Methought the souls of all that I caused to be murdered
Came....”[92]
The Prince of Hohenlohe, so famous during the first quarter of our century for his healing powers, was himself a great medium. Indeed, these phenomena and powers belong to no particular age or country. They form a portion of the psychological attributes of man—the Microcosmos.
For centuries have the Klikouchy,[93] the Yourodevoÿ,[94] and other miserable creatures been afflicted with strange disorders, which the Russian clergy and the populace attribute to possession by the devil. They throng the entrances of the cathedrals, without daring to trust themselves inside, lest their self-willed controlling demons might fling them on the ground. Voroneg, Kiew, Kazan, and all cities which possess the thaumaturgical relics of canonized saints, abound with such unconscious mediums. One can always find numbers of them, congregating in hideous groups, and hanging about the gates and porches. At certain stages of the celebration of the mass by the officiating clergy, such as the appearance of the sacraments, or the beginning of the prayer and chorus, “Ejey Cherouvim,” these half-maniacs, half-mediums, begin crowing like cocks, barking, bellowing and braying, and, finally, fall down in fearful convulsions. “The unclean one cannot bear the holy prayer,” is the pious explanation. Moved by pity, some charitable souls administer restoratives to the “afflicted ones,” and distribute alms among them. Occasionally, a priest is invited to exorcise, in which event he either performs the ceremony for the sake of love and charity, or the alluring prospect of a twenty-copeck silver bit, according to his Christian impulses. But these miserable creatures—who are mediums, for they prophesy and see visions sometimes, when the fit is genuine[95]—are never molested because of their misfortune. Why should the clergy persecute them, or people hate and denounce them as damnable witches or wizards? Common sense and justice surely suggest that if any are to be punished it is certainly not the victims who cannot help themselves, but the demon who is alleged to control their actions. The worst that happens to the patient is, that the priest inundates him or her with holy water, and causes the poor creature to catch cold. This failing in efficacy, the Klikoucha is left to the will of God, and taken care of in love and pity. Superstitious and blind as it is, a faith conducted on such principles certainly deserves some respect, and can never be offensive, either to man or the true God. Not so with that of the Roman Catholics; and hence, it is they, and secondarily, the Protestant clergy—with the exception of some foremost thinkers among them—that we purpose questioning in this work. We want to know upon what grounds they base their right to treat Hindus and Chinese spiritualists and kabalists in the way they do; denouncing them, in company with the infidels—creatures of their own making—as so many convicts sentenced to the inextinguishable fires of hell.
Far from us be the thought of the slightest irreverence—let alone blasphemy—toward the Divine Power which called into being all things, visible and invisible. Of its majesty and boundless perfection we dare not even think. It is enough for us to know that It exists and that It is all wise. Enough that in common with our fellow creatures we possess a spark of Its essence. The supreme power whom we revere is the boundless and endless one—the grand “Central Spiritual Sun” by whose attributes and the visible effects of whose inaudible WILL we are surrounded—the God of the ancient and the God of modern seers. His nature can be studied only in the worlds called forth by his mighty FIAT. His revelation is traced with his own finger in imperishable figures of universal harmony upon the face of the Cosmos. It is the only INFALLIBLE gospel we recognize.
Speaking of ancient geographers, Plutarch remarks in Theseus, that they “crowd into the edges of their maps parts of the world which they do not know about, adding notes in the margin to the effect that beyond this lies nothing but sandy deserts full of wild beasts and unapproachable bogs.” Do not our theologians and scientists do the same? While the former people the invisible world with either angels or devils, our philosophers try to persuade their disciples that where there is no matter there is nothing.
How many of our inveterate skeptics belong, notwithstanding their materialism, to Masonic Lodges? The brothers of the Rosie-Cross, mysterious practitioners of the mediæval ages, still live—but in name only. They may “shed tears at the grave of their respectable Master, Hiram Abiff;” but vainly will they search for the true locality, “where the sprig of myrtle was placed.” The dead letter remains alone, the spirit has fled. They are like the English or German chorus of the Italian opera, who descend in the fourth act of Ernani into the crypt of Charlemagne, singing their conspiracy in a tongue utterly unknown to them. So, our modern knights of the Sacred Arch may descend every night if they choose “through the nine arches into the bowels of the earth,“they “will never discover the sacred Delta of Enoch.” The “Sir Knights in the South Valley” and those in “the North Valley” may try to assure themselves that “enlightenment dawns upon their minds,” and that as they progress in Masonry “the veil of superstition, despotism, tyranny” and so on, no longer obscures the visions of their minds. But these are all empty words so long as they neglect their mother Magic, and turn their backs upon its twin sister, Spiritualism. Verily, “Sir Knights of the Orient,” you may “leave your stations and sit upon the floor in attitudes of grief, with your heads resting upon your hands,” for you have cause to bewail and mourn your fate. Since Phillipe le Bel destroyed the Knights-Templars, not one has appeared to clear up your doubts notwithstanding all claims to the contrary. Truly, you are “wanderers from Jerusalem, seeking the lost treasure of the holy place.” Have you found it? Alas, no! for the holy place is profaned; the pillars of wisdom, strength and beauty are destroyed. Henceforth, “you must wander in darkness,” and “travel in humility,” among the woods and mountains in search of the “lost word.” “Pass on!“you will never find it so long as you limit your journeys to seven or even seven times seven; because you are “travelling in darkness,” and this darkness can only be dispelled by the light of the blazing torch of truth which alone the right descendants of Ormazd carry. They alone can teach you the true pronunciation of the name revealed to Enoch, Jacob and Moses. “Pass on!” Till your R. S. W. shall learn to multiply 333, and strike instead 666—the number of the Apocalyptic Beast, you may just as well observe prudence and act “sub rosa.”
In order to demonstrate that the notions which the ancients entertained about dividing human history into cycles were not utterly devoid of a philosophical basis, we will close this chapter by introducing to the reader one of the oldest traditions of antiquity as to the evolution of our planet.
At the close of each “great year,” called by Aristotle—according to Censorinus—the greatest, and which consists of six sars[96] our planet is subjected to a thorough physical revolution. The polar and equatorial climates gradually exchange places; the former moving slowly toward the Line, and the tropical zone, with its exuberant vegetation and swarming animal life, replacing the forbidding wastes of the icy poles. This change of climate is necessarily attended by cataclysms, earthquakes, and other cosmical throes.[97] As the beds of the ocean are displaced, at the end of every decimillennium and about one neros, a semi-universal deluge like the legendary Noachian flood is brought about. This year was called the Heliacal by the Greeks; but no one outside the sanctuary knew anything certain either as to its duration or particulars. The winter of this year was called the Cataclysm or the Deluge,—the Summer, the Ecpyrosis. The popular traditions taught that at these alternate seasons the world was in turn burned and deluged. This is what we learn at least from the Astronomical Fragments of Censorinus and Seneca. So uncertain were the commentators about the length of this year, that none except Herodotus and Linus, who assigned to it, the former 10,800, and the latter 13,984, came near the truth.[98] According to the claims of the Babylonian priests, corroborated by Eupolemus,[99] “the city of Babylon, owes its foundation to those who were saved from the catastrophe of the deluge; they were the giants and they built the tower which is noticed in history.”[100] These giants who were great astrologers and had received moreover from their fathers, “the sons of God,” every instruction pertaining to secret matters, instructed the priests in their turn, and left in the temples all the records of the periodical cataclysm that they had witnessed themselves. This is how the high priests came by the knowledge of the great years. When we remember, moreover, that Plato in the Timæus cites the old Egyptian priest rebuking Solon for his ignorance of the fact that there were several such deluges as the great one of Ogyges, we can easily ascertain that this belief in the Heliakos was a doctrine held by the initiated priests the world over.
The Neroses, the Vrihaspati, or the periods called yugas or kalpas, are life-problems to solve. The Satya-yug and Buddhistic cycles of chronology would make a mathematician stand aghast at the array of ciphers. The Maha-kalpa embraces an untold number of periods far back in the antediluvian ages. Their system comprises a kalpa or grand period of 4,320,000,000 years, which they divide into four lesser yugas, running as follows: