FOOTNOTES:
[1] Lightfoot assures us that this voice, which had been used in times past for a testimony from heaven, “was indeed performed by magic art” (vol. ii., p. 128). This latter term is used as a supercilious expression, just because it was and is still misunderstood. It is the object of this work to correct the erroneous opinions concerning “magic art.”
[2] Encyclical of 1864.
[3] “Fragments of Science.”
[4] See the last chapter of this volume, p. 622.
[5] “Recollections of a Busy Life,” p. 147.
[6] Henry Ward Beecher.
[7] Cocker: “Christianity and Greek Philosophy,” xi., p. 377.
[8] Gospel according to Matthew, xiii. 11, 13.
[9] “The accusations of atheism, the introducing of foreign deities, and corrupting of the Athenian youth, which were made against Socrates, afforded ample justification for Plato to conceal the arcane preaching of his doctrines. Doubtless the peculiar diction or ‘jargon’ of the alchemists was employed for a like purpose. The dungeon, the rack, and the fagot were employed without scruple by Christians of every shade, the Roman Catholics especially, against all who taught even natural science contrary to the theories entertained by the Church. Pope Gregory the Great even inhibited the grammatical use of Latin as heathenish. The offense of Socrates consisted in unfolding to his disciples the arcane doctrine concerning the gods, which was taught in the Mysteries and was a capital crime. He also was charged by Aristophanes with introducing the new god Dinos into the republic as the demiurgos or artificer, and the lord of the solar universe. The Heliocentric system was also a doctrine of the Mysteries; and hence, when Aristarchus the Pythagorean taught it openly, Cleanthes declared that the Greeks ought to have called him to account and condemned him for blasphemy against the gods,”—(“Plutarch”). But Socrates had never been initiated, and hence divulged nothing which had ever been imparted to him.
[10] See Thomas Taylor: “Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries,” p. 47. New York: J. W Bouton, 1875.
[11] Cousin, “History of Philosophy,” I., ix.
[12] “Theol. Arithme.,” p. 62: “On Pythag. Numbers.”
[13] Plato: “Parmenid.,” 141 E.
[14] See Stobœus’ “Ecl.,” i., 862.
[15] Sextus: “Math.,” vii. 145.
[16] “Metaph.,” 407, a. 3.
[17] Appendix to “Timæus.”
[18] Stob.: “Ecl.,” i., 62.
[19] Krische: “Forsch.,” p. 322, etc.
[20] Clem.: “Alex. Stro.,” v., 590.
[21] Plutarch: “De Isid,” chap. 25, p. 360.
[22] “Plato und die Alt. Akademie.”
[23] “Tusc.,” v., 18, 51.
[24] Ibid. Cf. p. 559.
[25] “Plato und die Alt. Akademie.”
[26] Ed. Zeller: “Philos. der Griech.”
[27] “Plato und die Alt. Akademie.”
[28] One of the five solid figures in Geometry.
[29] “The Sun and the Earth.”
[30] “De Ente Spirituali,” lib. iv.; “de Ente Astrorum,” book i.; and opera omnia, vol. i., pp. 634 and 699.
[31] Or more commonly chārkh pūjā.
[32] Persons who believe in the clairvoyant power, but are disposed to discredit the existence of any other spirits in nature than disembodied human spirits, will be interested in an account of certain clairvoyant observations which appeared in the London Spiritualist of June 29, 1877. A thunder-storm approaching, the seeress saw “a bright spirit emerge from a dark cloud and pass with lightning speed across the sky, and, a few minutes after, a diagonal line of dark spirits in the clouds.” These are the Maruts of the “Vedas” (See Max Müller’s “Rig-Veda Sanhita”).
The well-known and respected lecturer, author, and clairvoyant, Mrs. Emma Hardinge Britten, has published accounts of her frequent experiences with these elemental spirits.
[33] Translated by Max Müller, Professor of Comparative Philology at the Oxford University, England.
[34] “Dyaríh vah pitâ, prithivi mâtâ sômah bhrâtâ âditih svásâ.”
[35] As the perfect identity of the philosophical and religious doctrines of antiquity will be fully treated upon in subsequent chapters, we limit our explanations for the present.
[36] “Rig-Veda-Anhita,” p. 234.
[37] Philostratus assures us that the Brahmins were able, in his time, to perform the most wonderful cures by merely pronouncing certain magical words. “The Indian Brahmans carry a staff and a ring, by means of which they are able to do almost anything.” Origenes states the same (“Contra Celsum”). But if a strong mesmeric fluid—say projected from the eye, and without any other contact—is not added, no magical words would be efficacious.
[38] Akiba was a friend of Aher, said to have been the Apostle Paul of Christian story. Both are depicted as having visited Paradise. Aher took branches from the Tree of Knowledge, and so fell from the true (Jewish) religion. Akiba came away in peace. See 2d Epistle to the Corinthians, chapter xii.
[39] Taley means ocean or sea.
[40] See “Aytareya Brahmanan,” 3, 1.
[41] See Pantheon: “Myths,” p. 31; also Aristophanes in “Vœstas,” i., reg. 28.
[42] The oracle of Apollo was at Delphos, the city of the δελφυς, womb or abdomen; the place of the temple was denominated the omphalos or navel. The symbols are female and lunary; reminding us that the Arcadians were called Proseleni, pre-Hellenic or more ancient than the period when Ionian and Olympian lunar worship was introduced.
[43] From the accounts of Strabo and Megasthenes, who visited Palibothras, it would seem that the persons termed by him Samanean, or Brachmane priests, were simply Buddhists. “The singularly subtile replies of the Samanean or Brahman philosophers, in their interview with the conqueror, will be found to contain the spirit of the Buddhist doctrine,” remarks Upham. (See the “History and Doctrine of Buddhism;” and Hale’s “Chronology,” vol. iii., p. 238.)
[44] In their turn, the heathen may well ask the missionaries what sort of a spirit lurks at the bottom of the sacrificial beer-bottle. That evangelical New York journal, the “Independent,” says: “A late English traveller found a simple-minded Baptist mission church, in far-off Burmah, using for the communion service, and we doubt not with God’s blessing, Bass’s pale ale instead of wine.” Circumstances alter cases, it seems!
[45] “Book of Brahmanical Evocations,” part iii.
[46] Bulwer-Lytton: “Last Days of Pompeii,” p. 147.
[47] “Select Works,” p. 159.
[48] Ibid., p. 92.
[49] “Aitareya Brahmanan,” Introduction.
[50] The name is used in the sense of the Greek word ανθροπος.
[51] The traditions of the Oriental Kabalists claim their science to be older than that. Modern scientists may doubt and reject the assertion. They cannot prove it false.
[52] Clement of Alexandria asserted that in his day the Egyptian priests possessed forty-two Canonical Books.
[53] “Chips from a German Work-shop,” vol. ii., p. 7. “Comparative Mythology.”
[54] “Conflict between Religion and Science,” ch. i.
[55] In another place, we explain with some minuteness the Hermetic philosophy of the evolution of the spheres and their several races.
[56] J. Burges: “The Works of Plato,” p. 207, note.
[57] From the Sanskrit text of the Aitareya Brahmanam. Rig-Veda, v., ch. ii., verse 23.
[58] Aitareya Brahmanam, book iii., c. v., 44.
[59] Ait. Brahm., vol. ii., p. 242.
[60] Ait. Brahm., book iv.
[61] Septenary Institutions; “Stone him to Death,” p. 20.
[62] See Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.”
[63] See Turner; also G. Higgins’s “Anacalypsis.”
[64] Genesis, i., 30.
[65] Sir William Drummond: “Œdipus Judicus,” p. 250.
[66] The absolute necessity for the perpetration of such pious frauds by the early fathers and later theologians becomes apparent, if we consider that if they had allowed the word Al to remain as in the original, it would have become but too evident—except for the initiated—that the Jehovah of Moses and the sun were identical. The multitudes, which ignore that the ancient hierophant considered our visible sun but as an emblem of the central, invisible, and spiritual Sun, would have accused Moses—as many of our modern commentators have already done—of worshipping the planetary bodies; in short, of actual Zabaism.
[67] Exodus, xxv., 40.
[68] “The Physical Basis of Life.” A Lecture by T. H. Huxley.
[69] Huxley: “Physical Basis of Life.”
[70] Prof. J. W. Draper: “Conflict between Religion and Science.”
[71] Bulwer’s “Zanoni.”
[72] See the Code published by Sir William Jones, chap. ix., p. 11.
[73] Pliny: “Hist. Nat.,” xxx. 1; Ib., xvi., 14; xxv., 9, etc.
[74] Pomponius ascribes to them the knowledge of the highest sciences.
[75] Cæsar, iii., 14.
[76] Pliny, xxx.
[77] Munter, on the most ancient religion of the North before the time of Odin. Mémoires de la Société des Antiquaires de France. Tome ii., p. 230.
[78] Ammianus Marcellinus, xxvi., 6.
[79] In some respects our modern philosophers, who think they make new discoveries, can be compared to “the very clever, learned, and civil gentleman” whom Hippocrates having met at Samos one day, describes very good-naturedly. “He informed me,” the Father of Medicine proceeds to say, “that he had lately discovered an herb never before known in Europe or Asia, and that no disease, however malignant or chronic, could resist its marvellous properties. Wishing to be civil in turn, I permitted myself to be persuaded to accompany him to the conservatory in which he had transplanted the wonderful specific. What I found was one of the commonest plants in Greece, namely, garlic—the plant which above all others has least pretensions to healing virtues.” Hippocrates: “De optima prædicandi ratione item judicii operum magni.” I.
[80] Schweigger: “Introduction to Mythology through Natural History.”
[81] Ennemoser: “History of Magic,” i., 3.
[82] “Hist. of Magic,” vol. i., p. 9.
[83] Philo Jud.: “De Specialibus Legibus.”
[84] Zend-Avesta, vol. ii., p. 506.
[85] Cassian: “Conference,” i., 21.
[86] “De Vita et Morte Mosis,” p. 199.
[87] Acts of the Apostles, vii., 22.
[88] Justin, xxxvi., 2.
[89] Molitor: “Philosophy of History and Traditions,” Howitt’s Translation, p. 285.
[90] “Conflict between Religion and Science,” p. 329.
[91] See “Gazette du Midi,” and “Le Monde,” of 3 May, 1864.
[92] Shakspere: “Richard III.”
[93] Literally, the screaming or the howling ones.
[94] The half-demented, the idiots.
[95] But such is not always the case, for some among these beggars make a regular and profitable trade of it.
[96] Webster declares very erroneously that the Chaldeans called saros, the cycle of eclipses, a period of about 6,586 years, “the time of revolution of the moon’s node.” Berosus, himself a Chaldean astrologer, at the Temple of Belus, at Babylon, gives the duration of the sar, or sarus, 3,600 years; a neros 600; and a sossus 60. (See, Berosus from Abydenus, “Of the Chaldæan Kings and the Deluge.” See also Eusebius, and Cary’s MS. Ex. Cod. reg. gall. gr. No. 2360, fol. 154.)
[97] Before scientists reject such a theory—traditional as it is—it would be in order for them to demonstrate why, at the end of the tertiary period, the Northern Hemisphere had undergone such a reduction of temperature as to utterly change the torrid zone to a Siberian climate? Let us bear in mind that the helicocentric system came to us from upper India; and that the germs of all great astronomical truths were brought thence by Pythagoras. So long as we lack a mathematically correct demonstration, one hypothesis is as good as another.
[98] Censorinus: “De Natal Die.” Seneca: “Nat. Quæst.,” iii., 29.
[99] Euseb.: “Præp. Evan.” Of the Tower of Babel and Abraham.
[100] This is in flat contradiction of the Bible narrative, which tells us that the deluge was sent for the special destruction of these giants. The Babylon priests had no object to invent lies.
[101] Coleman, who makes this calculation, allowed a serious error to escape the proof-reader; the length of the manwantara is given at 368,448,000, which is just sixty million years too much.
[102] S. Davis: “Essay in the Asiatic Researches;” and Higgins’s “Anacalypsis;” also see Coleman’s “Mythology of the Hindus.” Preface, p. xiii.
[103] Bunsen: “Egypte,” vol. i.
[104] The forty-two Sacred Books of the Egyptians mentioned by Clement of Alexandria as having existed in his time, were but a portion of the Books of Hermes. Iamblichus, on the authority of the Egyptian priest Abammon, attributes 1200 of such books to Hermes, and Manetho 36,000. But the testimony of Iamblichus as a neo-Platonist and theurgist is of course rejected by modern critics. Manetho, who is held by Bunsen in the highest consideration as a “purely historical personage” ... with whom “none of the later native historians can be compared ...” (see “Egypte,” i., p. 97), suddenly becomes a Pseudo-Manetho, as soon as the ideas propounded by him clash with the scientific prejudices against magic and the occult knowledge claimed by the ancient priests. However, none of the archæologists doubt for a moment the almost incredible antiquity of the Hermetic books. Champollion shows the greatest regard for their authenticity and great truthfulness, corroborated as it is by many of the oldest monuments. And Bunsen brings irrefutable proofs of their age. From his researches, for instance, we learn that there was a line of sixty-one kings before the days of Moses, who preceded the Mosaic period by a clearly-traceable civilization of several thousand years. Thus we are warranted in believing that the works of Hermes Trismegistus were extant many ages before the birth of the Jewish law-giver. “Styli and inkstands were found on monuments of the fourth Dynasty, the oldest in the world,” says Bunsen. If the eminent Egyptologist rejects the period of 48,863 years before Alexander, to which Diogenes Laertius carries back the records of the priests, he is evidently more embarrassed with the ten thousand of astronomical observations, and remarks that “if they were actual observations, they must have extended over 10,000 years” (p. 14). “We learn, however,” he adds, “from one of their own old chronological works ... that the genuine Egyptian traditions concerning the mythological period, treated of myriads of years.” (“Egypte,” i, p. 15).
[105] Higgins: “Anacalypsis.”
[106] “De Vite Pythag.”
[107] “The Rosicrucians,” etc., by Hargrave Jennings.
[108] W. Crookes, F.R.S.: “Researches in the Phenomena of Spiritualism.”
[109] W. Crookes: “Experiments on Psychic Force,” page 25.
[110] W. Crookes: “Spiritualism Viewed by the Light of Modern Science.” See “Quarterly Journal of Science.”
[111] A. Aksakof: “Phenomena of Mediumism.”
[112] A. N. Aksakof: “Phenomena of Mediumism.”
[113] “The Last of Katie King,” pamphlet iii., p. 119.
[114] Ibid., pamp. i., p. 7.
[115] “The Last of Katie King,” pamp. iii., p. 112.
[116] Ibid., p. 112.
[117] “Researches in the Phenomena of Spiritualism,” p. 45.
[118] Pfaff’s “Astrology.” Berl.
[119] “Medico-Surgical Essays.”
[120] “The Philosophy of Hist.”
[121] On Theoph. Paracelsus.—Magic.
[122] Kemshead says in his “Inorganic Chemistry” that “the element hydrogen was first mentioned in the sixteenth century by Paracelsus, but very little was known of it in any way.” (P. 66.) And why not be fair and confess at once that Paracelsus was the re-discoverer of hydrogen as he was the re-discoverer of the hidden properties of the magnet and animal magnetism? It is easy to show that according to the strict vows of secrecy taken and faithfully observed by every Rosicrucian (and especially by the alchemist) he kept his knowledge secret. Perhaps it would not prove a very difficult task for any chemist well versed in the works of Paracelsus to demonstrate that oxygen, the discovery of which is credited to Priestley, was known to the Rosicrucian alchemists as well as hydrogen.
[123] “Letter to J. Glanvil, chaplain to the king and a fellow of the Royal Society.” Glanvil was the author of the celebrated work on Apparitions and Demonology entitled “Sadducismus Triumphatus, or a full and plain evidence concerning witches and apparitions,” in two parts, “proving partly by Scripture, and partly by a choice collection of modern relations, the real existence of apparitions, spirits and witches.“1700.
[124] Plato: “Timæus Soerius,” 97.
[125] See Movers’ “Explanations,” 268.
[126] Cory: “Chaldean Oracles,” 243.
[127] Philo Judæus: “On the Creation,” x.
[128] Movers: “Phoinizer,” 282.
[129] K. O. Müller, 236.
[130] Weber: “Akad. Vorles,” 213, 214, etc.
[131] Plutarch, “Isis and Osiris,” i., vi.
[132] “Spirit History of Man,” p. 88.
[133] Movers: “Phoinizer,” 268.
[134] Cory: “Fragments,” 240.
[135] “Parerga,” ii., pp. 111, 112.
[136] See Huxley: “Physical Basis of Life.”
[137] Schopenhauer: “Parerga.” Art. on “Will in Nature.”
[138] “Revue des Deux Mondes,” Jan. 15, 1855, p. 108.
[139] Comte de Mirville: “Question des Esprits.”
[140] Bulwer-Lytton: “Zanoni.”
[141] T. Wright: “Narratives of Sorcery and Magic.”
[142] See Des Mousseaux’s “Dodone,” and “Dieu et les dieux,” p. 326.
[143] “Apparitions,” translated by C. Crowe, pp. 388, 391, 399.
[144] “De Abstinentia,” etc.
[145] C. Crowe: “On Apparitions,” p. 398.
[146] Upham: “Salem Witchcraft.”
[147] Brierre de Boismont: “On Hallucinations,” p. 60.
[148] See de Mirville’s “Question des Esprits,” and the works on the “Phénomènes Spirites,” by de Gasparin.
[149] Honorary Secretary to the National Association of Spiritualists of London.
[150] Job.
[151] See Dr. F. R. Marvin’s “Lectures on Mediomania and Insanity.”
[152] Vapereau: “Biographie Contemporaine,” art. Littré; and Des Mousseaux: “Les Hauts Phénomènes de la Magie,” ch. 6.
[153] A. Comte: “Système de Politique Positive,” vol. i. p. 203, etc.
[154] Ibid.
[155] Ibid.
[156] See des Mousseaux: “Hauts Phénomènes de la Magie,” chap. 6.
[157] Littré: “Paroles de Philosophie Positive.”
[158] Littré: “Paroles de Philosophie Positive,” vii., 57.
[159] “Spiritualism and Charlatanism.”
[160] Prof. Hare: “On Positivism,” p. 29.
[161] “Journal des Débats,” 1864. See also des Mousseaux’s “Hauts Phén. de la Magie.”
[162] “Philosophic Positive,” vol. iv., p. 279.
[163] Dr. F. R. Marvin: “Lecture on Insanity.”
[164] See Howitt: “History of the Supernatural,” vol. ii.
[165] Prof. Huxley: “Physical Basis of Life.”
[166] Reference is made to a card which appeared some time since in a New York paper, signed by three persons styling themselves as above, and assuming to be a scientific committee appointed two years before to investigate spiritual phenomena. The criticism on the triad appeared in the “New Era” magazine.
[167] Dr. Marvin: “Lecture on Insanity,” N. Y., 1875.
[168] Tyndall: “Fragments of Science.”
[169] Tyndall: Preface to “Fragments of Science.”
[170] Deuteronomy, chap. xvii., 6.
[171] Montesquieu: Esprit des Lois I., xii., chap. 3.
[172] C. B. Warring.
[173] Ammianus Marcellinus, xxiii., 6.
[174] The Rishis were seven in number, and lived in days anteceding the Vedic period. They were known as sages, and held in reverence like demi-gods. Haug shows that they occupy in the Brahmanical religion a position answering to that of the twelve sons of Jacob in the Jewish Bible. The Brahmans claim to descend directly from these Rishis.
[175] The fourth Veda.
[176] Orthography of the “Archaic Dictionary.”
[177] We do not mean the current or accepted Bible, but the real Jewish one explained kabalistically.
[178] “Dissertations Relating to Asia.”
[179] Dr. Gross, p. 195.
[180] Brahma does not create the earth, Mirtlok, any more than the rest of the universe. Having evolved himself from the soul of the world, once separated from the First Cause, he emanates in his turn all nature out of himself. He does not stand above it, but is mixed up with it; and Brahma and the universe form one Being, each particle of which is in its essence Brahma himself, who proceeded out of himself. [Burnouf: “Introduction,” p. 118.]
[181] “Conflict between Religion and Science,” 180.
[182] “Des Tables,” vol. i., p. 213.
[183] Ibid., 216.
[184] “Des Tables,” vol. i., p. 48.
[185] Ibid., p. 24.
[186] Ibid., p. 35.
[187] De Mirville: “Des Esprits,” p. 26.
[188] “Avant propos,” pp. 12 and 16.
[189] Vol. i., p. 244.
[190] Vol. ii., p. 524.
[191] “Medico-Psychological Annals,” Jan. 1, 1854.
[192] De Mirville: “Des Esprits,” “Constitutionnel,” June 16, 1854.
[193] Chevalier des Mousseaux: “Mœurs et Pratiques des Démons,” p. x.
[194] De Mirville: “Des Esprits,” p. 4.
[195] Ibid. “Revue des Deux Mondes,” January 15, 1854, p. 108.
[196] This is a repetition and variation of Faraday’s theory.
[197] “Revue des Deux Mondes,” p. 410.
[198] “Revue des Deux Mondes,” January, 1854, p. 414.
[199] “Revue des Deux Mondes,” May 1, 1854, p. 531.
[200] We translate verbatim. We doubt whether Mr. Weekman was the first investigator.
[201] Babinet: “Revue des Deux Mondes,” May 1, 1854, p. 511.
[202] De Mirville: “Des Esprits,” p. 33.
[203] Notes, “Des Esprits,” p. 38.
[204] De Mirville: “Faits et Théories Physiques,” p. 46.
[205] See Monograph: “Of the Lightning considered from the point of view of the history of Legal Medicine and Public Hygiene,” by M. Boudin, Chief Surgeon of the Military Hospital of Boule.
[206] De Gasparin: vol. i, page 288.
[207] Crookes: “Physical Force,” page 26.
[208] De Gasparin: “Science versus Spirit,” vol i, p. 313.
[209] Ibid, vol. 1, p. 313.
[210] De Mirville pleads here the devil-theory, of course.
[211] “Des Tables,” vol. i., p. 213.
[212] Vol. i, p. 217.
[213] Crookes: “Psychic Force,” part i., pp. 26-27.
[214] Plato: “Phædo,” § 44.
[215] Ibid., § 128.
[216] “Philosophy of Magic,” English translation, p. 47.
[217] De Mirville: “Des Esprits,” p. 159.
[218] See F. Gerry Fairfield’s “Ten Years with Spiritual Mediums,” New York, 1875.
[219] Marvin: “Lecture on Mediomania.”
[220] “Scientific American,” N. Y., 1875.
“De par le Roi, defense à Dieu,
De faire miracle, en ces lieux.”
A satire that was found written upon the walls of the cemetery at the time of the Jansenist miracles and their prohibition by the police of France.
[222] Polier: “Mythologie des Indous.”
[223] Genesis vi. 4.
[224] Mallett: “Northern Antiquities,” Bohn’s edition, pp. 401-405.
[225] In the “Quarterly Review” of 1859, Graham gives a strange account of many now deserted Oriental cities, in which the stone doors are of enormous dimensions, often seemingly out of proportion with the buildings themselves, and remarks that dwellings and doors bear all of them the impress of an ancient race of giants.
[226] Dr. More: “Letter to Glanvil, author of ‘Saducismus Triumphatus.’”
[227] J. S. Y.: “Demonologia, or Natural Knowledge Revealed,” 1827, p. 219.
[228] Pausanias: “Eliæ,” lib. i., cap. xiv.
[229] We apprehend that the noble author coined his curious names by contracting words in classical languages. Gy would come from gune; vril from virile.
[230] P. B. Randolph: “Pre-Adamite Man,” p. 48.
[231] On this point at least we are on firm ground. Mr. Crookes’s testimony corroborates our assertions. On page 84 of his pamphlet on “Phenomenal Spiritualism” he says: “The many hundreds of facts I am prepared to attest—facts which to imitate by known mechanics or physical means would baffle the skill of a Houdin, a Bosco, or an Anderson, backed with all the resources of elaborate machinery and the practice of years—have all taken place in my own house; at times appointed by myself and under circumstances which absolutely precluded the employment of the very simplest instrumental aids.”
[232] In this appellation, we may discover the meaning of the puzzling sentence to be found in the Zend-Avesta that “fire gives knowledge of the future, science, and amiable speech,” as it develops an extraordinary eloquence in some sensitives.
[233] Dunlap: “Musah, His Mysteries,” p. iii.
[234] “Hercules was known as the king of the Musians,” says Schwab, ii., 44; and Musien was the feast of “Spirit and Matter,” Adonis and Venus, Bacchus and Ceres. (See Dunlap: “Mystery of Adonis,” p. 95.) Dunlap shows, on the authority of Julian and Anthon (67), Æsculapius, “the Savior of all,” identical with Phtha (the creative Intellect, the Divine Wisdom), and with Apollo, Baal, Adonis, and Hercules (ibid., p. 93), and Phtha is the “Anima mundi,” the Universal Soul, of Plato, the Holy Ghost of the Egyptians, and the Astral Light of the Kabalists. M. Michelet, however, regards the Grecian Herakles as a different character, the adversary of the Bacchic revellings and their attendant human sacrifices.
[235] Plato: “Ion” (Burgess), vol. iv., p. 294.
[236] “Attic.” i., xiv.
[237] Plato: “Theages.” Cicero renders this word δαιμονιον, quiddam divinum, a divine something, not anything personal.
[238] “Cratylus,” p. 79.
[239] “Arnobius,” vi., xii.
[240] As we will show in subsequent chapters, the sun was not considered by the ancients as the direct cause of the light and heat, but only as an agent of the former, through which the light passes on its way to our sphere. Thus it was always called by the Egyptians “the eye of Osiris,” who was himself the Logos, the First-begotten, or light made manifest to the world, “which is the mind and divine intellect of the Concealed.” It is only that light of which we are cognizant that is the Demiurge, the creator of our planet and everything pertaining to it; with the invisible and unknown universes disseminated through space, none of the sun-gods had anything to do. The idea is expressed very clearly in the “Books of Hermes.”
[241] “Orphic Hymn,” xii.; Hermann; Dunlap: “Musah, His Mysteries,” p. 91.
[242] Movers, 525. Dunlap: “Mysteries of Adonis,” 94.
[243] Preller: ii., 153. This is evidently the origin of the Christian dogma of Christ descending into hell and overcoming Satan.
[244] This important fact accounts admirably for the gross polytheism of the masses, and the refined, highly-philosophical conception of one God, which was taught only in sanctuaries of the “pagan” temples.
[245] Anthon: “Cabeiria.”
[246] Plato: “Phædrus,” Cary’s translation.
[247] John xx. 22.
[248] “Heathen Religion,” 104.
[249] Alkahest, a word first used by Paracelsus, to denote the menstruum or universal solvent, that is capable of reducing all things.
[250] Josephus: “Antiquities,” vol. viii., c. 2, 5.
[251] “The Land of Charity,” p. 210.
[252] The claims of certain “adepts,” which do not agree with those of the students of the purely Jewish Kabala, and show that the “secret doctrine” has originated in India, from whence it was brought to Chaldea, passing subsequently into the hands of the Hebrew “Tanaïm,” are singularly corroborated by the researches of the Christian missionaries. These pious and learned travellers have inadvertently come to our help. Dr. Caldwell, in his “Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian Languages,” p. 66, and Dr. Mateer, in the “Land of Charity,” p. 83, fully support our assertions that the “wise” King Solomon got all his kabalistic lore from India, as the above-given magical figure well shows. The former missionary is desirous to prove that very old and huge specimens of the baobab-tree, which is not, as it appears, indigenous to India, but belongs to the African soil, and “found only at several ancient sites of foreign commerce (at Travancore), may, for aught we know,” he adds, “have been introduced into India, and planted by the servants of King Solomon.” The other proof is still more conclusive. Says Dr. Mateer, in his chapter on the Natural History of Travancore: “There is a curious fact connected with the name of this bird (the peacock) which throws some light upon Scripture history. King Solomon sent his navy to Tarshish (1 Kings, x. 22), which returned once in three years, bringing ‘gold and silver, ivory and apes, and peacocks.’ Now the word used in the Hebrew Bible for peacock is ‘tukki,’ and as the Jews had, of course, no word for these fine birds till they were first imported into Judea by King Solomon, there is no doubt that ‘tukki’ is simply the old Tamil word ‘toki,’ the name of the peacock. The ape or monkey also is, in Hebrew, called ‘koph,’ the Indian word for which is ‘kaphi.’ Ivory, we have seen, is abundant in South India, and gold is widely distributed in the rivers of the western coast. Hence the ‘Tarshish’ referred to was doubtless the western coast of India, and Solomon’s ships were ancient ‘East Indiamen.’” And hence also we may add, besides “the gold and silver, and apes and peacocks,” King Solomon and his friend Hiram, of masonic renown, got their “magic” and “wisdom” from India.
[253] Cooke: “New Chemistry,” p. 22.
[254] Eliphas Levi: “Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie.”
[255] Plato hints at a ceremony used in the Mysteries, during the performance of which the neophyte was taught that men are in this life in a kind of prison, and taught how to escape from it temporarily. As usual, the too-learned translators disfigured this passage, partially because they could not understand it, and partially because they would not. See Phædo § 16, and commentaries on it by Henry More, the well-known Mystic philosopher and Platonist.
[256] The akasa is a Sanscrit word which means sky, but it also designates the imponderable and intangible life-principle—the astral and celestial lights combined together, and which two form the anima mundi, and constitute the soul and spirit of man; the celestial light forming his νοὺς, πνευμα, or divine spirit, and the other his ψυχη soul orastral spirit. The grosser particles of the latter enter into the fabrication of his outward form—the body. Akasa is the mysterious fluid termed by scholastic science, “the all-pervading ether;” it enters into all the magical operations of nature, and produces mesmeric, magnetic, and spiritual phenomena. As, in Syria, Palestine, and India, meant the sky, life, and the sun at the same time; the sun being considered by the ancient sages as the great magnetic well of our universe. The softened pronunciation of this word was Ah—says Dunlap, for “the s continually softens to h from Greece to Calcutta.” Ah is Iah, Ao, and Iao. God tells Moses that his name is “I am” (Ahiah), a reduplication of Ah or Iah. The word “As” Ah, or Iah means life, existence, and is evidently the root of the word akasa, which in Hindustan is pronounced ahasa, the life-principle, or Divine life-giving fluid or medium. It is the Hebrew ruah, and means the “wind,” the breath, the air in motion, or “moving spirit,” according to Parkhurst’s Lexicon; and is identical with the spirit of God moving on the face of the waters.
[257] Bear in mind that Kavindasami made Jacolliot swear that he would neither approach nor touch him during the time he was entranced. The least contact with matter would have paralyzed the action of the freed spirit, which, if we are permitted to use such an unpoetical comparison, would re-enter its dwelling like a frightened snail, drawing in its horns at the approach of any foreign substance. In some cases such a brusque interruption and oozing back of the spirit (sometimes it may suddenly and altogether break the delicate thread connecting it with the body) kills the entranced subject. See the several works of Baron du Potet and Puysegur on this question.
[258] “La Magie Devoilée,” p. 147.
[259] “Magie au XIXme Siècle,” p. 268.
[260] Ibid.
[261] Brierre de Boismont: “Des Hallucinations, ou Histoire raisonnée des apparitions, des songes, des visions, de l’extase du Magnetisme,” 1845, p. 301 (French edition). See also Fairfield: “Ten Years Among the Mediums.”
[262] Cabanis, seventh memoir: “De l’Influence des Maladies sur la Formation des Idées,” etc. A respected N. Y. legislator has this faculty.
[263] Irenæus: Book iii., chap. ii., sec. 8.
[264] The cow is the symbol of prolific generation and of intellectual nature. She was sacred to Isis in Egypt; to Christna, in India, and to an infinity of other gods and goddesses personifying the various productive powers of nature. The cow was held, in short, as the impersonation of the Great Mother of all beings, both of the mortals and of the gods, of physical and spiritual generation of things.
[265] In Genesis the river of Eden was parted, “and became into four heads” (Gen. ii. 5).
[266] Genesis iii. 21.
[267] This is claimed to be one of the missing books of the sacred Canon of the Jews, and is referred to in Joshua and II. Samuel. It was discovered by Sidras, an officer of Titus, during the sack of Jerusalem, and published in Venice in the seventeenth century, as alleged in its preface by the Consistory of Rabbins, but the American edition, as well as the English, is reputed by the modern Rabbis, to be a forgery of the twelfth century.
[268] See Godfrey Higgins: “Anacalypsis,” quoting Faber.
[269] See Cory’s “Ancient Fragments.” Berosus.
[270] We refer the reader for further particulars to the “Prose Edda” in Mallett’s “Northern Antiquities.”
[271] It is worthy of attention that in the Mexican “Popol-Vuh” the human race is created out of a reed, and in Hesiod out of the ash-tree, as in the Scandinavian narrative.
[272] See Kanne’s “Pantheum der Æltesten Philosophie.”
[273] “Origin of Species,” p. 484.
[274] Ibid. Which latter word we cannot accept unless that “primordial form” is conceded to be the primal concrete form that spirit assumed as the revealed Deity.
[275] Ibid., p. 488.
[276] Lecture by T. H. Huxley, F. R. S.: “Darwin and Haeckel.”
[277] “Migration of Abraham,” § 32.
[278] Cory: “Ancient Fragments.”
[279] “Origin of Species,” pp. 448, 489, first edition.
[280] Huxley: “Darwin and Haeckel.”
[281] Mithras was regarded among the Persians as the Theos ek petros—god of the rock.
[282] Bordj is called a fire-mountain—a volcano; therefore it contains fire, rock, earth, and water—the male and active, and the female or passive elements. The myth is suggestive.
[283] Virgil: “Georgica,” book ii.
[284] Porphyry and other philosophers explain the nature of the dwellers. They are mischievous and deceitful, though some of them are perfectly gentle and harmless, but so weak as to have the greatest difficulty in communicating with mortals whose company they seek incessantly. The former are not wicked through intelligent malice. The law of spiritual evolution not having yet developed their instinct into intelligence, whose highest light belongs but to immortal spirits, their powers of reasoning are in a latent state and, therefore, they themselves, irresponsible.
But the Latin Church contradicts the Kabalists. St. Augustine has even a discussion on that account with Porphyry, the Neo-platonist. “These spirits,” he says, “are deceitful, not by their nature, as Porphyry, the theurgist, will have it, but through malice. They pass themselves off for gods and for the souls of the defunct” (“Civit. Dei,” book x., ch. 2). So far Porphyry agrees with him; “but they do not claim to be demons [read devils], for they are such in reality!” adds the bishop of Hippo. But then, under what class should we place the men without heads, whom Augustine wishes us to believe he saw himself? or the satyrs of St. Jerome, which he asserts were exhibited for a considerable length of time at Alexandria? They were, he tells us, “men with the legs and tails of goats;” and, if we may believe him, one of these Satyrs was actually pickled and sent in a cask to the Emperor Constantine!
[285] “Tria capita exsculpta sunt, una intra alterum, et alterum supra alterum” (Sohar; “Idra Suta,” sectio vii.)
[286] Gentle gale (lit.)
[287] Higgins: “Anacalypsis;” also “Dupruis.”
[288] Mallett: “Northern Antiquities,” pp. 401-406, and “The Songs of a Völuspa” Edda.
[289] From a London Spiritualist Journal.
[290] Hemmann: “Medico-Surgical Essays,” Berl., 1778.
[291] Robert Fludd: “Treatise III.”
[292] Prof. J. P. Cooke: “New Chemistry.”
[293] In the “Bulletin de l’Academie de Medecine,” Paris, 1837, vol. i., p. 343 et seq., may be found the report of Dr. Oudet, who, to ascertain the state of insensibility of a lady in a magnetic sleep, pricked her with pins, introducing a long pin in the flesh up to its head, and held one of her fingers for some seconds in the flame of a candle. A cancer was extracted from the right breast of a Madame Plaintain. The operation lasted twelve minutes; during the whole time the patient talked very quietly with her mesmerizer, and never felt the slightest sensation (“Bul. de l’Acad. de Med.,” Tom. ii., p. 370).
[294] Prophecy, Ancient and Modern, by A. Wilder: “Phrenological Journal.”
[295] The theory that the sun is an incandescent globe is—as one of the magazines recently expressed it—“going out of fashion.” It has been computed that if the sun—whose mass and diameter is known to us—“were a solid block of coal, and sufficient amount of oxygen could be supplied to burn at the rate necessary to produce the effects we see, it would be completely consumed in less than 5,000 years.” And yet, till comparatively a few weeks ago, it was maintained—nay, is still maintained, that the sun is a reservoir of vaporized metals!
[296] See Youmans: “Chemistry on the Basis of the New System—Spectrum Analysis.”
[297] Professor of Physics in the Stevens Institute of Technology. See his “The Earth a Great Magnet,“a lecture delivered before the Yale Scientific Club, 1872. See, also, Prof. Balfour Stewart’s lecture on “The Sun and the Earth.”
[298] “De Magnetica Vulner Curatione,” p. 722, l. c.
[299] See “On the Influence of the Blue Ray.”
[300] Ennemoser: “History of Magic.”
[301] “Du Magnetisme Animal, en France.” Paris, 1826.
[302] “The Conservation of Energy.” N. Y., 1875.
[303] “Fundamental Principles of Natural Philosophy.”
[304] “Simpl. in Phys.,” 143; “The Chaldean Oracles,” Cory.
[305] Draper: “Conflict between Religion and Science.”
[306] J. R. Buchanan, M.D.: “Outlines of Lectures on the Neurological System of Anthropology.”
[307] W. and Elizabeth M. F. Denton: “The Soul of Things; or Psychometric Researches and Discoveries.” Boston, 1873.
[308] “Religion of Geology.”
[309] “Principles of Science,” vol. ii., p. 455.
[310] J. W. Draper: “Conflict between Religion and Science,” pp. 132, 133.
[311] “Unseen Universe,” p. 159.
[312] F. R. Marvin: “Lecture on Mediomania.”
[313] “Unseen Universe,” p. 84, et seq.
[314] Ibid., p. 89.
[315] Behold! great scientists of the nineteenth century, corroborating the wisdom of the Scandinavian fable, cited in the preceding chapter. Several thousand years ago, the idea of a bridge between the visible and the invisible universes was allegorized by ignorant “heathen,” in the “Edda-Song of Völuspa,” “The Vision of Vala, the Seeress.” For what is this bridge of Bifrost, the radiant rainbow, which leads the gods to their rendezvous, near the Urdar-fountain, but the same idea as that which is offered to the thoughtful student by the authors of the “Unseen Universe?”
[316] “L’Ami des Sciences,” March 2, 1856, p. 67.
[317] Cooke: “New Chemistry,” p. 113.
[318] Ibid., pp. 110-111.
[319] Ibid., p. 106.
[320] “De Secretis Adeptorum.” Werdenfelt; Philalethes; Van Helmont; Paracelsus.
[321] Youmans: “Chemistry,” p. 169; and W. B. Kemshead, F. R. A. S.: “Inorganic Chemistry.”
[322] “Origin of Metalliferous Deposits.”
[323] John Bumpus: “Alchemy and the Alkahest,” 85, J. S. F., edition of 1820.
[324] See Boyle’s works.
[325] Deleuze: “De l’Opinion de Van Helmont sur la Cause, la Nature et les Effets du Magnetisme.” Anim. Vol. i., p. 45, and vol. ii., p. 198.
[326] A. R. Wallace: “An Answer to the Arguments of Hume, Lecky, etc., against Miracles.”
[327] Crookes: “Researches, etc.,” p. 96.
[328] Lucian: “Pharsalia,” Book v.
[329] “De Divinatio,” Book i., chap. 3.
[330] “De Occulta Philosoph.,” p. 355.
[331] Plato: “Timæus,” vol. ii., p. 563.
[332] Crookes: “Researches, etc.,” p. 101.
[333] Ibid., p. 101.
[334] Crookes: “Researches, etc.,” p. 83.
[335] In 1854, M. Foucault, an eminent physician and a member of the French Institute, one of the opponents of de Gasparin, rejecting the mere possibility of any such manifestations, wrote the following memorable words: “That day, when I should succeed in moving a straw under the action of my will only, I would feel terrified!” The word is ominous. About the same year, Babinet, the astronomer, repeated in his article in the “Revue des Deux Mondes,” the following sentence to exhaustion: “The levitation of a body without contact is as impossible as the perpetual motion, because on the day it would be done, the world would crumble down.” Luckily, we see no sign as yet of such a cataclysm; yet bodies are levitated.
[336] “Researches, etc.,” p. 91.
[337] Ibid., pp. 86-97.
[338] Ibid., p. 94.
[339] Ibid., p. 95.
[340] Ibid., p. 94.
[341] “Antidote,” lib. i., cap. 4.
[342] “Letter to Glanvil, the author of ‘Sadducismus Triumphatus,’ May 25, 1678.”
[343] “History of Magic,” vol. ii., p. 272.
[344] “Apologie pour tous les grands personnages faussement accusés de magie.”
[345] Berlin, 1817.
[346] “Nova Medicina Spirituum,” 1675.
[347] “History of Magic.”
[348] It would be a useless and too long labor to enter here upon the defence of Kepler’s theory of relation between the five regular solids of geometry and the magnitudes of the orbits of five principal planets, rather derided by Prof. Draper in his “Conflict.” Many are the theories of the ancients that have been avenged by modern discovery. For the rest, we must bide our time.
[349] “Magia Naturalis,” Lugduni, 1569.
[350] Athanasis Kircher: “Magnes sive de arte magnetici, opus tripartitum.” Coloniæ, 1654.
[351] Lib. iii., p. 643.
[352] “Notes from a New Historical Relation of the Kingdom of Siam,” by de la Loubère, French Ambassador to Siam in the years 1687-8. Edition of 1692.
[353] Baptist Van Helmont: “Opera Omnia,” 1682, p. 720, and others.
[354] De la Loubère: “Notes,” etc. (see ante), p. 115.
[355] Ibid., p. 120.
[356] Ibid., p. 63.
[357] See his “Conf.,” xiii., l. c. in præfatione.
[358] 1 Samuel, xvi. 14-23.
[359] “Aphorisms,” 22.
[360] Ibid., p. 69.
[361] Ibid., p. 70.
[362] “Philosophie des Sciences Occultes.”
[363] 1 Kings, i. 1-4, 15.
[364] Josephus: “Antiquities,” viii. 2.
[365] “The Diakka and their Victims; an Explanation of the False and Repulsive in Spiritualism.”
[366] See Chapter on the human spirits becoming the denizens of the eighth sphere, whose end is generally the annihilation of personal individuality.
[367] Porphyry: “On the Good and Bad Demons.”
[368] “De Mysteriis Egyptorum,” lib. iii., c. 5.
[369] Epes Sargent: “Proof Palpable of Immortality,” p. 45.
[370] See Matthew xxiv. 26.
[371] See Wallace, “Miracles and Modern Spiritualism,” and W. Howitt, “History of the Supernatural,” vol. ii.
[372] See Wallace’s paper read before the Dialectical Society, in 1871: “Answer to Hume, etc.”
[373] “Φιλολογος” (Bailey’s), second edition.
[374] See Art. on “Æthrobacy.”
[375] Psalm cv. 23. “The Land of Ham,” or chem, Greek χημι, whence the terms alchemy and chemistry.
[376] “Œdipi Ægyptiaci Theatrum Hieroglyphicum,” p. 544.
[377] “Lib. de Defectu Oraculorum.“
[378] Lib. i., Class 3, Cap. ult.
[379] The details of this story may be found in the work of Erasmus Franciscus, who quotes from Pflaumerus, Pancirollus, and many others.
[380] ”Sulphur. Alum ust. a ℥ iv.; sublime them into flowers to ℥ ij., of which add of crystalline Venetian borax (powdered) ℥ j.; upon these affuse high rectified spirit of wine and digest it, then abstract it and pour on fresh; repeat this so often till the sulphur melts like wax without any smoke, upon a hot plate of brass: this is for the pabulum, but the wick is to be prepared after this manner: gather the threads or thrums of the Lapis asbestos, to the thickness of your middle and the length of your little finger, then put them into a Venetian glass, and covering them over with the aforesaid depurated sulphur or aliment, set the glass in sand for the space of twenty-four hours, so hot that the sulphur may bubble all the while. The wick being thus besmeared and anointed, is to be put into a glass like a scallop-shell, in such manner that some part of it may lie above the mass of prepared sulphur; then setting this glass upon hot sand, you must melt the sulphur, so that it may lay hold of the wick, and when it is lighted, it will burn with a perpetual flame and you may set this lamp in any place where you please.”
The other is as follows:
“℞ Salis tosti, lb. j.; affuse over it strong wine vinegar, and abstract it to the consistency of oil; then put on fresh vinegar and macerate and distill it as before. Repeat this four times successively, then put into this vinegar vitr. antimonii subtilis lœvigat, lb. j.; set it on ashes in a close vessel for the space of six hours, to extract its tincture, decant the liquor, and put on fresh, and then extract it again; this repeat so often till you have got out all the redness. Coagulate your extractions to the consistency of oil, and then rectify them in Balneo Mariæ (bain Marie). Then take the antimony, from which the tincture was extracted, and reduce it to a very fine meal, and so put it into a glass bolthead; pour upon it the rectified oil, which abstract and cohobate seven times, till such time as the powder has imbibed all the oil, and is quite dry. This extract again with spirit of wine, so often, till all the essence be got out of it, which put into a Venice matrass, well luted with paper five-fold, and then distill it so that the spirit being drawn off, there may remain at the bottom an inconsumable oil, to be used with a wick after the same manner with the sulphur we have described before.”
“These are the eternal lights of Tritenheimus,” says Libavius, his commentator, “which indeed, though they do not agree with the pertinacy of naphtha, yet these things can illustrate one another. Naphtha is not so durable as not to be burned, for it exhales and deflagrates, but if it be fixed by adding the juice of the Lapis asbestinos it can afford perpetual fuel,” says this learned person.
We may add that we have ourselves seen a lamp so prepared, and we are told that since it was first lighted on May 2, 1871, it has not gone out. As we know the person who is making the experiment incapable to deceive any one, being himself an ardent experimenter in hermetic secrets, we have no reason to doubt his assertion.
[381] “Commentary upon St. Augustine’s ‘Treatise de Civitate Dei.’”
[382] The author of “De Rebus Cypriis,” 1566 A.D.
[383] “Book of Ancient Funerals.”
[384] “Comment. on the 77th Epigram of the IXth Book of Martial.”
[385] “De Defectu Oraculorum.”
[386] “Vulgar Errors,” p. 124.
[387] “London Dialectical Society’s Report on Spiritualism,” p. 229.
[388] Ibid., p. 230.
[389] Ibid., p. 265.
[390] Ibid., p. 266.
[391] Draper: “Conflict between Religion and Science,” p. 121.
[392] Milton: “Paradise Lost.”
[393] See Ennemoser: “History of Magic,” vol. ii., and Schweigger: “Introduction to Mythology through Natural History.”
[394] “History of Magic,” vol. ii.
[395] B. Jowett, M. A.: “The Dialogues of Plato,” vol. ii., p. 508.
[396] “Conflict between Religion and Science,” p. 240.
[397] “Plutarch,” translated by Langhorne.
[398] Some kabalistic scholars assert that the Greek original Pythagoric sentences of Sextus, which are now said to be lost, existed still, in a convent at Florence, at that time, and that Galileo was acquainted with these writings. They add, moreover, that a treatise on astronomy, a manuscript by Archytas, a direct disciple of Pythagoras, in which were noted all the most important doctrines of their school, was in the possession of Galileo. Had some Ruffinas got hold of it, he would no doubt have perverted it, as Presbyter Ruffinas has perverted the above-mentioned sentences of Sextus, replacing them with a fraudulent version, the authorship of which he sought to ascribe to a certain Bishop Sextus. See Taylor’s Introduction to Iamblichus’ “Life of Pythagoras,” p. xvii.
[399] Jowett: Introduction to the “Timæus,” vol. ii., p. 508.
[400] Ibid.
[401] “Conflict between Religion and Science,” p. 14.
[402] “Conflict between Religion and Science,” p. 311.
[403] “Egypt’s Place in Universal History,” vol. v., p. 88.
[404] W. R. Grove: “Preface to the Correlation of Physical Forces.”
[405] “Timæus,” p. 22.
[406] Beginning with Godfrey Higgins and ending with Max Müller, every archæologist and philologist who has fairly and seriously studied the old religions, has perceived that taken literally they could only lead them on a false track. Dr. Lardner disfigured and misrepresented the old doctrines—whether unwittingly or otherwise—in the grossest manner. The pravritti, or the existence of nature when alive, in activity, and the nirvritti, or the rest, the state of non-living, is the Buddhistic esoteric doctrine. The “pure nothing,” or non-existence, if translated according to the esoteric sense, would mean the “pure spirit,” the NAMELESS or something our intellect is unable to grasp, hence nothing. But we will speak of it further.
[407] This is the exact opposite of the modern theory of evolution.
[408] Ficinus: See “Excerpta” and “Dissertation on Magic;” Taylor: “Plato,” vol. i., p. 63.
[409] “Modern American Spiritualism,” p. 119.
[410] The full and correct name of this learned Society is—“The American Association for the Advancement of Science.” It is, however, often called for brevity’s sake, “The American Scientific Association.”
[411] See Taylor’s translation of “Select Works of Plotinus,” p. 553, etc.
[412] Iamblichus: “De Vita Pythag.,” additional notes (Taylor).
[413] “The National Quarterly Review,” Dec., 1875.
[414] Ibid., p. 94.
[415] “Force and Matter,” p. 151.
[416] Burnouf: “Introduction,” p. 118.
[417] “The National Quarterly Review,” Dec., 1875, p. 96.
[418] “De Anima,” lib. i., cap. 3.
[419] De Maistre: “Soirées de St. Petersburg.”
[420] We need not go so far back as that to assure ourselves that many great men believed the same. Kepler, the eminent astronomer, fully credited the idea that the stars and all heavenly bodies, even our earth, are endowed with living and thinking souls.
[421] We are not aware that a copy of this ancient work is embraced in the catalogue of any European library; but it is one of the “Books of Hermes,” and it is referred to and quotations are made from it in the works of a number of ancient and mediæval philosophical authors. Among these authorities are Arnoldo di Villanova’s “Rosarium philosoph.;” Francesco Arnolphim’s “Lucensis opus de lapide,” Hermes Trismegistus’ “Tractatus de transmutatione metallorum,” “Tabula smaragdina,” and above all in the treatise of Raymond Lulli, “Ab angelis opus divinum de quinta essentia.”
[422] Quicksilver.
[423] “Hermes,” iv. 6. Spirit here denotes the Deity—Pneuma, ὁ θέος.
[424] “Magia Adamica,” p. 11.
[425] The ignorance of the ancients of the earth’s sphericity is assumed without warrant. What proof have we of the fact? It was only the literati who exhibited such an ignorance. Even so early as the time of Pythagoras, the Pagans taught it, Plutarch testifies to it, and Socrates died for it. Besides, as we have stated repeatedly, all knowledge was concentrated in the sanctuaries of the temples from whence it very rarely spread itself among the uninitiated. If the sages and priests of the remotest antiquity were not aware of this astronomical truth, how is it that they represented Kneph, the spirit of the first hour, with an egg placed on his lips, the egg signifying our globe, to which he imparts life by his breath. Moreover, if, owing to the difficulty of consulting the Chaldean “Book of Numbers,” our critics should demand the citation of other authorities, we can refer them to Diogenes Laertius, who credits Manetho with having taught that the earth was in the shape of a ball. Besides, the same author, quoting most probably from the “Compendium of Natural Philosophy,” gives the following statements of the Egyptian doctrine: “The beginning is matter Αρχῆν μὲν εῖναι ὕλην,ἴλλεσθα and from it the four elements separated.... The true form of God is unknown; but the world had a beginning and is therefore perishable.... The moon is eclipsed when it crosses the shadow of the earth” (Diogenes Laertius: “Proœin,” §§ 10, 11). Besides, Pythagoras is credited with having taught that the earth was round, that it rotated, and was but a planet like any other of these celestial bodies. (See Fenelon’s “Lives of the Philosophers.”) In the latest of Plato’s translations (“The Dialogues of Plato,” by Professor Jowett), the author, in his introduction to “Timæus,” notwithstanding “an unfortunate doubt” which arises in consequence of the word ἵλλεσθαι capable of being translated either “circling” or “compacted,” feels inclined to credit Plato with having been familiar with the rotation of the earth. Plato’s doctrine is expressed in the following words: “The earth which is our nurse (compacted or) circling around the pole which is extended through the universe.” But if we are to believe Proclus and Simplicius, Aristotle understood this word in “Timæus” “to mean circling or revolving” (De Cœlo), and Mr. Jowett himself further admits that “Aristotle attributed to Plato the doctrine of the rotation of the earth.” (See vol. ii. of “Dial. of Plato.” Introduction to “Timæus,” pp. 501-2.) It would have been extraordinary, to say the least, that Plato, who was such an admirer of Pythagoras and who certainly must have had, as an initiate, access to the most secret doctrines of the great Samian, should be ignorant of such an elementary astronomical truth.
[426] “Wisdom of Solomon,” xi. 17.
[427] Eugenius Philalethes: “Magia Adamica.”
[428] Hargrave Jennings: “The Rosicrucians.”
[429] “Timæus.”
[430] “Our Place among Infinities,” p. 313.
[431] Ibid.
[432] Ibid., p. 314.
[433] The library of a relative of the writer contains a copy of a French edition of this unique work. The prophecies are given in the old French language, and are very difficult for the student of modern French to decipher. We give, therefore, an English version, which is said to be taken from a book in the possession of a gentleman in Somersetshire, England.
[434] See Rawlinson, vol. xvii., pp. 30-32, Revised edition.
[435] Jowett: Introduction to “Timæus,” “Dial. of Plato,” vol. i., p. 509.
[436] N. B.—He lived in the first century B. C.
[437] Stobæus: “Eclogues.”
[438] Kieser: “Archiv.,” vol. iv., p. 62. In fact, many of the old symbols were mere puns on names.
[439] See “Rig-Vedas,” the Aitareya-Brahmanan.
[440] Brahma is also called by the Hindu Brahmans Hiranyagarbha or the unit soul, while Amrita is the supreme soul, the first cause which emanated from itself the creative Brahma.
[441] Marbod: “Liber lapid. ed Beekmann.”
[442] “The Sun and the Earth,” Lecture by Prof. Balfour Stewart.
[443] “La Loi Naturelle,” par Volney.
[444] “Diction. Philosophique,” Art. “Philosophie.”
[445] “Boston Lecture,” December, 1875.
[446] Weber: “Ind. Stud.,” i. 290.
[447] Wilson: “Rig-Veda Sanhita,” ii. 143.
[448] “Duncker,” vol. ii., p. 162.
[449] “Wultke,” ii. 262.
[450] Daniel vii. 9, 10.
[451] Book of Enoch, xiv. 7, ff.
[452] This proposition, which will be branded as preposterous, but which we are ready to show, on the authority of Plato (see Jowett’s Introd. to “the Timæus;” last page), as a Pythagorean doctrine, together with that other of the sun being but the lens through which the light passes, is strangely corroborated at the present day, by the observations of General Pleasonton of Philadelphia. This experimentalist boldly comes out as a revolutionist of modern science, and calls Newton’s centripetal and centrifugal forces, and the law of gravitation, “fallacies.” He fearlessly maintains his ground against the Tyndalls and Huxleys of the day. We are glad to find such a learned defender of one of the oldest (and hitherto treated as the most absurd) of hermetic hallucinations (?) (See General Pleasonton’s book, “The Influence of the Blue Ray of the Sunlight, and of the Blue Color of the Sky, in developing Animal and Vegetable Life,” addressed to the Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture.)
[453] In no country were the true esoteric doctrines trusted to writing. The Hindu Brahma Maia, was passed from one generation to another by oral tradition. The Kabala was never written; and Moses intrusted it orally but to his elect. The primitive pure Oriental gnosticism was completely corrupted and degraded by the different subsequent sects. Philo, in the “de Sacrificiis Abeli et Caini,” states that there is a mystery not to be revealed to the uninitiated. Plato is silent on many things, and his disciples refer to this fact constantly. Any one who has studied, even superficially, these philosophers, on reading the institutes of Manu, will clearly perceive that they all drew from the same source. “This universe,” says Manu, “existed only in the first divine idea, yet unexpanded, as if involved in darkness, imperceptible, indefinable, undiscoverable by reason, and undiscovered by revelation, as if it were wholly immersed in sleep; then the sole self-existing Power himself undiscerned, appeared with undiminished glory, expanding his idea, or dispelling the gloom.” Thus speaks the first code of Buddhism. Plato’s idea is the Will, or Logos, the deity which manifests itself. It is the Eternal Light from which proceeds, as an emanation, the visible and material light.
[454] It appears that in descending from Mont Blanc, Tyndall suffered severely from the heat, though he was knee-deep in the snow at the time. The Professor attributed this to the burning rays of the sun, but Pleasonton maintains that if the rays of the sun had been so intense as described, they would have melted the snow, which they did not; he concludes that the heat from which the Professor suffered came from his own body, and was due to the electrical action of sunlight upon his dark woolen clothes, which had become electrified positively by the heat of his body. The cold, dry ether of planetary space and the upper atmosphere of the earth became negatively electrified, and falling upon his warm body and clothes, positively electrified, evolved an increased heat (see “The Influence of the Blue Ray,” etc., pp. 39, 40, 41, etc.).
[455] The most curious of all “curious coincidences,” to our mind is, that our men of science should put aside facts, striking enough to cause them to use such an expression when speaking of them, instead of setting to work to give us a philosophical explanation of the same.
[456] See Charles Elam, M.D.: “A Physician’s Problems,” London, 1869, p. 159.
[457] Jowett: “Timæus.”
[458] Ibid.
[459] According to General Pleasonton’s theory of positive and negative electricity underlying every psychological, physiological, and cosmic phenomena, the abuse of alcoholic stimulants transforms a man into a woman and vice versa, by changing their electricities. “When this change in the condition of his electricity has occurred,” says the author, “his attributes (those of a drunkard) become feminine; he is irritable, irrational, excitable ... becomes violent, and if he meets his wife, whose normal condition of electricity is like his present condition, positive, they repel each other, become mutually abusive, engage in conflict and deadly strife, and the newspapers of the next day announce the verdict of the coroner’s jury on the case.... Who would expect to find the discovery of the moving cause of all these terrible crimes in the perspiration of the criminal? and yet science has shown that the metamorphoses of a man into a woman, by changing the negative condition of his electricity into the positive electricity of the woman, with all its attributes, is disclosed by the character of his perspiration, superinduced by the use of alcoholic stimulants” (“The Influence of the Blue Ray,” p 119).
[460] Plato: “Timæus.”
[461] Littré: “Revue des Deux Mondes.”
[462] See des Mousseaux’s “Œuvres des Demons.”
[463] Du Potet: “Magie Devoilée,” pp. 51-147.
[464] Ibid., p. 201.
[465] Baron Du Potet: “Cours de Magnetisme,” pp. 17-108.
[466] “De Occulto Philosophiâ,” pp. 332-358.
[467] Cicero: “De Natura Deorum,” lib. i., cap. xviii.
[468] Eliphas Levi.
[469] “Timæus.” Such like expressions made Professor Jowett state in his Introduction that Plato taught the attraction of similar bodies to similar. But such an assertion would amount to denying the great philosopher even a rudimentary knowledge of the laws of magnetic poles.
[470] Alfred Marshall Mayer, Ph.D.: “The Earth a Great Magnet,” a lecture delivered before the Yale Scientific Club, Feb. 14, 1872.
[471] “Strange Story.”
[472] See Taylor’s “Pausanias;” MS. “Treatise on Dæmons,” by Psellus, and the “Treatise on the Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries.”
[473] Iamblichus: “De Vita Pythag.”
[474] “Anacalypsis,” vol. i., p. 807.
[475] Iamblichus: “Life of Pythagoras,” p. 297.
[476] Bulwer-Lytton: “Zanoni.”
[477] Cory: “Phædrus,” i. 328.
[478] This assertion is clearly corroborated by Plato himself, who says: “You say that, in my former discourse, I have not sufficiently explained to you the nature of the First, I purposely spoke enigmatically, that in case the tablet should have happened with any accident, either by land or sea, a person, without some previous knowledge of the subject, might not be able to understand its contents” (“Plato,” Ep. ii., p. 312; Cory: “Ancient Fragments”).
[479] “Josephus against Apion,” ii., p. 1079.
[480] See chapter ix., p.
[481] “Illusion; matter in its triple manifestation in the earthly, and the astral or fontal soul, or the body, and the Platonian dual soul, the rational and the irrational one,” see next chapter.
[482] “Perfection of Wisdom.”
[483] Porphyry gives the credit to Plotinus his master, of having been united with “God” six times during his life, and complains of having attained to it but twice, himself.
[484] Orpheus is said to have ascribed to the grand cycle 120,000 years of duration, and Cassandrus 136,000. See Censorinus: “de Natal. Die;” “Chronological and Astronomical Fragments.”
[485] W. and E. Denton; “The Soul of Things,” vol. i.
[486] See the “Cosmogony of Pherecydes.”
[487] See a few pages further on the quotation from the “Codex of the Nazarenes.”
[488] See Plato’s “Timæus.”
[489] On the authority of Irenæus, Justin Martyr, and the “Codex” itself, Dunlap shows that the Nazarenes treated their “spirit,” or rather soul, as a female and Evil Power. Irenæus, accusing the Gnostics of heresy, calls Christ and the Holy Ghost “the gnostic pair that produce the Æons” (Dunlap: “Sod, the Son of the Man,” p. 52, foot-note).
[490] Fetahil was with the Nazarenes the king of light, and the Creator; but in this instance he is the unlucky Prometheus, who fails to get hold of the Living Fire, necessary for the formation of the divine soul, as he is ignorant of the secret name (the ineffable or incommunicable name of the kabalists).
[491] The spirit of matter and concupiscence.
[492] See Franck’s “Codex Nazaræus” and Dunlap’s “Sod, the Son of the Man.”
[493] “Codex Nazaræus,” ii. 233.
[494] This Mano of the Nazarenes strangely resembles the Hindu Manu, the heavenly man of the “Rig-Vedas.”
[495] “I am the true vine and my Father is the husbandman” (John xv. 1).
[496] With the Gnostics, Christ, as well as Michael, who is identical in some respects with him, was the “Chief of the Æons.”
[497] “Codex Nazaræus,” i. 135.
[498] Ibid.
[499] “Codex Nazaræus,” iii. 61.
[500] The Astral Light, or anima mundi, is dual and bi-sexual. The male part of it is purely divine and spiritual; it is the Wisdom; while the female portion (the spiritus of the Nazarenes) is tainted, in one sense, with matter, and therefore is evil already. It is the life-principle of every living creature, and furnishes the astral soul, the fluidic perisprit to men, animals, fowls of the air, and everything living. Animals have only the germ of the highest immortal soul as a third principle. It will develop but through a series of countless evolutions; the doctrine of which evolution is contained in the kabalistic axiom: “A stone becomes a plant; a plant a beast; a beast a man; a man a spirit; and the spirit a god.”
[501] See Commentary on “Idra Suta,” by Rabbi Eleashar.
[502] Sod means a religious Mystery. Cicero mentions the sod, as constituting a portion of the Idean Mysteries. “The members of the Priest-Colleges were called Sodales,” says Dunlap, quoting Freund’s “Latin Lexicon,” iv. 448.
[503] The author of the “Sohar,” the great kabalistic work of the first century B.C.
[504] See Abbé Huc’s works.
[505] “The Sohar,” iii. 288; “Idra Suta.”
[506] Everard: “Mystères Physiologiques,” p. 132.
[507] See Plato’s “Timæus.”
[508] “Supernatural Religion; an Inquiry into the Reality of Divine Revelation,” vol. ii. London, 1875.
[509] See “Heavenly Arcana.”
[510] Burges: Preface.
[511] “Seventh Letter.”
[512] “The True Christian Religion.”
[513] E. A. Hitchcock: “Swedenborg, a Hermetic Philosopher.”
[514] “Ripley Revived,” 1678.
[515] “Mosaicall Philosophy,” p. 173. 1659.
[516] “Correlation of Vital with Chemical and Physical Forces,” by J. Le Conte.
[517] “Archives des Sciences,” vol. xlv., p. 345. December, 1872.
[518] Aristotle: “De Generat. et Corrupt.,” lib. ii.
[519] “De Part.,” an. lib. i., c. 1.
[520] A Pythagorean oath. The Pythagoreans swore by their master.
[521] See Lemprière: “Classical Dictionary.”
[522] Psel. in Alieb: “Chaldean Oracles.”
[523] Proc. in 1 “Alieb.”
[524] From the Latin word mensa—table. This curious letter is copied in full in “La Science des Esprits,” by Eliphas Levi.
[525] The Sulanuth is described in chap. lxxx., vers. 19, 20, of “Jasher.”
[526] “And when the Egyptians hid themselves on account of the swarm” (one of the plagues alleged to have been brought on by Moses) “ ... they locked their doors after them, and God ordered the Sulanuth ...” (a sea-monster, naively explains the translator, in a foot-note) “which was then in the sea, to come up and go into Egypt ... and she had long arms, ten cubits in length ... and she went upon the roofs and uncovered the rafting and cut them ... and stretched forth her arm into the house and removed the lock and the bolt and opened the houses of Egypt ... and the swarm of animals destroyed the Egyptians, and it grieved them exceedingly.”
[527] “Strom,” vi., 17, § 159.
[528] Ibid., vi., 3, § 30.
[529] “Gorgias.”
[530] “Timæus.”
[531] Cory: “Phædro,” i. 69.
[532] Ibid., i. 123.
[533] Cory: “Phædras;” Cory’s “Plato,” 325.
[534] See “The Unseen Universe,” pp. 205, 206.
[535] See Bulwer-Lytton: “Strange Story,” p. 76. We do not know where in literature can be found a more vivid and beautiful description of this difference between the life-principle of man and that of animals, than in the passages herein briefly alluded to.
[536] A. R. Wallace: “The Action of Natural Selection on Man.”
[537] W. Denton: “The Soul of Things,” p. 273.
[538] “Herodotus,” b. i., c. 181.
[539] “Anthropology,” p. 125.
[540] “Of Sacrifices to Gods and Dæmons,” chap. ii.
[541] “Odyssey,” book vii.
[542] Porphyry: “Of Sacrifices to Gods and Dæmons,” chap. ii.
[543] Ibid.
[544] Iamblichus: “De Mysteriis Egyptorum.”
[545] Ibid.: “On the Difference between the Dæmons, the Souls, etc.”
[546] Du Potet: “La Magie Devoilée.”
[547] We wonder if Father Felix is prepared to include St. Augustine, Lactantius, and Bede in this category?
[548] For instance, Copernicus, Bruno, and Galileo? For further particulars see the “Index Expurgatorius.” Verily, wise are such popular sayings, as that, “Boldness carries off cities at one shout.”
[549] This statement, neither Herbert Spencer nor Huxley will be likely to traverse. But Father Felix seems insensible of his own debt to science; if he had said this in February, 1600, he might have shared the fate of poor Bruno.
[550] “Le Mystère et la Science,” conferences, P. Felix de Notre Dame; des Mousseaux: “Hauts Phen. Magie.”
[551] Damascius, in the “Theogony,” calls it Dis, “the disposer of all things.” Cory: “Ancient Fragments,” p. 314.
[552] Plato: “Timæus.”
[553] “Suidas: v. Tyrrhenia.”
[554] The reader will understand that by “years” is meant “ages,” not mere periods of twelve lunar months each.
[555] See the Greek translation by Philo Byblius.
[556] Cory: “Ancient Fragments.”
[557] We give the spelling and words of this Kabalist who lived and published his works in the seventeenth century. Generally he is considered as one of the most famous alchemists among the Hermetic philosophers.
[558] The most positive of materialistic philosophers agree that all that exists was evolved from ether; hence, air, water, earth, and fire, the four primordial elements must also proceed from ether and chaos the first Duad; all the imponderables, whether now known or unknown, proceed from the same source. Now, if there is a spiritual essence in matter, and that essence forces it to shape itself into millions of individual forms, why is it illogical to assert that each of these spiritual kingdoms in nature is peopled with beings evolved out of its own material? Chemistry teaches us that in man’s body there are air, water, earth, and heat, or fire—air is present in its components; water in the secretions; earth in the inorganic constituents; and fire in the animal heat. The Kabalist knows by experience that an elemental spirit contains only one, and that each one of the four kingdoms has its own peculiar elemental spirits; man being higher than they, the law of evolution finds its illustration in the combination of all four in him.
[559] Görres: “Mystique,” lib. iii., p. 63.
[560] The ancients called “the soul” the spirits of bad people; the soul was the larva and lemure. Good human spirits became gods.
[561] Porphyry: “De Sacrificiis.” Chapter on the true Cultus.
[562] “Mysteries of the Egyptians.”
[563] Second century, A.D. “Du Dieu de Socrate,” Apul. class., pp. 143-145.
[564] “Eastern Monachism,” p. 9.
[565] “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” iv. 385.
[566] Hardy: “Manual of Buddhism;” Dunlap: “The World’s Religions.”
[567] Lemprière (“Classical Dictionary,” art. “Pythagoras”) says that “there is great reason to suspect the truth of the whole narrative of Pythagoras’ journey into India,” and concludes by saying that this philosopher had never seen either Gymnosophists or their country. If this be so, how account for the doctrine of the metempsychosis of Pythagoras, which is far more that of the Hindu in its details than the Egyptian? But, above all, how account for the fact that the name Monas, applied by him to the First Cause, is the identical appellation given to that Being in the Sanscrit tongue? In 1792-7, when Lemprière’s “Dictionary” appeared, the Sanscrit was, we may say, utterly unknown; Dr. Haug’s translation of the “Aitareya Brahmana” (“Rig-Vedas”), in which this word occurs, was published only about twenty years ago, and until that valuable addition to the literature of archaic ages was completed, and the precise age of the “Aitareya” now fixed by Haug at 2000-2400 B.C.—was a mystery, it might be suggested, as in the case of Christian symbols, that the Hindus borrowed it from Pythagoras. But now, unless philology can show it to be a “coincidence,” and that the word Monas is not the same in its minutest definitions, we have a right to assert that Pythagoras was in India, and that it was the Gymnosophists who instructed him in his metaphysical theology. The fact alone that “Sanscrit, as compared with Greek and Latin, is an elder sister,” as Max Müller shows, is not sufficient to account for the perfect identity of the Sanscrit and Greek words Monas, in their most metaphysical, abstruse sense. The Sanscrit word Deva (god) has become the Latin deus, and points to a common source; but we see in the Zoroastrian “Zend-Avesta” the same word, meaning diametrically the opposite, and becoming daêva, or evil spirit, from which comes the word devil.
[568] Haug: “Aitareya Brahmanam.”
[569] Ibid.
[570] Berosus: fragment preserved by Alex. Polyhostor; Cory: “Of the Cosmogony and the Deluge.”
[571] Some writer has employed a most felicitous expression in describing the majesty of the Hindu archaic monuments, and the exquisite finish of their sculpture. “They built,” says he, “like giants, and finished like jewelers.”
[572] “Anatomie Cerebrale,” Malacorne, Milan.
[573] Psellus, 6, Plet. 2; Cory: “Chaldean Oracles.”
[574] See “Lecture on the Vedas.”
[575] In order to avoid being contradicted by some spiritualists we give verbatim the language in question, as a specimen of the unreliability of the oracular utterances of certain “spirits.” Let them be human or elemental, but spirits capable of such effrontery may well be regarded by occultists as anything but safe guides in philosophy, exact science, or ethics. “It will be remembered,” says Mrs. Cora V. Tappan, in a public discourse upon the “History of Occultism and its Relations to Spiritualism” (see “Banner of Light,” Aug. 26, 1876), “that the ancient word witchcraft, or the exercise of it, was forbidden among the Hebrews. The translation is that no witch should be allowed to live. That has been supposed to be the literal interpretation; and acting upon that, your very pious and devout ancestors put to death, without adequate testimony, numbers of very intelligent, wise, and sincere persons, under the condemnation of witchcraft. It has now turned out that the interpretation or translation should be, that no witches should be allowed to obtain a living by the practice of their art. That is, it should not be made a profession.” May we be so bold as to inquire of the celebrated speaker, through whom or according to what authority such a thing has ever turned out?
[576] Mr. Cromwell F. Varley, the well-known electrician of the Atlantic Cable Company, communicates the result of his observations, in the course of a debate at the Psychological Society of Great Britain, which is reported in the “Spiritualist” (London, April 14, 1876, pp. 174, 175). He thought that the effect of free nitric acid in the atmosphere was able to drive away what he calls “unpleasant spirits.” He thought that those who were troubled by unpleasant spirits at home, would find relief by pouring one ounce of vitriol upon two ounces of finely-powdered nitre in a saucer and putting the mixture under the bed. Here is a scientist, whose reputation extends over two continents, who gives a recipe to drive away bad spirits. And yet the general public mocks as a “superstition” the herbs and incenses employed by Hindus, Chinese, Africans, and other races to accomplish the self-same purpose.
[577] “Art-Magic,” p. 97.
[578] This phantom is called Scin Lecca. See Bulwer-Lytton’s “Strange Story.”
[579] In the Strasbourg edition of his works (1603), Paracelsus writes of the wonderful magical power of man’s spirit. “It is possible,” he says, “that my spirit, without the help of the body, and through a fiery will alone, and without a sword, can stab and wound others. It is also possible that I can bring the spirit of my adversary into an image, and then double him up and lame him ... the exertion of will is a great point in medicine.... Every imagination of man comes through the heart, for this is the sun of the microcosm, and out of the microcosm proceeds the imagination into the great world (universal ether) ... the imagination of man is a seed which is material.” (Our atomical modern scientists have proved it; see Babbage and Professor Jevons.) “Fixed thought is also a means to an end. The magical is a great concealed wisdom, and reason is a great public foolishness. No armor protects against magic, for it injures the inward spirit of life.”
[580] “Salem Witchcraft; With an Account of Salem Village,” by C. W. Upham.
[581] “Odyssey,” A. 82.
[582] “Æneid,” book vi., 260.
[583] “De Dæmon,” cap. “Quomodo dæm occupent.”
[584] Numquid dæmonum corpora pulsari possunt? Possunt sane, atque dolere solido quodam percussa corpore.
[585] Ubi secatur, mox in se iterum recreatur et coalescit ... dictu velocius dæmoni cus spiritus in se revertitor.
[586] A magistrate of the district.
[587] This appalling circumstance was authenticated by the Prefect of the city, and the Proconsul of the Province laid the report before the Emperor. The story is modestly related by Mrs. Catherine Crowe (see “Night-Side of Nature,” p. 335).
[588] Pliny, xxx., 1.
[589] T. Wright, M.A., F.S.A., etc.: “Sorcery and Magic,” vol. iii.
[590] “Art-Magic,” pp. 159, 160.
[591] “Art-Magic,” p. 28.
[592] Fakir, beggar.
[593] A juggler so called.
[594] “Mœurs et Pratiques des Demons.”
[595] “Histoire du Merveilleux dans les Temps Modernes,” vol. ii., p. 262.
[596] Ibid.
[597] Ibid., p. 265.
[598] Ibid., pp. 267, 401, 402.
[599] Ibid., pp. 266, etc., 400.
[600] Ibid., p. 403.
[601] “Histoire du Merveilleux,” vol. i., p. 397.
[602] Ibid., pp. 26-27.
[603] Ibid., p. 238.
[604] Des Mousseaux: “Magie au XIXme Siècle,” p. 452.
[605] Hume: “Philosophical Essays,” p. 195.
[606] “Histoire du Merveilleux,” p. 401.
[607] Ibid.
[608] Ibid., vol. ii., pp. 410, 411.
[609] Ibid., p. 407.
[610] Villecroze: “Le Docteur H. d’Alger,” 19 Mars, 1861. Pierrart: vol. iv., pp. 254-257.
[611] Bruce: “Travels to Discover the Sources of the Nile,” vol. x., pp. 402-447; Hasselquist: “Voyage in the Levant,” vol. i., pp. 92-100; Lemprière: “Voyage dans l’Empire de Maroc, etc., en 1790,” pp. 42-43.
[612] Salverte: “La Philosophie de la Magie. De l’Influence sur les Animaux,” vol. i.
[613] Thibaut de Chanvallon: “Voyage à la Martinique.”
[614] Salverte: “Philosophy of Magic.”
[615] Forbes: “Oriental Memoirs,” vol. i., p. 44; vol. ii., p. 387.
[616] Stedmann: “Voyage in Surinam,” vol. iii., pp. 64, 65.
[617] See “Edinburgh Review,” vol. lxxx., p. 428, etc.
[618] Elam: “A Physician’s Problems,” p. 25.
[619] The “Immortality of the Soul,” by Henry More. Fellow of Christ’s College, Cambridge.
[620] Dr H. More: “Immortality of the Soul,” p. 393.
[621] “Transactions of the Medical Society of N. Y.,” 1865-6-7.
[622] “Dublin Quarterly Journal of Medical Science,” vol. xv., p. 263, 1853.
[623] “Recherches d’Anatomie transcendante et Pathologique, etc.,” Paris, 1832.
[624] “Silliman’s Journal of Science and Art,” vol. x., p. 48.
[625] “Precis Elementaire de Physiologie,” p. 520.
[626] Ibid., p. 521.
[627] “Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie,” p. 175.
[628] “Transactions of Medical Society, etc.,” p. 246.
[629] Fournié: “Physiologie du Système Nerveux, Cerebro-spinal,” Paris, 1872.
[630] Ibid.
[631] “Night-Side of Nature,” by Catherine Crowe, p. 434, et seq.
[632] Henry More: “Immortality of the Soul,” p. 399.
[633] By the word soul, neither Demokritus nor the other philosophers understood the nous or pneuma, the divine immaterial soul, but the psychè, or astral body; that which Plato always terms the second mortal soul.
[634] Balfour Stewart, LL.D., F.R.S.: “The Conservation of Energy,” p. 133.
[635] Fournié: “Physiologie du Système Nerveux,” p. 16.
[636] “A System of Logic.” Eighth ed., 1872, vol. ii., p. 165.
[637] Draper: “Conflict between Religion and Science,” p. 22.
[638] Edward L. Youmans, M.D.; “A Class-book of Chemistry,” p. 4.
[639] Sprengel, in his “History of Medicine,” makes Van Helmont appear as if disgusted with the charlatanry and ignorant presumption of Paracelsus. “The works of this latter,” says Sprengel, “which he (Van Helmont) had attentively read, aroused in him the spirit of reformation; but they alone did not suffice for him, because his erudition and judgment were infinitely superior to those of that author, and he despised this made egoist, this ignorant and ridiculous vagabond, who often seemed to have fallen into insanity.” This assertion is perfectly false. We have the writings of Helmont himself to refute it. In the well-known dispute between two writers, Goclenius, a professor in Marburg, who supported the great efficacy of the sympathetic salve discovered by Paracelsus, for the cure of every wound, and Father Robert, a Jesuit, who condemned all these cures, as he attributed them to the Devil. Van Helmont undertook to settle the dispute. The reason he gave for interfering was that all such disputes “affected Paracelsus as their discoverer and himself as his disciple” (see “De Magnetica Vulner.,” and l. c., p. 705).
[640] Demokritus said that, as from nothing, nothing could be produced, so there was not anything that could ever be reduced to nothing.
[641] J. Le Conte: “Correlation of Vital with Chemical and Physical Forces,” appendix.
[642] The date is incorrect; it should be 1784.
[643] Ecclesiastes i. 10.
[644] Ibid., i. 6.
[645] Ibid., i. 7.
[646] Siljeström: “Minnesfest öfver Berzelius,” p. 79.
[647] “Séance de l’Academie de Paris,” 13 Août, 1807.
[648] Mollien: “Voyage dans l’interieur de l’Afrique,” tome ii., p. 210.
[649] “The Popular Science Monthly,” May, 1876, p. 110.
[650] Malte-Brun, pp. 372, 373; Herodotus.
[651] “The Popular Science Monthly,” Dec., 1874, p. 252, New York.
[652] The “Periplus of Hanno.”
[653] The original was suspended in the temple of Saturn, at Carthage. Falconer gave two dissertations on it, and agrees with Bougainville in referring it to the sixth century before the Christian era. See Cory’s “Ancient Fragments.”
[654] Professor Jowett.
[655] “On the Atlantic Island (from Marcellus) Ethiopic History.”
[656] “Alchemy, or the Hermetic Philosophy.”
[657] See “Revue Encyclopédique,” vol. xxxiii., p. 676.
[658] “Bulletin de la Soc. Geograph,” vol. vi., pp. 209-220.
[659] See “Revue Encyclopédique,” vols. xxxiii. and xxxiv., pp. 676-395.
[660] Porphyry: “Epistola ad Anebo., ap. Euseb. Præp. Evangel,” v. 10; Iamblichus: “De Mysteriis Ægypt.; “Porphyrii: “Epistola ad Anebonem Ægyptium.”
[661] “Porphyry,” says the “Classical Dictionary” of Lemprière, “was a man of universal information, and, according to the testimony of the ancients, he excelled his contemporaries in the knowledge of history, mathematics, music, and philosophy.”
[662] “On the Scientific Use of the Imagination.”
[663] Epes Sargent. See his pamphlet, “Does Matter do it All?”
[664] In his “Essay on Classification” (sect. xvii., pp. 97-99), Louis Agassiz, the great zoölogist, remarks: “Most of the arguments in favor of the immortality of man apply equally to the permanency of this principle in other living beings. May I not add that a future life in which man would be deprived of that great source of enjoyment and intellectual and moral improvement, which results from the contemplation of the harmonies of an organic world would involve a lamentable loss? And may we not look to a spiritual concert of the combined worlds and all their inhabitants in the presence of their creator as the highest conception of paradise?”
[665] “Diog. in Vita.”
[666] See the works of Robertus de Fluctibus; and the “Rosicrucians,” by Hargrave Jennings.
[667] Professor B. Stewart: “Conservation of Energy.”
[668] Cabanis: “Histoire de la Medecine.”
[669] “De Vatibus in Problemate,” sect. 21.
[670] See Max Müller: “The Meaning of Nirvana.”
[671] “The Lankâvatâra,” transl. by Burnouf, p. 514.
[672] “Classical Dictionary.”
[673] See Cabanis, “Histoire de la Medecine.”
[674] “Le Lotus de la bonne Loi,” by E. Burnouf, translated from the Sanscrit.
[675] “Cosmos,” vol. iii., part i., p. 168.
[676] “Lecture on the Vedas.”
[677] “The Classical Journal,” vol. iv., pp. 107, 348.
[678] See “Mosheim.”
[679] “New Platonism and Alchemy.”
[680] Origen: “Contra Celsum.”
[681] “Fatti relativi al Mesmerismo,” pp. 88, 93, 1842.
[682] “Leonard de Vair,” l. ii., ch. ii.; “La Magie au 19me Siècle,” p. 332.
[683] “The Tinnevelly Shanars,” p. 43.
[684] Pierart: “Revue Spiritualiste,” chapter on “Vampirism.”
[685] Maimonides: “Abodah Sarab,” 12 Absh, 11 Abth.
[686] Pierart: “Revue Spiritualiste.”
[687] Dr. Pierart: “Revue Spiritualiste,” vol. iv., p. 104.
[688] See “Hauts Phen.,” p. 199.
[689] “Huetiana,” p. 81.
[690] Dom Calmet: “Apparitions,” etc. Paris, 1751, vol. ii., p. 47; “Hauts Phen. de la Magie,” 195.
[691] “Hauts Phen.,” p. 196.
[692] Ibid.
[693] See the same sworn testimony in official documents: “De l’Inspir. des Camis,” H. Blanc, 1859. Plon, Paris.
[694] Dom Calmet: “Apparit.,” vol. ii., chap, xliv., p. 212.
[695] Pierart: “Revue Spiritualiste,” vol. iv., p. 104.
[696] “Sadducismus Triumphatus,” vol. ii., p. 70.
[697] Görres: “Complete Works,” vol. iii., ch. vii., p. 132.
[698] “Ashes to Ashes,” London: Daldy, Isbister & Co., 1875.
[699] The author refers all those who may doubt such statements to G. A. Walker’s “Gatherings from Graveyards,” pp. 84-193, 194, etc.
[700] Horst: “Zauber Bibliothek,” vol. v., p. 52.
[701] See Eliphas Levi: “La Science des Esprits.”
[702] Henry Maudsley: “Body and Mind.”
[703] Josiah Cooke, Jr.: “The New Chemistry.”
[704] Henry Maudsley: “The Limits of Philosophical Inquiry,” p. 266.
[705] “Scientific American,” August 12, 1868.
[706] Le Conte: “Correlation of Vital with Chemical and Physical Forces.”
[707] The wood-apple.
[708] Incorrect; the Hindustani word for monkey is rūkh-charhä. Probably chokra, a little native servant is meant.
[709] “Book of Ser Marco Polo,” vol. i., pp. 306, 307.
[710] Delrio: “Disquis. Magic,” pp. 34, 100.
[711] Col. H. Yule: “The Book of Ser Marco Polo,” vol. i., p. 308.
[712] Edward Melton: “Engelsh Edelmans, Zeldzaame en Geden Kwaardige Zee en Land Reizen, etc.,” p. 468. Amsterdam, 1702.
[713] “Memoirs of the Emperor Jahangire,” pp. 99, 102.
[714] J. Hughes Bennett: “Text Book of Physiology,” Lippincott’s American Edition, pp. 37-50.
[715] “Curiosités Inouïes.”
[716] “Thoughts on the Birth and Generation of Things.”
[717] C. Crowe: “Night-Side of Nature,” p. 111.
[718] Pliny: “Hist. Nat.,” vii., c. 52; and Plutarch: “Discourse concerning Socrates’ Dæmon,” 22.
[719] “De Res. Var.,” v. iii., i., viii., c. 43. Plutarch: “Discourse concerning Socrates’ Dæmon,” 22.
[720] Nasse: “Zeitschrift fur Psychische Aerzte,” 1820.
[721] Osborne: “Camp and Court of Rundjit Singh;” Braid: “On France.”
[722] Mrs. Catherine Crowe, in her “Night-Side of Nature,” p. 118, gives us the particulars of a similar burial of a fakir, in the presence of General Ventura, together with the Maharajah, and many of his Sirdars. The political agent at Loodhiana was “present when he was disinterred, ten months after he had been buried.” The coffin, or box, containing the fakir “being buried in a vault, the earth was thrown over it and trod down, after which a crop of barley was sown on the spot, and sentries placed to watch it. The Maharajah, however, was so skeptical that in spite of all these precautions, he had him, twice in the ten months, dug up and examined, and each time he was found to be exactly in the same state as when they had shut him up.”
[723] Todd: Appendix to “Occult Science,” vol. i.
[724] “A Cornel. Cels.,” lib. ii., cap. vi.
[725] “Hist. Nat.,” lib. vii., cap. lii.
[726] “Morning Herald,” July 21, 1836.
[727] “La Science des Esprits.”
[728] “Vit. Apollon. Tyan.,” lib. iv., ch. xvi.
[729] Salverte: “Sciences Occultes,” vol. ii.
[730] “La Science des Esprits.”
[731] It would be beneficial to humanity were our modern physicians possessed of the same inestimable faculty; for then we would have on record less horrid deaths after inhumation. Mrs. Catherine Crowe, in the “Night-Side of Nature,” records in the chapter on “Cases of Trances” five such cases, in England alone, and during the present century. Among them is Dr. Walker of Dublin and a Mr. S——, whose stepmother was accused of poisoning him, and who, upon being disinterred, was found lying on his face.
[732] A. Wilder: “Neo-platonism and Alchemy.”
[733] Iamblichus was the founder of the Neo-platonic theurgy.
[734] See the “Sketch of the Eclectic Philosophy of the Alexandrian School.”
[735] See “Medium and Daybreak,” July 7, 1876, p. 428.
[736] In Volume II., we will distinctly prove that the Old Testament mentions the worship of more than one god by the Israelites. The El-Shadi of Abraham and Jacob was not the Jehovah of Moses, or the Lord God worshipped by them for forty years in the wilderness. And the God of Hosts of Amos is not, if we are to believe his own words, the Mosaic God, the Sinaïtic deity, for this is what we read: “I hate, I despise your feast-days ... your meat-offerings, I will not accept them.... Have ye offered unto me sacrifices and offerings in the wilderness forty years, O house of Israel?... No, but ye have borne the tabernacle of your Moloch and Chiun (Saturn), your images, the star of your god, which ye made to yourselves.... Therefore, will I cause you to go into captivity ... saith the Lord, whose name is The God of hosts” (Amos v. 21-27).
[737] Chapter xviii.
[738] This word “up” from the spirit of a prophet whose abode ought certainly to be in heaven and who therefore ought to have said “to bring me down,” is very suggestive in itself to a Christian, who locates paradise and hell at two opposite points.
[739] Ezekiel iii. 12-14.
[740] William Howitt: “History of the Supernatural,” vol. ii., ch. i.
[741] Lib. i., Sat. 8.
[742] Porphyry: “Of Sacrifices.”
[743] Genesis xviii. i.
[744] Daniel x. 8.
[745] 1 Samuel, x. 6.
[746] Gospel according to John vii. 20.
[747] Our informant, who was an eye-witness, is Mr. N—— ff of St. Petersburg, who was attached to the flag-ship Almaz, if we are not mistaken.
[748] “What forces were in operation to cause this oscillation of the newspaper?” asks J. W. Phelps, who quotes the case—“These were the rapid upward motion of heated air, the downward motion of cold air, the translatory motion of the surface breeze, and the circular motion of the whirlwind. But how could these combine so as to produce the oscillation?” (Lecture on “Force Electrically Explained.”)
[749] “Revue des Deux Mondes,” p. 414, 1858.
[750] “Conservation of Energy,” p. 140.
[751] Eugenius Philalethes.
[752] “Book of Ser Marco Polo,” vol. i., p. 215.
[753] See “Sage’s Dictionnaire des Tissus,” vol. ii., pp. 1-12.
[754] “Book of Ser Marco Polo,” vol. i., p. 230.
[755] “Alchemy, or the Hermetic Philosophy,” p. 25.
[756] See Plutarch: “Symposiacs,” viii. 2. “Diogenianas began and said: ‘Let us admit Plato to the conference and inquire upon what account he says—supposing it to be his sentence—that God always plays the geometer.‘ I said: ‘This sentence was not plainly set down in any of his books; yet there are good arguments that it is his, and it is very much like his expression.’ Tyndares presently subjoined: ‘He praises geometry as a science that takes off men from sensible objects, and makes them apply themselves to the intelligible and Eternal Nature—the contemplation of which is the end of philosophy, as a view of the mysteries of initiation into holy rites.’”
[757] Prof. Ed. L. Youmans: “Descriptive Chemistry.”
[758] In ancient nations the Deity was a trine supplemented by a goddess—the arba-Ih, or fourfold God.
[759] Josiah Cooke: “The New Chemistry.”
[760] Prof. Sterry Hunt’s theory of metalliferous deposits contradicts this; but is it right?
[761] Peisse: “La Médecine et les Médecins,” vol. i., pp. 59, 283.
[762] “The Conservation of Energy.”
[763] Ibid., p. 136.
[764] Extracts from Robertus di Fluctibus in “The Rosicrucians.”
[765] “Philopseud.”
[766] Diog. Laert. in “Demokrit. Vitæ.”
[767] “Satyric. Vitrus D. Architect,” lib. ix., cap. iii.
[768] Pliny: “Hist. Nat.”
[769] “Conflict between Religion and Science.”
[770] “Book of Ser Marco Polo,” vol. i., pp. 133-135.
[771] “Dionysius of Halicarnassus.”
[772] See vol. ii., chap. 8.
[773] J. M. Peebles: “Around the World.“
[774] John Fiske: ” The North American Review,” art. The Laws of History, July 1869.
[775] J. M. Peebles: “Around the World.”
[776] Savary: “Letters on Egypt,” vol. ii., p. 67. London, 1786.
[777] John Fiske: “North American Review,” art. The Laws of History, July, 1869.
[778] Sir G. C. Lewis: “Astronomy of the Ancients.”
[779] J. Fiske: “North American Review,” art. The Laws of History.
[780] We shall attempt to demonstrate in Vol. II., chapter viii., that the ancient Æthiopians were never a Hamitic race.
[781] Servius: “Virgil,” Eclog. vi., v. 42.
[782] Ovid: “Fast.,” lib. iii., v. 285-346.
[783] “Titus Livius,” lib. i., cap. xxxi.
[784] Pliny: “Hist. Nat.,” lib. ii., cap. liii.
[785] Lucius: “Piso;” Pliny: “Hist. Nat.,” lib. xxviii., c. ii.
[786] “Columella,” lib. x., vers. 346, etc.
[787] See “Notice sur les Travaux de l’Academie du Gard,” part i., pp. 304-314, by la Boissière.
[788] “Bell. Jud. adv. Roman,” lib. v., cap. xiv.
[789] “Magasin Scientifique de Goëthingen,” 3me. année, 5me. cahier.
[790] “Ammian. Marcel.,” lib. xxiii., cap. vi.
[791] “Oupnek-hat,” Brahman xi.
[792] “Ktesias, in India ap. Photum.,” Bibl. Cod. lxxii.
[793] Buffon: “Histoire Naturelle des Mineraux,” 6me Mem., art. ii.
[794] “Egypt’s Place in Universal History,” vol. iv., p. 462.
[795] “Archæologia,” vol. xv., p. 320.
[796] Lib. ii., c. 50.
[797] Galen: “De Composit. Medec.,” lib. v.
[798] “Ancient Fragments:” see chapter on the Early Kings of Egypt.
[799] “Pliny,” lib. vii., c. 56.
[800] Jablonski: “Pantheon Ægypti.,” ii., Proleg. 10.
[801] Cicero: “De Divinatione.”
[802] “Telegraphic Journal,” art. Scientific Prophecy.
[803] Professor Albrecht Müller: “The First Traces of Man in Europe.” Says the author: “And this bronze age reaches to and overlaps the beginning of the historic period in some countries, and so includes the great epochs of the Assyrian and Egyptian Empires, B.C. circa 1500, and the earlier eras of the next succeeding age of iron.”
[804] “Conflict between Religion and Science,” chap. i.
[805] Psellus: “Chaldean Oracles,” 4, cxliv.
[806] Psellus: “Zoroast. Oracles,” 4.
[807] Proctor: “Saturn and the Sabbath of the Jews,” p. 309.
[808] Dioscorides: “Περι Ὑλης Ιατρικῆς,” lib. v., cap. clviii.
[809] Pliny: “Histoire Naturelle,” lib. xxxviii., cap. vii.
[810] Le P. Paulin de St. Barthelemi: “Voyage aux Indes Orientales,” vol. i., p. 358.
[811] Max Müller, Professor Wilson, and H. J. Bushby, with several other Sanscrit students, prove that “Oriental scholars, both native and European, have shown that the rite of widow-burning was not only unsanctionable but imperatively forbidden by the earliest and most authoritative Hindu Scriptures” (“Widow-burning,” p. 21). See Max Müller’s “Comparative Mythology.” “Professor Wilson,” says Max Müller, “was the first to point out the falsification of the text and the change of ‘yonim agre’ into ‘yonim agne’ (womb of fire).... According to the hymns of the ‘Rig-Veda,’ and the Vaidic ceremonial contained in the ‘Grihya-Sûtras,’ the wife accompanies the corpse of the husband to the funeral pile, but she is there addressed with a verse taken from the ‘Rig-Veda,’ and ordered to leave her husband, and to return to the world of the living” (“Comparative Mythology,” p. 35).
[812] Hence the story that Moses fabricated there the serpent or seraph of brass which the Israelites worshipped till the reign of Hezekiah.
[813] A. Gell: “Noet. Attic.,” lib. x., cap. xiii.
[814] Such is not our opinion. They were probably built by the Atlantians.
[815] “Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan,” vol. ii., p. 457.
[816] Max Müller: “Chips from a German Workshop,” vol. ii., p. 269.
[817] Max Müller: “Popol-Vuh,” p. 327.
[818] Why not to the sacrifices of men in ancient worship?
[819] “Odyssey,” xii. 71.
[820] “Chips from a German Workshop,” p. 268.
[821] Villemarque, Member of the Institute. Vol. lx.; “Collect et Nouvelle Serie,” 24, p. 570, 1863; “Poesie des Cloitres Celtiques.”
[822] “Archæol.,” vol. xxv., p. 220. London.
[823] “Archæol.,” vol. xxv., p. 292. London.
[824] Brasseur de Bourbourg: “Cartas,” p. 52.
[825] See Stephens: “Travels in Central America,” etc.
[826] “Cartas,” 53, 7-62.
[827] “Die Phönizier,” 70.
[828] See Sanchoniaton in “Eusebius,” Pr. Ev. 36; Genesis xiv.
[829] “Archæological Society of the Antiquaries of London,” vol. xxv., p. 220.
[830] “Cartas,” 51.
[831] “Hauts Phénomenes de la Magie,” 50.
[832] Genesis xlix.
[833] Dunlap, in his introduction to “Sod, the Mysteries of Adonis,” explains the word “Sod,” as Arcanum; religious mystery on the authority of Shindler’s “Penteglott” (1201). “The SECRET of the Lord is with them that fear Him,” says Psalm xxv. 14. This is a mistranslation of the Christians, for it ought to read “Sod Ihoh (the mysteries of Iohoh) are for those who fear Him” (Dunlap: “Mysteries of Adonis,” xi.). “Al (El) is terrible in the great Sod of the Kedeshim (the priests, the holy, the Initiated), Psalm lxxxix. 7” (Ibid.).
[834] “The members of the priest-colleges were called Sodales,” says Freund’s “Latin Lexicon” (iv. 448). “Sodalities were constituted in the Idæan Mysteries of the Mighty Mother,” writes Cicero (“De Senectute,” 13); Dunlap: “Mysteries of Adonis.”
[835] See Wilkinson: “Ancient Egyptians,” vol. v., p. 65.
[836] Brasseur de Bourbourg: “Mexique,” pp. 135-574.
[837] “Catholic World,” N. Y., January, 1877: Article Nagualism, Voodooism, etc.
[838] In “Hesiod,” Zeus creates his third race of men out of ash-trees. In “Popol-Vuh,” we are told the third race of men is created out of the tree “tzite,” and women are made from the marrow of a reed which was called “sibac.” This also is a strange coincidence.
[839] “Popol-Vuh,” reviewed by Max Müller.
[840] Frank Vincent, Jun.: “The Land of the White Elephant,” p. 209.
[841] The Hanoumā is over three feet tall, and black as a coal. The Ramayana, giving the biography of this sacred monkey, relates that Hanoumā was formerly a powerful chieftain, who being the greatest friend of Rama, helped him to find his wife, Sithâ, who had been carried off to Ceylon by Râvana, the mighty king of the giants. After numerous adventures Hanoumā was caught by the latter, while visiting the city of the giant as Rama’s spy. For this crime Râvana had the poor Hanoumā’s tail oiled and set on fire, and it was in extinguishing it that the monkey-god became so black in the face that neither himself nor his posterity could ever get rid of the color. If we have to believe Hindu legends this same Hanoumā was the progenitor of the Europeans; a tradition which, though strictly Darwinian, hence, scientific, is by no means flattering to us. The legend states that for services rendered, Rama, the hero and demi-god, gave in marriage to the monkey-warriors of his army the daughters of the giants of Ceylon—the Bâkshasas—and granted them, moreover, as a dowry, all western parts of the world. Repairing thence, the monkeys and their giant-wives lived happily and had a number of descendants. The latter are the present Europeans. Dravidian words are found in Western Europe, indicating that there was an original unity of race and language between the populations. May it not be a hint that the traditions are akin, of elfin and kobold races in Europe, and monkeys, actually cognate with them in Hindustan?
[842] “Incidents of Travels in Central America, etc.,” vol. i., p. 105.
[843] They stand no more, for the obelisk alone was removed to Paris.
[844] See “The Land of the White Elephant,” p. 221.
[845] The President of the Royal Geographical Society of Berlin.
[846] “The Land of the White Elephant,” p. 215.
[847] The Phœnician Dido is the feminine of David דוד , דידו . Under the name of Astartè, she led the Phœnician colonies, and her image was on the prow of their ships. But David and Saul are names belonging to Afghanistan also.
[848] (Prof. A. Wilder.) This archæologist says: “I regard the Æthiopian, Cushite and Hamitic races as the building and artistic race who worshipped Baal (Siva), or Bel—made temples, grottos, pyramids, and used a language of peculiar type. Rawlinson derives that language from the Turanians in Hindustan.”
[849] Prof. A. Wilder among others.
[850] See Martin Haug’s translation: “The Aytareya Brahmanam.“
[851] Judges xvii.-xviii., etc.
[852] The Zendic H is S in India. Thus Hapta is Sapta; Hindu is Sindhaya. (A. Wilder.) ” ... the S continually softens to H from Greece to Calcutta, from the Caucasus to Egypt,” says Dunlap. Therefore the letters K, H, and S are interchangeable.
[853] Guignant: “Op. cit.,” vol. i., p. 167.
[854] “Incidents of Travel in Central America, etc.”
[855] See Paul to the Galatians, iv. 24, and Gospel according to Matthew, xiii. 10-15.
[856] A. Wilder says that “Gan-duniyas,” is a name of Babylonia.
[857] The appropriate definition of the name “Turanian” is, any ethnic family that ethnologists know nothing about.
[858] See Berosus and Sanchoniathon: Cory’s “Ancient Fragments:” Movers and others.
[859] Movers, 86.
[860] Ibid.
[861] Sanchon.: in Cory’s “Fragments,” p. 14.
[862] In an old Brahmanical book called the “Prophecies,” by Ramatsariar, as well as in the Southern MSS. in the legend of Christna, the latter gives nearly word for word the first two chapters of Genesis. He recounts the creation of man—whom he calls Adima, in Sanscrit, the ‘first man’—and the first woman is called Heva, that which completes life. According to Louis Jacolliot (“La Bible dans l’Inde”), Christna existed, and his legend was written, over 3,000 years B. C.
[863] Adah in Hebrew is גן־עדן, and Eden, אלהים. The first is a woman’s name; the second the designation of a country. They are closely related to each other; but hardly to Adam and Akkad—כתנות צור, which are spelled with aleph.
[864] The two words answer to the terms, Macroprosopos, or macrocosm—the absolute and boundless, and the Microprosopos of the “Kabala,” the “short face,” or the microcosm—the finite and conditioned. It is not translated; nor is it likely to be. The Thibetean monks say that it is the real “Sutrâs.” Some Buddhists believe that Buddha was, in a previous existence, Kapila himself. We do not see how several Sanscrit scholars can entertain the idea that Kapila was an atheist, while every legend shows him the most ascetic mystic, the founder of the sect of the Yogis.
[865] The “Brahmanas” were translated by Dr. Haug; see his “Aitareya Brâhmanam.”
[866] The “Stan-gyour” is full of rules of magic, the study of occult powers, and their acquisition, charms, incantations, etc.; and is as little understood by its lay-interpreters as the Jewish “Bible” is by our clergy, or the “Kabala” by the European Rabbis.
[867] “Aitareya Brahmana,” Lecture by Max Müller.
[868] Ibid., “Buddhist Pilgrims.”
[869] “Progress of Religious Ideas through Successive Ages,” vol. i., p. 17.
[870] “La Bible dans l’Inde.”
[871] “La Bible dans l’Inde.”
[872] “Presbyterian Banner,” December 20, 1876.
[873] “La Bible dans l’Inde.”
[874] See Max Müller’s “Lecture on the Vedas.”
[875] See Roth’s “The Burial in India;” Max Müller’s “Comparative Mythology” (Lecture); Wilson’s article, “The Supposed Vaidic Authority for the Burning of Hindu Widows,” etc.
[876] Bunsen gives as the first year of Menes, 3645; Manetho as 3892 B.C. “Eqypt’s Place,” etc., vol. v., 34; Key.
[877] Louis Jacolliot, in “The Bible in India,” affirms the same.
[878] Purana means ancient and sacred history or tradition. See Loiseleur Des-longchamp’s translations of “Manu;” also L. Jacolliot’s “La Genèse dans l’Humanité.”
[879] There are archæologists, who, like Mr. James Fergusson, deny the great antiquity of even one single monument in India. In his work, “Illustrations of the Rock-Cut Temples of India,” the author ventures to express the very extraordinary opinion that “Egypt had ceased to be a nation before the earliest of the cave-temples of India was excavated.” In short, he does not admit the existence of any cave anterior to the reign of Asoka, and seems willing to prove that most of these rock-cut temples were executed from the time of that pious Buddhist king, till the destruction of the Andhra dynasty of Maghada, in the beginning of the fifth century. We believe such a claim perfectly arbitrary. Further discoveries are sure to show how erroneous and unwarranted it was.
[880] It is a strange coincidence that when first discovered, America was found to bear among some native tribes the name of Atlanta.
[881] Baldwin: “Prehistoric Nations,” p. 179.
[882] Alberico Vespuzio, the son of Anastasio Vespuzio or Vespuchy, is now gravely doubted in regard to the naming of the New World. Indeed the name is said to have occurred in a work written several centuries before. A. Wilder (Notes).
[883] See Thomas Belt: “The Naturalists in Nicaragua.” London, 1873.
[884] Torfæus: “Historia Vinlandiæ Antiquæ.”
[885] 2 Kings, xxii. 14; 2 Chronicles, xxxiv. 22.
[886] As we are going to press with this chapter, we have received from Paris, through the kindness of the Honorable John L. O’Sullivan, the complete works of Louis Jacolliot in twenty-one volumes. They are chiefly upon India and its old traditions, philosophy, and religion. This indefatigable writer has collected a world of information from various sources, mostly authentic. While we do not accept his personal views on many points, still we freely acknowledge the extreme value of his copious translations from the Indian sacred books. The more so, since we find them corroborating in every respect the assertions we have made. Among other instances is this matter of the submergence of continents in prehistoric days.
In his “Histoire des Vierges: Les Peuples et les Continents Disparus,” he says: “One of the most ancient legends of India, preserved in the temples by oral and written tradition, relates that several hundred thousand years ago there existed in the Pacific Ocean, an immense continent which was destroyed by geological upheaval, and the fragments of which must be sought in Madagascar, Ceylon, Sumatra, Java, Borneo, and the principal isles of Polynesia.
“The high plateaux of Hindustan and Asia, according to this hypothesis, would only have been represented in those distant epochs by great islands contiguous to the central continent.... According to the Brahmans this country had attained a high civilization, and the peninsula of Hindustan, enlarged by the displacement of the waters, at the time of the grand cataclysm, has but continued the chain of the primitive traditions born in this place. These traditions give the name of Rutas to the peoples which inhabited this immense equinoctial continent, and from their speech was derived the Sanscrit.” (We will have something to say of this language in our second volume.)
“The Indo-Hellenic tradition, preserved by the most intelligent population which emigrated from the plains of India, equally relates the existence of a continent and a people to which it gives the name of Atlantis and Atlantides, and which it locates in the Atlantic in the northern portion of the Tropics.
“Apart from the fact that the supposition of an ancient continent in those latitudes, the vestiges of which may be found in the volcanic islands and mountainous surface of the Azores, the Canaries and Cape Verd, is not devoid of geographical probability, the Greeks, who, moreover, never dared to pass beyond the pillars of Hercules, on account of their dread of the mysterious ocean, appeared too late in antiquity for the stories preserved by Plato to be anything else than an echo of the Indian legend. Moreover, when we cast a look on a planisphere, at the sight of the islands and islets strewn from the Malayan Archipelago to Polynesia, from the straits of Sund to Easter Island, it is impossible, upon the hypothesis of continents preceding those which we inhabit, not to place there the most important of all.
“A religious belief, common to Malacca and Polynesia, that is to say to the two opposite extremes of the Oceanic world, affirms ‘that all these islands once formed two immense countries, inhabited by yellow men and black men, always at war; and that the gods, wearied with their quarrels, having charged Ocean to pacify them, the latter swallowed up the two continents, and since, it had been impossible to make him give up his captives. Alone, the mountain-peaks and high plateaux escaped the flood, by the power of the gods, who perceived too late the mistake they had committed.’
“Whatever there may be in these traditions, and whatever may have been the place where a civilization more ancient than that of Rome, of Greece, of Egypt, and of India was developed, it is certain that this civilization did exist, and that it is highly important for science to recover its traces, however feeble and fugitive they may be” (pp. 13-15).
This last tradition, translated by Louis Jacolliot from the Sanscrit manuscripts, corroborates the one we have given from the “Records of the Secret Doctrine.” The war mentioned between the yellow and the black men, relates to a struggle between the “sons of God” and the “sons of giants,” or the inhabitants and magicians of the Atlantis.
The final conclusion of M. Jacolliot, who visited personally all the islands of Polynesia, and devoted years to the study of the religion, language, and traditions of nearly all the peoples, is as follows:
“As to the Polynesian continent which disappeared at the time of the final geological cataclysms, its existence rests on such proofs that to be logical we can doubt no longer.
“The three summits of this continent, Sandwich Islands, New Zealand, Easter Island, are distant from each other from fifteen to eighteen hundred leagues, and the groups of intermediate islands, Viti, Samoa, Tonga, Foutouna, Ouvea, Marquesas, Tahiti, Poumouton, Gambiers, are themselves distant from these extreme points from seven or eight hundred to one thousand leagues.
“All navigators agree in saying that the extreme and the central groups could never have communicated in view of their actual geographical position, and with the insufficient means they had at hand. It is physically impossible to cross such distances in a pirogue ... without a compass, and travel months without provisions.
“On the other hand, the aborigines of the Sandwich Islands, of Viti, of New Zealand, of the central groups, of Samoa, Tahiti, etc., had never known each other, had never heard of each other before the arrival of the Europeans. And yet, each of these people maintained that their island had at one time formed a part of an immense stretch of land which extended toward the West, on the side of Asia. And all, brought together, were found to speak the same language, to have the same usages, the same customs, the same religious belief. And all to the question, ‘Where is the cradle of your race?’ for sole response, extended their hand toward the setting sun” (Ibid., p. 308).
[887] These “magic mirrors,” generally black, are another proof of the universality of an identical belief. In India these mirrors are prepared in the province of Agra and are also fabricated in Thibet and China. And we find them in Ancient Egypt, from whence, according to the native historian quoted by Brasseur de Bourbourg, the ancestors of the Quichès brought them to Mexico; the Peruvian sun-worshippers also used it. When the Spaniards had landed, says the historian, the King of the Quichès, ordered his priests to consult the mirror, in order to learn the fate of his kingdom. “The demon reflected the present and the future as in a mirror,” he adds (De Bourbourg: “Mexique,” p. 184).
[888] Pay’quina, or Payaquina, so called because its waves used to drift particles of gold from the Brazil. We found a few specks of genuine metal in a handful of sand that we brought back to Europe.
[889] The regions somewhere about Udyana and Kashmere, as the translator and editor of Marco Polo (Colonel Yule), believes. Vol. i., p. 173.
[890] “Voyage des Pèlerins Bouddhistes,” vol. 1.; “Histoire de la Vie de Hiouen-Thsang,” etc., traduit du Chinois en français, par Stanislas Julien.
[891] Lao-tsi, the Chinese philosopher.
[892] “The Book of Ser Marco Polo,” vol. i., p. 318. See also, in this connection, the experiments of Mr. Crookes, described in chapter vi. of this work.
[893] Max Müller: “Buddhist Pilgrims.”
[894] Berlin Academy of Sciences, 1846.
[895] Colonel Yule makes a remark in relation to the above Chinese mysticism which for its noble fairness we quote most willingly. “In 1871,” he says, “I saw in Bond street an exhibition of the (so-called) ‘spirit’ drawings, i.e., drawings executed by a ‘medium’ under extraneous and invisible guidance. A number of these extraordinary productions (for extraordinary they were undoubtedly) professed to represent the ‘Spiritual Flowers’ of such and such persons; and the explanation of these as presented in the catalogue was in substance exactly that given in the text. It is highly improbable that the artist had any cognizance of Schott’s Essays, and the coincidence was certainly very striking” (“The Book of Ser Marco Polo,” vol. i., p. 444).
[896] Schott: “Essay on Buddhism,” p. 103.
[897] “The Book of Ser Marco Polo,” vol. i., Preface to the second edition, p. viii.
[898] Ibid., vol. i., p. 203.
[899] “Visdelon,” p. 130.
[900] “Pliny,” vii., 2.
[901] “Philostratus,” book ii., chap. iv.
[902] Ibid., book iv., p. 382; “Book of Ser Marco Polo,” vol. i., p. 206.
[903] There are pious critics who deny the world the same right to judge the “Bible” on the testimony of deductive logic as “any other book.” Even exact science must bow to this decree. In the concluding paragraph of an article devoted to a terrible onslaught on Baron Bunsen’s “Chronology,” which does not quite agree with the “Bible,” a writer exclaims, “the subject we have proposed to ourselves is completed.... We have endeavored to meet Chevalier Bunsen’s charges against the inspiration of the “Bible” on its own ground.... An inspired book ... never can, as an expression of its own teaching, or as a part of its own record, bear witness to any untrue or ignorant statement of fact, whether in history or doctrine. If it be untrue in its witness of one, who shall trust its truth in the witness of the other?” (“The Journal of Sacred Literature and Biblical Record,” edited by the Rev. H. Burgess, Oct., 1859, p. 70.)
[904] Remusat: “Histoire du Khotan,” p. 74; “Marco Polo,” vol. i., p. 206.
[905] Like the Psylli, or serpent-charmers of Libya, whose gift is hereditary.
[906] “Ser Marco Polo,” vol. ii., p. 321.
[907] “The Spiritualist.” London, Nov. 10, 1876.
[908] Read any of the papers, of the summer and autumn of 1876.
[909] Tite-Livy, v. déc. i.,—Val. Max., 1, cap. vii.
[910] See “Les Hauts Phénomenes de la Magie;” “La Magie au XIXme Siècle;” “Dieu et les Dieux,” etc.
[911] “De Idol. Vanit.,” lib. i., p. 452.
[912] These, after their bodily death, unable to soar higher, attached to terrestrial regions, delight in the society of the kind of elementals which by their affinity with vice attract them the most. They identify themselves with these to such a degree that they very soon lose sight of their own identity, and become a part of the elementals, the help of which they need to communicate with mortals. But as the nature-spirits are not immortal, so the human elementary who have lost their divine guide—spirit—can last no longer than the essence of the elements which compose their astral bodies holds together.
[913] L. Jacolliot: “Voyage au Pays des Perles.”
[914] “Ultimate Deductions of Science; The Earth Motionless.” A lecture demonstrating that our globe does neither turn about its own axis nor around the sun; delivered in Berlin by Doctor Shoëpfer. Seventh Edition.
[915] Champ.-Figeac: “Egypte,” p. 143.
[916] Ibid., p. 119.
[917] Ibid., p. 2.
[918] Ibid., p. 11.
List of Main Corrections Implemented
Greek
φυχη replaced by ψυχη
Τό Ὁν replaced by Τὸ Ὀν
Πολυμήχὰνος replaced by Πολυμήχανος
μα̈τηρ replaced by μάτηρ
μὰγος replaced by μάγος
μὰγνης replaced by μάγνης
πὺθωνος replaced by πύθωνος
Αρχῆν [ρεῦ replaced by μὲν] εῖναι [ῦλην possibly replaced by ὕλην]
πὰντα replaced by πάντα
Hebrew
כבדים replaced by גברים
ווח replaced by רוח
Unclear, but thought to be דוד , דידו .
כתנות צור replaced by כתנות עור