Isis unveiled, Volume 1 (of 2), Science

[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).