1875
“What
are you Going to Do About it?”
From Scrapbook, Vol. I, p.57
The Science of Magic
The Magical Evocation of Apollonius of Tyana
From Scrapbook, Vol. I, pp. 98-99
.
“WHAT ARE YOU GOING
TO DO ABOUT IT?”
[Spiritual Scientist,
A most outrageous swindle was perpetrated upon the public last Sunday evening,
at the Boston Theatre. Some persons with no higher aspirations in the world,
than a lust for a few dollars to fill their pockets depleted by unsuccessful
cheap shows, advertised a “Séance” and engaged as “Mediums”
some of the most impudent impostors with which the world is cursed. They furthermore
abused public confidence by causing it to be understood that these people
were to appear before the Scientific Commission at
Is it not about time that some Society in
The Press of
As a proof of the sincerity of the Boston Press, and also in support and
further explanation of the above, we might mention that the
120 BLAVATSKY:
COLLECTED WRITINGS
following card sent to all the Morning Dailies, was accepted and
printed in Tuesday’s edition.
Sir,—The undersigned desire to say that the persons who advertised a so-called
spiritualistic exhibition, at the Boston Theatre, last evening, were guilty
of false representations to the public. We are alone empowered by the Academy
of Sciences attached to the Imperial University of St. Petersburg, Russia,
to select the mediums who shall be invited by that body to display their powers
during the forthcoming scientific investigation of Spiritualism, and Mr. E.
Gerry Brown, editor Spiritual Scientist of this city, is our only authorized
Deputy.
Neither “F. Warren,” “Prof. J. T. Bates,” “Miss Suydam,”
“Mrs. S. Gould,” nor “Miss Lillie Darling,” has been selected, or are at all
likely to be selected for that honor.
As this swindle may be again attempted, we desire to say, once for all,
that no medium accepted by us will be obliged to exhibit his powers to earn
money to defray his expenses, nor will any such exhibition be tolerated. The
Imperial University of St. Petersburg makes this investigation in the interest
of science; not to assist charlatans to give juggling performances in theatres,
upon the strength of our certificates.
HENRY S. OLCOTT.
H. P. BLAVATSKY.
—————
[In H.P.B.’s Scrapbook,
Vol. I, p. 47, there is a cutting of an article from the Spiritual
Scientist of
She swore to me in
H.P.B.
FORMATION OF THE THEOSOPHICAL
SOCIETY 121
[FORMATION OF THE
THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY]
[In H.P.B.’s Scrapbook
Vol. I, pp. 54-55, there is a cutting from a weekly journal. The Liberal
Christian, of
“It was just after Col. Olcott’s astounding stories
in the Sun about the floral gifts received from the spirits through
a
According to Dr. Wiggin’s account, there were
present at this gathering: Col. Olcott. Il Conte,
“the secretary once of Mazzini,” Charles Sotheran, Judge M. of New Jersey, his wife, Mr. M., a Boston
gentleman, and H. P. Blavatsky, who, he says, was “the centre of the group.”
To the cutting in her Scrapbook, H.P.B. appended the following remarks
in pen and ink:]
Written by Rev. Dr. Wiggin. This article provoked
the wrath of Rev. Dr. Bellows; hence he wrote another one, on “Sorcery and
Necromancy” and pitched into us.
[H.P.B. then drew a blue line from the title along the cutting to the bottom
on the right edge of page 55 and added in pen and ink the following significant
remark:]
On that evening the first idea of the Theos. Society was discussed.
122 BLAVATSKY:
COLLECTED WRITINGS
[To this, Col. Olcott added the following note,
possibly at a later date:]
For
a much better account see a quotation on p. 296 of E. H. Britten’s
Nineteenth Century Miracles,
[Unfortunately, Col. Olcott’s remark confuses
the issue. What he has in mind is a report of the gathering that took place
in H.P.B.’s quarters, at
We have seen that Dr. Wiggin specifically mentions
Col. Olcott’s stories in the
From Dr. Wiggin’s words it would appear that
the gathering he describes took place fairly soon after Col. Olcott’s published account of Mrs. Thayer’s phenomena. As
no mention of any such gathering occurs in The Liberal Christian of
Saturday, August 28th, it is likely that it took place sometime between August
28th and September 4th.
In mentioning this earlier gathering, but giving no date, Col. Olcott (Old Diary Leaves, I, 114-15)
speaks of it as having taken place “during the previous week,” and identifies
one of the persons present as Signor Bruzzesi, who
may have been the same personage as “Il Conte” of Dr. Wiggin.
By “previous week” he means the period between August 29th and September 4th.
There seems to be no reason, however, to doubt the fact that the actual
formation of the Theosophical Society took place on September 7th, 1875,
even though, in Col. Olcott’s own words “no official
memorandum exists of the persons actually present on that particular evening,”
and “no official record by the Secretary of the attendance at this first meeting
survives” (op. cit., pp. 114, 118).
FORMATION OF THE THEOSOPHICAL
SOCIETY 123
In a book which belonged to H.P.B. and is now in the Library at Adyar,
entitled A Guide to Theosophy—a Collection of Select Articles which
was published by Tukaram Tatya
in
Formally; Yet in truth it was founded on
[On page 79 of Vol. I of H.P.B.’s Scrapbook, there is another cutting
from The Liberal Christian of
Not “departed Spirits or souls” but the “Elementals” the beings living
in the Elements.
[We must bear in mind that Col. Olcott, when
writing the First Series of his Old Diary Leaves, did so from
memory, as his actual Diaries of the period 1874-78 had mysteriously disappeared.
Speaking of the gathering on September 7th, he says that during the animated
discussion which followed Felt’s lecture,
“. . . the idea occurred to me [Olcott] that
it would be a good thing to form a society to pursue and promote such occult
research, and, after turning it over in my mind, I wrote on a scrap of paper
the following:
‘Would it not be a good thing to form a Society for this kind of study?’
—and gave it to Judge, at the moment standing between me and H.P.B., sitting
opposite, to pass over to her. She read it and nodded assent . .
. .”
On the other hand, Annie Besant, writing in Lucifer (Vol. XII, April,
1893, p. 105) about the formation of the T.S., says that
“. . . she [H.P.B.] has told me herself how her Master bade her found it,
and how at His bidding she wrote the suggestion of starting it on a slip of
paper and gave it to W. Q. Judge to pass to Colonel Olcott;
and then the Society had its first beginning . . .”
124 BLAVATSKY: COLLECTED WRITINGS
While these two contradictory accounts are somewhat perplexing to the historian,
we must bear in mind that neither of them is based on any
actual document or written contemporary account. What is of particular
importance and interest, however, is the fact that H.P.B. herself, as we have
seen earlier in the present Volume, concluded her “Important Note” pasted
in her Scrapbook, I, pp. 20-21, with the statement that
“. . . M ... brings orders to form a Society—a secret Society like the Rosicrucian
Lodge. He promises to help.” In addition to that, she specifically states
having received orders from
It is evident, therefore, that the impending formation of such a Society
was already “in the air,” so to say, a considerable time prior to the gathering
at which it was first broached.]
[In addition to H.P.B., Col. Olcott and W. Q.
Judge, the other “formers” of the Theosophical Society, to use Col. Olcott’s own expression, were: Charles Sotheran,
Dr. Charles E. Simmons, Herbert D. Monachesi, Charles
C. Massey, W. L. Alden, George H. Felt, D. E. de Lara, Dr. W. Britten, Mrs. Emma Hardinge-Britten,
Henry J. Newton, John Storer Cobb, J. Hyslop, and H. M. Stevens.
The reader should consult the BIO-BIOGRAPHICAL INDEX at the end of the
present Volume, under the respective names. A special effort has been made
to collect as much information as was possible to obtain concerning at least
some of these individuals. A few of them have remained untraced.—Compiler.]
—————
[In H.P.B.’s Scrapbook,
Vol. I, p. 57, an article by Col. Olcott is pasted in, entitled “Spiritualism Rampant.” It is dated
The
present generation of men gradually evolving from—plants, vegetables, fish and becoming finally Whiskey bottles,—the “Embryonic man”
or ancestor of the present race.
FORMATION OF
THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY 125
>>>>>>> IMAGEM <<<<<<
126 BLAVATSKY: COLLECTED WRITINGS
FROM MADAME H. P. BLAVATSKY
TO HER
CORRESPONDENTS
AN OPEN LETTER SUCH
AS FEW CAN WRITE
[Spiritual Scientist,
Being
daily in receipt of numerous letters—written with the view of obtaining advice
as to the best method of receiving information respecting Occultism, and the
direct relation it bears to modern Spiritualism, and not having sufficient
time at my disposal to answer these requests, I now propose to facilitate
the mutual labor of myself and correspondents, by naming herein a few of the
principal works treating upon magiism,
and the mysteries of such modern Hermetists.
To
this I feel bound to add, respecting what I have stated before, to wit: that would-be aspirants must not lure themselves with the idea
of any possibility of their becoming practical Occultists by mere book-knowledge.
The works of the Hermetic Philosophers were never intended for the masses,
as Mr. Charles Sotheran,* one of the most learned
members of the Society Rosae Crucis, in a late essay, thus observes: “Gabriele
Rossetti in his Disquisitions on the Antipapal
spirit, which produced the Reformation, shows that the art
of speaking and writing in a language which bears a double interpretation,
is of very great antiquity; that it was in practice among the priests of Egypt,
brought from thence by the Manichees, whence it
passed to the Templars and Albigenses, spread over Europe, and brought about the Reformation.”
The
ablest book that was ever written on Symbols and Mystic Orders,
is most certainly Hargrave Jennings’ The Rosicrucians, and yet it has been repeatedly called
“obscure trash” in my presence, and that too, by individuals who were most
decidedly well-versed in the rites and mysteries of modern Freemasonry. Persons
who lack even the latter knowledge, can easily infer from this, what would
be the
––––––––––
* [See the Bio-Bibliographical Index for information concerning him.—Compiler.]
––––––––––
H. P. BLAVATSKY TO HER CORRESPONDENTS 127
amount of
information they might derive from still more obscure and mystical works than
the latter; for if we compare Hargrave Jennings’
book with some of the mediaeval treatises and ancient works of the most noted
Alchemists and Magi, we might find the latter as much more obscure than the
former—as regards language—as a pupil in celestial Philosophy would the Book
of the Heavens, if he should examine a far distant star with the naked eye,
rather than with the help of a powerful telescope.
Far
from me, though, the idea of disparaging in anyone the laudable impulse to
search ardently after Truth, however arid and ungrateful the task may appear
at first sight; for my own principle has ever been to make the Light of Truth,
the beacon of my life. The words uttered by Christ eighteen centuries ago:
“Believe and you will understand,” can be applied in the present case, and
repeating them with but a slight modification, I may well say: “Study and
you will believe.”
But
to particularize one or another Book on Occultism, to those who are anxious
to begin their studies in the hidden mysteries of nature is something, the
responsibility of which, I am not prepared to assume. What may be clear to
one who is intuitional, if read in the same book by another person, might
prove meaningless. Unless one is prepared to devote to it his whole life,
the superficial knowledge of Occult Sciences will lead him surely to become
the target for millions of ignorant scoffers to aim their blunderbusses, loaded
with ridicule and chaff, against. Besides this, it is in more than one way
dangerous to select this science as a mere pastime. One must bear forever
in mind the impressive fable of Oedipus, and beware of the same consequences.
Oedipus unriddled but one-half of the enigma offered him by the Sphinx, and caused its death; the
other half of the mystery avenged the death of the symbolic monster, and forced
the King of Thebes to prefer blindness and exile in his despair, rather than
face what he did not feel himself pure enough to encounter. He unriddled the man, the form, and had forgotten God—the idea.
If
a man would follow in the steps of Hermetic
128 BLAVATSKY: COLLECTED WRITINGS
Philosophers,
he must prepare himself beforehand for martyrdom. He must give up personal
pride and all selfish purposes, and be ready for everlasting encounters with
friends and foes. He must part, once for all, with every remembrance of his
earlier ideas, on all and on everything. Existing religions, knowledge, science
must rebecome a blank book for him, as in the days
of his babyhood, for if he wants to succeed he must learn a new alphabet on
the lap of Mother Nature, every letter of which will afford a new insight
to him, every syllable and word an unexpected revelation. The two hitherto
irreconcilable foes, science and theology—the Montecchi
and Capuletti of the nineteenth century—will ally
themselves with the ignorant masses, against the modern Occultist. If we have
outgrown the age of stakes, we are in the heyday, per contra, of
slander, the venom of the press, and all these mephitic venticelli
of calumny, so vividly expressed by the immortal Don Basilio.*
To Science, it will be the duty, arid and sterile as a matter of course—of
the Cabalist to prove that from the beginning of time there was but one positive
Science—Occultism; that it was the mysterious lever of all intellectual forces,
the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil of the Allegorical Paradise, from whose
gigantic trunk sprang in every direction boughs, branches and twigs, the former
shooting forth straight enough at first, the latter, deviating with every
inch of growth, assuming more and more fantastical appearances, till at last
one after the other, lost its vital juice, got deformed, and, drying up, finally
broke off, scattering the ground afar with heaps of rubbish. To Theology,
the Occultist of the future will have to demonstrate, that the Gods of the
Mythologies, the Elohim of Israel as well as the
religious, theological mysteries of Christianity, to begin with the Trinity,
sprang from the sanctuaries of Memphis and Thebes; that their mother Eve is
but the spiritualized Psyche of old, both of them paying a like penalty for
their curiosity, descending to Hades or Hell, the latter to bring back to
––––––––––
* [A calumniating niggardly bigot in de Beaumarchais’ Barber of Seville and Marriage of
Figaro.—Compiler.]
––––––––––
H. P. BLAVATSKY TO HER CORRESPONDENTS 129
earth the
famous Pandora’s box—the former, to search out and crush the head of the serpent—symbol
of time and evil; the crime of both expiated by the Pagan Prometheus and the
Christian Lucifer; the first, delivered by Hercules—the second conquered by
the Saviour.
Furthermore,
the Occultist will have to prove to the Christian Theology, publicly, what
many of its priesthood are well aware of in secret—namely, that their God
on earth was a Cabalist, the meek representative of a tremendous Power, which,
if misapplied, might shake the world to its foundations; and that, of all
their evangelical symbols, there is not one but can be traced up to its parent
fount. For instance, their Incarnated Verbum or
Logos was worshipped at His birth by the three Magi, led on by the star,
and received from them the gold, the frankincense and myrrh, the whole of
which is simply an excerpt from the Cabala our modern theologians despise,
and the representation of another and still more mysterious “Ternary,”* embodying
allegorically in its emblems, the highest secrets of the Cabala.
A clergy,
whose main object ever has been to make of their Divine Cross the gallows
of Truth, and Freedom, could not do otherwise than try and bury in oblivion
the origin of that same cross, which, in the most primitive symbols of the
Egyptians’ magic, represents the key to Heaven. Their anathemas are powerless
in our days, the multitude is wiser; but the greatest danger awaits us just
in that latter direction, if we do not succeed in making the masses remain
at least neutral—till they come to know better—in this forthcoming conflict
between Truth, Superstition and Presumption; or, to express it in other terms,
Occult Spiritualism, Theology and Science. We have to fear neither the miniature
thunderbolts of the clergy, nor the unwarranted negations of Science. But
Public Opinion, this invisible, intangible, omnipresent, despotic tyrant;
this thousand-headed Hydra—the more dangerous for being composed of
––––––––––
* The Ternarius or Ternary, the Symbol of perfection
in antiquity, and the Star, the Cabalistic sign of the Microcosm.
––––––––––
130 BLAVATSKY: COLLECTED WRITINGS
individual
mediocrities—is not an enemy to be scorned by any would-be Occultist, courageous
as he may be. Many of the far more innocent Spiritualists have left their
sheepskins in the clutches of this ever-hungry, roaring lion—for he is the
most dangerous of our three classes of enemies. What will be the fate, in
such a case, of an unfortunate Occultist, if he once succeeds in demonstrating
the close relationship existing between the two? The masses of people, though
they do not generally appreciate the science of truth, or have real knowledge,
on the other hand are unerringly directed by mere instinct; they have intuitionally—if
I may be allowed to express myself—the sense of what is formidable in its
genuine strength. People will never conspire except against real Power.
In their blind ignorance, the Mysteries and the Unknown have been, and ever
will be, objects of terror for them. Civilization may progress, human nature will remain the same throughout all
ages. Occultists, beware!
Let
it be understood, then, that I address myself but to the truly courageous
and persevering. Besides the danger expressed above, the difficulties to becoming
a practical Occultist in this country, are next to insurmountable. Barrier
upon barrier, obstacles in every form and shape will present themselves to
the student; for the Keys of the
H.P. BLAVATSKY TO HER CORRESPONDENTS 131
endowed
all the Free Masonic associations with their symbols and secrets, which alone
can reconcile human reason with God and Faith, Power with Freedom, Science
with Mystery, and which has alone the keys of the present, past and future.
The
first difficulty for the aspirant lies in the utter impossibility of his comprehending,
as I said before, the meaning of the best books written by Hermetic Philosophers.
The latter who mainly lived in the mediaeval ages, prompted on the one hand
by their duty towards their brethren, and by their desire to impart to them
and their successors only, the glorious truths, and on the other very naturally
desirous to avoid the clutches of the blood-thirsty Christian Inquisition,
enveloped themselves more than ever in mystery. They invented new signs and
hieroglyphs, renovated the ancient symbolical language of the high-priests
of antiquity, who had used it as a sacred barrier between their holy rites
and the ignorance of the profane and created a veritable Cabalistic slang.
This latter, which continually blinded the false neophyte, attracted towards
the science only by his greediness for wealth and power which he would have
surely misused were he to succeed, is a living, eloquent, clear language;
but it is and can become such, only to the true disciple of Hermes.
But
were it even otherwise, and could books on Occultism, written in a plain and
precise language, be obtained, in order to get initiated in the Cabala, it
would not be sufficient to understand and meditate on certain authors. Galatinus and Pico della
Mirandola, Paracelsus and Robertus
de Fluctibus do not furnish one with the key to
the practical mysteries. They simply state what can be done and why it is
done; but they do not tell one how to do it. More than one philosopher
who has by heart the whole of the Hermetic literature, and who has devoted
to the study of it upwards of thirty or forty years of his life, fails when
he believes he is about reaching the final result. One must understand the
Hebrew authors, such as Sepher Yetzîrah,
for instance; learn by heart the great book of the Zohar
in its original tongue; master the Kabbalah
Denudata, from
132 BLAVATSKY: COLLECTED WRITINGS
the Collection
of 1684 (
Were
I to name two of the books, which contain the most of the occult information
which was derived and utilized by the greatest Cabalists of the mediaeval
ages—Paracelsus was one of them—I might astonish many of my correspondents
“craving for knowledge,” and they might let it pass unnoticed. Adepts more
learned than I will nevertheless endorse the truths of my assertion. For prudence
sake I prefer quoting from a book, written by one of our greatest modern Occultists.
“Among
the sacred books of the Christians,” says Éliphas
Lévi, “there exist two works, which, strange to say, the Infallible
Church does not even pretend to understand and never tried to explain: the
Prophecy of Ezekiel and the Apocalypse; two Cabalistic
treatises, reserved, without doubt, for the commentaries of the Magi Kings;
books closed with the seven seals to the faithful Christian; but perfectly
clear to the Infidel initiated in the Occult Sciences.”
Thus,
the works on Occultism were not, I repeat, written for the masses, but for
those of the Brethren who make the solution of the mysteries of the Cabala
the principal object of their lives, and who are supposed to have conquered
the first abstruse difficulties of the Alpha of Hermetic Philosophy.
––––––––––
* [This is the work of Baron Christian Knorr
von Rosenroth (1636-89), the first volume of which
was published at Sulzbach, 1677-78, and the second
at
† Immanuel Deutsch found it otherwise, and in his celebrated Quarterly
Review Essay eulogizes the Talmud as the repository of vast
stores of information for the philosophical student, placing it in certain
respects above even the Old Testament itself.—ED., Spiritual Scientist.
––––––––––
H.P. BLAVATSKY TO HER CORRESPONDENTS 133
To fervent and persevering candidates for the above science, I have to offer but one word of advice, “Try and become.” One single journey to the Orient, made in the proper spirit, and the possible emergencies arising from the meeting of what may seem no more than the chance acquaintances and adventures of any traveller, may quite as likely as not throw wide open to the zealous student, the heretofore closed doors of the final mysteries. I will go farther and say that such a journey, performed with the omnipresent idea of the one object, and with the help of a fervent will, is sure to produce more rapid, better, and far more practical results, than the most diligent study of Occultism in books—even though one were to devote to it dozens of years. In the name of Truth,
Yours,
H. P. BLAVATSKY.
—————
[Herbert D. Monachesi, one of the original Founders
of the T.S., had written an article entitled “Proselyters
from
Our
original programme is here clearly defined by Herbert
Monachesi, F.T.S., one of the Founders. The Christian
and Scientists must be made to respect their Indian betters. The Wisdom of
India, her philosophy and achievement must be made known in Europe
& America & the English be made to respect the natives of
H. P. B.
–––––––––––––
134 BLAVATSKY: COLLECTED WRITINGS
THE SCIENCE OF MAGIC
PROOFS OF ITS EXISTENCE—MEDIUMS
IN
ANCIENT
TIMES, ETC., ETC.
BY MME. H. P. BLAVATSKY.*
[Spiritual Scientist,
Happening to be on a visit to Ithaca, where spiritual papers in general, and the Banner of Light in particular, ar