The priest-hierophant of the Egyptian temples wore a breast-plate of precious stones, in every way similar to that of the high priest of the Israelites. The tabernacle was simply the archaic telephone of those days of Magic, when Occult powers were acquired by Initiation, just as they are now. Ancient divination was always accomplished with the help of the spirits of the elements. But there are good as well as bad spirits, beneficent and malevolent “gods” in all ages. Alas, Christians are still worshipping the Jewish Jehovah, the “spirit” who spoke through his teraphim.
Wm. Oxley is an ardent Spiritualist equipped with a wily tongue, and habitually swayed by deceitful visions in his boots. A.D. Bathell is another calumniator and manqué philosopher, yet a useful purgative of the Theosophical Society. Wm. Oxley attributes the authorship of the Mahabharata to a “Spirit” named Busiris. By adjusting the force of its two-faced blowing Wm. Oxley manages to keep himself from falling off the fence. The initiated Brahmans do not know when the Vedas, the Mahabharata, and especially the Bhagavad-Gita, were written, and by whom. But Wm. Oxley who is not a philosopher, still less a sage, does know. Harken! Whomsoever Wm. Oxley claims that he had seen and conversed with, was not with Master Koot-Hoomi as he alleges.
Works of fiction are no fiction, but presentiments of what lies in the bosom of the future. Many will be the unconscious crimes committed, and many will be the victims who will innocently suffer death at the hands of the righteous judges and the too innocent jurymen, both alike ignorant of the fiendish power of suggestion. The body may be slain but not the soul. The consequences of the death penalty for judge and jury, the community at large. and not the least for the criminal, are too grim and too harsh to contemplate. Capital punishment is futile, unnecessary, and fraught with potentially dire societal harms. While the seed of a tree may be destroyed, the spiritual “seed” which produces the soul of a man cannot be destroyed by capital punishment, but will eventually produce such a man again as sure as the seed of a thistle will produce nothing else but a thistle. One’s criminal powers and proclivities cannot be eliminated by killing his body. Having been deprived of one instrument for their manifestation, such powers will manifest themselves in other, still less convenient, and more dangerous ways. Moreover, by deferring the manifestation of an evil cause we pass on to a future generation an evil inheritance, with which we ourselves ought to have contended, and which we ought to have sought to ameliorate. Mortal man is an instrument of immortal spirit. A ray of divine mind dwells in the heart of every man. But the divine mind is veiled in man; his animal brain alone philosophises. The physical man is the musical instrument; the divine the performing artist. The physical body is a transient mask of the spiritual man within, and instrument of action on the objective plane. By the power of an inequitable law the slayer’s knife did stab himself, thus the unjust judge has lost his own defender. Letter to “Lucifer” from a puzzled student. Like an eye-for-an-eye, capital punishment is nothing but a relic of Jewish barbarity. As the juryman, in deciding for a verdict of guilty, becomes an accessory in a fresh murder, so an increasing number of people refuse to repay evil for evil.
Such illusive shadows, belonging to neither Earth nor Heaven, are used by sorcerers and other adepts of the Black Art to help them in persecutions of victims; to hallucinate the minds of very honest and well-meaning persons occasionally, who fall victims to the mental epidemics aroused by them for a purpose; and to oppose in every way the beneficent work of the guardians of mankind, whether divine or human.
The Christian Fathers applied the sacred name Daimonia of the Greeks (the divine Egos of man) to their “devils,” a fiction of diseased brains, and thus dishonoured the anthropomorphized symbols of wise antiquity, and made them all loathsome in the sight of the ignorant and the unlearned. Daimonium was ascribed by the ancients to all kinds of spirits, whether good or bad, human or otherwise, but the term was often synonymous with gods or angels. The Indian Daimonia and Deities are thirty-three millions. The two most important Elemental classes, as well as the least understood by the Orientalists, are the Devas (Shinning Ones) and the Pitris (Ancestors). Deva Yonis such as gnomes, sylphs, fairies, djinns, etc., belong to the three lower kingdoms of elementals and pertain to the Mysteries on account of their dangerous nature. The Pitris or Lunar Ancestors are not the forefathers of the present living men but those of the first human race. Pitris are Devas, Lunar and Solar. It is the Lunar Pitris who gave images of their astral body (chhayas) as models of the first race in the Fourth Round, while the Solar Pitris informed and endowed man with intellect — a Great Sacrifice! The Pitris have naught to do with juggling, tricks, and other phenomena, nor are the “spirits of the departed” concerned in them. There are three main classes of Elementaries: (1) of the spiritually dead; (2) of the spiritually poor but materially rich; and (3) of those whose bodies perished by violence. The ancients taught that while man is a septenary trinity of body, astral spirit, and immortal soul, the animal has only five instead of seven principles in him. Apes have as much intelligence as some men. Why, then, should these men who are no way superior to the apes, have Immortal Spirits and the apes none? One may search for months and never find the demarcation in the “Comte de Gabalis” between the spirits of the séance-rooms and the Sylphs and Undines of the French satire. Theosophists believe in spirits no less than Spiritualists do, but as dissimilar in their variety as are the feathered tribes in the air. Countless generations of buffoons, appointed to amuse Majesties and Highnesses, had the inestimable privilege of speaking truth at the Courts, yet those truths have always been laughed at. A strict rule, common to both Right and Left Paths, is the renunciation of carnal commerce with male or female Elementals. Certain mediums boast of Spirit husbands and wives. Consultation and deliberation with “spirits” spells the end of wisdom. The truthfulness of Spiritualists is always tempered by enthusiasm. The only character of Truth, is its capability of enduring the test of universal experience, and coming unchanged out of every possible form of fair discussion. Spiritualism is a philosophy of yesterday. But the philosophy of the East comes to us from an immense antiquity. Theosophists share only the product of corroborated experience, hoary with age; Spiritualists hold to their own views, that are based on their unflinching enthusiasm and emotionalism. Holy spirits will not visit promiscuous séance rooms, nor will they intermarry with living men and women. Monotheism, proclaiming in one place God, whom “no man shall see and live,” shows him at the same time so petty a god as to concern himself with the breeches of his chosen people. Polytheism is based upon a fact of nature. Spirits mistaken for gods, have been seen in every age by men — hence the universal belief in many and various gods, who are the personified powers of nature. Man is made up of a spiritual and of a fleshly body; Angels are pure spirits but are created and finite in all respects, whereas God is infinite and uncreated. Therefore the masses are well justified in believing in a plurality of gods. While Pagans are sincere in calling their religion Polytheism, the Churches put a mask on theirs by claiming for it the title of a monotheistic Church. Christian angel-worship is plainly idolatrous. The Devas are the embodied powers of states of matter. Every Deva has a direct connection with its bodily fabric, in invisible atoms and visible molecules, and also physical and chemical particles. Although gods are superior to man in some respects, it must not be concluded that the latent potencies of the human spirit are inferior to those of the Devas. Their angelic faculties are more expanded than those of ordinary men; but with the ultimate effect of prescribing a limit to their expansion, to which the human spirit is not subjected. There are high Devas and lower ones, higher Elementals and those far below man and even animals. But all these have been or will be men, and the former will again be reborn on higher planets and in future manvantaras. Dugpas are the “Brothers of Shadow,” possessed by earth-bound Elementaries. A highly developed Intellectual Soul (manas) is quite compatible with the absence of Spiritual Soul (Buddhi). The Sorcerer, who always performs his rites on the day of the new moon, when the benign influence of the Pitris is at its lowest ebb, crystallizes some of the satanic energy of his predecessors in evil; while the Brahman pursues a corresponding benevolent course with the energy bequeathed him by his Pitris. The only difference between the spirits of other Societies and ours lies in their names, and in dogmatic assertions with regard to their natures. In those whom the Spiritualists call the “Spirits of the Dead,” and in whom the Roman Church sees the Devils of the Host of Satan, we see neither. We call them, Dhyani-Chohans, Devas, Pitris, Elementals — imperfect at times, but never wholly imperfect. With a 36-page extended conversation about Elementals and Elementaries with a Student of Occultism.
Materialism is the mother of all vices and root of the sin and suffering in the world. It is the negation of pure Spirit, resulting in brutality, hypocrisy, greed, and selfishness. Further proof of the moral blindness of materialism is the unquestioning belief in the necromantic apparitions of the disembodied “spirits” of the dead. Modern Science cannot unveil the mystery of the Spirit of Cosmos to the eyes of man. It can collect, classify, and generalize upon phenomena; but the Occultist declares that the daring explorer, who would probe the inmost secrets of Nature, must transcend the narrow limitations of sense, and elevate his Manas to the realm of noumena and the sphere of primal causes. To run counter to the views of modern Science’s most eminent exponents, is to court a premature discomfiture in the eyes of the Western world. Occultism is at odds with the spiritual blindness of anthropomorphism, idealism and hylo-idealism, positivism and the all-denying modern psychology and, not least, the endless speculations of physicists who are at loggerheads with each other. The ancient belief that the Sun is the God of Spiritual and Terrestrial Light, is nowadays regarded as a superstition only by rank materialism, that denies the triadic hypostasis of Deity–Spirit–Soul, and admits no intelligence outside the mind of man. The ever-concealed Central Spiritual Sun is the all-pervading Spirit of Life animating the playground of numberless Universes, incessantly manifesting and disappearing. Its creative energy, having originated in the Central Point, is then stored in the visible Sun, the Life- and Health-Giver of the physical world; and then, from deep in the bowels of the Earth, it keeps flowing incessantly out of the North Pole towards the Equator. Francis Bacon was among the first to strike the keynote of materialism, by inverting the order of mental evolution, not only by his inductive method renovated from ill-digested Aristotle, but also by the general tenor of his writings. The Light of Spirit is the eternal Sabbath of the Mystic. Fiat Lux, esoterically rendered, means “Let there be the Sons of Light,” i.e., the noumena of all phenomena. The Sons of Light are the Logoi of Life shooting out like seven fiery tongues from the infinite Ocean of Light, whose supernal pole is pure Spirit lost in Non-Being, and whose infernal pole condenses and crystallizes into gross matter.
Part 1. Mystery is the negation of common sense, just as metaphysics is a kind of poetry. Ten axiomatic propositions of eastern philosophy. Part 2. There are two kinds of seership, spiritual and sensuous. Spiritual seership is pellucid vistas of cosmic splendour; sensuous, hazy glimpses of Truth distorted by matter. Part 3. The exercise of Will-power is the highest form of prayer, followed by an instant response. Eight Vedantic precepts of man’s mystic powers, and their appellations. Part 4. An illusionary “double” or doppelganger can be projected to any location. There are three kinds of “doubles” or astral bodies. Part 5. Feats and wonders by learned thaumaturgists, skilled in occult science. Conjuration, ceremonies, circle-making, and incense-burning are as ridiculous as they are useless. Part 6. The adept-magician can release the astral soul from the cremated remains and thus facilitate the withdrawal of the astral soul of the deceased, which otherwise might remain stupefied for an indefinite period within the ashes. Part 7. The disappearance from sight of a flame, symbol of Divine Light, does not imply its actual extinction. The spirit of the flame is inextinguishable. Part 8. Pure Buddhism possesses all the breadth that can be claimed from a doctrine, at once religious and scientific. Its tolerance excites the jealousy of none. Part 9. Magnetism is the alphabet of magic. The glorified human spirit is far more beauteous than its physical capsule. Part 10. The Todas resemble the statue of the Grecian Zeus, in majesty and beauty of form. Part 11. Shamanism is the heathenism of Mongolia, and one of the oldest religions of India. In is an offshoot of primitive theurgy, a practical blending of the visible with the invisible world. Part 12. The philosopher’s stone is no stone, it is Triune Unity and the end of all philosophers. Man is also a stone, potentially, a living foundation upon which he can build a temple, pure as flaming diamond, fit for his Higher Self to shine through him and become a beneficent power on earth. Part 13. The longevity of Lamas and the Talapoins of Siam is proverbial. Part 14. To deride wonders is easy; to explain them, troublesome; to dissect scientifically, impossible. How the brave warrior’s feet proved less nimble than his tongue. Part 15. Shamanism and its spirit-worship, is the most despised of all surviving religions. Still, many Russians are convinced of the Shamans’ supernatural powers. Part 16. The Kurdish rites and doctrines are purely magical and magian. They unify the mysticism of the Hindu with the practices of the Assyrio-Chaldean magians. Part 17. The plastic power of imagination, when impregnated with the potentiality of good or bad, generates a current which attaches itself to anyone who comes within it. “Evil eye” is the effect of venomous thoughts from the spell a malicious person. Part 18. The subjective end of matter, is pure spirit; the objective end, crystallised spirit. There being but One Truth, man requires but One Church, which is the Temple of God within us, walled-in by dense matter. Part 19. Modern Spiritualism is neither a science, nor a religion, not even a philosophy. To the spiritualists we offer philosophical deduction, instead of unverifiable hypothesis; scientific analysis and demonstration, instead of undiscriminating faith. Part 20. Our work is done. The enemies of Truth have been all counted, and paraded for all to see. Modern science, powerless to satisfy the aspirations of the race, makes the future a void, and bereaves man of hope. Paganism is ancient wisdom replete with Deity. And today, it rules the world in secret. Part 21. If ye love me, keep my commandments. Commentary on John xiv, 15–17. Appendix A. The Fire which devours itself is more mighty than ordinary fire. Appendix B. Biography of Francis Gerry Fairfield.
