind, the majority of
critics show that Peter never was at Rome at all; the reasons are many and
unanswerable. Perhaps we had best begin by pointing to the works of Justin
Martyr. This great champion of Christianity, writing in the early part of the
second century in Rome, where he fixed his abode, eager to get hold of
the least proof in favor of the truth for which he suffered, seems perfectly
unconscious of St. Peter's existence!!
Neither does any other writer of
any consequence mention him in connection with the Church of Rome, earlier than
the days of Irenζus, when the latter set himself to invent a new religion, drawn
from the depths of his imagination. We refer the reader anxious to learn more to
the able work of Mr. George Reber, entitled "The Christ of Paul." The arguments
of this author are conclusive. The above article in the "Chronique des Arts,"
speaks of the increase
of the faithful to such an extent that Ostrianum could not contain the
number of Christians. Now, if Peter was at Rome at all runs Mr. Reber's
argument it must have been between the years A.D. 64 and 69; for at 64 he was
at Babylon, from whence he wrote epistles and letters to Rome, and at some time
between 64 and 68 (the reign of Nero) he either died a martyr or in his bed, for
Irenζus makes him deliver the Church of Rome, together with Paul (! ?) (whom he
persecuted and quarrelled with all his life), into the hands of Linus,
who became bishop in 69 (see Reber's "Christ of Paul," p. 122). We will treat of
it more fully in chapter iii.
Now, we ask, in the name of
common sense, how could the faithful of Peter's Church increase
at such a rate, when Nero trapped and killed them like so many mice during his
reign? History shows the few Christians fleeing from Rome, wherever they could,
to avoid the persecution of the emperor, and the "Chronique des Arts" makes them
increase and multiply! "Christ," the article goes on to say, "willed that this
visible sign of the doctrinal authority of his vicar should also have its
portion of immortality; one can follow it from age to age in the documents of
the Roman Church." Tertullian formally attests its existence in his book "De
Prζscriptionibus." Eager to learn everything concerning so interesting a
subject, we would like to be shown when did Christ WILL
anything of the kind? However: "Ornaments of ivory have been fitted to the front
and back of the chair, but only on those parts repaired with acacia-wood. Those
which cover the panel in front are divided into three superimposed rows, each
containing six plaques of ivory, on which are engraved various subjects, among
others the 'Labors of Hercules.' Several of the plaques were wrongly placed, and
seemed to have been affixed to the chair at a time when the remains of antiquity
were employed as ornaments, without much regard to fitness." This is the point.
The article was written simply as a clever answer to several facts published
during the present century. Bower, in his "History of the Popes" (vol. ii., p.
7), narrates that in the year 1662, while cleaning one of the chairs, "the
'Twelve Labors of Hercules' unluckily appeared engraved upon it," after which
the chair was removed and another substituted. But in 1795, when Bonaparte's
troops occupied Rome, the chair was again examined. This time there was found
the Mahometan confession of faith, in Arabic letters: "There is no Deity but
Allah, and Mahomet is his Apostle." (See appendix to "Ancient Symbol-Worship,"
by H. M. Westropp and C. Staniland Wake.) In the appendix Prof. Alexander Wilder
very justly remarks as follows: "We presume that the Apostle of the
Circumcision, as Paul, his great rival, styles him, was never at the Imperial
City, nor had a successor there, not even in the ghetto. The 'Chair of Peter,'
therefore, is sacred rather than apostolical. Its sanctity proceeded,
however, from the esoteric religion of the former times of Rome. The hierophant
of the Mysteries probably occupied it on the day of initiations, when exhibiting
to the candidates the Petroma (stone tablet containing the last
revelation made by the hierophant to the neophyte for initiation)."
kins of Planchette would confess
to the most distant relationship with the Satanic majesty, or accredit him with
the governorship of a single inch of territory. The clergy felt their prestige
growing weaker every day, as they saw the people impatiently shaking off, in the
broad daylight of truth, the dark veils with which they had been blindfolded for
so many centuries. Then finally, fortune, which previously had been on their
side in the long-waged conflict between theology and science, deserted to their
adversary. The help of the latter to the study of the occult side of nature was
truly precious and timely, and science has unwittingly widened the once narrow
path of the phenomena into a broad highway. Had not
this conflict culminated at the nick of time, we might have seen reproduced on a miniature scale the disgraceful scenes of the episodes of Salem witchcraft and the Nuns of Loudun. As it was, the clergy were muzzled.
But if Science has unintentionally helped the progress of the occult phenomena,
the latter have reciprocally aided science herself. Until the days when
newly-reincarnated philosophy boldly claimed its place in the world, there had
been but few scholars who had undertaken the difficult task of studying
comparative theology. This science occupies a domain heretofore penetrated by
few explorers. The necessity which it involved of being well acquainted with the
dead languages, necessarily limited the number of students. Besides, there was
less popular need for it so long as people could not replace the Christian
orthodoxy by something more tangible. It is one of the most undeniable facts of
psychology, that the average man can as little exist out of a religious element
of some kind, as a fish out of the water. The voice of truth, "a voice stronger
than the voice of the mightiest thunder," speaks to the inner man in the
nineteenth century of the Christian era, as it spoke in the corresponding
century B.C. It is a useless and unprofitable task to offer to humanity the
choice between a future life and annihilation. The only chance that remains for
those friends of human progress who seek to establish for the good of mankind a
faith, henceforth stripped entirely of superstition
26 ISIS UNVEILED.
and dogmatic fetters is to address them in the words of Joshua: "Choose ye this day whom you will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell." *
"The science of religion," wrote Max Mόller in 1860, "is only just beginning. . . . During the last fifty years the authentic documents of the most important religions in the world have been recovered in a most unexpected and almost miraculous manner. We have now before us the Canonical books of Buddhism; the Zend-Avesta of Zoroaster is no longer a sealed book; and the hymns of the Rig-Veda have revealed a state of religions anterior to the first beginnings of that mythology which in Homer and Hesiod stands before us as a mouldering ruin."
In their insatiable desire to
extend the dominion of blind faith, the early architects of Christian theology
had been forced to conceal, as much as it was possible, the true sources of the
same. To this end they are said to have burned or otherwise destroyed all the
original manuscripts on the Kabala, magic, and occult sciences upon
which they could lay their hands. They ignorantly supposed that the most
dangerous writings of this class had perished with the last Gnostic; but some
day they may discover their mistake. Other authentic and as important documents
will perhaps reappear in a "most unexpected and almost miraculous manner."
* Joshua xxiv., 15.
One of the most surprising facts that have come under our observation,
is that students of profound research should not couple the frequent recurrence
of these "unexpected and almost miraculous" discoveries of important documents,
at the most opportune moments, with a premeditated design. Is it so strange that
the custodians of "Pagan" lore, seeing that the proper moment had arrived,
should cause the needed document, book, or relic to fall as if by accident in
the right man's way? Geological surveyors and explorers even as competent as
Humboldt and Tschuddi, have not discovered the hidden mines from which the
Peruvian Incas dug their treasure, although the latter confesses that the
present degenerate Indians have the secret. In 1839, Perring, the archζologist,
proposed to the sheik of an Arab village two purses of gold, if he helped him to
discover the entrance to the hidden passage leading to the sepulchral chambers
in the North Pyramid of Doshoor. But though his men were out of employment and
half-starved, the sheik proudly refused to "sell the secret of the dead,"
promising to show it gratis, when the time would come for it. Is it, then, impossible
that in some other regions of the earth are guarded the remains of that glorious
literature of the past, which was the fruit of its majestic civilization? What
is there so surprising in the idea? Who knows but that as the Christian Church
has unconsciously begotten free thought by reaction against her own cruelty,
rapacity, and dogmatism, the public mind may be glad to follow the lead of the
Orientalists, away from Jerusalem and towards Ellora; and that then much more
will be discovered that is now hidden?
"Chips from a German Workshop," vol. i., p. 373; Semitic Monotheism.
There are strange traditions current in various parts of the East on Mount
Athos and in the Desert of Nitria, for instance among certain monks, and with
learned Rabbis in Palestine, who pass their lives in commenting upon the
Talmud. They say that not all the rolls and manuscripts, reported in
history to have been burned by Cζsar, by the Christian mob, in 389, and by the
Arab General Amru, perished as it is commonly believed; and the story they tell
is the following: At the time of the contest for the throne, in 51
B.C., between
Cleopatra and her brother Dionysius Ptolemy, the Bruckion, which contained over
seven hundred thousand rolls, all bound in wood and fire-proof
parchment, was undergoing repairs, and a great portion of the original
manuscripts, considered among the most precious, and which were not duplicated,
were stored away in the house of one of the librarians. As the fire which
consumed the rest was but the result of accident, no precautions had been taken
at the time. But they add, that several hours passed between the burning of the
fleet, set on fire by Cζsar's order, and the moment when the first buildings
situated near the harbor caught fire in their turn; and that all the librarians,
aided by several hundred slaves attached to the museum, succeeded in saving the
most precious of the rolls. So perfect and solid was the fabric of the
parchment, that while in some rolls the inner pages and the wood-binding were
reduced to ashes, of others the parchment binding remained unscorched. These
particulars were all written out in Greek, Latin, and the Chaldeo-Syriac
dialect, by a learned youth named Theodas, one of the scribes employed in the
museum. One of these manuscripts is alleged to be preserved till now in a Greek
convent; and the person who narrated the tradition to us had seen it himself. He
said that many more will see it and learn where to look for important documents,
when a certain prophecy will be fulfilled; adding, that most of these works
could be found in Tartary and India.* The monk showed us a copy of the original,
which, of course, we could read but poorly, as we claim but little erudition in
the matter of dead languages. But we were so particularly struck by the
* An after-thought has made us fancy that we can understand what is meant by
the following sentences of Moses of Chorenθ: "The ancient Asiatics,"
says he, "five centuries before our era and especially the Hindus, the
Persians, and the Chaldeans, had in their possession a quantity of historical
and scientific books. These works were partially borrowed, partially translated
in the Greek language, mostly since the Ptolemies had established the
Alexandrian library and encouraged the writers by their liberalities, so that
the Greek language became the deposit of all the sciences" ("History of
Armenia"). Therefore, the greater part of the literature included in the 700,000
volumes of the Alexandrian Library was due to India, and her next neighbors.
the vivid and picturesque translation of the holy father, that we perfectly remember some curious paragraphs, which run, as far as we can recall them, as follows: "When the Queen of the Sun (Cleopatra) was brought back to the half-ruined city, after the fire had devoured the Glory of the World; and when she saw the mountains of books or rolls covering the half-consumed steps of the estrada; and when she perceived that the inside was gone and the indestructible covers alone remained, she wept in rage and fury, and cursed the meanness of her fathers who had grudged the cost of the real Pergamos for the inside as well as the outside of the precious rolls." Further, our author, Theodas, indulges in a joke at the expense of the queen for believing that nearly all the library was burned; when, in fact, hundreds and thousands of the choicest books were safely stored in his own house and those of other scribes, librarians, students, and philosophers.
No more do sundry very learned Copts scattered all over the East in Asia Minor, Egypt, and Palestine believe in the total destruction of the subsequent libraries. For instance, they say that out of the library of Attalus III. of Pergamus, presented by Antony to Cleopatra, not a volume was destroyed. At that time, according to their assertions, from the moment that the Christians began to gain power in Alexandria about the end of the fourth century and Anatolius, Bishop of Laodicea, began to insult the national gods, the Pagan philosophers and learned theurgists adopted effective measures to preserve the repositories of their sacred learning. Theophilus, a bishop, who left behind him the reputation of a most rascally and mercenary villain, was accused by one named Antoninus, a famous theurgist and eminent scholar of occult science of Alexandria, with bribing the slaves of the Serapion to steal books which he sold to foreigners at great prices. History tells us how Theophilus had the best of the philosophers, in A.D. 389; and how his successor and nephew, the no less infamous Cyril, butchered Hypatia. Suidas gives us some details about Antoninus, whom he calls Antonius, and his eloquent friend Olympus, the defender of the Serapion. But history is far from being complete in the miserable remnants of books, which, crossing so many ages, have reached our own learned century; it fails to give the facts relating to the first five centuries of Christianity which are preserved in the numerous traditions current in the East. Unauthenticated as these may appear, there is unquestionably in the heap of chaff much good grain. That these traditions are not oftener communicated to Europeans is not strange, when we consider how apt our travellers are to render themselves antagonistic to the natives by their skeptical bearing and, occasionally, dogmatic intolerance. When exceptional men like some archζologists, who knew how to win the
confidence and even friendship of certain Arabs, are favored with precious documents, it is declared simply a "coincidence." And yet there are widespread traditions of the existence of certain subterranean, and immense galleries, in the neighborhood of Ishmonia the "petrified City," in which are stored numberless manuscripts and rolls. For no amount of money would the Arabs go near it. At night, they say, from the crevices of the desolate ruins, sunk deep in the unwatered sands of the desert, stream the rays from lights carried to and fro in the galleries by no human hands. The Afrites study the literature of the antediluvian ages, according to their belief, and the Djin learns from the magic rolls the lesson of the following day.
The Encyclopedia Britannica, in its article on Alexandria, says: "When the temple of Serapis was demolished . . .the valuable library was pillaged or destroyed; and twenty years afterwards * the empty shelves excited the regret. . . etc." But it does not state the subsequent fate of the pillaged books.
In rivalry of the fierce Mary-worshippers of the fourth century, the modern clerical persecutors of liberalism and "heresy" would willingly shut up all the heretics and their books in some modern Serapion and burn them alive. The cause of this hatred is natural. Modern research has more than ever unveiled the secret. "Is not the worship of saints and angels now," said Bishop Newton, years ago, "in all respects the same that the worship of demons was in former times? The name only is different, the thing is identically the same . . . the very same temples, the very same images, which were once consecrated to Jupiter and the other demons, are now consecrated to the Virgin Mary and other saints . . . the whole of Paganism is converted and applied to Popery."
Why not be impartial and add that "a good portion of it was adopted by Protestant religions also"?
The very apostolic designation
Peter is from the Mysteries. The hierophant or supreme pontiff bore the
Chaldean title
dtp
Peter, or interpreter. The names Phtah, Peth'r, the residence of Balaam,
Patara, and Patras, the names of oracle-cities, pateres or pateras
and, perhaps,
* Bonamy says in "La Bibliotheque d'Alexandrie," quoting, we suppose, the
Presbyter Orosius, who was an eye-witness, "thirty years later."
Since the above was written, the spirit here described has been
beautifully exemplified at Barcelona, Spain, where the Bishop Fray Joachim
invited the local spiritualists to witness a formal burning of spiritual books.
We find the account in a paper called "The Revelation," published at Alicante,
which sensibly adds that the performance was "a caricature of the memorable
epoch of the Inquisition."
Buddha,* all come from the same root. Jesus says: "Upon this petra I will build my Church, and the gates, or rulers of Hades, shall not prevail against it"; meaning by petra the rock-temple, and by metaphor, the Christian Mysteries; the adversaries to which were the old mystery-gods of the underworld, who were worshipped in the rites of Isis, Adonis, Atys, Sabazius, Dionysus, and the Eleusinia. No apostle Peter was ever at Rome; but the Pope, seizing the sceptre of the Pontifex Maximus, the keys of Janus and Kubelι, and adorning his Christian head with the cap of the Magna Mater, copied from that of the tiara of Brahmβtma, the Supreme Pontiff of the Initiates of old India, became the successor of the Pagan high priest, the real Peter-Roma, or Petroma.
The Roman Catholic Church has two far mightier enemies than the "heretics" and the "infidels"; and these are Comparative Mythology and Philology. When such eminent divines as the Rev. James Freeman Clarke go so much out of their way to prove to their readers that "Critical Theology from the time of Origen and Jerome . . . and the Controversial Theology during fifteen centuries, has not consisted in accepting on authority the opinions of other people," but has shown, on the contrary, much "acute and comprehensive reasoning," we can but regret that so much scholarship should have been wasted in attempting to prove that which a fair survey of the history of theology upsets at every step. In these "controversies" and critical treatment of the doctrines of the Church one can certainly find any amount of "acute reasoning," but far more of a still acuter sophistry.
Recently the mass of cumulative
evidence has been re-inforced to an extent which leaves little, if any, room for
further controversy. A conclusive opinion is furnished by too many scholars to
doubt the fact that India was the
Alma-Mater, not only of
the civilization, arts, and sciences, but also of all the great religions of
antiquity; Judaism, and hence Christianity, included. Herder places the cradle
of humanity in India, and shows Moses as a clever and relatively
modern compiler of the
ancient Brahmanical traditions: "The river which encircles the country (India)
is the sacred Ganges, which all Asia considers as the paradisaical river. There,
also, is the biblical Gihon, which is none else but the Indus. The Arabs call it
so unto this day, and the names of the countries watered by it are yet existing
among the Hindus." Jacolliot claims to have translated every ancient palm-leaf
manuscript which he had the fortune of being allowed by the Brahmans of the
pagodas to see. In one of his
* E. Pococke gives the variations of the name Buddha as: Bud'ha, Buddha,
Booddha, Butta, Pout, Pote, Pto, Pte, Phte, Phtha, Phut, etc., etc. See "India
in Greece," Note, Appendix, 397.
The tiara of the Pope is also a perfect copy of that of the Dalai-Lama
of Thibet.
translations, we found passages which reveal to us the undoubted origin of
the keys of St. Peter, and account for the subsequent adoption of the
symbol by their Holinesses, the Popes of Rome.
He shows us, on the testimony of the Agrouchada Parikshai, which he
freely translates as "the Book of Spirits" (Pitris), that
centuries before our era the initiates of the temple chose a Superior
Council, presided over by the Brahm-βtma or supreme chief of all these
Initiates. That this pontificate, which could be exercised only by a
Brahman who had reached the age of eighty years; * that the Brahm-βtma
was sole guardian of the mystic formula, rιsumι of every science,
contained in the three mysterious letters,
A
U M
which signify creation,
conservation, and transformation. He alone could expound its
meaning in the presence of the initiates of the third and supreme degree.
Whomsoever among these initiates revealed to a profane a single one of the
truths, even the smallest of the secrets entrusted to his care, was put to
death. He who received the confidence had to share his fate.
"Finally, to crown this able system," says Jacolliot, "there existed a word
still more superior to the mysterious monosyllable
A U M, and
which rendered him who came into the possession of its key nearly the equal of
Brahma himself. The Brahm-βtma alone possessed this key, and transmitted it in a
sealed casket to his successor.
"This unknown word, of which no human power could, even to-day, when the
Brahmanical authority has been crushed under the Mongolian and European
invasions, to-day, when each pagoda has its Brahm-βtma force the
disclosure, was engraved in a golden triangle and preserved in a sanctuary
of the temple of Asgartha, whose Brahm-βtma alone held the keys. He also bore
upon his tiara two crossed keys supported by two kneeling Brahmans,
symbol of the precious deposit of which he had the keeping.
. . This word and this
triangle were engraved upon the tablet of the ring that this religious chief
wore as one of the signs of his dignity; it was also framed in a golden sun on
the altar, where every morning the Supreme Pontiff offered the sacrifice of the
sarvameda, or sacrifice to all the forces of nature."
* It is the traditional policy of the College of Cardinals to elect,
whenever practicable, the new Pope among the oldest valetudinarians. The
hierophant of the Eleusinia was likewise always an old man, and unmarried.
This is not correct.
"Le Spiritisme dans le Monde," p. 28.
Is this clear enough? And will the Catholics still maintain that it was the Brahmans of 4,000 years ago who copied the ritual, symbols, and dress of the Roman Pontiffs? We would not feel in the least surprised.
Without going very far back into antiquity for comparisons, if we only stop at the fourth and fifth centuries of our era, and contrast the so-called "heathenism" of the third Neo-platonic Eclectic School with the growing Christianity, the result may not be favorable to the latter. Even at that early period, when the new religion had hardly outlined its contradictory dogmas; when the champions of the bloodthirsty Cyril knew not themselves whether Mary was to become "the Mother of God," or rank as a "demon" in company with Isis; when the memory of the meek and lowly Jesus still lingered lovingly in every Christian heart, and his words of mercy and charity vibrated still in the air, even then the Christians were outdoing the Pagans in every kind of ferocity and religious intolerance.
And if we look still farther back, and seek for examples of true Christism, in ages when Buddhism had hardly superseded Brahmanism in India, and the name of Jesus was only to be pronounced three centuries later, what do we find? Which of the holy pillars of the Church has ever elevated himself to the level of religious tolerance and noble simplicity of character of some heathen? Compare, for instance, the Hindu Asoka, who lived 300 B.C., and the Carthaginian St. Augustine, who flourished three centuries after Christ. According to Max Mόller, this is what is found engraved on the rocks of Girnar, Dhauli, and Kapurdigiri:
"Piyadasi, the king beloved of the gods, desires that the ascetics of all creeds might reside in all places. All these ascetics profess alike the command which people should exercise over themselves, and the purity of the soul. But people have different opinions and different inclinations."
And here is what Augustine wrote after his baptism: "Wondrous depth of thy words! whose surface, behold! is before us, inviting to little ones; yet are they a wondrous depth, O my God, a wondrous depth! It is awful to look therein; yes . . . an awfulness of honor, and a trembling of love. Thy enemies [read Pagans] thereof I hate vehemently; Oh, that thou wouldst slay them with thy two-edged sword, that they might no longer be enemies to it; for so do I love to have them slain." *
Wonderful spirit of
Christianity; and that from a Manichean converted to the religion of one who
even on his cross prayed for his enemies!
* Translated by Prof. Draper for "Conflict between Religion and Science"; book
xii.
Who the enemies of the "Lord" were, according to the Christians, is not difficult to surmise; the few inside the Augustinian fold were His new children and favorites, who had supplanted in His affections the sons of Israel, His "chosen people." The rest of mankind were His natural foes. The teeming multitudes of heathendom were proper food for the flames of hell; the handful within the Church communion, "heirs of salvation."
But if such a proscriptive policy was just, and its enforcement was "sweet savor" in the nostrils of the "Lord," why not scorn also the Pagan rites and philosophy? Why draw so deep from the wells of wisdom, dug and filled up to brim by the same heathen? Or did the fathers, in their desire to imitate the chosen people whose time-worn shoes they were trying to fit upon their feet, contemplate the reλnaction of the spoliation-scene of the Exodus? Did they propose, in fleeing from heathendom as the Jews did from Egypt, to carry off the valuables of its religious allegories, as the "chosen ones" did the gold and silver ornaments?
It certainly does seem as if the
events of the first centuries of Christianity were but the reflection of the
images thrown upon the mirror of the future at the time of the Exodus. During
the stormy days of Irenζus the Platonic philosophy, with its mystical submersion
into Deity, was not so obnoxious after all to the new doctrine as to prevent the
Christians from helping themselves to its abstruse metaphysics in every way and
manner. Allying themselves with the ascetical therapeutζ forefathers and
models of the Christian monks and hermits, it was in Alexandria, let it be
remembered, that they laid the first foundations of the purely Platonic
trinitarian doctrine. It became the Plato-Philonean doctrine later, and such as
we find it now. Plato considered the divine nature under a three-fold
modification of the First Cause, the reason or Logos, and the
soul or spirit of the universe. "The three archial or original principles," says
Gibbon,* "were represented in the Platonic system as three gods, united
with each other by a mysterious and ineffable generation." Blending this
transcendental idea with the more hypostatic figure of the Logos of
Philo, whose doctrine was that of the oldest Kabala, and who viewed the King
Messiah, as the metatron, or "the angel of the Lord," the Legatus
descended in flesh, but not the Ancient of Days Himself; the
Christians clothed with this mythical representation of the Mediator for the
fallen race of Adam, Jesus, the son of Mary. Under this unexpected garb his
personality was all but lost. In the modern Jesus of the Christian Church, we
find the ideal of the imaginative Irenζus, not the adept
* "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire."
"Sohar Comment.," Gen. A. 10; "Kabbal. Denud.," i., 528.
of the Essenes, the obscure reformer from Galilee. We see him under the disfigured Plato-Philonean mask, not as the disciples heard him on the mount.
So far then the heathen philosophy had helped them in the building of the principal dogma. But when the theurgists of the third Neo-platonic school, deprived of their ancient Mysteries, strove to blend the doctrines of Plato with those of Aristotle, and by combining the two philosophies added to their theosophy the primeval doctrines of the Oriental Kabala, then the Christians from rivals became persecutors. Once that the metaphysical allegories of Plato were being prepared to be discussed in public in the form of Grecian dialectics, all the elaborate system of the Christian trinity would be unravelled and the divine prestige completely upset. The eclectic school, reversing the order, had adopted the inductive method; and this method became its death-knell. Of all things on earth, logic and reasonable explanations were the most hateful to the new religion of mystery; for they threatened to unveil the whole ground-work of the trinitarian conception; to apprise the multitude of the doctrine of emanations, and thus destroy the unity of the whole. It could not be permitted, and it was not. History records the Christ-like means that were resorted to.
The universal doctrine of emanations, adopted from time immemorial by the
greatest schools which taught the kabalistic, Alexandrian, and Oriental
philosophers, gives the key to that panic among the Christian fathers. That
spirit of Jesuitism and clerical craft, which prompted Parkhurst, many centuries
later, to suppress in his Hebrew Lexicon the true meaning of the first
word of Genesis, originated in those days of war against the expiring
Neo-platonic and eclectic school. The fathers had decided to pervert the meaning
of the word "daimon," * and they dreaded above all to
have the esoteric and true meaning of the word
Rasit unveiled to the
multitudes; for if once the true sense of this sentence, as well as that of the
Hebrew word asdt (translated in the Septuagint "angels,"
while it means emanations), were understood rightly, the mystery of the
Christian trinity would have crumbled, carrying in its downfall the new religion
into the same heap of ruins with the ancient Mysteries. This is the true reason
why dialecticians, as well as Aristotle himself, the "prying philosopher," were
ever obnoxious to Christian theology. Even Luther, while on his work of reform,
feeling the ground insecure under his feet, notwithstanding that the dogmas had
* "The beings which the philosophers
of other peoples distinguish by the name 'Dζmons,' Moses names 'Angels,' " says
Philo Judζus."De Gigant," i. 253.
Deuteronomy xxxiii. 2.,
tr X a is translated "fiery law" in the
English Bible.
been reduced by him to their simplest expression, gave full vent to his fear and hatred for Aristotle. The amount of abuse he heaped upon the memory of the great logician can only be equalled never surpassed by the Pope's anathemas and invectives against the liberals of the Italian government. Compiled together, they might easily fill a copy of a new encyclopζdia with models for monkish diatribes.
Of course the Christian clergy can never get reconciled with a doctrine based on the application of strict logic to discursive reasoning? The number of those who have abandoned theology on this account has never been made known. They have asked questions and been forbidden to ask them; hence, separation, disgust, and often a despairing plunge into the abyss of atheism. The Orphean views of ether as chief medium between God and created matter were likewise denounced. The Orphic Ζther recalled too vividly the Archeus, the Soul of the World, and the latter was in its metaphysical sense as closely related to the emanations, being the first manifestation Sephira, or Divine Light. And when could the latter be more feared than at that critical moment?
Origen, Clemens Alexandrinus, Chalcidius, Methodius, and Maimonides, on the
authority of the Targum of Jerusalem, the orthodox and greatest
authority of the Jews, held that the first two words in the book of Genesis
B-RASIT, mean Wisdom, or the Principle. And that the
idea of these words meaning "in the beginning" was never
shared but by the profane, who were not allowed to penetrate any deeper into the
esoteric sense of the sentence. Beausobre, and after him Godfrey Higgins, have
demonstrated the fact. "All things," says the Kabala, "are derived from
one great Principle, and this principle is the
unknown and
invisible God. From Him a substantial power immediately proceeds, which is
the image of God, and the source of all subsequent emanations. This
second principle sends forth, by the energy (or will and
force) of emanation, other natures, which are more or less
perfect, according to their different degrees of distance, in the scale of
emanation, from the First Source of existence, and which constitute different
worlds, or orders of being, all united to the eternal power from which they
proceed. Matter is nothing more than the most remote effect of the emanative
energy of the Deity. The material world receives its form from the
immediate agency of powers far beneath the First Source of Being * . . .
Beausobref makes St. Augustine the Manichean say thus: 'And if by
Rasit we
understand the active Principle of the creation, instead of its
beginning, in such a case we will clearly perceive that Moses never meant
to say
* See Rees's "Encyclopζdia," art. Kabala.
"Histor. Manich.," Liv. vi., ch. i., p. 291.
that heaven and earth were the first works of God. He only said that God created heaven and earth through the Principle, who is His Son. It is not the time he points to, but to the immediate author of the creation.' Angels, according to Augustine, were created before the firmament, and according to the esoteric interpretation, the heaven and earth were created after that, evolving from the second Principle or the Logos the creative Deity. "The word principle," says Beausobre, "does not mean that the heaven and earth were created before anything else, for, to begin with, the angels were created before that; but that God did everything through His Wisdom, which is His Verbum, and which the Christian Bible named the Beginning," thus adopting the exoteric meaning of the word abandoned to the multitudes. The Kabala the Oriental as well as the Jewish shows that a number of emanations (the Jewish Sephiroth) issued from the First Principle, the chief of which was Wisdom. This Wisdom is the Logos of Philo, and Michael, the chief of the Gnostic Eons; it is the Ormazd of the Persians; Minerva, goddess of wisdom, of the Greeks, who emanated from the head of Jupiter; and the second Person of the Christian Trinity. The early Fathers of the Church had not much to exert their imagination; they found a ready-made doctrine that had existed in every theogony for thousands of years before the Christian era. Their trinity is but the trio of Sephiroth, the first three kabalistic lights of which Moses Nachmanides says, that "they have never been seen by any one; there is not any defect in them, nor any disunion." The first eternal number is the Father, or the Chaldean primeval, invisible, and incomprehensible chaos, out of which proceeded the Intelligible one. The Egyptian Phtah, or "the Principle of Light not the light itself, and the Principle of Life, though himself no life." The Wisdom by which the Father created the heavens is the Son, or the kabalistic androgynous Adam Kadmon. The Son is at once the male Ra, or Light of Wisdom, Prudence or Intelligence, Sephira, the female part of Himself; while from this dual being proceeds the third emanation, the Binah or Reason, the second Intelligence the Holy Ghost of the Christians. Therefore, strictly speaking, there is a TETRAKTIS or quaternary, consisting of the Unintelligible First monad, and its triple emanation, which properly constitute our Trinity.
How then avoid perceiving at once, that had not the Christians purposely disfigured in their interpretation and translation the Mosaic Genesis to fit their own views, their religion, with its present dogmas, would have been impossible? The word Rasit, once taught in its new sense of the Principle and not the Beginning, and the anathematized doctrine of emanations accepted, the position of the second trinitarian personage
becomes untenable. For, if the angels are the first divine emanations from the Divine Substance, and were in existence before the Second Principle, then the anthropomorphized Son is at best an emanation like themselves, and cannot be God hypostatically any more than our visible works are ourselves. That these metaphysical subtleties never entered into the head of the honest-minded, sincere Paul, is evident; as it is furthermore evident, that like all learned Jews he was well acquainted with the doctrine of emanations and never thought of corrupting it. How can any one imagine that Paul identified the Son with the Father, when he tells us that God made Jesus "a little lower than the angels" (Hebrews ii. 9), and a little higher than Moses! "For this MAN was counted worthy of more glory than Moses" (Hebrews iii. 3). Of whatever, or how many forgeries, interlined later in the Acts, the Fathers are guilty we know not; but that Paul never considered Christ more than a man "full of the Spirit of God" is but too evident: "In the arche was the Logos, and the Logos was adnate to the Theos."
Wisdom, the first emanation of En-Soph; the Protogonos, the Hypostasis; the Adam Kadmon of the kabalist, the Brahma of the Hindu; the Logos of Plato, and the "Beginning" of St. John is the Rasit tyXar , of the Book of Genesis. If rightly interpreted it overturns, as we have remarked, the whole elaborate system of Christian theology, for it proves that behind the creative Deity, there was a HIGHER god; a planner, an architect; and that the former was but His executive agent a simple POWER!
They persecuted the Gnostics, murdered the philosophers, and burned the kabalists and the masons; and when the day of the great reckoning arrives, and the light shines in darkness, what will they have to offer in the place of the departed, expired religion? What will they answer, these pretended monotheists, these worshippers and pseudo-servants of the one living God, to their Creator? How will they account for this long persecution of them who were the true followers of the grand Megalistor, the supreme great master of the Rosicrucians, the FIRST of masons. "For he is the Builder and Architect of the Temple of the universe; He is the Verbum Sapienti." *
"Every one knows," wrote the
great Manichean of the third century, Fauste, "that the Evangeliums were written
neither by Jesus Christ,
* "The altogether mystical coloring of Christianity harmonized with the
Essene rules of life and opinions, and it is not improbable that Jesus and John
the Baptist were initiated into the Essene Mysteries, to which Christianity may
be indebted for many a form of expression; as indeed the community of Therapeutζ,
an offspring of the Essene order, soon belonged wholly to Christianity" ("Yost,"
i., 411 quoted by the author of "Sod, the Son of the Man").
nor his apostles, but long after their time by some unknown persons, who, judging well that they would hardly be believed when telling of things they had not seen themselves, headed their narratives with the names of the apostles or of disciples contemporaneous with the latter."
Commenting upon the subject, A. Franck, the learned Hebrew scholar of the Institute and translator of the Kabala, expresses the same idea. "Are we not authorized," he asks, "to view the Kabala as a precious remnant of religious philosophy of the Orient, which, transported into Alexandria, got mixed to the doctrine of Plato, and under the usurped name of Dionysius the Areopagite, bishop of Athens, converted and consecrated by St. Paul, was thus enabled to penetrate into the mysticism of the mediζval ages?" *
Says Jacolliot: "What is then this religious philosophy of the Orient, which has penetrated into the mystic symbolism of Christianity? We answer: This philosophy, the traces of which we find among the Magians, the Chaldeans, the Egyptians, the Hebrew kabalists and the Christians, is none other than that of the Hindu Brahmans, the sectarians of the pitris, or the spirits of the invisible worlds which surround us."
But if the Gnostics were destroyed, the Gnosis, based on the secret science of sciences, still lives. It is the earth which helps the woman, and which is destined to open her mouth to swallow up mediζval Christianity, the usurper and assassin of the great master's doctrine. The ancient Kabala, the Gnosis, or traditional secret knowledge, was never without its representatives in any age or country. The trinities of initiates, whether passed into history or concealed under the impenetrable veil of mystery, are preserved and impressed throughout the ages. They are known as Moses, Aholiab, and Bezaleel, the son of Uri, the son of Hur, as Plato, Philo, and Pythagoras, etc. At the Transfiguration we see them as Jesus, Moses, and Elias, the three Trismegisti; and three kabalists, Peter, James, and John whose revelation is the key to all wisdom. We found them in the twilight of Jewish history as Zoroaster, Abraham, and Terah, and later as Henoch, Ezekiel, and Daniel.
Who, of those who ever studied
the ancient philosophies, who understand intuitionally the grandeur of their
conceptions, the boundless sublimity of their views of the Unknown Deity, can
hesitate for a moment to give the preference to their doctrines over the
incomprehensible dogmatic and contradictory theology of the hundreds of
Christian sects? Who that ever read Plato and fathomed his To On ,
"whom no person has seen except the Son," can doubt that
Jesus was a disciple of the same
* A. Franck: "Die Kabbala."
"Le Spiritisme dans le Monde."
secret doctrine which had instructed the great philosopher? For, as we have shown before now, Plato never claimed to be the inventor of all that he wrote, but gave credit for it to Pythagoras, who, in his turn, pointed to the remote East as the source whence he derived his information and his philosophy. Colebrooke shows that Plato confesses it in his epistles, and says that he has taken his teachings from ancient and sacred doctrines! * Moreover, it is undeniable that the theologies of all the great nations dovetail together and show that each is a part of "one stupendous whole." Like the rest of the initiates we see Plato taking great pains to conceal the true meaning of his allegories. Every time the subject touches the greater secrets of the Oriental Kabala, secret of the true cosmogony of the universe and of the ideal, preλxisting world, Plato shrouds his philosophy in the profoundest darkness. His Timζus is so confused that no one but an initiate can understand the secret meaning. And Mosheim thinks that Philo has filled his works with passages directly contradicting each other for the sole purpose of concealing the true doctrine. For once we see a critic on the right track.
And this very trinitarian idea, as well as the so bitterly denounced doctrine of emanations, whence their remotest origin? The answer is easy, and every proof is now at hand. In the sublime and profoundest of all philosophies, that of the universal "Wisdom-Religion," the first traces of which, historical research now finds in the old pre-Vedic religion of India. As the much-abused Jacolliot well remarks, "It is not in the religious works of antiquity, such as the Vedas, the Zend Avesta, the Bible, that we have to search for the exact expression of the ennobling and sublime beliefs of those epochs."
"The holy primitive syllable, composed of the three letters A U M., in which is contained the Vedic Trimurti (Trinity), must be kept secret, like another triple Veda," says Manu, in book xi., sloka 265.
Swayambhouva is the unrevealed Deity; it is the Being existent through and of
itself; he is the central and immortal germ of all that exists in the universe.
Three trinities emanate and are confounded in him, forming a Supreme unity.
These trinities, or the triple Trimurti, are: the Nara, Nari, and
Viradyi the initial triad; the Agni, Vaya, and Sourya the
manifested triad; Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva, the creative
triad. Each of these triads becomes less metaphysical and more adapted to the
vulgar intelligence as it descends. Thus the last becomes but the symbol in its
concrete expression; the necessarianism of a purely meta-
* "Asiat. Trans.," i., p. 579.
Louis Jacolliot: "The Initiates of the Ancient Temples."
physical conception. Together with Swayambhouva, they are the ten Sephiroth
of the Hebrew kabalists, the ten Hindu Prajapatis the En-Soph of the
former, answering to the great Unknown, expressed by the mystic
A U M of the latter.
Says Franck, the translator of the Kabala:
"The ten Sephiroth are divided into three classes, each of them
presenting to us the divinity under a different aspect, the whole still
remaining an indivisible Trinity.
"The first three Sephiroth are purely intellectual in metaphysics, they
express the absolute identity of existence and thought, and form what the modern
kabalists called the intelligible world which is the first manifestation of
God.
"The three that follow, make us conceive God in one of their aspects, as the
identity of goodness and wisdom; in the other they show to us, in the Supreme
good, the origin of beauty and magnificence (in the creation). Therefore, they
are named the virtues, or the sensible world.
"Finally, we learn, by the last three Sephiroth, that the Universal
Providence, that the Supreme artist is also absolute Force, the
all-powerful cause, and that, at the same time, this cause is the generative
element of all that is. It is these last Sephiroth that constitute the
natural world, or nature in its essence and in its active
principle. Natura naturans." *
This kabalistic conception is
thus proved identical with that of the Hindu philosophy. Whoever reads Plato and
his Dialogue Timζus, will find these ideas as faithfully re-echoed by
the Greek philosopher. Moreover, the injunction of secrecy was as strict with
the kabalists, as with the initiates of the Adyta and the Hindu Yogis.
"Close thy mouth, lest thou shouldst speak of this (the mystery),
and thy heart, lest thou shouldst think aloud; and if thy heart has escaped
thee, bring it back to its place, for such is the object of our alliance"
(Sepher Jezireh, Book of Creation).
"This is a secret which gives death: close thy mouth lest thou shouldst
reveal to the vulgar; compress thy brain lest something should escape from it
and fall outside" (Agrouchada-Parikshai).
Truly the fate of many a
future generation hung on a gossamer thread, in the days of the third and fourth
centuries. Had not the Emperor sent in 389 to Alexandria a rescript which was
forced from him by the Christians for the destruction of every idol, our own
century would never have had a Christian mythological Pantheon of its own. Never
* Franck: "Die Kabbala."
did the Neo-platonic school reach such a height of philosophy as when nearest its end. Uniting the mystic theosophy of old Egypt with the refined philosophy of the Greeks; nearer to the ancient Mysteries of Thebes and Memphis than they had been for centuries; versed in the science of soothsaying and divination, as in the art of the Therapeutists; friendly with the acutest men of the Jewish nation, who were deeply imbued with the Zoroastrian ideas, the Neo-platonists tended to amalgamate the old wisdom of the Oriental Kabala with the more refined conceptions of the Occidental Theosophists. Notwithstanding the treason of the Christians, who saw fit, for political reasons, after the days of Constantine, to repudiate their tutors, the influence of the new Platonic philosophy is conspicuous in the subsequent adoption of dogmas, the origin of which can be traced but too easily to that remarkable school. Though mutilated and disfigured, they still preserve a strong family likeness, which nothing can obliterate.
But, if the knowledge of the occult powers of nature opens the spiritual sight of man, enlarges his intellectual faculties, and leads him unerringly to a profounder veneration for the Creator, on the other hand ignorance, dogmatic narrow-mindedness, and a childish fear of looking to the bottom of things, invariably leads to fetish-worship and superstition.
When Cyril, the Bishop of Alexandria, had openly embraced the cause of Isis, the Egyptian goddess, and had anthropomorphized her into Mary, the mother of God; and the trinitarian controversy had taken place; from that moment the Egyptian doctrine of the emanation of the creative God out of Emepht began to be tortured in a thousand ways, until the Councils had agreed upon the adoption of it as it now stands the disfigured Ternary of the kabalistic Solomon and Philo! But as its origin was yet too evident, the Word was no longer called the "Heavenly man," the primal Adam Kadmon, but became the Logos Christ, and was made as old as the "Ancient of the Ancient," his father. The concealed WISDOM became identical with its emanation, the DIVINE THOUGHT, and made to be regarded coλqual and coλternal with its first manifestation.
If we now stop to consider
another of the fundamental dogmas of Christianity, the doctrine of atonement, we
may trace it as easily back to heathendom. This corner-stone of a Church which
had believed herself built on a firm rock for long centuries, is now excavated
by science and proved to come from the Gnostics. Professor Draper shows it as
hardly known in the days of Tertullian, and as having "originated among
the Gnostic heretics." * We will not permit ourselves to contradict such a
* See "Conflict between Religion and Science," p. 224.
learned authority, farther than to state that it originated among them no more than their "anointed" Christos and Sophia. The former they modelled on the original of the "King Messiah," the male principle of wisdom, and the latter on the third Sephiroth, from the Chaldean Kabala,* and even from the Hindu Brahma and Sara-asvati, and the Pagan Dionysus and Demeter. And here we are on firm ground, if it were only because it is now proved that the New Testament never appeared in its complete form, such as we find it now, till 300 years after the period of apostles, and the Sohar and other kabalistic books are found to belong to the first century before our era, if not to be far older still.
The Gnostics entertained many of
the Essenean ideas; and the Essenes had their "greater" and "minor" Mysteries at
least two centuries before our era. They were the Isarim or
Initiates, the descendants of the Egyptian hierophants, in whose country
they had been settled for several centuries before they were converted to
Buddhistic monasticism by the missionaries of King Asoka, and amalgamated later
with the earliest Christians; and they existed, probably, before the old
Egyptian temples were desecrated and ruined in the incessant invasions of
Persians, Greeks, and other conquering hordes. The hierophants had their
atonement enacted in the Mystery of Initiation ages before the Gnostics, or
even the Essenes, had appeared. It was known among hierophants as the
BAPTISM
OF BLOOD, and was considered not as an atonement for the "fall
of man" in Eden, but simply as an expiation for the past, present, and future
sins of ignorant but nevertheless polluted mankind. The hierophant had the
option of either offering his pure and sinless life as a sacrifice for his race
to the gods whom he hoped to rejoin, or an animal victim. The former depended
entirely on their own will. At the last moment of the solemn "new birth," the
initiator passed "the word" to the initiated, and immediately after that the
latter had a weapon placed in his right hand, and was ordered to strike.§
This is the true origin of the Christian dogma of atonement.
* See "Sohar"; "Kab. Den."; "The Book of Mystery," the oldest book of the
kabalists; and Milman: "History of Christianity," pp. 212, 213-215.
Milman: "History of Christianity," p. 280. The Kurios and
Kora are mentioned repeatedly in "Justin Martyr." See p. 97.
See Olshausen: "Biblischer Commentar uber sammtliche Schriften des
Neuen Testaments," ii.
§ There is a wide-spread superstition (?), especially
among the Slavonians and Russians, that the magician or wizard cannot
die before he has passed the "word" to a successor. So deeply is it rooted among
the popular beliefs, that we do not imagine there is a person in Russia who has
not heard of it. It is but too easy to trace the origin of this superstition to
the old Mysteries which had been for ages spread all over the globe. The
ancient Variago-Rouss
had his Mysteries in the North as well as in the South of Russia; and there
are many relics of the by-gone faith scattered in the lands watered by the
sacred Dnieper, the baptismal Jordan of all Russia. No
Znachar (the knowing
one) or Koldoun (sorcerer), male or female, can die in fact before he
has passed the mysterious word to some one. The popular belief is that unless he
does that he will linger and suffer for weeks and months, and were he even
finally to get liberated, it would be only to wander on earth, unable to quit
its region unless he finds a successor even after death. How far the belief may
be verified by others, we do not know, but we have seen a case which, for its
tragical and mysterious denoument, deserves to be given here as an
illustration of the subject in hand. An old man, of over one hundred years of
age, a peasant-serf in the government of S, having a wide reputation as a
sorcerer and healer, was said to be dying for several days, and still unable to
die. The report spread like lightning, and the poor old fellow was shunned by
even the members of his own family, as the latter were afraid of receiving the
unwelcome inheritance. At last the public rumor in the village was that he had
sent a message to a colleague less versed than himself in the art, and who,
although he lived in a distant district, was nevertheless coming at the call,
and would be on hand early on the following morning. There was at that time on a
visit to the proprietor of the village a young physician who, belonging to the
famous school of Nihilism of that day, laughed outrageously at the
idea. The master of the house, being a very pious man, and but half inclined to
make so cheap of the "superstition," smiled as the saying goes but with one
corner of his mouth. Meanwhile the young skeptic, to gratify his curiosity, had
made a visit to the dying man, had found that he could not live twenty-four
hours longer, and, determined to prove the absurdity of the "superstition," had
taken means to detain the coming "successor" at a neighboring village.
Early in the morning a company
of four persons, comprising the physician, the master of the place, his
daughter, and the writer of the present lines, went to the but in which was to
be achieved the triumph of skepticism. The dying man was expecting his liberator
every moment, and his agony at the delay became extreme. We tried to persuade
the physician to humor the patient, were it for humanity's sake. He only
laughed. Getting hold with one hand of the old wizard's pulse, he took out his
watch with the other, and remarking in French that all would be over in a few
moments, remained absorbed in his professional experiment. The scene was solemn
and appalling. Suddenly the door opened, and a young boy entered with the
intelligence, addressed to the doctor, that the
koum was lying dead
drunk at a neighboring village, and, according to his orders, could not
be with "grandfather" till the next day. The young doctor felt confused, and was
just going to address the old man, when, as quick as lightning, the Znachar
snatched his hand from his grasp and raised himself in bed. His deep-sunken eyes
flashed; his yellow-white beard and hair streaming round his livid face made him
a dreadful sight. One instant more, and his long, sinewy arms were clasped round
the physician's neck, as with a supernatural force he drew the doctor's head
closer and closer to his own face, where he held him as in a vise, while whispering words inaudible to us
in his ear. The skeptic struggled to free himself, but before he had time to
make one effective motion the work had evidently been done; the hands relaxed
their grasp, and the old sorcerer fell on his back a corpse! A strange and
ghostly smile had settled on the stony lips a smile of fiendish triumph and
satisfied revenge; but the doctor looked paler and more ghastly than the dead
man himself. He stared round with an expression of terror difficult to describe,
and without answering our inquiries rushed out wildly from the hut, in the
direction of the woods. Messengers were sent after him, but he was nowhere to be
found. About sunset a report was heard in the forest. An hour later his body was
brought home, with a bullet through his head, for the skeptic had blown out his
brains!
What made him commit suicide?
What magic spell of sorcery had the "word" of the dying wizard left on his mind?
Who can tell?
43 THE SORCERER'S TERRIFYING DEATH-BED.
Verily the "Christs" of the pre-Christian ages were many. But they died unknown to the world, and disappeared as silently and as mysteriously from the sight of man as Moses from the top of Pisgah, the mountain of Nebo (oracular wisdom), after he had laid his hands upon Joshua, who thus became "full of the spirit of wisdom" (i.e., initiated).
Nor does the Mystery of the
Eucharist pertain to Christians alone. Godfrey Higgins proves that it was
instituted many hundreds of years before the "Paschal Supper," and says that
"the sacrifice of bread and
44 ISIS UNVEILED.
wine was common to many ancient nations." * Cicero mentions it in his works, and wonders at the strangeness of the rite. There had been an esoteric meaning attached to it from the first establishment of the Mysteries, and the Eucharistia is one of the oldest rites of antiquity. With the hierophants it had nearly the same significance as with the Christians. Ceres was bread, and Bacchus was wine; the former meaning regeneration of life from the seed, and the latter the grape the emblem of wisdom and knowledge; the accumulation of the spirit of things, and the fermentation and subsequent strength of that esoteric knowledge being justly symbolized by wine. The mystery related to the drama of Eden; it is said to have been first taught by Janus, who was also the first to introduce in the temples the sacrifices of "bread" and "wine" in commemoration of the "fall into generation" as the symbol of the "seed." "I am the vine, and my Father is the husbandman," says Jesus, alluding to the secret knowledge that could be imparted by him. "I will drink no more of the fruit of the vine until that day that I drink it new in the kingdom of God."
The festival of the Eleusinian Mysteries began in the month of Boλdromion, which corresponds with the month of September, the time of grape-gathering, and lasted from the 15th to the 22d of the month, seven days. The Hebrew festival of the Feast of Tabernacles began on the 15th and ended on the 22d of the month of Ethanim, which Dunlap shows as derived from Adonim, Adonia, Attenim, Ethanim; and this feast is named in Exodus (xxiii. 16) the feast of ingatherings. "All the men of Israel assembled unto King Solomon at the feast in the month Ethanim, which is the seventh." §
Plutarch thinks the feast of the
booths to be the Bacchic rites, not the
*
"Anacalypsis"; also Tertullian.
"Anthon," art.
Eleusinia.
Dunlap: "Musah, His Mysteries," p. 71.
§ Kings, viii. 2.
the Eleusinian. Thus "Bacchus was directly called upon," he says. The Sabazian worship was Sabbatic; the names Evius, or Hevius, and Luaios are identical with Hivite and Levite. The French name Louis is the Hebrew Levi; Iacchus again is Iao or Jehovah; and Baal or Adon, like Bacchus, was a phallic god. "Who shall ascend into the hill (the high place) of the Lord?" asks the holy king David, "who shall stand in the place of his Kadushu w Xr q "? (Psalms xxiv. 3). Kadesh may mean in one sense to devote, hallow, sanctify, and even to initiate or to set apart; but it also means the ministers of lascivious rites (the Venus-worship) and the true interpretation of the word Kadesh is bluntly rendered in Deuteronomy xxiii. 17; Hosea iv. 14; and Genesis xxxviii., from verses 15 to 22. The "holy" Kadeshuth of the Bible were identical as to the duties of their office with the Nautch-girls of the later Hindu pagodas. The Hebrew Kadeshim or galli lived "by the house of the Lord, where the women wove hangings for the grove," or bust of Venus-Astarte, says verse the seventh in the twenty-third chapter of 2 Kings.
The dance performed by David round the ark was the "circle-dance" said to have been prescribed by the Amazons for the Mysteries. Such was the dance of the daughters of Shiloh (Judges xxi. 21, 23 et passim), and the leaping of the prophets of Baal (I Kings xviii. 26). It was simply a characteristic of the Sabean worship, for it denoted the motion of the planets round the sun. That the dance was a Bacchic frenzy is apparent. Sistra were used on the occasion, and the taunt of Michael and the king's reply are very expressive. "The king of Israel uncovered himself before his maid-servants as one of the vain (or debauched) fellows shamelessly uncovereth himself." And he retorts: "I will play (act wantonly) before hyhy , and I will be yet more vile than this, and I will be base in my own sight." When we remember that David had sojourned among the Tyrians and Philistines, where their rites were common; and that indeed he had conquered that land away from the house of Saul, by the aid of mercenaries from their country, the countenancing and even, perhaps, the introduction of such a Pagan-like worship by the weak "psalmist" seems very natural. David knew nothing of Moses, it seems, and if he introduced the Jehovah-worship it was not in its monotheistic character, but simply as that of one of the many gods of the neighboring nations a tutelary deity to whom he had given the preference, and chosen among "all other gods."
Following the Christian dogmas seriatim, if we concentrate our attention upon one which provoked the fiercest battles until its recognition, that of the Trinity, what do we find? We meet it, as we have shown, northeast of the Indus; and tracing it to Asia Minor and Europe, recognize it among every people who had anything like an established re-
ligion. It was taught in the oldest Chaldean, Egyptian, and Mithraitic schools. The Chaldean Sun-god, Mithra, was called "Triple," and the trinitarian idea of the Chaldeans was a doctrine of the Akkadians, who, themselves, belonged to a race which was the first to conceive a metaphysical trinity. The Chaldeans are a tribe of the Akkadians, according to Rawlinson, who lived in Babylonia from the earliest times. They were Turanians, according to others, and instructed the Babylonians into the first notions of religion. But these same Akkadians, who were they? Those scientists who would ascribe to them a Turanian origin, make of them the inventors of the cuneiform characters; others call them Sumerians; others again, respectively, make their language, of which (for very good reasons) no traces whatever remain Kasdean, Chaldaic, Proto-Chaldean, Kasdo-Scythic, and so on. The only tradition worthy of credence is that these Akkadians instructed the Babylonians in the Mysteries, and taught them the sacerdotal or Mystery-language. These Akkadians were then simply a tribe of the Hindu-Brahmans, now called Aryans their vernacular language, the Sanscrit * of the Vedas; and the sacred or Mystery-language, that which, even in our own age, is used by the Hindu fakirs and initiated Brahmans in their magical evocations. It has been, from time immemorial, and still is employed by the initiates of all countries, and the Thibetan lamas claim that it is in this tongue that appear the mysterious characters on the leaves and bark of the sacred Koumboum.
Jacolliot, who took such pains to penetrate the mysteries of the Brahmanical initiation in translating and commenting upon the Agrouchada-Parikshai, confesses the following:
"It is pretended also, without our being able to verify the assertion, that the magical evocations were pronounced in a particular language, and that it was forbidden, under pain of death, to translate them into vulgar dialects. The rare expressions that we have been able to catch like L'rhom, h'hom, sh'hrum, sho'rhim, are in fact most curious, and do not seem to belong to any known idiom."
Those who have seen a fakir or a
lama reciting his mantras and con-
* Let us remember in this connection that Col. Vans Kennedy has long ago
declared his opinion that Babylonia was once the seat of the Sanscrit language
and of Brahmanical influence.
" 'The Agrouchada-Parikshai,' which discloses, to a certain extent, the
order of initiation, does not give the formula of evocation," says Jacolliot,
and he adds that, according to some Brahmans, "these formulζ were never
written, they were and still are imparted in a whisper in the ear of the adepts"
("mouth to ear, and the word at low breath," say the Masons). "Le
Spiritisme dans le Monde," p. 108.
"Le Spiritisme dans le Monde," p. 108.
jurations, know that he never pronounces the words audibly when preparing for a phenomenon. His lips move, and none will ever hear the terrible formula pronounced, except in the interior of the temples, and then in a cautious whisper. This, then, was the language now respectively baptized by every scientist, and, according to his imaginative and philological propensities, Kasdeo-Semitic, Scythic, Proto-Chaldean, and the like.
Scarcely two of even the most learned Sanscrit philologists are agreed as to the true interpretation of Vedic words. Let one put forth an essay, a lecture, a treatise, a translation, a dictionary, and straightway all the others fall to quarrelling with each other and with him as to his sins of omission and commission. Professor Whitney, greatest of American Orientalists, says that Professor Mόller's notes on the Rig Veda Sβnhita "are far from showing that sound and thoughtful judgment, that moderation and economy which are among the most precious qualities of an exegete." Professor Mόller angrily retorts upon his critics that "not only is the joy embittered which is the inherent reward of all bona fide work, but selfishness, malignity, aye, even untruthfulness, gain the upper hand, and the healthy growth of science is stunted." He differs "in many cases from the explanations of Vedic words given by Professor Roth" in his Sanscrit Dictionary, and Professor Whitney shampooes both their heads by saying that there are, unquestionably, words and phrases "as to which both alike will hereafter be set right."
In volume i. of his Chips, Professor Mόller stigmatizes all the Vedas except the Rik, the Atharva-Veda included, as "theological twaddle," while Professor Whitney regards the latter as "the most comprehensive and valuable of the four collections, next after the Rik." To return to the case of Jacolliot. Professor Whitney brands him as a "bungler and a humbug," and, as we remarked above, this is the very general verdict. But when the Bible dans l'Inde appeared, the Societe Academique de Saint Quentin requested M. Textor de Ravisi, a learned Indianist, ten years Governor of Karikal, India, to report upon its merits. He was an ardent Catholic, and bitterly opposed Jacolliot's conclusions where they discredited the Mosaic and Catholic revelations; but he was forced to say: "Written with good faith, in an easy, vigorous, and passionate style, of an easy and varied argumentation, the work of M. Jacolliot is of absorbing interest . . . a learned work on known facts and with familiar arguments."
Enough. Let Jacolliot have the benefit of the doubt when such very imposing authorities are doing their best to show up each other as incompetents and literary journeymen. We quite agree with Professor Whitney that "the truism, that [for European critics?] it is far easier to
pull to pieces than to build up,
is nowhere truer than in matters affecting the archζology and history of India."
*
Babylonia happened to be situated on the way of the great stream of the
earliest Hindu emigration, and the Babylonians were one of the first peoples
benefited thereby. These Khaldi were the worshippers of the Moon-god,
Deus Lunus, from which fact we may infer that the Akkadians if such must be
their name belonged to the race of the Kings of the Moon, whom tradition shows
as having reigned in Pruyay now Allahabad. With them the trinity of Deus Lunus
was manifested in the three lunar phases, completing the quaternary with the
fourth, and typifying the death of the Moon-god in its gradual waning and final
disappearance. This death was allegorized by them, and attributed to the triumph
of the genius of evil over the light-giving deity; as the later nations
allegorized the death of their Sun-gods, Osiris and Apollo, at the hands of
Typhon and the great Dragon Python, when the sun entered the winter solstice.
Babel, Arach, and Akkad are names of the sun. The Zoroastrian Oracles
are full and explicit upon the subject of the Divine Triad. "A triad of Deity
shines forth throughout the whole world, of which a Monad is the head," admits
the Reverend Dr. Maurice.
"For from this Triad, in the
bosoms, are all things governed," says a Chaldean oracle. The Phos, Pur, and
Phlox, of Sanchoniathon, are Light, Fire, and Flame, three
manifestations of the Sun who is one. Bel-Saturn, Jupiter-Bel, and Bel
or Baal-Chom are the Chaldean trinity; § "The Babylonian Bel was regarded
in the Triune aspect of Belitan, Zeus-Belus (the mediator) and Baal-Chom who is
Apollo Chomζus. This was the Triune aspect of the 'Highest God,' who is,
according to Berosus, either El (the Hebrew), Bel, Belitan, Mithra, or Zervana,
and has the name
pathr , "the Father." ∫∫ The Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva,Ά
corresponding to Power, Wisdom, and Justice, which answer in their turn
* W. D. Whitney: "Oriental and Linguistic Studies, The Veda, etc."
Jacolliot seems to have very logically demonstrated the absurd
contradictions of some philologists, anthropologists, and Orientalists, in
regard to their Akkado and Semito mania. "There is not, perhaps, much
of good faith in their negations," he writes. "The scientists who invent
Turanian peoples know very well that in Manu alone, there is more of
veritable science and philosophy than in all that this pretended Semitism has
hitherto furnished us with; but they are the slaves of a path which some of them
are following the last fifteen, twenty, or even thirty years. . . . We expect,
therefore, nothing of the present. India will owe its reconstitution to the
scientists of the next generation" ("La Genese de l'Humanitι," pp. 60-61).
Cory: "Anc. Frag." §
Movers: "Phoinizer," 263.
∫∫ Dunlap: "Sp. Hist. of Man," p. 281.
Ά Siva is not a god of the Vedas, strictly speaking. When the
Vedas were written, he held the rank of Maha-Deva or Bel among the gods
of aboriginal India.
to Spirit, Matter, Time, and the Past, Present, and Future, can be found in the temple of Gharipuri; thousands of dogmatic Brahmans worship these attributes of the Vedic Deity, while the severe monks and nuns of Buddhistic Thibet recognize but the sacred trinity of the three cardinal virtues: Poverty, Chastity, and Obedience, professed by the Christians, practiced by the Buddhists and some Hindus alone.
The Persian triplicate Deity also consists of three persons, Ormazd, Mithra, and Ahriman. "That is that principle," says Porphyry, * "which the author of the Chaldaic Summary saith, 'They conceive there is one principle of all things, and declare that is one and good.' " The Chinese idol Sanpao, consists of three equal in all respects; and the Peruvians "supposed their Tanga-tanga to be one in three, and three in one," says Faben. The Egyptians have their Emepht, Eicton, and Phta; and the triple god seated on the Lotos can be seen in the St. Petersburg Museum, on a medal of the Northern Tartars.
Among the Church dogmas which have most seriously suffered of late at the hands of the Orientalists, the last in question stands conspicuous. The reputation of each of the three personages of the anthropomorphic godhead as an original revelation to the Christians through Divine will, has been badly compromised by inquiry into its predecessors and origin. Orientalists have published more about the similarity between Brahmanism, Buddhism, and Christianity than was strictly agreeable to the Vatican. Draper's assertion that "Paganism was modified by Christianity, Christianity by Paganism," § is being daily verified. "Olympus was restored but the divinities passed under other names," he says, treating of the Constantine period. "The more powerful provinces insisted on the adoption of their time-honored conceptions. Views of the trinity in accordance with the Egyptian traditions were established. Not only was the adoration of Isis under a new name restored, but even her image, standing on the crescent moon, reappeared. The well-known effigy of that goddess with the infant Horus in her arms has descended to our days, in the beautiful artistic creations of the Madonna and child."
But a still earlier origin than
the Egyptian and Chaldean can be assigned to the Virgin "Mother of God," Queen
of Heaven. Though
* "De Antro Nympharum."
"Navarette," book ii., c. x.
"On the Origin of Heathen Idolatry."
§ Isis and Osiris are said, in the Egyptian sacred books, to have
appeared (i.e., been worshipped), on earth, later than Thot, the
first Hermes, called
Trismegistus, who wrote all their sacred books according to the command of God
or by "divine revelation." The companion and instructor of Isis and Osiris was
Thot, or Hermes II., who was an incarnation of the celestial
Hermes.
Isis is also by right the Queen of Heaven, and is generally represented carrying in her hand the Crux Ansata composed of the mundane cross, and of the Stauros of the Gnostics, she is a great deal younger than the celestial virgin, Neith. In one of the tombs of the Pharaohs Rhameses, in the valley of Biban-el-Molouk, in Thebes, Champollion, Junior, discovered a picture, according to his opinion the most ancient ever yet found. It represents the heavens symbolized by the figure of a woman bedecked with stars. The birth of the Sun is figured by the form of a little child, issuing from the bosom of its "Divine Mother."
In the Book of Hermes, "Pimander" is enunciated in distinct and unequivocal sentences, the whole trinitarian dogma accepted by the Christians. "The light is me," says Pimander, the DIVINE THOUGHT. "I am the nous or intelligence, and I am thy god, and I am far older than the human principle which escapes from the shadow. I am the germ of thought, the resplendent WORD, the SON of God. Think that what thus sees and hears in thee, is the Verbum of the Master, it is the Thought, which is God the Father. . . . The celestial ocean, the ΖTHER, which flows from east to west, is the Breath of the Father, the life-giving Principle, the HOLY GHOST!" "For they are not at all separated and their union is LIFE."
Ancient as may be the origin of Hermes, lost in the unknown days of Egyptian colonization, there is yet a far older prophecy, directly relating to the Hindu Christna, according to the Brahmans. It is, to say the least, strange that the Christians claim to base their religion upon a prophecy of the Bible, which exists nowhere in that book. In what chapter or verse does Jehovah, the "Lord God," promise Adam and Eve to send them a Redeemer who will save humanity? "I will put enmity between thee and the woman," says the Lord God to the serpent, "and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel."
In these words there is not the slightest allusion to a Redeemer, and the subtilest of intellects could not extract from them, as they stand in the third chapter of Genesis, anything like that which the Christians have contrived to find. On the other hand, in the traditions and Manu, Brahma promises directly to the first couple to send them a Saviour who will teach them the way to salvation.
"It is from the lips of a messenger of Brahma, who will be born in Kuroukshetra, Matsya, and the land of Pantchola, also called Kanya-Cubja (mountain of the Virgin), that all men on earth will learn their duty," says Manu (book ii., slokas 19 and 20).
The Mexicans call the Father of their Trinity Yzona, the Son Bacab, and the Holy Ghost Echvah, "and say they received it (the doctrine)
from their ancestors." * Among the Semitic nations we can trace the trinity to the prehistorical days of the fabled Sesostris, who is identified by more than one critic with Nimrod, "the mighty hunter." Manetho makes the oracle rebuke the king, when the latter asks, "Tell me, O thou strong in fire, who before me could subjugate all things? and who shall after me?" And the oracle saith thus: "First God, then the Word, and then 'the Spirit.' "
In the foregoing lies the foundation of the fierce hatred of the Christians toward the "Pagans" and the theurgists. Too much had been borrowed; the ancient religions and the Neo-platonists had been laid by them under contribution sufficiently to perplex the world for several thousand years. Had not the ancient creeds been speedily obliterated, it would have been found impossible to preach the Christian religion as a New Dispensation, or the direct Revelation from God the Father, through God the Son, and under the influence of God the Holy Ghost. As a political exigence the Fathers had to gratify the wishes of their rich converts instituted even the festivals of Pan. They went so far as to accept the ceremonies hitherto celebrated by the Pagan world in honor of the God of the gardens, in all their primitive sincerity. It was time to sever the connection. Either the Pagan worship and the Neo-platonic theurgy, with all ceremonial of magic, must be crushed out forever, or the Christians become Neo-platonists.
The fierce polemics and
single-handed battles between Irenζus and the Gnostics are too well known to
need repetition. They were carried on for over two centuries after the
unscrupulous Bishop of Lyons had uttered his last religious paradox. Celsus, the
Neo-platonist, and a disciple of the school of Ammonius Saccas, had thrown the
Christians into perturbation, and even had arrested for a time the progress of
proselytism by successfully proving that the original and purer forms of the
most important dogmas of Christianity were to be found only in the teachings of
Plato. Celsus accused them of accepting the worst superstitions of Paganism, and
of interpolating passages from the books of the Sybils, without rightly
understanding their meaning. The accusations were so plausible, and the facts so
patent, that for a long time no Christian writer had ventured to answer the
challenge. Origen, at the fervent request of his friend, Ambrosius, was the
first to take the defense in hand, for, having belonged to the same Platonic
school of Ammonius, he was considered the most competent man to refute the
well-founded charges. But his eloquence failed, and the only remedy that could
be found was to destroy the writings of
* Lord Kingsborough: "Ant. Mex.," p. 165.
"Ap. Malal.," lib. i., cap. iv.
Payne Knight:
"Phallic Worship."
Celsus themselves.* This could be achieved only in the fifth century, when copies had been taken from this work, and many were those who had read and studied them. If no copy of it has descended to our present generation of scientists, it is not because there is none extant at present, but for the simple reason that the monks of a certain Oriental church on Mount Athos will neither show nor confess they have one in their possession. Perhaps they do not even know themselves the value of the contents of their manuscripts, on account of their great ignorance.
The dispersion of the Eclectic
school had become the fondest hope of the Christians. It had been looked for and
contemplated with intense anxiety. It was finally achieved. The members were
scattered by the
* The Celsus above mentioned, who lived between the second and third
centuries, is not Celsus the Epicurean. The latter wrote several works against
Magic, and lived earlier, during the reign of Hadrian.
We have the facts from a trustworthy witness, having no interest to invent such a story. Having injured his leg in a fall from the steamer into the boat in which he was to land at the Mount, he was taken care of by these monks, and during his convalescence, through gifts of money and presents, became their greatest friend, and finally won their entire confidence. Having asked for the loan of some books, he was taken by the Superior to a large cellar in which they keep their sacred vessels and other property. Opening a great trunk, full of old musty manuscripts and rolls, he was invited by the Superior to "amuse himself." The gentleman was a scholar, and well versed in Greek and Latin text. "I was amazed," he says, in a private letter, "and had my breath taken away, on finding among these old parchments, so unceremoniously treated, some of the most valuable relics of the first centuries, hitherto believed to have been lost." Among others he found a half-destroyed manuscript, which he is perfectly sure must be a copy of the "True Doctrine," the Aogo" alhqhv" of Celsus, out of which Origen quoted whole pages. The traveller took as many notes as he could on that day, but when he came to offer to the Superior to purchase some of these writings he found, to his great surprise, that no amount of money would tempt the monks. They did not know what the manuscripts contained, nor "did they care," they said. But the "heap of writing," they added, was transmitted to them from one generation to another, and there was a tradition among them that these papers would one day become the means of crushing the "Great Beast of the Apocalypse," their hereditary enemy, the Church of Rome. They were constantly quarrelling and fighting with the Catholic monks, and among the whole "heap" they knew that there was a "holy" relic which protected them. They did not know which, and so in their doubt abstained. It appears that the Superior, a shrewd Greek, understood his bevue and repented of his kindness, for first of all he made the traveller give him his most sacred word of honor, strengthened by an oath he made him take on the image of the Holy Patroness of the Island, never to betray their secret, and never mention, at least, the name of their convent. And finally, when the anxious student who had passed a fortnight in reading all sorts of antiquated trash before he happened to stumble over some precious manuscript, expressed the desire to have the key, to "amuse himself" with the writings once more, he was very naively informed that the "key had been lost," and that they did not know where to look for it. And thus he was left to the few notes he had taken.
hand of the monsters Theophilus, Bishop of Alexandria, and his nephew Cyril the murderer of the young, the learned, and the innocent Hypatia! *
With the death of the martyred daughter of Theon, the mathematician, there remained no possibility for the Neo-platonists to continue their school at Alexandria. During the life-time of the youthful Hypatia her friendship and influence with Orestes, the governor of the city, had assured the philosophers security and protection against their murderous enemies. With her death they had lost their strongest friend. How much she was revered by all who knew her for her erudition, noble virtues, and character, we can infer from the letters addressed to her by Synesius, Bishop of Ptolemais, fragments of which have reached us. "My heart yearns for the presence of your divine spirit," he wrote in 413 A.D., "which more than anything else could alleviate the bitterness of my fortunes." At another time he says: "Oh, my mother, my sister, my teacher, my benefactor! My soul is very sad. The recollection of my children I have lost is killing me. . . . When I have news of you and learn, as I hope, that you are more fortunate than myself, I am at least only half-unhappy."
What would have been the feelings of this most noble and worthy of Christian bishops, who had surrendered family and children and happiness for the faith into which he had been attracted, had a prophetic vision disclosed to him that the only friend that had been left to him, his "mother, sister, benefactor," would soon become an unrecognizable mass of flesh and blood, pounded to jelly under the blows of the club of Peter the Reader that her youthful, innocent body would be cut to pieces, "the flesh scraped from the bones," by oyster-shells and the rest of her cast into the fire, by order of the same Bishop Cyril he knew so well Cyril, the CANONIZED Saint!!
There has never been a religion
in the annals of the world with such a bloody record as Christianity. All the
rest, including the traditional fierce fights of the "chosen people" with their
next of kin, the idolatrous tribes of Israel, pale before the murderous
fanaticism of the alleged followers of Christ! Even the rapid spread of
Mahometanism before the conquering sword of the Islam prophet, is a direct
consequence of the
* See the historical romance of Canon Kingsley, "Hypatia," for a highly
picturesque account of the tragical fate of this young martyr.
We beg the reader to bear in mind that it is the same Cyril who was
accused and proved guilty of having sold the gold and silver ornaments of his
church, and spent the money. He pleaded guilty, but tried to excuse himself on
the ground that he had used the money for the poor, but could not give evidence
of it. His duplicity with Arius and his party is well known. Thus one of the
first Christian saints, and the founder of the Trinity, appears on the pages of
history as a murderer and a thief!
bloody riots and fights among Christians. It was the intestine war between the Nestorians and Cyrilians that engendered Islamism; and it is in the convent of Bozrah that the prolific seed was first sown by Bahira, the Nestorian monk. Freely watered by rivers of blood, the tree of Mecca has grown till we find it in the present century overshadowing nearly two hundred millions of people. The recent Bulgarian atrocities are but the natural outgrowth of the triumph of Cyril and the Mariolaters.
The cruel, crafty politician, the plotting monk, glorified by ecclesiastical history with the aureole of a martyred saint. The despoiled philosophers, the Neo-platonists, and the Gnostics, daily anathematized by the Church all over the world for long and dreary centuries. The curse of the unconcerned Deity hourly invoked on the magian rites and theurgic practice, and the Christian clergy themselves using sorcery for ages. Hypatia, the glorious maiden-philosopher, torn to pieces by the Christian mob. And such as Catherine de Medicis, Lucrezia Borgia, Joanna of Naples, and the Isabellas of Spain, presented to the world as the faithful daughters of the Church some even decorated by the Pope with the order of the "Immaculate Rose," the highest emblem of womanly purity and virtue, a symbol sacred to the Virgin-mother of God! Such are the examples of human justice! How far less blasphemous appears a total rejection of Mary as an immaculate goddess, than an idolatrous worship of her, accompanied by such practices.
In the next chapter we will present a few illustrations of sorcery, as practiced under the patronage of the Roman Church.
"They undertake by scales of miles
to tell
The bounds, dimensions, and extent of hell;
* * * * * * * * * *
Where bloated souls in smoky durance hung
Like a Westphalia gammon or neat's tongue,
To be redeemed with masses and a song."
OLDHAM: Satires
upon the Jesuits.
"York.
But you are more inhuman, more inexorable
O, ten times more than tigers of Hyrcania."
King Henry VI.,
Part Third, Act i., Scene iv.
"War. And hark ye, Sirs;
because she is a maid
Spare for no faggots, let there be enough;
Place barrels of pitch upon the fatal stake."
King Henry VI.,
Part First, Act v., Scene iv.
IN that famous work
of Bodin, on sorcery, * a frightful story is told about Catherine of
Medicis. The author was a learned publicist, who, during twenty years of his
life, collected authentic documents from the archives of nearly every important
city of France, to make up a complete work on sorcery, magic, and the power of
various "demons." To use an expression of Eliphas Levi, his book offers a most
remarkable collection of "bloody and hideous facts; acts of revolting
superstition, arrests, and executions of stupid ferocity." "Burn every body!"
the Inquisition seemed to say God will easily sort out His own! Poor fools,
hysterical women, and idiots were roasted alive, without mercy, for the crime of
"magic." But, "at the same time, how many great culprits escaped this unjust and
sanguinary justice! This is what Bodin makes us fully appreciate."
Catherine, the pious Christian who has so well deserved in the eyes of the
Church of Christ for the atrocious and never-to-be-forgotten massacre of St.
Bartholomew the Queen Catherine, kept in her service an apostate Jacobin
priest. Well versed in the "black art," so fully patronized by the Medici
family, he had won the gratitude and protection of his pious mistress, by his
unparalleled skill in killing people at a distance, by torturing with various
incantations their wax simulacra. The process has been described over and over
again, and we scarcely need repeat it.
* "La Demonomanie, ou traite des Sorciers." Paris, 1587.
Charles was lying sick of an incurable disease. The queen-mother, had everything to lose in case of his death, resorted to necromancy, consulted the oracle of the "bleeding head." This infernal operation required the decapitation of a child who must be possessed of great beauty and purity. He had been prepared in secret for his first communion, by the chaplain of the palace, who was apprised of the plot, and at midnight of the appointed day, in the chamber of the sick man, and in presence only of Catherine and a few of her confederates, the "devil's mass" was celebrated. Let us give the rest of the story as we find it in one of Levi's works: "At this mass, celebrated before the image of the demon, having under his feet a reversed cross, the sorcerer consecrated two wafers, one black and one white. The white was given to the child, whom they brought clothed as for baptism, and who was murdered upon the very steps of the altar, immediately after his communion. His head, separated from the trunk by a single blow, was placed, all palpitating, upon the great black wafer which covered the bottom of the paten, then placed upon a table where some mysterious lamps were burning. The exorcism then began, and the demon was charged to pronounce an oracle, and reply by the mouth of this head to a secret question that the king dared not speak aloud, and that had been confided to no one. Then a feeble voice, a strange voice, which had nothing of human character about it, made itself audible in this poor little martyr's head." The sorcery availed nothing; the king died, and Catherine remained the faithful daughter of Rome!
How strange, that des Mousseaux, who makes such free use of Bodin's materials to construct his formidable indictment against Spiritualists and other sorcerers, should have overlooked this interesting episode!
It is a well-attested fact that Pope Sylvester II. was publicly accused by Cardinal Benno with being a sorcerer and an enchanter. The brazen "oracular head" made by his Holiness was of the same kind as the one fabricated by Albertus Magnus. The latter was smashed to pieces by Thomas Aquinas, not because it was the work of or inhabited by a "demon," but because the spook who was fixed inside, by mesmeric power, talked incessantly, and his verbiage prevented the eloquent saint from working out his mathematical problems. These heads and other talking statues, trophies of the magical skill of monks and bishops, were fac-similes of the "animated" gods of the ancient temples. The accusation against the Pope was proved at the time. It was also demonstrated that he was constantly attended by "demons" or spirits. In the preceding chapter we have mentioned Benedict IX., John XX., and the VIth and VIIth Gregory, who were all known as magicians. The latter Pope, moreover, was the famous Hildebrand, who was said to have
been so expert at "shaking lightning out of his sleeve." An expression which makes the venerable spiritualistic writer, Mr. Howitt, think that "it was the origin of the celebrated thunder of the Vatican."
The magical achievements of the Bishop of Ratisbon and those of the "angelic doctor," Thomas Aquinas, are too well known to need repetition; but we may explain farther how the "illusions" of the former were produced. If the Catholic bishop was so clever in making people believe on a bitter winter night that they were enjoying the delights of a splendid summer day, and cause the icicles hanging from the boughs of the trees in the garden to seem like so many tropical fruits, the Hindu magicians also practice such biological powers unto this very day, and claim the assistance of neither god nor devil. Such "miracles" are all produced by the same human power that is inherent in every man, if he only knew how to develop it.
About the time of the Reformation, the study of alchemy and magic had become so prevalent among the clergy as to produce great scandal. Cardinal Wolsey was openly accused before the court and the privy-council of confederacy with a man named Wood, a sorcerer, who said that "My Lord Cardinale had suche a rynge that whatsomevere he askyd of the Kynges grace that he hadd yt"; adding that "Master Cromwell, when he . . . was servaunt in my lord cardynales housse . . . rede many bokes and specyally the boke of Salamon . . . and studied mettells and what vertues they had after the canon of Salamon." This case, with several others equally curious, is to be found among the Cromwell papers in the Record Office of the Rolls House.
A priest named William Stapleton was arrested as a conjurer, during the reign of Henry VIII., and an account of his adventures is still preserved in the Rolls House records. The Sicilian priest whom Benvenuto Cellini calls a necromancer, became famous through his successful conjurations, and was never molested. The remarkable adventure of Cellini with him in the Colosseum, where the priest conjured up a whole host of devils, is well known to the reading public. The subsequent meeting of Cellini with his mistress, as predicted and brought about by the conjurer, at the precise time fixed by him, is to be considered, as a matter of course, a "curious coincidence." In the latter part of the sixteenth century there was hardly a parish to be found in which the priests did not study magic and alchemy. The practice of exorcism to cast out devils "in imitation of Christ," who by the way never used exorcism at all, led the clergy to devote themselves openly to "sacred" magic in contradistinction to black art, of which latter crime were accused all those who were neither priests nor monks.
The occult knowledge gleaned by the Roman Church from the once fat fields of theurgy she sedulously guarded for her own use, and sent to the stake only those practitioners who "poached" on her lands of the Scientia Scientiarum, and those whose sins could not be concealed by the friar's frock. The proof of it lies in the records of history. "In the course only of fifteen years, between 1580 to 1595, and only in the single province of Lorraine, the President Remigius burned 900 witches," says Thomas Wright, in his Sorcery and Magic. It was during these days, prolific in ecclesiastical murder and unrivalled for cruelty and ferocity, that Jean Bodin wrote.
While the orthodox clergy called forth whole legions of "demons" through magical incantations, unmolested by the authorities, provided they held fast to the established dogmas and taught no heresy, on the other hand, acts of unparalleled atrocity were perpetrated on poor, unfortunate fools. Gabriel Malagrida, an old man of eighty, was burnt by these evangelical Jack Ketches in 1761. In the Amsterdam library there is a copy of the report of his famous trial, translated from the Lisbon edition. He was accused of sorcery and illicit intercourse with the Devil, who had "disclosed to him futurity." (?) The prophecy imparted by the Arch-Enemy to the poor visionary Jesuit is reported in the following terms: "The culprit hath confessed that the demon, under the form of the blessed Virgin, having commanded him to write the life of Antichrist (?), told him that he, Malagrida, was a second John, but more clear than John the Evangelist; that there were to be three Antichrists, and that the last should be born at Milan, of a monk and a nun, in the year 1920; that he would marry Proserpine, one of the infernal furies," etc.
The prophecy is to be verified forty-three years hence. Even were all the children born of monks and nuns really to become antichrists if allowed to grow up to maturity, the fact would seem far less deplorable than the discoveries made in so many convents when the foundations have been removed for some reason. If the assertion of Luther is to be disbelieved on account of his hatred for popery, then we may name discoveries of the same character made quite recently in Austrian and Russian Poland. Luther speaks of a fish-pond at Rome, situated near a convent of nuns, which, having been cleared out by order of Pope Gregory, disclosed, at the bottom, over six thousand infant skulls; and of a nunnery at Neinburg, in Austria, whose foundations, when searched, disclosed the same relics of celibacy and chastity!
"Ecclesia non novit Sanguinem!" meekly repeated the scarlet-robed cardinals. And to avoid the spilling of blood which horrified them, they instituted the Holy Inquisition. If, as the occultists maintain, and science half confirms, our most trifling acts and thoughts are indelibly impressed
upon the eternal mirror of the astral ether, there must be somewhere, in the boundless realm of the unseen universe, the imprint of a curious picture. It is that of a gorgeous standard waving in the heavenly breeze at the foot of the great "white throne" of the Almighty. On its crimson damask face a cross, symbol of "the Son of God who died for mankind," with an olive branch on one side, and a sword, stained to the hilt with human gore, on the other. A legend selected from the Psalms emblazoned in golden letters, reading thus: "Exurge, Domine, et judica causam meam." For such appears the standard of the Inquisition, on a photograph in our possession, from an original procured at the Escurial of Madrid.
Under this Christian standard, in the brief space of fourteen years, Tomas de Torquemada, the confessor of Queen Isabella, burned over ten thousand persons, and sentenced to the torture eighty thousand more. Orobio, the well-known writer, who was detained so long in prison, and who hardly escaped the flames of the Inquisition, immortalized this institution in his works when once at liberty in Holland. He found no better argument against the Holy Church than to embrace the Judaic faith and submit even to circumcision. "In the cathedral of Saragossa," says a writer on the Inquisition, "is the tomb of a famous inquisitor. Six pillars surround the tomb; to each is chained a Moor, as preparatory to being burned." On this St. Foix ingenuously observes: "If ever the Jack Ketch of any country should be rich enough to have a splendid tomb, this might serve as an excellent model!" To make it complete, however, the builders of the tomb ought not to have omitted a bas-relief of the famous horse which was burnt for sorcery and witchcraft. Granger tells the story, describing it as having occurred in his time. The poor animal "had been taught to tell the spots upon cards, and the hour of the day by the watch. Horse and owner were both indicted by the sacred office for dealing with the Devil, and both were burned, with a great ceremony of auto-da-fι, at Lisbon, in 1601, as wizards!"
This immortal institution of Christianity did not remain without its Dante to sing its praise. "Macedo, a Portuguese Jesuit," says the author of Demonologia, "has discovered the origin of the Inquisition, in the terrestrial Paradise, and presumes to allege that God was the first who began the functions of an inquisitor over Cain and the workmen of Babel!"
Nowhere, during the middle ages, were the arts of magic and sorcery more practiced by the clergy than in Spain and Portugal. The Moors were profoundly versed in the occult sciences, and at Toledo, Seville, and Salamanca, were, once upon a time, the great schools of magic. The kabalists of the latter town were skilled in all the abstruse sciences; they
knew the virtues of precious stones and other minerals, and had extracted from alchemy its most profound secrets.
The authentic documents pertaining to the great trial of the Marechale d'Ancre, during the regency of Marie de Medicis, disclose that the unfortunate woman perished through the fault of the priests with whom, like a true Italian, she surrounded herself. She was accused by the people of Paris of sorcery, because it had been asserted that she had used, after the ceremony of exorcism, newly-killed white cocks. Believing herself constantly bewitched, and being in very delicate health, the Marechale had the ceremony of exorcism publicly applied to herself in the Church of the Augustins; as to the birds, she used them as an application to the forehead on account of dreadful pains in the head, and had been advised to do so by Montalto, the Jew physician of the queen, and the Italian priests.
In the sixteenth century, the Cure de Barjota, of the diocese of Callahora, Spain, became the world's wonder for his magical powers. His most extraordinary feat consisted, it was said, in transporting himself to any distant country, witnessing political and other events, and then returning home to predict them in his own country. He had a familiar demon, who served him faithfully for long years, says the Chronicle, but the cure turned ungrateful and cheated him. Having been apprised by his demon of a conspiracy against the Pope's life, in consequence of an intrigue of the latter with a fair lady, the cure transported himself to Rome (in his double, of course) and thus saved his Holiness' life. After which he repented, confessed his sins to the gallant Pope, and got absolution. "On his return he was delivered, as a matter of form, into the custody of the inquisitors of Logrono, but was acquitted and restored to his liberty very soon."
Friar Pietro, a Dominican monk of the fourteenth century the magician who presented the famous Dr. Eugenio Torralva, a physician attached to the house of the admiral of Castile, with a demon named Zequiel won his fame through the subsequent trial of Torralva. The procedure and circumstances attendant upon the extraordinary trial are described in the original papers preserved in the Archives of the Inquisition. The Cardinal of Volterra, and the Cardinal of Santa Cruz, both saw and communicated with Zequiel, who proved, during the whole of Torralva's life, to be a pure, kind, elemental spirit, doing many beneficent actions, and remaining faithful to the physician to the last hour of his life. Even the Inquisition acquitted Torralva, on that account; and, although an immortality of fame was insured to him by the satire of Cervantes, neither Torralva nor the monk Pietro are fictitious heroes, but historical personages, recorded in ecclesiastical documents of Rome and Cuenηa,
in which town the trial of the physician took place, January the 29th, 1530.
The book of Dr. W. G. Soldan, of Stuttgart, has become as famous in Germany, as Bodin's book on Demonomania in France. It is the most complete German treatise on witchcraft of the sixteenth century. One interested to learn the secret machinery underlying these thousands of legal murders, perpetrated by a clergy who pretended to believe in the Devil, and succeeded in making others believe in him, will find it divulged in the above-mentioned work.* The true origin of the daily accusations and death-sentences for sorcery are cleverly traced to personal and political enmities, and, above all, to the hatred of the Catholics toward the Protestants. The crafty work of the Jesuits is seen at every page of the bloody tragedies; and it is in Bamberg and Wurzburg, where these worthy sons of Loyola were most powerful at that time, that the cases of witchcraft were most numerous. On the next page we give a curious list of some victims, many of whom were children between the ages of seven and eight years, and Protestants. "Of the multitudes of persons who perished at the stake in Germany during the first half of the seventeenth century for sorcery, the crime of many was their attachment to the religion of Luther," says T. Wright, " . . . and the petty princes were not unwilling to seize upon any pretense to fill their coffers . . . the persons most persecuted being those whose property was a matter of consideration. . . . At Bamberg, as well as at Wόrzburg, the bishop was a sovereign prince in his dominions. The Prince-Bishop, John George II., who ruled Bamberg . . . after several unsuccessful attempts to root out Lutheranism, distinguished his reign by a series of sanguinary witch-trials, which disgrace the annals of that city. . . . We may form some notion of the proceedings of his worthy agent, from the statement of the most authentic historians, that between 1625 and 1630, not less than 900 trials took place in the two courts of Bamberg and Zeil; and a pamphlet published at Bamberg by authority, in 1659, states the number of persons whom Bishop John George had caused to be burned for sorcery, to have been 600."
Regretting that space should
prevent our giving one of the most curious lists in the world of burned witches,
we will nevertheless make a few extracts from the original record as printed in
Hauber's Bibliotheca
* Dr. W. G. Soldan: "Geschichte der Hexenprocesse, aus den Quellen
dargestellt," Stuttgart, 1843.
Frederick Forner, Suffragan of Bamberg, author of a treatise against
heretics and sorcerers, under the title of "Panoplia Armaturoe Dei."
"Sorcery and Magic," by T. Wright,
M.A.,
F.S.A.,
etc., Corresponding Member of the National Institute of France, vol. ii., p.
185.
Magica. One glance at this horrible catalogue of murders in Christ's name, is sufficient to discover that out of 162 persons burned, more than one-half of them are designated as strangers (i.e., Protestants) in this hospitable town; and of the other half we find thirty-four children, the oldest of whom was fourteen, the youngest an infant child of Dr. Schutz. To make the catalogue shorter we will present of each of the twenty-nine burnings, but the most remarkable.*
IN THE
FIRST BURNING, FOUR PERSONS.
Old Ancker's widow.
The wife of Liebler.
The wife of Gutbrodt.
The wife of Hocker.
IN THE
SECOND BURNING, FOUR PERSONS.
Two strange women (names unknown).
The old wife of Beutler.
IN THE
THIRD BURNING, FIVE PERSONS.
Tungersleber, a minstrel.
Four wives of citizens.
IN THE FOURTH BURNING, FIVE PERSONS.
A strange man.
IN THE FIFTH BURNING, NINE PERSONS.
Lutz, an eminent shop-keeper.
The wife of Baunach, a senator.
IN THE SIXTH BURNING, SIX PERSONS.
The fat tailor's wife.
A strange man.
A strange woman.
* Besides these burnings in Germany, which amount to many thousands, we find
some very interesting statements in Prof. Draper's "Conflict between Religion
and Science." On page 146, he says: "The families of the convicted were plunged
into irretrievable ruin. Llorente, the historian of the Inquisition, computes
that Torquemada and his collaborators, in the course of eighteen years, burned
at the stake 10,220 persons, 6,860 in effigy, and otherwise punished 97,321! . .
. With unutterable disgust and indignation, we learn that the papal government
realized much money by selling to the rich, dispensations to secure them from
the Inquisition."
63
A
RECORD OF FIENDISH CRUELTY.
IN THE
SEVENTH BURNING, SEVEN PERSONS.
A strange girl of twelve years old.
A strange man, a strange woman.
A strange bailiff (Schultheiss).
Three strange women.
IN THE
EIGHTH BURNING, SEVEN PERSONS.
Baunach, a senator, the fattest citizen in Wurzburg.
A strange man.
Two strange women.
IN THE
NINTH BURNING, FIVE PERSONS.
A strange man.
A mother and daughter.
IN THE
TENTH BURNING, THREE PERSONS.
Steinacher, a very rich man.
A strange man, a strange woman.
IN THE
ELEVENTH BURNING, FOUR PERSONS.
Two women and two men.
IN THE
TWELFTH BURNING, TWO PERSONS.
Two strange women.
IN THE
THIRTEENTH BURNING, FOUR PERSONS.
A little girl nine or ten years old.
A younger girl, her little sister.
IN
THE FOURTEENTH BURNING, TWO PERSONS.
The mother of the two little girls before mentioned.
A girl twenty-four years old.
IN
THE FIFTEENTH BURNING, TWO PERSONS.
A boy twelve years of age, in the first school.
A woman.
IN
THE SIXTEENTH BURNING, SIX PERSONS.
A boy of ten years of age.
IN
THE SEVENTEENTH BURNING, FOUR PERSONS.
A boy eleven years old.
A mother and daughter.
IN THE
EIGHTEENTH BURNING, SIX PERSONS.
Two boys, twelve years old.
The daughter of Dr. Junge.
A girl of fifteen years of age.
A strange woman.
IN THE NINETEENTH BURNING, SIX PERSONS.
A boy of ten years of age.
Another boy, twelve years old.
IN THE TWENTIETH BURNING, SIX PERSONS.
Gobel's child, the most beautiful girl in Wurzburg.
Two boys, each twelve years old.
Stepper's little daughter.
IN THE
TWENTY-FIRST BURNING, SIX PERSONS.
A boy fourteen years old.
The little son of Senator Stolzenberger.
Two alumni.
IN THE
TWENTY-SECOND BURNING, SIX PERSONS.
Sturman, a rich cooper.
A strange boy.
IN THE
TWENTY-THIRD BURNING, NINE PERSONS.
David Croten's boy, nine years old.
The two sons of the prince's cook, one fourteen, the other ten years old.
IN THE
TWENTY-FOURTH BURNING, SEVEN PERSONS.
Two boys in the hospital.
A rich cooper.
IN
THE TWENTY-FIFTH BURNING, SIX PERSONS.
A strange boy.
IN
THE TWENTY-SIXTH BURNING, SEVEN PERSONS.Weydenbush, a senator.
The little daughter of Valkenberger.
The little son of the town council bailiff.
IN THE
TWENTY-SEVENTH BURNING, SEVEN PERSONS.A strange boy.
A strange woman.
Another boy.
IN THE
TWENTY-EIGHTH BURNING, SIX PERSONS.
The infant daughter of Dr. Schόtz.
A blind girl.
IN THE
TWENTY-NINTH BURNING, SEVEN PERSONS.
The fat noble lady (Edelfrau).
A doctor of divinity.
Item.
Summary:
"Strange" men and women, i.e.,
Protestants, 28
Citizens, apparently all WEALTHY people, 100
Boys, girls, and little children, 34
In nineteen months,
162 persons.
"There were," says Wright,
"little girls of from seven to ten years of age among the witches, and seven
and twenty of them were convicted and burnt," at some of the other
brδnde, or burnings. "The numbers brought to trial in these terrible
proceedings were so great, and they were treated with so little consideration,
that it was usual not even to take the trouble of setting down their names, but
they were cited as the accused No. 1, No. 2, No. 3, and so on.* The
Jesuits took their confessions in private."
What room is there in a theology which exacts such holocausts as these to
appease the bloody appetites of its priests for the following gentle words:
"Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not; for of such
is the kingdom of Heaven." "Even so it is not the will of your Father . . . that
one of these little ones should perish." "But whoso shall offend one of these
little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone
were hanged about his neck and that he were drowned in the depths of the
sea."
We sincerely hope that the above words have proved no vain threat to these
child-burners.
Did this butchery in the name of
their Moloch-god prevent these treasure-hunters from resorting to the black art
themselves? Not in the least; for in no class were such consulters of "familiar"
spirits more numerous than among the clergy during the fifteenth, sixteenth, and
seventeenth centuries. True, there were some Catholic priests among the victims,
but though these were generally accused of having "been
* "Sorcery and Magic"; "The Burnings at Wόrzburg," p. 186.
led into practices too dreadful to be described," it was not so. In the twenty-nine burnings above catalogued we find the names of twelve vicars, four canons, and two doctors of divinity burnt alive. But we have only to turn to such works as were published at the time to assure ourselves that each popish priest executed was accused of "damnable heresy," i.e., a tendency to reformation a crime more heinous far than sorcery.
We refer those who would learn how the Catholic clergy united duty with pleasure in the matter of exorcisms, revenge, and treasure-hunting, to volume II., chapter i., of W. Howitt's History of the Supernatural. "In the book called Pneumatologia Occulta et Vera, all the forms of adjuration and conjuration were laid down," says this veteran writer. He then proceeds to give a long description of the favorite modus operandi. The Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie of the late Eliphas Levi, treated with so much abuse and contempt by des Mousseaux, tells nothing of the weird ceremonies and practices but what was practiced legally and with the tacit if not open consent of the Church, by the priests of the middle ages. The exorcist-priest entered a circle at midnight; he was clad in a new surplice, and had a consecrated band hanging from the neck, covered with sacred characters. He wore on the head a tall pointed cap, on the front of which was written in Hebrew the holy word, Tetragrammaton the ineffable name. It was written with a new pen dipped in the blood of a white dove. What the exorcists most yearned after, was to release miserable spirits which haunt spots where hidden treasures lie. The exorcist sprinkles the circle with the blood of a black lamb and a white pigeon. The priest had to adjure the evil spirits of hell Acheront, Magoth, Asmodei, Beelzebub, Belial, and all the damned souls, in the mighty names of Jehovah, Adonay, Elohah, and Sabaioth, which latter was the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who dwelt in the Urim and Thummim. When the damned souls flung in the face of the exorcist that he was a sinner, and could not get the treasure from them, the priest-sorcerer had to reply that "all his sins were washed out in the blood of Christ ,* and he bid them depart as cursed ghosts and damned flies." When the exorcist dislodged them at last, the poor soul was "comforted in the name of the Saviour, and consigned to the care of good angels," who were less powerful, we must think, than the exorcising Catholic worthies, "and the rescued treasure, of course, was secured for the Church."
"Certain days," adds Howitt, "are laid down in the calendar of the
* And retinted in the blood of the millions murdered in his name in the no
less innocent blood than his own, of the little child-witches!
Church as most favorable for the practice of exorcism; and, if the devils are difficult to drive, a fume of sulphur, assaftida, bear's gall, and rue is recommended, which, it was presumed, would outstench even devils."
This is the Church, and this the priesthood, which, in the nineteenth century, pays 5,000 priests to teach the people of the United States the infidelity of science and the infallibility of the Bishop of Rome!
We have already noticed the confession of an eminent prelate that the elimination of Satan from theology would be fatal to the perpetuity of the Church. But this is only partially true. The Prince of Sin would be gone, but sin itself would survive. If the Devil were annihilated, the Articles of Faith and the Bible would remain. In short there would still be a pretended divine revelation, and the necessity for self-assumed inspired interpreters. We must, therefore, consider the authenticity of the Bible itself. We must study its pages, and see if they, indeed, contain the commands of the Deity, or but a compendium of ancient traditions and hoary myths. We must try to interpret them for ourselves if possible. As to its pretended interpreters, the only possible assimilation we can find for them in the Bible is to compare them with the man described by the wise King Solomon in his Proverbs, with the perpetrator of these "six things . . . yea seven . . . which doth the Lord hate," and which are an abomination unto Him, to wit: "A proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood; an heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief; a false witness that speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren" (Proverbs vi. 16, 17, 18, 19).
Of which of these accusations are the long line of men who have left the imprint of their feet in the Vatican guiltless?
"When the demons," says Augustine, "insinuate themselves in the creatures, they begin by conforming themselves to the will of every one. . . . In order to attract men, they begin by seducing them, by simulating obedience. . . . How could one know, had he not been taught by the demons themselves, what they like or what they hate; the name which attracts, or that which forces them into obedience; all this art, in short, of magic, the whole science of the magicians?" *
To this impressive dissertation
of the "saint," we will add that no magician has ever denied that he had learned
the art from "spirits," whether, being a medium, they acted
independently on him, or he had been initiated into the science of "evocation"
by his fathers who knew it before himself. But who was it then that taught the
exorcist? The priest
* St. Augustine: "City of God," i, xxi., ch. vi.; des Mousseaux: "Murs et
Pratiques des Demons."
who clothes himself with an authority not only over the magician, but even over all these "spirits," whom he calls demons and devils as soon as he finds them obeying any one but himself? He must have learned somewhere from some one that power which he pretends to possess. For, ". . . how could one know had he not been taught by the demons themselves . . . the name which attracts, or that which forces them into obedience?" asks Augustine.
Useless to remark that we know
the answer beforehand: "Revelation . . .
divine gift . . . the
Son of God; nay, God Himself, through His direct Spirit, who descended on the
apostles as the Pentecostal fire," and who is now alleged to overshadow every
priest who sees fit to exorcise for either glory or a gift. Are we then to
believe that the recent scandal of public exorcism, performed about the 14th of
October, 1876, by the senior priest of the Church of the Holy Spirit, at
Barcelona, Spain, was also done under the direct superintendence of the Holy
Ghost? *
* A correspondent of the London "Times" describes the Catalonian exorcist in
the following lines:
"About the 14th of October it
was privately announced that a young woman of seventeen or eighteen years of
age, of the lower class, having long been afflicted with 'a hatred of holy
things,' the senior priest of the Church of the Holy Spirit would cure her of
her disease. The exhibition was to be held in a church frequented by the best
part of the community. The church was dark, but a sickly light was shed by wax
lights on the sable forms of some eighty or a hundred persons who clustered
round the presbyterio, or sanctuary, in front of the altar. Within the
little enclosure or sanctuary, separated from the crowd by a light railing, lay,
on a common bench, with a little pillow for her head to recline upon, a
poorly-clad girl, probably of the peasant or artisan class; her brother or
husband stood at her feet to restrain her (at times) frantic kicking by holding
her legs. The door of the vestry opened; the exhibitor I mean the priest
came in. The poor girl, not without just reason, 'had an aversion to holy
things,' or, at least, the 400 devils within her distorted body had such an
aversion, and in the confusion of the moment, thinking that the father was 'a
holy thing,' she doubled up her legs, screamed out with twitching mouth, her
whole body writhing, and threw herself nearly off the bench. The male attendant
seized her legs, the women supported her head and swept out her dishevelled
hair. The priest advanced and, mingling familiarly with the shuddering and
horror-struck crowd, said, pointing at the suffering child, now sobbing and
twitching on the bench, 'Promise me, my children, that you will be prudent (prudentes),
and of a truth, sons and daughters mine, you shall see marvels.' The
promise was given. The exhibitor went to procure stole and short surplice (estola
y roquete), and returned in a moment, taking his stand at the side of the
'possessed with the devils,' with his face toward the group of students. The
order of the day's proceedings was a lecture to the bystanders, and the
operation of exorcising the devils. 'You know,' said the priest, 'that so great
is this girl's aversion to holy things, myself included, that she goes into
convulsions, kicks, screams, and distorts her body the moment she arrives at the
corner of this street, and her convulsive struggles reach their climax when she
enters the sacred house of the Most High.' Turning to the prostrate, shuddering,
most unhappy object of his attack, the priest commenced: 'In the name of God, of
the saints, of the blessed Host, of every holy sacrament of our Church, I adjure
thee, Rusbel, come out of her.'
(N. B. 'Rusbel' is the name of a devil, the devil having 257 names in
Catalonia.) Thus adjured, the girl threw herself in an agony of convulsion,
till her distorted face, foam-bespattered lips and writhing limbs grew well-nigh
stiff at full length upon the floor, and, in language semi-obscene,
semi-violent, screamed out, 'I don't choose to come out, you thieves, scamps,
robbers.' At last, from the quivering lips of the girl, came the words, 'I
will'; but the devil added, with traditional perversity, 'I will cast the 100
out, but by the mouth of the girl.' The priest objected. The exit, he said, of
100 devils out of the small Spanish mouth of the woman would 'leave her
suffocated.' Then the maddened girl said she must undress herself for the devils
to escape. This petition the holy father refused. 'Then I will come out through
the right foot, but first' the girl had on a hempen sandal, she was obviously
of the poorest class 'you must take off her sandal.' The sandal was untied;
the foot gave a convulsive plunge; the devil and his myrmidons (so the cura
said, looking round triumphantly) had gone to their own place. And, assured
of this, the wretched dupe of a girl lay quite still. The bishop was not
cognizant of this freak of the clergy, and the moment it came to the ears of the
civil authorities, the sharpest means were taken to prevent a repetition of the
scandal."
It will be urged that the "bishop was not cognizant of this freak of the clergy"; but even if he were, how could he have protested against a rite considered since the days of the apostles, one of the most holy prerogatives of the Church of Rome? So late as in 1852, only twenty-five years ago, these rites received a public and solemn sanction from the Vatican, and a new Ritual of Exorcism was published in Rome, Paris, and other Catholic capitals. Des Mousseaux, writing under the immediate patronage of Father Ventura, the General of the Theatines of Rome, even favors us with lengthy extracts from this famous ritual, and explains the reason why it was enforced again. It was in consequence of the revival of Magic under the name of Modern Spiritualism. The bull of Pope Innocent VIII. is exhumed, and translated for the benefit of des Mousseaux's readers. "We have heard," exclaims the Sovereign Pontiff, "that a great number of persons of both sexes have feared not to enter into relations with the spirits of hell; and that, by their practice of sorcery . . . they strike with sterility the conjugal bed, destroy the germs of humanity in the bosom of the mother, and throw spells on them, and set a barrier to the multiplication of animals . . . etc., etc."; then follow curses and anathemas against the practice.
This belief of the Sovereign Pontiffs of an enlightened Christian country is a
direct inheritance by the most ignorant multitudes from the southern Hindu
rabble the "heathen." The diabolical arts of certain kangalins (witches) and
jadugar (sorcerers) are firmly believed in by these people. The following are
among their most dreaded powers: to inspire love and hatred at will; to send a
devil to take possession of a person and torture
him; to expel him; to cause sudden death or an incurable disease; to either strike cattle with or protect them from epidemics; to compose philtres that will either strike with sterility or provoke unbounded passions in men and women, etc., etc. The sight alone of a man said to be such a sorcerer excites in a Hindu profound terror.
And now we will quote in this connection the truthful remark of a writer who passed years in India in the study of the origin of such superstitions: "Vulgar magic in India, like a degenerated infiltration, goes hand-in-hand with the most ennobling beliefs of the sectarians of the Pitris. It was the work of the lowest clergy, and designed to hold the populace in a perpetual state of fear. It is thus that in all ages and under every latitude, side by side with philosophical speculations of the highest character, one always finds the religion of the rabble." * In India it was the work of the lowest clergy; in Rome, that of the highest Pontiffs. But then, have they not as authority their greatest saint, Augustine, who declares that "whoever believes not in the evil spirits, refuses to believe in Holy Writ?"
Therefore, in the second half of the nineteenth century, we find the counsel for the Sacred Congregation of Rites (exorcism of demons included), Father Ventura de Raulica, writing thus, in a letter published by des Mousseaux, in 1865:
"We are in full magic! and
under false names; the Spirit of lies and impudicity goes on perpetrating his
horrible deprecations. . . . The most grievous feature in this is that among the
most serious persons they do not attach the importance to the strange phenomena
which they deserve, these manifestations that we witness, and which become with
every day more weird, striking, as well as most fatal.
"I cannot sufficiently admire and praise, from this standpoint, the zeal and
courage displayed by you in your work. The facts which you have collected are
calculated to throw light and conviction into the most skeptical minds; and
after reading this remarkable work, written with so much learnedness and
consciousness, blindness is no longer possible.
"If anything could surprise us, it would be the indifference with which these
phenomena have been treated by false Science, endeavoring as she has,
to turn into ridicule so grave a subject; the childish simplicity exhibited by
her in the desire to explain the facts by absurd and contradictory hypotheses. .
. .
[Signed] "The
Father Ventura de Raulica, etc., etc."
Thus encouraged by the greatest
authorities of the Church of Rome, ancient and modern, the Chevalier argues the
necessity and the efficacy of exorcism by the priests. He tries to demonstrate
on faith, as usual
* Louis Jacolliot: "Le Spiritisme dans le Monde," p. 162.
St. Augustine: "City of God."
"Murs et Pratiques des Demons," p. ii.
that the power of the spirits of hell is closely related to certain rites, words, and formal signs. "In the diabolical Catholicism," he says, "as well as in the divine Catholicism, potential grace is bound (liιe) to certain signs." While the power of the Catholic priest proceeds from God, that of the Pagan priest proceeds from the Devil. The Devil, he adds, "is forced to submission" before the holy minister of God "he dares not LIE." *
We beg the reader to note well the underlined sentence, as we mean to test its truth impartially. We are prepared to adduce proofs, undeniable and undenied even by the Popish Church forced, as she was, into the confession proofs of hundreds of cases in relation to the most solemn of her dogmas, wherein the "spirits" lied from beginning to end. How about certain holy relics authenticated by visions of the blessed Virgin, and a host of saints? We have at hand a treatise by a pious Catholic, Jilbert de Nogen, on the relics of saints. With honest despair he acknowledges the "great number of false relics, as well as false legends," and severely censures the inventors of these lying miracles. "It was on the occasion of one of our Saviour's teeth," writes the author of Demonologia, "that de Nogen took up his pen on this subject, by which the monks of St. Medard de Soissons pretended to work miracles; a pretension which he asserted to be as chimerical as that of several persons who believed they possessed the navel, and other parts less comely, of the body of Christ."
"A monk of St. Antony," says Stephens, "having been at Jerusalem, saw there several relics, among which was a bit of the finger of the Holy Ghost, as sound and entire as it had ever been; the snout of the seraph that appeared to St. Francis; one of the nails of a cherub; one of the ribs of the Verbum caro factum (the Word made flesh); some rays of the star that appeared to the three kings of the East; a phial of St. Michael's sweat, that exuded when he was fighting against the Devil, etc. 'All which things,' observes the monkish treasurer of relics, 'I have brought with me home very devoutly.' "
And if the foregoing is set
aside as the invention of a Protestant enemy, may we not be allowed to refer the
reader to the History of England and authentic documents which state the
existence of a relic not less extraordinary than the best of the others? Henry
III. received from the Grand Master of the Templars a phial
containing a small portion of the sacred blood of Christ which he had shed upon
the cross. It was attested to be genuine by the seals of the Patriarch of
Jerusalem, and others. The
* Des Mousseaux: "Table des Matieres."
"Demonologia"; London, 1827, J. Bumpus, 23 Skinner Street.
"Traite Preparatif a l'Apologie pour Herodote," c. 39.
procession bearing the sacred phial from St. Paul's to Westminster Abbey is described by the historian: "Two monks received the phial, and deposited it in the Abbey . . . which made all England shine with glory, dedicating it to God and St. Edward."
The story of the Prince Radzivil is well known. It was the undeniable deception of the monks and nuns surrounding him and his own confessor which made the Polish nobleman become a Lutheran. He felt at first so indignant at the "heresy" of the Reformation spreading in Lithuania, that he travelled all the way to Rome to pay his homage of sympathy and veneration to the Pope. The latter presented him with a precious box of relics. On his return home, his confessor saw the Virgin, who descended from her glorious abode for the sole purpose of blessing these relics and authenticating them. The superior of the neighboring convent and the mother-abbess of a nunnery both saw the same vision, with a reλnforcement of several saints and martyrs; they prophesied and "felt the Holy Ghost" ascending from the box of relics and overshadowing the prince. A demoniac provided for the purpose by the clergy was exorcised in full ceremony, and upon being touched by the box immediately recovered, and rendered thanks on the spot to the Pope and the Holy Ghost. After the ceremony was over the guardian of the treasury in which the relics were kept, threw himself at the feet of the prince, and confessed that on their way back from Rome he had lost the box of relics. Dreading the wrath of his master, he had procured a similar box, "which he had filled with the small bones of dogs and cats"; but seeing how the prince was deceived, he preferred confessing his guilt to such blasphemous tricks. The prince said nothing, but continued for some time testing not the relics, but his confessor and the vision-seers. Their mock raptures made him discover so thoroughly the gross impositions of the monks and nuns that he joined the Reformed Church.
This is history. Bayle shows that when the Roman Church is no longer able to deny that there have been false relics, she resorts to sophistry, and replies that if false relics have wrought miracles it is "because of the good intentions of the believers, who thus obtained from God a reward of their good faith!" The same Bayle shows, by numerous instances, that whenever it was proved that several bodies of the same saint, or three heads of him, or three arms (as in the case of Augustine) were said to exist in different places, and that they could not well be all authentic, the cool and invariable answer of the Church was that they were all genuine; for "God had multiplied and miraculously reproduced them for the greater glory of His Holy Church!" In other words they would have the faithful believe that the body of a deceased saint may, through divine miracle, acquire the physiological peculiarities of a crawfish!
We fancy that it would be hard to demonstrate to satisfaction that the visions of Catholic saints, are, in any one particular instance, better or more trustworthy than the average visions and prophecies of our modern "mediums." The visions of Andrew Jackson Davis however our critics may sneer at them are by long odds more philosophical and more compatible with modern science than the Augustinian speculations. Whenever the visions of Swedenborg, the greatest among the modern seers, run astray from philosophy and scientific truth, it is when they most run parallel with theology. Nor are these visions any more useless to either science or humanity than those of the great orthodox saints. In the life of St. Bernard it is narrated that as he was once in church, upon a Christmas eve, he prayed that the very hour in which Christ was born might be revealed to him; and when the "true and correct hour came, he saw the divine babe appear in his manger." What a pity that the divine babe did not embrace so favorable an opportunity to fix the correct day and year of his death, and thereby reconcile the controversies of his putative historians. The Tischendorfs, Lardners, and Colensos, as well as many a Catholic divine, who have vainly squeezed the marrow out of historical records and their own brains, in the useless search, would at least have had something for which to thank the saint.
As it is, we are hopelessly left to infer that most of the beatific and divine visions of the Golden Legend, and those to be found in the more complete biographies of the most important "saints," as well as most of the visions of our own persecuted seers and seeresses, were produced by ignorant and undeveloped "spirits" passionately fond of personating great historical characters. We are quite ready to agree with the Chevalier des Mousseaux, and other unrelenting persecutors of magic and spiritualism in the name of the Church, that modern spirits are often "lying spirits"; that they are ever on hand to humor the respective hobbies of the persons who communicate with them at "circles"; that they deceive them and, therefore, are not always good "spirits."
But, having conceded so much, we will now ask of any impartial person: is it possible to believe at the same time that the power given to the exorcist-priest, that supreme and divine power of which he boasts, has been given to him by God for the purpose of deceiving people? That the prayer pronounced by him in the name of Christ, and which, forcing the demon into submission, makes him reveal himself, is calculated at the same time to make the devil confess not the truth, but that only which it is the interest of the church to which the exorcist belongs, should pass for truth? And this is what invariably happens. Compare, for instance, the responses given by the demon to Luther, with those obtained from the devils by St. Dominick. The one argues against the
private mass, and upbraids Luther with placing the Virgin Mary and saints before Christ, and thus dishonoring the Son of God; * while the demons exorcised by St. Dominick, upon seeing the Virgin whom the holy father had also evoked to help him, roar out: "Oh! our enemy! oh! our damner! . . . why didst thou descend from heaven to torment us? Why art thou so powerful an intercessor for sinners! Oh! thou most certain and secure way to heaven . . . thou commandest us and we are forced to confess that nobody is damned who only perseveres in thy holy worship, etc., etc." Luther's "Saint Satan" assures him that while believing in the transubstantiation of Christ's body and blood he had been worshipping merely bread and wine; and the devils of all the Catholic saints promise eternal damnation to whomsoever disbelieves or even so much as doubts the dogma!
Before leaving the subject, let us give one or two more instances from the Chronicles of the Lives of the Saints, selected from such narratives as are fully accepted by the Church. We might fill volumes with proofs of undeniable confederacy between the exorcisers and the demons. Their very nature betrays them. Instead of being independent, crafty entities bent on the destruction of men's souls and spirits, the majority of them are simply the elementals of the kabalists; creatures with no intellect of their own, but faithful mirrors of the WILL which evokes, controls, and guides them. We will not waste our time in drawing the reader's attention to doubtful or obscure thaumaturgists and exorcisers, but take as our standard one of the greatest saints of Catholicism, and select a bouquet from that same prolific conservatory of pious lies, The Golden Legend, of James de Voragine.
St. Dominick, the founder of the
famous order of that name, is one of the mightiest saints on the calendar. His
order was the first that received a solemn confirmation from the Pope, §
and he is well known in history as the associate and counsellor of the infamous
Simon de Montfort, the papal general, whom he helped to butcher the unfortunate
Albigenses in and near Toulouse. The story goes that this saint and the Church
after him, claim that he received from the Virgin, in propria persona,
a rosary, whose virtues produced such stupendous miracles that they throw
entirely into the shade those of the apostles, and even of Jesus himself. A man,
says the biographer, an abandoned sinner, was bold enough to doubt the
* De Missa Privata et Unctione Sacerdotum.
See the "Life of St. Dominick" and the story about the miraculous
Rosary; also the "Golden Legend."
James de Varasse, known by the Latin name of James de Voragine, was
Vicar General of the Dominicans and Bishop of Genoa in 1290.
§ Thirteenth century.
virtue of the Dominican rosary; and for this unparalleled blasphemy was punished
on the spot by having 15,000 devils take possession of him. Seeing the great
suffering of the tortured demoniac, St. Dominick forgot the insult and called
the devils to account.
Following is the colloquy between the "blessed exorcist" and the
demons:
Question.
How did you take possession of this man, and how many are you?
Answer of the
Devils. We came into him for having spoken disrespectfully of the
rosary. We are 15,000.
Question.
Why did so many as 15,000 enter him?
Answer.
Because there are fifteen decades in the rosary which he derided, etc.
Dominick.
Is not all true I have said of the virtues of the rosary?
Devils.
Yes! Yes! (they
emit flames through the nostrils of the demoniac). Know all ye Christians
that Dominick never said one word concerning the rosary that is not most true;
and know ye further, that if you do not believe him, great calamities will
befall you.
Dominick.
Who is the man in the world the Devil hates the most?
Devils.
(In chorus.) Thou art the very man (here follow
verbose compliments).
Dominick. Of which state of
Christians are there the most damned?
Devils. In hell we have merchants,
pawnbrokers, fraudulent bankers, grocers, Jews, apothecaries, etc., etc.
Dominick.
Are there any priests or monks in hell?
Devils. There are a great number of priests, but no monks,
with the exception of such as have transgressed the rule of their order.
Dominick.
Have you any Dominicans?
Devils. Alas! alas! we have not one yet, but we expect a great number
of them after their devotion is a little cooled.
We do not pretend to give the questions and answers literally, for they occupy twenty-three pages; but the substance is here, as may be seen by any one who cares to read the Golden Legend. The full description of the hideous bellowings of the demons, their enforced glorification of the saint, and so on, is too long for this chapter. Suffice it to say that as we read the numerous questions offered by Dominick and the answers of the demons, we become fully convinced that they corroborate in every detail the unwarranted assertions and support the interests of the Church. The narrative is suggestive. The legend graphically describes the battle of the exorcist with the legion from the bottomless pit. The sulphurous flames which burst forth from the nose, mouth, eyes, and ears, of the demoniac; the sudden appearance of over a hun-
dred angels, clad in golden armor; and, finally, the descent of the blessed Virgin herself, in person, bearing a golden rod, with which she administers a sound thrashing to the demoniac, to force the devils to confess that of herself which we scarcely need repeat. The whole catalogue of theological truths uttered by Dominick's devils were embodied in so many articles of faith by his Holiness, the present Pope, in 1870, at the last cumenical Council.
From the foregoing it is easy to see that the only substantial difference between infidel "mediums" and orthodox saints lies in the relative usefulness of the demons, if demons we must call them. While the Devil faithfully supports the Christian exorcist in his orthodox (?) views, the modern spook generally leaves his medium in the lurch. For, by lying, he acts against his or her interests rather than otherwise, and thereby too often casts foul suspicion on the genuineness of the mediumship. Were modern "spirits" devils, they would evidently display a little more discrimination and cunning than they do. They would act as the demons of the saint which, compelled by the ecclesiastical magician and by the power of "the name . . . which forces them into submission," lie in accordance with the direct interest of the exorcist and his church. The moral of the parallel we leave to the sagacity of the reader.
"Observe well," exclaims des Mousseaux, "that there are demons which sometimes will speak the truth." "The exorcist," he adds, quoting the Ritual, "must command the demon to tell him whether he is detained in the body of the demoniac through some magic art, or by signs, or any objects which usually serve for this evil practice. In case the exorcised person has swallowed the latter, he must vomit them back; and if they are not in his body, the demon must indicate the proper place where they are to be found; and having found them they must be burned." * Thus some "demons reveal the existence of the bewitchment, tell who is its author, and indicate the means to destroy the malefice. But beware to ever resort, in such a case, to magicians, sorcerers, or mediums. You must call to help you but the minister of your Church!" "The Church believes in magic, as you well see," he adds, "since she expresses it so formally. And those who disbelieve in magic, can they still hope to share the faith of their own Church? And who can teach them better? To whom did Christ say: 'Go ye therefore, and teach all nations . . . and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the world?' "
Are we to believe that he said
this but to those who wear these black
* "Rituale Romanum," pp. 475-478. Parisiis, 1852.
"Murs et Pratiques des Demons," p. 177.
or scarlet liveries of Rome? Must we then credit the story that this power was given by Christ to Simon Stylites, the saint who sanctified himself by perching on a pillar (stylos) sixty feet high, for thirty-six years of his life, without ever descending from it, in order that, among other miracles stated in the Golden Legend, he might cure a dragon of a sore eye? "Near Simon's pillar was the dwelling of a dragon, so very venomous that the stench was spread for miles round his cave." This ophidian-hermit met with an accident; he got a thorn in his eye, and, becoming blind, crept to the saint's pillar, and pressed his eye against it for three days, without touching any one. Then the blessed saint, from his aλrial seat, "three feet in diameter," ordered earth and water to be placed on the dragon's eye, out of which suddenly emerged a thorn (or stake), a cubit in length; when the people saw the "miracle" they glorified the Creator. As to the grateful dragon, he arose and, "having adored God for two hours, returned to his cave" * a half-converted ophidian, we must suppose.
And what are we to think of that other narrative, to disbelieve in which is "to risk one's salvation," as we were informed by a Pope's missionary, of the Order of the Franciscans? When St. Francis preached a sermon in the wilderness, the birds assembled from the four cardinal points of the world. They warbled and applauded every sentence; they sang a holy mass in chorus; finally they dispersed to carry the glad tidings all over the universe. A grasshopper, profiting by the absence of the Holy Virgin, who generally kept company with the saint, remained perched on the head of the "blessed one" for a whole week. Attacked by a ferocious wolf, the saint, who had no other weapon but the sign of the cross which he made upon himself, instead of running away from his rabid assailant, began arguing with the beast. Having imparted to him the benefit to be derived from the holy religion, St. Francis never ceased talking until the wolf became as meek as a lamb, and even shed tears of repentance over his past sins. Finally, he "stretched his paws in the hands of the saint, followed him like a dog through all the towns in which he preached, and became half a Christian"! Wonders of zoology! a horse turned sorcerer, a wolf and a dragon turned Christians!
These two anecdotes, chosen at random from among hundreds, if rivalled are not
surpassed by the wildest romances of the Pagan thaumaturgists, magicians, and
spiritualists! And yet, when Pythagoras is said to have subdued animals, even
wild beasts, merely through a power-
* See the narrative selected from the "Golden Legend," by Alban Butler.
See the "Golden Legend"; "Life of St. Francis"; "Demonologia."
ful mesmeric influence, he is pronounced by one-half of the Catholics a bare-faced impostor, and by the rest a sorcerer, who worked magic in confederacy with the Devil. Neither the she-bear, nor the eagle, nor yet the bull that Pythagoras is said to have persuaded to give up eating beans, were alleged to have answered with human voices; while St. Benedict's "black raven," whom he called "brother," argues with him, and croaks his answers like a born casuist. When the saint offers him one-half of a poisoned loaf, the raven grows indignant and reproaches him in Latin as though he had just graduated at the Propaganda!
If it be objected that the Golden Legend is now but half supported by the Church; and that it is known to have been compiled by the writer from a collection of the lives of the saints, for the most part unauthenticated, we can show that, at least in one instance, the biography is no legendary compilation, but the history of one man, by another one who was his contemporary. Jortin and Gibbon demonstrated years ago, that the early fathers used to select narratives, wherewith to ornament the lives of their apocryphal saints, from Ovid, Homer, Livy, and even from the unwritten popular legends of Pagan nations. But such is not the case in the above instances. St. Bernard lived in the twelfth century, and St. Dominick was nearly contemporaneous with the author of the Golden Legend. De Voragine died in 1298, and Dominick, whose exorcisms and life he describes so minutely, instituted his order in the first quarter of the thirteenth century. Moreover, de Voragine was Vicar-General of the Dominicans himself, in the middle of the same century, and therefore described the miracles wrought by his hero and patron but a few years after they were alleged to have happened. He wrote them in the same convent; and while narrating these wonders he had probably fifty persons at hand who had been eye-witnesses to the saint's mode of living. What must we think, in such a case, of a biographer who seriously describes the following: One day, as the blessed saint was occupied in his study, the Devil began pestering him, in the shape of a flea. He frisked and jumped about the pages of his book until the harassed saint, unwilling as he was to act unkindly, even toward a devil, felt compelled to punish him by fixing the troublesome devil on the very sentence on which he stopped, by clasping the book. At another time the same devil appeared under the shape of a monkey. He grinned so horribly that Dominick, in order to get rid of him, ordered the devil-monkey to take the candle and hold it for him until he had done reading. The poor imp did so, and held it until it was consumed to the very end of the wick; and, notwithstanding his pitiful cries for mercy, the saint compelled him to hold it till his fingers were burned to the bones!
Enough! The approbation with which this book was received by the
Church, and the peculiar sanctity attributed to it, is sufficient to show the estimation in which veracity was held by its patrons. We may add, in conclusion, that the finest quintessence of Boccaccio's Decameron appears prudery itself by comparison with the filthy realism of the Golden Legend.
We cannot regard with too much astonishment the pretensions of the Catholic Church in seeking to convert Hindus and Buddhists to Christianity. While the "heathen" keeps to the faith of his fathers, he has at least the one redeeming quality that of not having apostatized for the mere pleasure of exchanging one set of idols for another. There may be for him some novelty in his embracing Protestantism; for in that he gains the advantage, at least, of limiting his religious views to their simplest expression. But when a Buddhist has been enticed into exchanging his Shoe Dagoon for the Slipper of the Vatican, or the eight hairs from the head of Gautama and Buddha's tooth, which work miracles, for the locks of a Christian saint, and a tooth of Jesus, which work far less clever miracles, he has no cause to boast of his choice. In his address to the Literary Society of Java, Sir T. S. Raffles is said to have narrated the following characteristic anecdote: "On visiting the great temple on the hills of Nagasaki, the English commissioner was received with marked regard and respect by the venerable patriarch of the northern provinces, a man eighty years of age, who entertained him most sumptuously. On showing him round the courts of the temple, one of the English officers present heedlessly exclaimed, in surprise, 'Jesus Christus!' The patriarch turning half round, with a placid smile, bowed significantly, with the expression: 'We know your Jasus Christus! Well, don't obtrude him upon us in our temples, and we remain friends.' And so, with a hearty shake of the hands, these two opposites parted." *
There is scarcely a report sent
by the missionaries from India, Thibet, and China, but laments the diabolical
"obscenity" of the heathen rites, their lamentable impudicity; all of which "are
so strongly suggestive of devil-worship," as des Mousseaux tells us. We can
scarcely be assured that the morality of the Pagans would be in the least
improved were they allowed a free inquiry into the life of say the
psalmist-king, the author of those sweet Psalms which are so
rapturously repeated by Christians. The difference between David performing a
phallic dance before the holy ark emblem of the female principle and a Hindu
Vishnavite bearing the same emblem on his forehead, favors the former only in
the eyes of those who have studied neither the ancient faith nor their own. When
a religion which compelled David to cut off and deliver two hundred foreskins of
his enemies before he could become the king's son-in-law (I Sam.
* "The Mythology of the Hindus," by Charles Coleman. Japan.
xviii.) is accepted as a standard by Christians, they would do well not to cast into the teeth of heathen the impudicities of their faiths. Remembering the suggestive parable of Jesus, they ought to cast the beam out of their own eye before plucking at the mote in their neighbor's. The sexual element is as marked in Christianity as in any one of the "heathen religions." Certainly, nowhere in the Vedas can be found the coarseness and downright immodesty of language, that Hebraists now discover throughout the Mosaic Bible.
It would profit little were we to dwell much upon subjects which have been disposed of in such a masterly way by an anonymous author whose work electrified England and Germany last year; * while as regards the particular topic under notice, we cannot do better than recommend the scholarly writings of Dr. Inman. Albeit one-sided, and in many instances unjust to the ancient heathen, Pagan, and Jewish religions, the facts treated in the Ancient and Pagan Christian Symbolism, are unimpeachable. Neither can we agree with some English critics who charge him with an intent to destroy Christianity. If by Christianity is meant the external religious forms of worship, then he certainly seeks to destroy it, for in his eyes, as well as in those of every truly religious man, who has studied ancient exoteric faiths, and their symbology, Christianity is pure heathenism, and Catholicism, with its fetish-worshipping, is far worse and more pernicious than Hinduism in its most idolatrous aspect. But while denouncing the exoteric forms and unmasking the symbols, it is not the religion of Christ that the author attacks, but the artificial system of theology. We will allow him to illustrate the position in his own language, and quote from his preface:
"When vampires were discovered
by the acumen of any observer," he says, "they were, we are told, ignominiously
killed, by a stake being driven through the body; but experience showed them to
have such tenacity of life that they rose, again and again, notwithstanding
renewed impalement, and were not ultimately laid to rest till wholly burned. In
like manner, the regenerated heathendom, which dominates over the followers of
Jesus of Nazareth, has risen again and again, after being transfixed. Still
cherished by the many, it is denounced by the few. Amongst other accusers, I
raise my voice against the Paganism which exists so extensively in
ecclesiastical Christianity, and will do my utmost to expose the imposture. . .
. In a vampire story told in Thalaba, by Southey, the
resuscitated being takes the form of a dearly-beloved maiden, and the hero is
obliged to kill her with his own hand. He does so; but, whilst he strikes the
form of the loved one, he feels sure that he slays
* "Supernatural Religion."
only a demon. In like manner, when I endeavor to destroy the current heathenism, which has assumed the garb of Christianity, I do not attack real religion. * Few would accuse a workman of malignancy, who cleanses from filth the surface of a noble statue. There may be some who are too nice to touch a nasty subject, yet even they will rejoice when some one else removes the dirt. Such a scavenger is wanted."
But is it merely Pagans and heathen that the Catholics persecute, and about whom, like Augustine, they cry to the Deity, "Oh, my God! so do I wish Thy enemies to be slain"? Oh, no! their aspirations are more Mosaic and Cain-like than that. It is against their next of kin in faith, against their schismatic brothers that they are now intriguing within the walls which sheltered the murderous Borgias. The larvζ of the infanticidal, parricidal, and fratricidal Popes have proved themselves fit counsellors for the Cains of Castelfidardo and Mentana. It is now the turn of the Slavonian Christians, the Oriental Schismatics the Philistines of the Greek Church!
His Holiness the Pope, after
exhausting, in a metaphor of self-laudation, every point of assimilation between
the great biblical prophets and himself, has finally and truly compared himself
with the Patriarch Jacob "wrestling against his God." He now crowns the edifice
of Catholic piety by openly sympathizing with the Turks! The vicegerent of God
inaugurates his infallibility by encouraging, in a true Christian spirit, the
acts of that Moslem David, the modern Bashi-Bazuk; and it seems as if nothing
would more please his Holiness than to be presented by the latter with several
thousands of the Bulgarian or Servian "foreskins." True to her policy to be all
things to all men to promote her own interests, the Romish Church is, at this
writing (1876), benevolently viewing the Bulgarian and Servian atrocities, and,
probably, manuvring with Turkey against Russia. Better Islam, and the
hitherto-hated Crescent over the sepulchre of the Christian god, than the Greek
Church established at Constantinople and Jerusalem as the state religion. Like a
decrepit and toothless ex-tyrant in exile, the Vatican is eager for any alliance
that promises, if not a restoration of its own power, at least the weakening of
its rival. The axe its inquisitors once swung, it now toys
* Neither do we, if by true religion the world shall at last
understand the adoration of one Supreme, invisible, and Unknown Deity, by works
and acts, not by the profession of vain human dogmas. But our intention is to go
farther. We desire to demonstrate that if we exclude ceremonial and fetish
worship from being regarded as essential parts of religion, then the true
Christ-like principles have been exemplified, and true Christianity practiced
since the days of the apostles, exclusively among Buddhists and "heathen."
"Ancient Pagan and Modern Christian Symbolism," p. xvi.
with in secret, feeling its edge, and waiting, and hoping against hope. In her time, the Popish Church has lain with strange bedfellows, but never before now sunk to the degradation of giving her moral support to those who for over 1200 years spat in her face, called her adherents "infidel dogs," repudiated her teachings, and denied godhood to her God!
The press of even Catholic France is fairly aroused at this indignity, and openly accuses the Ultramontane portion of the Catholic Church and the Vatican of siding, during the present Eastern struggle, with the Mahometan against the Christian. "When the Minister of Foreign Affairs in the French Legislature spoke some mild words in favor of the Greek Christians, he was only applauded by the liberal Catholics, and received coldly by the Ultramontane party," says the French correspondent of a New York paper.
"So pronounced was this, that M. Lemoinne, the well-known editor of the great liberal Catholic journal, the Debats, was moved to say that the Roman Church felt more sympathy for the Moslem than the schismatic, just as they preferred an infidel to the Protestant. 'There is at bottom,' says this writer, 'a great affinity between the Syllabus and the Koran, and between the two heads of the faithful. The two systems are of the same nature, and are united on the common ground of a one and unchangeable theory.' In Italy, in like manner, the King and Liberal Catholics are in warm sympathy with the unfortunate Christians, while the Pope and Ultramontane faction are believed to be inclining to the Mahometans."
The civilized world may yet
expect the apparition of the materialized Virgin Mary within the walls of the
Vatican. The so often-repeated "miracle" of the Immaculate Visitor in the
mediζval ages has recently been enacted at Lourdes, and why not once more, as a
coup de grβce to all heretics, schismatics, and infidels? The
miraculous wax taper is yet seen at Arras, the chief city of Artois; and at
every new calamity threatening her beloved Church, the "Blessed Lady" appears
personally, and lights it with her own fair hands, in view of a whole "biologized"
congregation. This sort of "miracle," says E. Worsley, wrought by the Roman
Catholic Church, "being most certain, and never doubted of by any." *
Neither has the private correspondence with which the most "Gracious Lady"
honors her friends been doubted. There are two precious missives from her in the
archives of the Church. The first purports to be a letter in answer to one
addressed to her by Ignatius. She confirms all things learned by her
correspondent from "her friend"
* "Discourses of Miracles wrought in the Roman Catholic Church; or a full
Refutation of Dr. Stillingfleet's unjust Exceptions against Miracles." Octavo,
1676, p. 64.
meaning the Apostle John. She
bids him hold fast to his vows, and adds as an inducement: "I and John will
come together and pay you a visit." *
Nothing was known of this unblushing fraud till the letters were published
at Paris, in 1495. By a curious accident it appeared at a time when threatening
inquiries began to be made as to the genuineness of the fourth Synoptic. Who
could doubt, after such a confirmation from headquarters! But the climax of
effrontery was capped in 1534, when another letter was received from the "Mediatrix,"
which sounds more like the report of a lobby-agent to a brother-politician. It
was written in excellent Latin, and was found in the Cathedral of Messina,
together with the image to which it alludes. Its contents run as follows:
"Mary Virgin, Mother of the Redeemer of the world, to the Bishop, Clergy,
and the other faithful of Messina, sendeth health and benediction from
herself and son:
"Whereas ye have been mindful of establishing the worship of me; now this is to let you know that by so doing ye have found great favor in my sight. I have a long time reflected with pain upon your city, which is exposed to much danger from its contiguity to the fire of Etna, and I have often had words about it with my son, for he was vexed with you because of your guilty neglect of my worship, so that he would not care a pin about my intercession. Now, however, that you have come to your senses, and have happily begun to worship me, he has conferred upon me the right to become your everlasting protectress; but, at the same time, I warn you to mind what you are about, and give me no cause of repenting of my kindness to you. The prayers and festivals instituted in my honor please me tremendously (vehementer), and if you faithfully persevere in these things, and provided you oppose to the utmost of your power, the heretics which now-a-days are spreading through the world, by which both my worship and that of the other saints, male and female, are so endangered, you shall enjoy my perpetual protection.
"In sign of this compact, I send you down from Heaven the image of myself, cast by celestial hands, and if ye hold it in the honor to which it is entitled, it will be an evidence to me of your obedience and your faith. Farewell. Dated in Heaven, whilst sitting near the throne of my son, in the month of December, of the 1534th year from his incarnation.
"MARY VIRGIN"
The reader should understand
that this document is no anti-Catholic forgery. The author from whom it is
taken, says that the authenticity of the missive "is attested by the
Bishop himself, his Vicar-General,
* After this, why should the Roman Catholics object to the claims of the
Spiritualists? If, without proof, they believe in the "materialization" of Mary
and John, for Ignatius, how can they logically deny the materialization of Katie
and John (King), when it is attested by the careful experiments of Mr. Crookes,
the English chemist, and the cumulative testimony of a large number of
witnesses?
The "Mother of God" takes precedence therefore of God?
See the "New Era" for July, 1875. N. Y.
Secretary, and six Canons of the Cathedral Church of Messina, all of whom have signed that attestation with their names, and confirmed it upon oath.
"Both the epistle and image were found upon the high altar, where they had been placed by angels from heaven."
A Church must have reached the last stages of degradation, when such sacrilegious trickery as this could be resorted to by its clergy, and accepted with or without question by the people.
No! far from the man who feels the workings of an immortal spirit within him, be such a religion! There never was nor ever will be a truly philosophical mind, whether of Pagan, heathen, Jew, or Christian, but has followed the same path of thought. Gautama-Buddha is mirrored in the precepts of Christ; Paul and Philo Judζus are faithful echoes of Plato; and Ammonius Saccas and Plotinus won their immortal fame by combining the teachings of all these grand masters of true philosophy. "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good," ought to be the motto of all brothers on earth. Not so is it with the interpreters of the Bible. The seed of the Reformation was sown on the day that the second chapter of The Catholic Epistle of James, jostled the eleventh chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews in the same New Testament. One who believes in Paul cannot believe in James, Peter, and John. The Paulists, to remain Christians with their apostle, must withstand Peter "to the face"; and if Peter "was to be blamed" and was wrong, then he was not infallible. How then can his successor (?) boast of his infallibility? Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every house divided against itself must fall. A plurality of masters has proved as fatal in religions as in politics. What Paul preached, was preached by every other mystic philosopher. "Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage!" exclaims the honest apostle-philosopher; and adds, as if prophetically inspired: "But if ye bite and devour one another, take heed that ye be not consumed one of another."
That the Neo-platonists were not always despised or accused of demonolatry is evidenced in the adoption by the Roman Church of their very rites and theurgy. The identical evocations and incantations of the Pagan and Jewish Kabalist, are now repeated by the Christian exorcist, and the theurgy of Iamblichus was adopted word for word. "Distinct as were the Platonists and Pauline Christians of the earlier centuries," writes Professor A. Wilder, "many of the more distinguished teachers of the new faith were deeply tinctured with the philosophical leaven. Synesius, the Bishop of Cyrene, was the disciple of Hypatia. St. Anthony reiterated the theurgy of Iamblichus. The Logos, or word of the Gospel
KABALISTIC.
(Jewish
and Pagan.)
ROMAN
CATHOLIC
Exorcism of Salt. Exorcism of Salt. §
The Priest-Magician blesses the Salt, and says: The Priest blesses the Salt and says: "Creature of Salt, I
"Creature of Salt, in thee may remain the WISDOM exorcise thee in the name of the living God . . . become
(of God); and may it preserve from all corruption the health of the soul and of the body! Every-
our minds and
*
"Paul and Plato."
See "La Magie au XIXme Siecle," p. 168.
Creature of salt, air, water, or of any object to be
enchanted or blessed, is a technical word in magic, adopted by the
Christian clergy.
§ "Rom. Rit.," edit. of 1851, pp. 291-296, etc., etc.
bodies. Through Hochmael (
lawkbx God of wisdom),
where where thou art thrown may the unclean spirit
and the
power of Ruach Hochmael (Spirit of the
be put to flight.
. . . Amen."
Holy Ghost) may the Spirits
of matter (bad spirits)
before it recede. . . . Amen."
Exorcism of Water (and Ashes).
Exorcism of Water.
"Creature of the Water, I exorcise thee . . . by the
"Creature of the water, in the name of the Almighty God,
three names
which are Netsah, Hod, and Jerod
the Father, the
Son, and the Holy Ghost . . . be exorcised
(kabalistic trinity), in the beginning and
in the end,
. . . . I adjure thee in the name of the Lamb . . . (the
by Alpha and Omega, which are in the Spirit Azoth
magician says bull or ox per
alas Tauri) of the Lamb
(Holy Ghost,
or the 'Universal Soul'), I exorcise and
that trod upon the basilisk and the aspic, and who crushes
adjure thee. . .
. Wandering eagle, may the Lord under his foot the lion and the dragon."
command thee by the wings of the bull
and his
flaming sword." (The cherub placed at the east
gate of
Eden.)
Exorcism of an Elemental Spirit.
Exorcism of the Devil.
"Serpent, in the name of the Tetragrammaton,
. . . . . .
. . . . . .
the Lord; He commands thee,
by the angel and
"O Lord, let him who carries along with him the terror,
the lion.
flee, struck in his turn by terror and defeated. O thou,
"Angel of darkness, obey, and run away with
who art the Ancient Serpent . . . tremble before the hand
this holy (exorcised) water.
Eagle in chains, obey of him who, having triumphed of the tortures of hell
(?)
this sign, and retreat before the breath. Moving devictis gemitibus inferni,
recalled the souls to light. . . .
serpent, crawl at my feet, or be tortured by this
The more whilst thou decay, the more terrible will be thy
sacred fire, and
evaporate before this holy incense.
torture . . . by Him who reigns over the living and the
Let water return to water (the elemental
spirit of dead . . . and who will judge the
century by fire, sζculum
water); let the fire burn, and the air circulate; let per ignem,
etc. In the name of the Father, Son, and the
the earth
return to earth by the virtue of the
Holy Ghost. Amen." *
Pentagram, which is the Morning Star,
and in
the name of the tetragrammaton which is traced
in the centre of
the Cross of Light. Amen."
It is unnecessary to try the patience of the reader any longer, although we
might multiply examples. It must not be forgotten that we have quoted from the
latest revision of the Ritual, that of 1851-2. If we were to go back to
the former one we would find a far more striking identity, not merely of
phraseology but of ceremonial form. For the purpose of comparison we have not
even availed ourselves of the ritual of ceremonial magic of the Christian
kabalists of the middle ages, wherein the language modelled upon a belief
in
the divinity of Christ is, with the exception of a stray expression here and
there, identical with the Catholic
* "Rom. Rit.," pp. 421-435.
Ritual.* The latter, however, makes one improvement, for the originality of which the Church should be allowed all credit. Certainly nothing so fantastical could be found in a ritual of magic. "Give place," apostrophizing the "Demon," it says, "give place to Jesus Christ . . . thou filthy, stinking, and ferocious beast . . . dost thou rebel? Listen and tremble, Satan; enemy of the faith, enemy of the human race, introducer of death . . . root of all evil, promoter of vice, soul of envy, origin of avarice, cause of discord, prince of homicide, whom God curses; author of incest and sacrilege, inventor of all obscenity, professor of the most detestable actions, and Grand Master of Heretics (!!) (Doctor Hζreticorum!) What! . . . dost thou still stand? Dost dare to resist, and thou knowest that Christ, our Lord, is coming? . . . Give place to Jesus Christ, give place to the Holy Ghost, which, by His blessed Apostle Peter, has flung thee down before the public, in the person of Simon the Magician" (te manifeste stravit in Simone mago).
After such a shower of abuse, no devil having the slightest feeling of self-respect could remain in such company; unless, indeed, he should chance to be an Italian Liberal, or King Victor Emmanuel himself both of whom, thanks to Pius IX., have become anathema-proof.
It really seems too bad to strip
Rome of all her symbols at once; but justice must be done to the despoiled
hierophants. Long before the sign of the Cross was adopted as a Christian
symbol, it was employed as a secret sign of recognition among neophytes and
adepts. Says Levi: "The sign of the Cross adopted by the Christians does not
belong exclusively to them. It is kabalistic, and represents the oppositions and
quaternary equilibrium of the elements. We see by the occult verse of the
Pater, to which we have called attention in another work, that there were
originally two ways of making it, or, at least, two very different formulas to
express its meaning one reserved for priests and initiates; the other given to
neophytes and the profane. Thus, for example, the initiate, carrying
his hand to his forehead, said: To thee; then he added, belong;
and continued, while carrying his hand to the breast the kingdom;
then, to the left shoulder justice; to the right shoulder
and mercy. Then he joined the two hands, adding: throughout the
generating cycles: 'Tibi sunt Malchut, et Geburah et Chassed per Ζonas'
a sign of the Cross, absolutely and magnificently
kabalistic, which the profanations of Gnosticism made the militant and official
Church completely lose."
* See "Art-Magic," art. Peter d'Abano.
"Ritual," pp. 429-433; see "La Magie au XIXme Siecle," pp. 171, 172.
"Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie," vol. ii., p. 88.
How fantastical, therefore, is the assertion of Father Ventura, that, while Augustine was a Manichean, a philosopher, ignorant of and refusing to humble himself before the sublimity of the "grand Christian revelation," he knew nothing, understood naught of God, man, or universe; ". . . he remained poor, small, obscure, sterile, and wrote nothing, did nothing really grand or useful." But, hardly had he become a Christian ". . . when his reasoning powers and intellect, enlightened at the luminary of faith, elevated him to the most sublime heights of philosophy and theology." And his other proposition that Augustine's genius, as a consequence, "developed itself in all its grandeur and prodigious fecundity . . . his intellect radiated with that immense splendor which, reflecting itself in his immortal writings, has never ceased for one moment during fourteen centuries to illuminate the Church and the world"! *
Whatever Augustine was as a Manichean, we leave Father Ventura to discover; but that his accession to Christianity established an everlasting enmity between theology and science is beyond doubt. While forced to confess that "the Gentiles had possibly something divine and true in their doctrines," he, nevertheless, declared that for their superstition, idolatry, and pride, they had "to be detested, and, unless they improved, to be punished by divine judgment." This furnishes the clew to the subsequent policy of the Christian Church, even to our day. If the Gentiles did not choose to come into the Church, all that was divine in their philosophy should go for naught, and the divine wrath of God should be visited upon their heads. What effect this produced is succinctly stated by Draper: "No one did more than this Father to bring science and religion into antagonism; it was mainly he who diverted the Bible from its true office a guide to purity of life and placed it in the perilous position of being the arbiter of human knowledge, an audacious tyranny over the mind of man. The example once set, there was no want of followers; the works of the Greek philosophers were stigmatized as profane; the transcendently glorious achievements of the Museum of Alexandria were hidden from sight by a cloud of ignorance, mysticism, and unintelligible jargon, out of which there too often flashed the destroying lightnings of ecclesiastical vengeance."
Augustine and Cyprian
admit that Hermes and Hostanes believed in one true god; the first two
maintaining, as well as the two Pagans, that he is invisible and
incomprehensible, except spiritually. Moreover we invite any man of intelligence
provided he be not a religious fanatic after reading fragments chosen at
random from the works of Hermes
* "Conferences," by Le Pere Ventura, vol. ii., part i., p. lvi., Preface.
"Conflict between Religion and Science," p. 62.
"De Baptismo Contra Donatistas," lib. vi., ch. xliv.
and Augustine on the Deity, to decide which of the two gives a more philosophical definition of the "unseen Father." We have at least one writer of fame who is of our opinion. Draper calls the Augustinian productions a "rhapsodical conversation" with God; an "incoherent dream." *
Father Ventura depicts the saint as attitudinizing before an astonished world upon "the most sublime heights of philosophy." But here steps in again the same unprejudiced critic, who passes the following remarks on this colossus of Patristic philosophy. "Was it for this preposterous scheme," he asks, "this product of ignorance and audacity, that the works of the Greek philosophers were to be given up? It was none too soon that the great critics who appeared at the Reformation, by comparing the works of these writers with one another, brought them to their proper level, and taught us to look upon them all with contempt."
For such men as Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus, Apollonius, and even Simon Magus, to be accused of having formed a pact with the Devil, whether the latter personage exist or not, is so absurd as to need but little refutation. If Simon Magus the most problematical of all in an historical sense ever existed otherwise than in the overheated fancy of Peter and the other apostles, he was evidently no worse than any of his adversaries. A difference in religious views, however great, is insufficient per se to send one person to heaven and the other to hell. Such uncharitable and peremptory doctrines might have been taught in the middle ages; but it is too late now for even the Church to put forward this traditional scarecrow. Research begins to suggest that which, if ever verified, will bring eternal disgrace on the Church of the Apostle Peter, whose very imposition of herself upon that disciple must be regarded as the most unverified and unverifiable of the assumptions of the Catholic clergy.
The erudite author of
Supernatural Religion assiduously endeavors to prove that by Simon
Magus we must understand the apostle Paul, whose Epistles were secretly as
well as openly calumniated by Peter, and charged with containing "dysnoλtic
learning." The Apostle of the Gentiles was brave, outspoken, sincere, and
very learned; the Apostle of Circumcision, cowardly, cautious,
insincere, and very
ignorant. That Paul had been, partially, at least, if not completely, initiated
into the theurgic mysteries, admits of little doubt. His language, the
phraseology so peculiar to the Greek philosophers, certain expressions used but
by the initiates, are so many sure ear-marks to that supposition. Our suspicion
has been strengthened by an able article in one of the New York peri-
* "Conflict, etc.," p. 37.
Ibid.
odicals, entitled Paul and Plato, * in which the author puts forward one remarkable and, for us, very precious observation. In his Epistles to the Corinthians he shows Paul abounding with "expressions suggested by the initiations of Sabazius and Eleusis, and the lectures of the (Greek) philosophers. He (Paul) designates himself an idiotes a person unskilful in the Word, but not in the gnosis or philosophical learning. 'We speak wisdom among the perfect or initiated,' he writes; 'not the wisdom of this world, nor of the archons of this world, but divine wisdom in a mystery, secret which none of the Archons of this world knew.' " What else can the apostle mean by these unequivocal words, but that he himself, as belonging to the mystζ (initiated), spoke of things shown and explained only in the Mysteries? The "divine wisdom in a mystery which none of the archons of this world knew," has evidently some direct reference to the basileus of the Eleusinian initiation who did know. The basileus belonged to the staff of the great hierophant, and was an archon of Athens; and as such was one of the chief mystζ, belonging to the interior Mysteries, to which a very select and small number obtained an entrance. The magistrates supervising the Eleusinians were called archons.
Another proof that Paul belonged to the circle of the "Initiates" lies in the following fact. The apostle had his head shorn at Cenchrea (where Lucius, Apulcius, was initiated) because "he had a vow." The nazars or set apart as we see in the Jewish Scriptures, had to cut their hair which they wore long, and which "no razor touched" at any other time, and sacrifice it on the altar of initiation. And the nazars were a class of Chaldean theurgists. We will show further that Jesus belonged to this class.
Paul declares that: "According to the grace of God which is given unto me, as a wise master-builder, I have laid the foundation." §
This expression, master-builder,
used only once in the whole Bible, and by Paul, may be
considered as a whole revelation. In the Mysteries, the third part of the sacred
rites was called Epopteia, or revelation, reception into the secrets.
In substance it means that stage of divine clairvoyance when everything
pertaining to this earth disappears, and earthly sight is paralyzed, and the
soul is united free and pure with its Spirit, or God. But the real significance
of the word is "overseeing," from
optomai
I see myself. In Sanscrit the word evβpto has the same
meaning,
* "Paul and Plato," by A. Wilder, editor of "The Eleusinian and Bacchic
Mysteries," of Thomas Taylor.
"Paul and Plato."
See Taylor's "Eleus. and
Bacchic Myst."
§ I Corin., iii. 10.
as well as to obtain. * The word epopteia is a compound one, from Epi; upon, and ovptomai to look, or an overseer, an inspector also used for a master-builder. The title of master-mason, in Freemasonry, is derived from this, in the sense used in the Mysteries. Therefore, when Paul entitles himself a "master-builder," he is using a word pre-eminently kabalistic, theurgic, and masonic, and one which no other apostle uses. He thus declares himself an adept, having the right to initiate others.
If we search in this direction, with those sure guides, the Grecian Mysteries and the Kabala, before us, it will be easy to find the secret reason why Paul was so persecuted and hated by Peter, John, and James. The author of the Revelation was a Jewish kabalist pur sang, with all the hatred inherited by him from his forefathers toward the Mysteries. His jealousy during the life of Jesus extended even to Peter; and it is but after the death of their common master that we see the two apostles the former of whom wore the Mitre and the Petaloon of the Jewish Rabbis preach so zealously the rite of circumcision. In the eyes of Peter, Paul, who had humiliated him, and whom he felt so much his superior in "Greek learning" and philosophy, must have naturally appeared as a magician, a man polluted with the "Gnosis," with the "wisdom" of the Greek Mysteries hence, perhaps, "Simon the Magician."
As to Peter, biblical criticism
has shown before now that he had probably no more to do with the foundation of
the Latin Church at Rome, than to furnish the pretext so readily seized upon by
the cunning Irenζus to benefit this Church with the new name of the apostle
Petra or Kiffa, a name which allowed so readily, by an easy
play upon words to connect it with Petroma, the double set of stone
tablets used
* In its most extensive meaning, the Sanscrit word has the same literal
sense as the Greek term; both imply "revelation," by no human agent, but through
the "receiving of the sacred drink." In India the initiated received the "Soma,"
sacred drink, which helped to liberate his soul from the body; and in the
Eleusinian Mysteries it was the sacred drink offered at the Epopteia. The
Grecian Mysteries are wholly derived from the Brahmanical Vedic rites, and the
latter from the ante-vedic religious Mysteries primitive Buddhist philosophy.
It is needless to state that the Gospel according to John was not written by John but by a Platonist or a Gnostic belonging to the Neo-platonic school.
The fact that Peter persecuted the "Apostle to the Gentiles," under that name, does not necessarily imply that there was no Simon Magus individually distinct from Paul. It may have become a generic name of abuse. Theodoret and Chrysostom, the earliest and most prolific commentators on the Gnosticism of those days, seem actually to make of Simon a rival of Paul, and to state that between them passed frequent messages. The former, as a diligent propagandist of what Paul terms the "antitheses of the Gnosis" (1st Epistle to Timothy), must have been a sore thorn in the side of the apostle. There are sufficient proofs of the actual existence of Simon Magus.
by the hierophant at the initiations, during the final Mystery. In this, perhaps, lies concealed the whole secret of the claims of the Vatican. As Professor Wilder happily suggests: "In the Oriental countries the designation rTp , Peter (in Phnician and Chaldaic, an interpreter) appears to have been the title of this personage (the hierophant). . . . There is in these facts some reminder of the peculiar circumstances of the Mosaic Law . . . and also of the claim of the Pope to be the successor of Peter, the hierophant or interpreter of the Christian religion." *
As such, we must concede to him, to some extent, the right to be such an interpreter. The Latin Church has faithfully preserved in symbols, rites, ceremonies, architecture, and even in the very dress of her clergy, the tradition of the Pagan worship of the public or exoteric ceremonies, we should add; otherwise her dogmas would embody more sense and contain less blasphemy against the majesty of the Supreme and Invisible God.
An inscription found on the coffin of Queen Mentuhept, of the eleventh dynasty (2250 B.C.), now proved to have been transcribed from the seventeenth chapter of the Book of the Dead (dating not later than 4500 B.C.), is more than suggestive. This monumental text contains a group of hieroglyphics, which, when interpreted, read thus:
PTR.
RF. SU.
peter- ref- su.
Baron Bunsen shows this sacred formulary mixed up with a whole series of glosses and various interpretations on a monument forty centuries old. "This is identical with saying that the record (the true interpretation) was at that time no longer intelligible. . . . We beg our readers to understand," he adds, "that a sacred text, a hymn, containing the words of a departed spirit, existed in such a state about 4,000 years ago . . . as to be all but unintelligible to royal scribes."
That it was unintelligible to
the uninitiated among the latter is as well proved by the confused and
contradictory glossaries, as that it was a "mystery"-word, known to the
hierophants of the sanctuaries, and, moreover, a word chosen by Jesus, to
designate the office assigned by him to one of his apostles. This word,
PTR, was partially interpreted, owing to another word similarly written
in another group of hieroglyphics, on a
* "Introd. to Eleus. and Bacchic Mysteries," p. x. Had we not trustworthy
kabalistic tradition to rely upon, we might be, perhaps, forced to question
whether the authorship of the Revelation is to be ascribed to the apostle of
that name. He seems to be termed John the Theologist.
Bunsen: "Egypt's Place in Universal History," vol. v., p. 90.
stele, the sign used for it being an opened eye.* Bunsen mentions as another explanation of PTR "to show." "It appears to me," he remarks, "that our PTR is literally the old Aramaic and Hebrew 'Patar,' which occurs in the history of Joseph as the specific word for interpreting; whence also Pitrum is the term for interpretation of a text, a dream." In a manuscript of the first century, a combination of the Demotic and Greek texts, and most probably one of the few which miraculously escaped the Christian vandalism of the second and third centuries, when all such precious manuscripts were burned as magical, we find occurring in several places a phrase, which, perhaps, may throw some light upon this question. One of the principal heroes of the manuscript, who is constantly referred to as "the Judean Illuminator" or Initiate, Teleiwth;" , is made to communicate but with his Patar; the latter being written in Chaldaic characters. Once the latter word is coupled with the name Shimeon. Several times, the "Illuminator," who rarely breaks his contemplative solitude, is shown inhabiting a Kruvpte (cave), and teaching the multitudes of eager scholars standing outside, not orally, but through this Patar. The latter receives the words of wisdom by applying his ear to a circular hole in a partition which conceals the teacher from the listeners, and then conveys them, with explanations and glossaries, to the crowd. This, with a slight change, was the method used by Pythagoras, who, as we know, never allowed his neophytes to see him during the years of probation, but instructed them from behind a curtain in his cave.
But, whether the "Illuminator"
of the Grζco-Demotic manuscript is identical with Jesus or not, the fact
remains, that we find him selecting a "mystery"-appellation for one who is made
to appear later by the Catholic Church as the janitor of the Kingdom of Heaven
and the interpreter of Christ's will. The word Patar or Peter locates both
master and disciple in the circle of initiation, and connects them with the
"Secret Doctrine." The great hierophant of the ancient Mysteries never allowed
the candidates to see or hear him personally. He was the Deus-ex-Machina, the
presiding but invisible Deity, uttering his will and instructions through a
second party; and 2,000 years later, we discover that the Dalai-Lamas of Thibet
had been following for centuries the same traditional programme during the most
important religious mysteries of lamaism.
* See de Rougι : "Stele," p. 44;
PTAR (videus) is
interpreted on it "to appear," with a sign of interrogation after it the usual
mark of scientific perplexity. In Bunsen's fifth volume of "Egypte," the
interpretation following is "Illuminator," which is more correct.
Bunsen's "Egypt," vol. v., p. 90.
It is the property of a mystic whom we met in Syria.
If Jesus knew the secret meaning
of the title bestowed by him on Simon, then he must have been initiated;
otherwise he could not have learned it; and if he was an initiate of either the
Pythagorean Essenes, the Chaldean Magi, or the Egyptian Priests, then the
doctrine taught by him was but a portion of the "Secret Doctrine" taught by the
Pagan hierophants to the few select adepts admitted within the sacred adyta.
But we will discuss this question further on. For the present we will
endeavor to briefly indicate the extraordinary similarity or rather identity,
we should say of rites and ceremonial dress of the Christian clergy with that
of the old Babylonians, Assyrians, Phnicians, Egyptians, and other Pagans of
the hoary antiquity.
If we would find the model of the Papal tiara, we must search the annals of
the ancient Assyrian tablets. We invite the reader to give his attention to Dr.
Inman's illustrated work, Ancient Pagan and Modern Christian
Symbolism. On page sixty-four, he will readily recognize the head-gear of
the successor of St. Peter in the coiffure worn by gods or angels in ancient
Assyria, "where it appears crowned by an emblem of the
male trinity" (the
Christian Cross). "We may mention, in passing," adds Dr. Inman, "that, as the
Romanists adopted the mitre and the tiara from 'the cursed brood of Ham,' so
they adopted the Episcopalian crook from the augurs of Etruria, and the artistic
form with which they clothe their angels from the painters and urn-makers of
Magna Grecia and Central Italy."
Would we push our inquiries farther, and seek to ascertain as much in
relation to the nimbus and the tonsure of the Catholic priest and monk? *
We shall find undeniable proofs that they are solar emblems. Knight, in his
Old England Pictorially Illustrated, gives a drawing by St. Augustine,
representing an ancient Christian bishop, in a dress probably identical with
that worn by the great "saint" himself. The pallium, or the ancient
stole of the bishop, is the feminine sign when worn by a priest in worship. On
St. Augustine's picture it is bedecked with Buddhistic crosses, and in its whole
appearance it is a representation of the Egyptian
T
(tau), assuming slightly the figure of the letter
Y
. "Its lower end is the mark of the masculine triad," says Inman; "the right
hand (of the figure) has the forefinger extended, like the Assyrian priests
while doing homage to the grove. . . . When a male dons the pallium in
worship, he becomes the representative of the trinity in the unity, the arba,
or mystic four."
"Immaculate is our Lady Isis,"
is the legend around an engraving
* The Priests of Isis were tonsured.
See "Ancient Faiths," vol. ii., pp. 915-918.
of Serapis and Isis, described by King, in The Gnostics and their Remains, ΤH KURIA ICIC AGNH ". . . the very terms applied afterwards to that personage (the Virgin Mary) who succeeded to her form, titles, symbols, rites, and ceremonies. . . . Thus, her devotees carried into the new priesthood the former badges of their profession, the obligation to celibacy, the tonsure, and the surplice, omitting, unfortunately, the frequent ablutions prescribed by the ancient creed." "The 'Black Virgins,' so highly reverenced in certain French cathedrals . . . proved, when at last critically examined, basalt figures of Isis"! *
Before the shrine of Jupiter Ammon were suspended tinkling bells, from the sound of whose chiming the priests gathered the auguries; "A golden bell and a pomegranate . . . round about the hem of the robe," was the result with the Mosaic Jews. But in the Buddhistic system, during the religious services, the gods of the Deva Loka are always invoked, and invited to descend upon the altars by the ringing of bells suspended in the pagodas. The bell of the sacred table of Siva at Kuhama is described in Kailasa, and every Buddhist vihara and lamasery has its bells.
We thus see that the bells used
by Christians come to them directly from the Buddhist Thibetans and Chinese. The
beads and rosaries have the same origin, and have been used by Buddhist monks
for over 2,300 years. The Linghams in the Hindu temples are ornamented
upon certain days with large berries, from a tree sacred to Mahadeva, which are
strung into rosaries. The title of "nun" is an Egyptian word, and had with them
the actual meaning; the Christians did not even take the trouble of translating
the word Nonna. The aureole of the saints was used by the antediluvian
artists of Babylonia, whenever they desired to honor or deify a mortal's head.
In a celebrated picture in Moore's Hindoo Pantheon, entitled, "Christna
nursed by Devaki, from a highly-finished picture," the Hindu Virgin is
represented as seated on a lounge and nursing Christna. The hair brushed back,
the long veil, and the golden aureole around the Virgin's head, as well as
around that of the Hindu Saviour, are striking. No Catholic, well versed as he
might be in the mysterious symbolism of iconology, would hesitate for a moment
to worship at that shrine the Virgin Mary, the mother of his God! In
Indur Subba, the south entrance of the Caves of Ellora, may be seen to this day
the figure of Indra's wife, Indranee, sitting with her infant son-god, pointing
the finger to heaven with the same gesture as the Italian Madonna and child. In
Pagan and Christian Symbolism, the author gives a figure from a
*
"The Gnostics and their Remains," p. 71.
See illustration in Inman's "Ancient Pagan and Modern Christian
Symbolism," p. 27.
mediζval woodcut the like of which we have seen by dozens in old psalters in which the Virgin Mary, with her infant, is represented as the Queen of Heaven, on the crescent moon, emblem of virginity. "Being before the sun, she almost eclipses its light. Than this, nothing could more completely identify the Christian mother and child with Isis and Horus, Ishtar, Venus, Juno, and a host of other Pagan goddesses, who have been called 'Queen of Heaven,' 'Queen of the Universe,' 'Mother of God,' 'Spouse of God,' 'the Celestial Virgin,' 'the Heavenly Peace-Maker,' etc." *
Such pictures are not purely astronomical. They represent the male god and the female goddess, as the sun and moon in conjunction, "the union of the triad with the unit." The horns of the cow on the head of Isis have the same significance.
And so above, below, outside,
and inside, the Christian Church, in the priestly garments, and the religious
rites, we recognize the stamp of exoteric heathenism. On no subject within the
wide range of human knowledge, has the world been more blinded or deceived with
such persistent misrepresentation as on that of antiquity. Its hoary past and
its religious faiths have been misrepresented and trampled under the feet of its
successors. Its hierophants and prophets, mystζ and epoptζ, of the once
sacred adyta of the temple shown as demoniacs and devil-worshippers. Donned in
the despoiled garments of the victim, the Christian priest now anathematizes the
latter with rites and ceremonies which he has learned from the theurgists
themselves. The Mosaic Bible is used as a weapon against the people who
furnished it. The heathen philosopher is cursed under the very roof which has
witnessed his initiation; and the "monkey of God" (i.e.,
the devil of Tertullian), "the originator and founder of magical theurgy, the
science of illusions and lies, whose father and author is the demon," is
exorcised with holy water by the hand which holds the identical lituus
with which the ancient augur, after a solemn prayer, used to
determine the regions of heaven, and evoke, in the name of the HIGHEST, the
minor god (now termed the Devil), who unveiled to his eyes futurity, and enabled
him to prophesy! On the part of the Christians and the clergy it is nothing but
shameful ignorance, prejudice, and that contemptible pride so boldly denounced
by one of their own reverend ministers, T. Gross, § which rails against
all investigation "as a useless or a criminal labor, when it must be feared that
they will result in the overthrow of preλstablished systems of faith." On the
part of the scholars it is the same apprehension of the possible necessity of
having to
* Ibid., p. 76.
Initiates and seers.
The augur's, and now bishop's, pastoral crook.
§ "The
Heathen Religion."
modify some of their erroneously-established theories of science. "Nothing but such pitiable prejudice," says Gross, "can have thus misrepresented the theology of heathenism, and distorted nay, caricatured its forms of religious worship. It is time that posterity should raise its voice in vindication of violated truth, and that the present age should learn a little of that common sense of which it boasts with as much self-complacency as if the prerogative of reason was the birthright only of modern times."
All this gives a sure clew to the real cause of the hatred felt by the early and mediζval Christian toward his Pagan brother and dangerous rival. We hate but what we fear. The Christian thaumaturgist once having broken all association with the Mysteries of the temples and with "these schools so renowned for magic," described by St. Hilarion,* could certainly expect but little to rival the Pagan wonder-workers. No apostle, with the exception perhaps of healing by mesmeric power, has ever equalled Apollonius of Tyana; and the scandal created among the apostles by the miracle-doing Simon Magus, is too notorious to be repeated here again. "How is it," asks Justin Martyr, in evident dismay, "how is it that the talismans of Apollonius (the telesmata ) have power in certain members of creation, for they prevent, as we see, the fury of the waves, and the violence of the winds, and the attacks of wild beasts; and whilst our Lord's miracles are preserved by tradition alone, those of Apollonius are most numerous, and actually manifested in present facts, so as to lead astray all beholders?" This perplexed martyr solves the problem by attributing very correctly the efficacy and potency of the charms used by Apollonius to his profound knowledge of the sympathies and antipathies (or repugnances) of nature.
Unable to deny the evident superiority of their enemies' powers, the fathers had recourse to the old but ever successful method that of slander. They honored the theurgists with the same insinuating calumny that had been resorted to by the Pharisees against Jesus. "Thou hast a dζmon," the elders of the Jewish Synagogue had said to him. "Thou hast the Devil," repeated the cunning fathers, with equal truth, addressing the Pagan thaumaturgist; and the widely-bruited charge, erected later into an article of faith, won the day.
But the modern heirs of these
ecclesiastical falsifiers, who charge magic, spiritualism, and even magnetism
with being produced by a demon, forget or perhaps never read the classics. None
of our bigots has ever looked with more scorn on the abuses of magic
than did the true initiate
* "Peres du Desert d'Orient," vol. ii., p. 283.
Justin Martyr: "Quζst.," xxiv.
of old. No modern or even mediζval law could be more severe than that of the hierophant. True, he had more discrimination, charity, and justice, than the Christian clergy; for while banishing the "unconscious" sorcerer, the person troubled with a demon, from within the sacred precincts of the adyta, the priests, instead of mercilessly burning him, took care of the unfortunate "possessed one." Having hospitals expressly for that purpose in the neighborhood of temples, the ancient "medium," if obsessed, was taken care of and restored to health. But with one who had, by conscious witchcraft, acquired powers dangerous to his fellow-creatures, the priests of old were as severe as justice herself. "Any person accidentally guilty of homicide, or of any crime, or convicted of witchcraft, was excluded from the Eleusinian Mysteries." * And so were they from all others. This law, mentioned by all writers on the ancient initiation, speaks for itself. The claim of Augustine, that all the explanations given by the Neo-platonists were invented by themselves is absurd. For nearly every ceremony in their true and successive order is given by Plato himself, in a more or less covered way. The Mysteries are as old as the world, and one well versed in the esoteric mythologies of various nations can trace them back to the days of the ante-Vedic period in India. A condition of the strictest virtue and purity is required from the Vatou, or candidate in India before he can become an initiate, whether he aims to be a simple fakir, a Purohita (public priest) or a Sannyβsi, a saint of the second degree of initiation, the most holy as the most revered of them all. After having conquered, in the terrible trials preliminary to admittance to the inner temple in the subterranean crypts of his pagoda, the sannyβsi passes the rest of his life in the temple, practicing the eighty-four rules and ten virtues prescribed to the Yogis.
"No one who has not practiced, during his whole life, the ten virtues which the divine Manu makes incumbent as a duty, can be initiated into the Mysteries of the council," say the Hindu books of initiation.
These virtues are: "Resignation; the act of rendering good for evil; temperance; probity; purity; chastity; repression of the physical senses; the knowledge of the Holy Scriptures; that of the Superior soul (spirit); worship of truth; abstinence from anger." These virtues must alone direct the life of a true Yogi. "No unworthy adept ought to defile the ranks of the holy initiates by his presence for twenty-four hours." The adept becomes guilty after having once broken any one of these vows. Surely the exercise of such virtues is inconsistent with the idea one has of devil-worship and lasciviousness of purpose!
And now we will try to give a
clear insight into one of the chief ob-
* See Taylor's "Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries"; Porphyry and others.
jects of this work. What we desire to prove is, that underlying every ancient popular religion was the same ancient wisdom-doctrine, one and identical, professed and practiced by the initiates of every country, who alone were aware of its existence and importance. To ascertain its origin, and the precise age in which it was matured, is now beyond human possibility. A single glance, however, is enough to assure one that it could not have attained the marvellous perfection in which we find it pictured to us in the relics of the various esoteric systems, except after a succession of ages. A philosophy so profound, a moral code so ennobling, and practical results so conclusive and so uniformly demonstrable is not the growth of a generation, or even a single epoch. Fact must have been piled upon fact, deduction upon deduction, science have begotten science, and myriads of the brightest human intellects have reflected upon the laws of nature, before this ancient doctrine had taken concrete shape. The proofs of this identity of fundamental doctrine in the old religions are found in the prevalence of a system of initiation; in the secret sacerdotal castes who had the guardianship of mystical words of power, and a public display of a phenomenal control over natural forces, indicating association with preterhuman beings. Every approach to the Mysteries of all these nations was guarded with the same jealous care, and in all, the penalty of death was inflicted upon initiates of any degree who divulged the secrets entrusted to them. We have seen that such was the case in the Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries, among the Chaldean Magi, and the Egyptian hierophants; while with the Hindus, from whom they were all derived, the same rule has prevailed from time immemorial. We are left in no doubt upon this point; for the Agrushada Parikshai says explicitly, "Every initiate, to whatever degree he may belong, who reveals the great sacred formula, must be put to death."
Naturally enough, this same extreme penalty was prescribed in all the
multifarious sects and brotherhoods which at different periods have sprung from
the ancient stock. We find it with the early Essenes, Gnostics, theurgic
Neo-platonists, and mediζval philosophers; and in our day, even the Masons
perpetuate the memory of the old obligations in the penalties of throat-cutting,
dismemberment, and disemboweling, with which the candidate is threatened. As the
Masonic "master's word" is communicated only at "low breath," so the selfsame
precaution is prescribed in the Chaldean Book of Numbers and the Jewish
Mercaba. When initiated, the neophyte was led by an ancient to
a secluded spot, and there the latter whispered in his ear the great
secret. * The Mason swears, under the most frightful penalties, that he
will not communicate the secrets of
* Franck: "Die Kabbala."
any degree "to a brother of an inferior degree"; and the Agrushada Parikshai says: "Any initiate of the third degree who reveals before the prescribed time, to the initiates of the second degree, the superior truths, must be put to death." Again, the Masonic apprentice consents to have his "tongue torn out by the roots" if he divulge anything to a profane; and in the Hindu books of initiation, the same Agrushada Parikshai, we find that any initiate of the first degree (the lowest) who betrays the secrets of his initiation, to members of other castes, for whom the science should be a closed book, must have "his tongue cut out," and suffer other mutilations.
As we proceed, we will point out the evidences of this identity of vows, formulas, rites, and doctrines, between the ancient faiths. We will also show that not only their memory is still preserved in India, but also that the Secret Association is still alive and as active as ever. That, after reading what we have to say, it may be inferred that the chief pontiff and hierophants, the Brahmβtma, is still accessible to those "who know," though perhaps recognized by another name; and that the ramifications of his influence extend throughout the world. But we will now return again to the early Christian period.
As though he were not aware that there was any esoteric significance to the exoteric symbols, and that the Mysteries themselves were composed of two parts, the lesser at Agrζ, and the higher ones at Eleusinia, Clemens Alexandrinus, with a rancorous bigotry that one might expect from a renegade Neo-platonist, but is astonished to find in this generally honest and learned Father, stigmatized the Mysteries as indecent and diabolical. Whatever were the rites enacted among the neophytes before they passed to a higher form of instruction; however misunderstood were the trials of Katharsis or purification, during which they were submitted to every kind of probation; and however much the immaterial or physical aspect might have led to calumny, it is but wicked prejudice which can compel a person to say that under this external meaning there was not a far deeper and spiritual significance.
It is positively absurd to judge the ancients from our own standpoint of propriety and virtue. And most assuredly it is not for the Church which now stands accused by all the modern symbologists of having adopted precisely these same emblems in their coarsest aspect, and feels herself powerless to refute the accusations to throw the stone at those who were her models. When men like Pythagoras, Plato, and Iamblichus, renowned for their severe morality, took part in the Mysteries, and spoke of them with veneration, it ill behooves our modern critics to judge them so rashly upon their merely external aspects. Iamblichus explains the worst; and his explanation, for an unprejudiced mind, ought to be
perfectly plausible. "Exhibitions of this kind," he says, "in the Mysteries were designed to free us from licentious passions, by gratifying the sight, and at the same time vanquishing all evil thought, through the awful sanctity with which these rites were accompanied." * "The wisest and best men in the Pagan world," adds Dr. Warburton, "are unanimous in this, that the Mysteries were instituted pure, and proposed the noblest ends by the worthiest means."
In these celebrated rites, although persons of both sexes and all classes were allowed to take a part, and a participation in them was even obligatory, very few indeed attained the higher and final initiation. The gradation of the Mysteries is given us by Proclus in the fourth book of his Theology of Plato. "The perfective rite teleth , precedes in order the initiation Muesis and the initiation, Epopteia, or the final apocalypse (revelation)." Theon of Smyrna, in Mathematica, also divides the mystic rites into five parts: "the first of which is the previous purification; for neither are the Mysteries communicated to all who are willing to receive them; . . . there are certain persons who are prevented by the voice of the crier ( Khrux ) . . . since it is necessary that such as are not expelled from the Mysteries should first be refined by certain purifications which the reception of the sacred rites succeeds. The third part is denominated epopteia or reception. And the fourth, which is the end and design of the revelation, is the binding of the head and fixing of the crowns . . . whether after this he (the initiated person) becomes . . . an hierophant or sustains some other part of the sacerdotal office. But the fifth, which is produced from all these, is friendship and interior communion with God." And this was the last and most awful of all the Mysteries.
There are writers who have often wondered at the meaning of this claim to a
"friendship and interior communion with God." Christian authors have denied the
pretensions of the "Pagans" to such "communion," affirming that only Christian
saints were and are capable of enjoying it; materialistic skeptics have
altogether scoffed at the idea of both. After long ages of religious materialism
and spiritual stagnation, it has most certainly become difficult if not
altogether impossible to substantiate the claims of either party. The old
Greeks, who had once crowded
* "Mysteries of the Egyptians, Chaldeans, and Assyrians."
"Divine Legation of Moses"; The "Eleusinian Mysteries" as quoted by
Thos. Taylor.
This expression must not be understood literally; for as in the
initiation of certain Brotherhoods it has a secret meaning, hinted at by
Pythagoras, when he describes his feelings after the initiation and tells that
he was crowned by the gods in whose presence he had drunk "the waters of life"
in Hindu, β-bi-hayβt, fount of life.
around the Agora of Athens, with its altar to the "Unknown God," are no more; and their descendants firmly believe that they have found the "Unknown" in the Jewish Jehova. The divine ecstasies of the early Christians have made room for visions of a more modern character, in perfect keeping with progress and civilization. The "Son of man" appearing to the rapt vision of the ancient Christian as coming from the seventh heaven, in a cloud of glory, and surrounded with angels and winged seraphim, has made room for a more prosaic and at the same time more business-like Jesus. The latter is now shown as making morning calls upon Mary and Martha in Bethany; as seating himself on "the ottoman" with the younger sister, a lover of "ethics," while Martha goes off to the kitchen to cook. Anon the heated fancy of a blasphemous Brooklyn preacher and harlequin, the Reverend Dr. Talmage, makes us see her rushing back "with besweated brow, a pitcher in one hand and the tongs in the other . . . into the presence of Christ," and blowing him up for not caring that her sister hath left her "to serve alone." *
From the birth of the solemn and majestic conception of the unrevealed Deity of the ancient adepts to such caricatured descriptions of him who died on the Cross for his philanthropic devotion to humanity, long centuries have intervened, and their heavy tread seems to have almost entirely obliterated all sense of a spiritual religion from the hearts of his professed followers. No wonder then, that the sentence of Proclus is no longer understood by the Christians, and is rejected as a "vaglary" by the materialists, who, in their negation, are less blasphemous and atheistical than many of the reverends and members of the churches. But, although the Greek epoptai are no more, we have now, in our own age, a people far more ancient than the oldest Hellenes, who practice the so-called "preterhuman" gifts to the same extent as did their ancestors far earlier than the days of Troy. It is to this people that we draw the attention of the psychologist and philosopher.
One need not go very deep into
the literature of the Orientalists to become convinced that in most cases they
do not even suspect that in
* This original and very long sermon was preached in a church at Brooklyn,
N. Y., on the 15th day of April, 1877. On the following morning, the reverend
orator was called in the "Sun" a gibbering charlatan; but this deserved epithet
will not prevent other reverend buffoons doing the same and even worse. And this
is the religion of Christ! Far better disbelieve in him altogether than
caricature one's God in such a manner. We heartily applaud the "Sun" for the
following views: "And then when Talmage makes Christ say to Martha in the
tantrums: 'Don't worry, but sit down on this ottoman,' he adds the climax to a
scene that the inspired writers had nothing to say about. Talmage's buffoonery
is going too far. If he were the worst heretic in the land, instead of being
straight in his orthodoxy, he would not do so much evil to religion as he does
by his familiar blasphemies."
the arcane philosophy of India there are depths which they have not sounded, and cannot sound, for they pass on without perceiving them. There is a pervading tone of conscious superiority, a ring of contempt in the treatment of Hindu metaphysics, as though the European mind is alone enlightened enough to polish the rough diamond of the old Sanscrit writers, and separate right from wrong for the benefit of their descendants. We see them disputing over the external forms of expression without a conception of the great vital truths these hide from the profane view.
"As a rule, the Brahmans," says Jacolliot, "rarely go beyond the class of grihesta [priests of the vulgar castes] and purahita [exorcisers, divines, prophets, and evocators of spirits]. And yet, we shall see . . . once that we have touched upon the question and study of manifestations and phenomena, that these initiates of the first degree (the lowest) attribute to themselves, and in appearance possess faculties developed to a degree which has never been equalled in Europe. As to the initiates of the second and especially of the third category, they pretend to be enabled to ignore time, space, and to command life and death." *
Such initiates as these M. Jacolliot did not meet; for, as he says himself, they only appear on the most solemn occasions, and when the faith of the multitudes has to be strengthened by phenomena of a superior order. "They are never seen, either in the neighborhood of, or even inside the temples, except at the grand quinquennial festival of the fire. On that occasion, they appear about the middle of the night, on a platform erected in the centre of the sacred lake, like so many phantoms, and by their conjurations they illumine the space. A fiery column of light ascends from around them, rushing from earth to heaven. Unfamiliar sounds vibrate through the air, and five or six hundred thousand Hindus, gathered from every part of India to contemplate these demi-gods, throw themselves with their faces buried in the dust, invoking the souls of their ancestors."
Let any impartial person read
the Spiritisme dans le Monde, and he cannot believe that this
"implacable rationalist," as Jacolliot takes pride in terming himself, said one
word more than is warranted by what he had seen. His statements support and are
corroborated by those of other skeptics. As a rule, the missionaries, even after
passing half a lifetime in the country of "devil-worship," as they call India,
either disingenuously deny altogether what they cannot help knowing to
be true, or ridiculously attribute phenomena to this power of the Devil, that
outrival the "miracles" of the apostolic ages. And what do we see this French
* "Le Spiritisme dans le Monde," p. 68.
Ibid., pp. 78,
79.
author, notwithstanding his incorrigible rationalism, forced to admit, after having narrated the greatest wonders? Watch the fakirs as he would, he is compelled to bear the strongest testimony to their perfect honesty in the matter of their miraculous phenomena. "Never," he says, "have we succeeded in detecting a single one in the act of deceit." One fact should be noted by all who, without having been in India, still fancy they are clever enough to expose the fraud of pretended magicians. This skilled and cool observer, this redoubtable materialist, after his long sojourn in India, affirms, "We unhesitatingly avow that we have not met, either in India or in Ceylon, a single European, even among the oldest residents, who has been able to indicate the means employed by these devotees for the production of these phenomena!"
And how should they? Does not this zealous Orientalist confess to us that even he, who had every available means at hand to learn many of their rites and doctrines at first hand, failed in his attempts to make the Brahmans explain to him their secrets. "All that our most diligent inquiries of the Pourohitas could elicit from them respecting the acts of their superiors (the invisible initiates of the temples), amounts to very little." And again, speaking of one of the books, he confesses that, while purporting to reveal all that is desirable to know, it "falls back into mysterious formulas, in combinations of magical and occult letters, the secret of which it has been impossible for us to penetrate," etc.
The fakirs, although they can never reach beyond the first degree of initiation, are, notwithstanding, the only agents between the living world and the "silent brothers," or those initiates who never cross the thresholds of their sacred dwellings. The Fūkara-Yogis belong to the temples, and who knows but these cenobites of the sanctuary have far more to do with the psychological phenomena which attend the fakirs, and have been so graphically described by Jacolliot, than the Pitris themselves? Who can tell but that the fluidic spectre of the ancient Brahman seen by Jacolliot was the Scin-lecca, the spiritual double, of one of these mysterious sannyβsi?
Although the story has been translated and commented upon by Professor Perty, of Geneva, still we will venture to give it in Jacolliot's own words: "A moment after the disappearance of the hands, the fakir continuing his evocations (mantras) more earnestly than ever, a cloud like the first, but more opalescent and more opaque, began to hover near the small brasier, which, by request of the Hindu, I had constantly fed with live coals. Little by little it assumed a form entire human, and I distinguished the spectre for I cannot call it otherwise of an old Brahman sacrificator, kneeling near the little brasier.
"He bore on his forehead the signs sacred to Vishnu, and around his
body the triple cord, sign of the initiates of the priestly caste. He joined his
hands above his head, as during the sacrifices, and his lips moved as if they
were reciting prayers. At a given moment, he took a pinch of perfumed powder,
and threw it upon the coals; it must have been a strong compound, for a thick
smoke arose on the instant, and filled the two chambers.
"When it was dissipated, I perceived the spectre, which, two steps from
me, was extending to me its fleshless hand; I took it in mine, making a
salutation, and I was astonished to find it, although bony and hard, warm and
living.
" 'Art thou, indeed,' said I at this moment, in a loud voice, 'an ancient
inhabitant of the earth?'
"I had not finished the question, when the word
AM, (yes) appeared and then
disappeared in letters of fire, on the breast of the old Brahman, with an effect
much like that which the word would produce if written in the dark with a stick
of phosphorus.
" 'Will you leave me nothing in token of your visit?' I continued.
"The spirit broke the triple cord, composed of three strands of cotton,
which
begirt his loins, gave it to me, and vanished at my feet." *
"Oh Brahma! what is this mystery which takes place every night? . . . When lying on the matting, with eyes closed, the body is lost sight of, and the soul escapes to enter into conversation with the Pitris. . . . Watch over it, O Brahma, when, forsaking the resting body, it goes away to hover over the waters, to wander in the immensity of heaven, and penetrate into the dark and mysterious nooks of the valleys and grand forests of the Hymavat! " (Agroushada Parikshai.)
The fakirs, when belonging to some particular temple, never act but under orders. Not one of them, unless he has reached a degree of extraordinary sanctity, is freed from the influence and guidance of his guru, his teacher, who first initiated and instructed him in the mysteries of the occult sciences. Like the subject of the European mesmerizer, the average fakir can never rid himself entirely of the psychological influence exercised on him by his guru. Having passed two or three hours in the silence and solitude of the inner temple in prayer and meditation, the fakir, when he emerges thence, is mesmerically strengthened and prepared; he produces wonders far more varied and powerful than before he entered. The "master" has laid his hands upon him, and the fakir feels strong.
It may be shown, on the
authority of many Brahmanical and Buddhist sacred books, that there has ever
existed a great difference between
* Louis Jacolliot: "Phιnomenes et Manifestations."
adepts of the higher order, and purely psychological subjects like many of these fakirs, who are mediums in a certain qualified sense. True, the fakir is ever talking of Pitris, and this is natural; for they are his protecting deities. But are the Pitris disembodied human beings of our race? This is the question, and we will discuss it in a moment.
We say that the fakir may be regarded in a degree as a medium; for he is what is not generally known under the direct mesmeric influence of a living adept, his sannyβsi or guru. When the latter dies, the power of the former, unless he has received the last transfer of spiritual forces, wanes and often even disappears. Why, if it were otherwise, should the fakirs have been excluded from the right of advancing to the second and third degree? The lives of many of them exemplify a degree of self-sacrifice and sanctity unknown and utterly incomprehensible to Europeans, who shudder at the bare thought of such self-inflicted tortures. But however shielded from control by vulgar and earth-bound spirits, however wide the chasm between a debasing influence and their self-controlled souls; and however well protected by the seven-knotted magical bamboo rod which he receives from the guru, still the fakir lives in the outer world of sin and matter, and it is possible that his soul may be tainted, perchance, by the magnetic emanations from profane objects and persons, and thereby open an access to strange spirits and gods. To admit one so situated, one not under any and all circumstances sure of the mastery over himself, to a knowledge of the awful mysteries and priceless secrets of initiation, would be impracticable. It would not only imperil the security of that which must, at all hazards, be guarded from profanation, but it would be consenting to admit behind the veil a fellow being, whose mediumistic irresponsibility might at any moment cause him to lose his life through an involuntary indiscretion. The same law which prevailed in the Eleusinian Mysteries before our era, holds good now in India.
Not only must the adept have mastery over himself, but he must be able to control the inferior grades of spiritual beings, nature-spirits, and earthbound souls, in short the very ones by whom, if by any, the fakir is liable to be affected.
For the objector to affirm that the Brahman-adepts and the fakirs admit that of themselves they are powerless, and can only act with the help of disembodied human spirits, is to state that these Hindus are unacquainted with the laws of their sacred books and even the meaning of the word Pitris. The Laws of Manu, the Atharva-Veda, and other books, prove what we now say. "All that exists," says the Atharva-Veda, "is in the power of the gods. The gods are under the power of magical conjurations. The magical conjurations are under the control of the Brahmans. Hence
the gods are in the power of the
Brahmans." This is logical, albeit seemingly paradoxical, and it is the fact.
And this fact will explain to those who have not hitherto had the clew (among
whom Jacolliot must be numbered, as will appear on reading his works), why the
fakir should be confined to the first, or lowest degree of that course of
initiation whose highest adepts, or hierophants, are the sannyβsis, or
members of the ancient Supreme Council of Seventy.
Moreover, in Book I., of the Hindu Genesis, or Book of
Creation of Manu, the Pitris are called the lunar
ancestors of the human race. They belong to a race of beings different from
ourselves, and cannot properly be called "human spirits" in the sense in which
the spiritualists use this term. This is what is said of them:
"Then they (the gods) created the Jackshas, the Rakshasas, the Pisatshas, * the Gandarbas and the Apsaras, and the Asuras, the Nagas, the Sarpas and the Suparnas, and the Pitris lunar ancestors of the human race" (See Institutes of Manu, Book I., sloka 37, where the Pitris are termed "progenitors of mankind").
The Pitris are a distinct race
of spirits belonging to the mythological hierarchy or rather to the kabalistical
nomenclature, and must be included with the good genii, the dζmons of the
Greeks, or the inferior gods of the invisible world; and when a fakir attributes
his phenomena to the Pitris, he means only what the ancient philosophers and
theurgists meant when they maintained that all the "miracles" were obtained
through the intervention of the gods, or the good and bad dζmons, who control
the powers of nature, the elementals, who are subordinate to the power
of him "who knows." A ghost or human phantom would be termed by a fakir
palīt, or chutnā, as that of a female human spirit pichhalpai,
not pitris. True, pitara means (plural) fathers,
ancestors; and
pitrā-i is a kinsman; but these words are used in quite a different sense from
that of the Pitris invoked in the mantras.
To maintain before a devout Brahman or a fakir that any one can converse with the spirits of the dead, would be to shock him with what would appear to him blasphemy. Does not the concluding verse of the Bagavat state that this supreme felicity is alone reserved to the holy sannyβsis, the gurus, and yogis?
"Long before they finally rid
themselves of their mortal envelopes, the souls who have practiced only good,
such as those of the sannyβsis and the vanaprasthas, acquire the faculty of
conversing with the souls which preceded them to the swarga."
* Pisatshas, dζmons of the race of the gnomes, the giants and the vampires.
Gandarbas, good dζmon, celestial seraphs, singers.
Asuras and Nagas are the Titanic spirits and the dragon or
serpent-headed spirits.
In this case the Pitris instead of genii are the spirits, or rather souls, of the departed ones. But they will freely communicate only with those whose atmosphere is as pure as their own, and to whose prayerful kalassa (invocation) they can respond without the risk of defiling their own celestial purity. When the soul of the invocator has reached the Sayadyam, or perfect identity of essence with the Universal Soul, when matter is utterly conquered, then the adept can freely enter into daily and hourly communion with those who, though unburdened with their corporeal forms, are still themselves progressing through the endless series of transformations included in the gradual approach to the Paramatma, or the grand Universal Soul.
Bearing in mind that the Christian fathers have always claimed for themselves and their saints the name of "friends of God," and knowing that they borrowed this expression, with many others, from the technology of the Pagan temples, it is but natural to expect them to show an evil temper whenever alluding to these rites. Ignorant, as a rule, and having had biographers as ignorant as themselves, we could not well expect them to find in the accounts of their beatific visions a descriptive beauty such as we find in the Pagan classics. Whether the visions and objective phenomena claimed by both the fathers of the desert and the hierophants of the sanctuary are to be discredited, or accepted as facts, the splendid imagery employed by Proclus and Apuleius in narrating the small portion of the final initiation that they dared reveal, throws completely into the shade the plagiaristic tales of the Christian ascetics, faithful copies though they were intended to be. The story of the temptation of St. Anthony in the desert by the female demon, is a parody upon the preliminary trials of the neophyte during the Mikra, or minor Mysteries of Agrζ those rites at the thought of which Clemens railed so bitterly, and which represented the bereaved Demeter in search of her child, and her good-natured hostess Baubo .*
Without entering again into a
demonstration that in Christian, and especially Irish Roman Catholic, churches
the same apparently indecent customs as the above prevailed until the end of the
last century, we will recur to the untiring labors of that honest and brave
defender of the ancient faith, Thomas Taylor, and his works. However much
dogmatic Greek scholarship may have found to say against his "mistranslations,"
his memory must be dear to every true Platonist, who seeks rather to learn the
inner thought of the great philosopher than enjoy the mere external mechanism of
his writings. Better classical translators may have
* See Arnolius: "Op. Cit.," pp. 249, 250.
See Inman's "Ancient Pagan and Modern Christian Symbolism."
rendered us, in more correct phraseology, Plato's words, but Taylor shows us Plato's meaning, and this is more than can be said of Zeller, Jowett, and their predecessors. Yet, as writes Professor A. Wilder, "Taylor's works have met with favor at the hands of men capable of profound and recondite thinking; and it must be conceded that he was endowed with a superior qualification that of an intuitive perception of the interior meaning of the subjects which he considered. Others may have known more Greek, but he knew more Plato." *
Taylor devoted his whole useful life to the search after such old manuscripts as would enable him to have his own speculations concerning several obscure rites in the Mysteries corroborated by writers who had been initiated themselves. It is with full confidence in the assertions of various classical writers that we say that ridiculous, perhaps licentious in some cases, as may appear ancient worship to the modern critic, it ought not to have so appeared to the Christians. During the mediζval ages, and even later, they accepted pretty nearly the same without understanding the secret import of its rites, and quite satisfied with the obscure and rather fantastic interpretations of their clergy, who accepted the exterior form and distorted the inner meaning. We are ready to concede, in full justice, that centuries have passed since the great majority of the Christian clergy, who are not allowed to pry into God's mysteries nor seek to explain that which the Church has once accepted and established, have had the remotest idea of their symbolism, whether in its exoteric or esoteric meaning. Not so with the head of the Church and its highest dignitaries. And if we fully agree with Inman that it is "difficult to believe that the ecclesiastics who sanctioned the publication of such prints could have been as ignorant as modern ritualists," we are not at all prepared to believe with the same author "that the latter, if they knew the real meaning of the symbols commonly used by the Roman Church, would not have adopted them."
To eliminate what is plainly
derived from the sex and nature wor-
* Introduction to Taylor's "Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries," published by
J. W. Bouton.
Illustrated figures "from an ancient Rosary of the blessed Virgin Mary, printed at Venice, 1524, with a license from the Inquisition." In the illustrations given by Dr. Inman the Virgin is represented in an Assyrian "grove," the abomination in the eyes of the Lord, according to the Bible prophets. "The book in question," says the author, "contains numerous figures, all resembling closely the Mesopotamian emblem of Ishtar. The presence of the woman therein identifies the two as symbolic of Isis, or la nature; and a man bowing down in adoration thereof shows the same idea as is depicted in Assyrian sculptures, where males offer to the goddess symbols of themselves" (See "Ancient Pagan and Modern Christian Symbolism," p. 91. Second edition. J. W. Bouton, publisher, New York).