Heracleides, who adopted fully the Pythagorean and Platonic views of the human Soul, its nature and faculties, speaking of Spirits, calls them "Daimons with airy and vaporous bodies," and affirms that Souls inhabit the Milky Way before descending "into generation" or sublunary existence.
Again, when the author of Epinomis locates between the highest and lowest Gods (embodied Souls) three classes of Daimons, and peoples the universe with invisible beings, he is more rational than either our modern Scientists, who make between the two extremes one vast hiatus of being, the playground of blind forces, or the Christian Theologians, who call every pagan God, a dæmon, or devil. Of these three classes the first two are invisible; their bodies are pure ether and fire (Planetary Spirits); the Daimons of the third class are clothed with vapoury bodies; they are usually invisible, but sometimes, making themselves concrete, become visible for a few seconds. These are the earthly spirits, or our astral souls.
The fact is, that the word Daimon was given by the ancients, and especially by the Philosophers of the Alexandrian school, to all kinds of spirits, whether good or bad, human or otherwise, but the appellation was often synonymous with that of Gods or angels. For instance, the "Samothraces" was a designation of the Fane-gods; worshipped at Samothracia in the Mysteries. They are considered as identical with the Cabeiri, Dioscuri, and Corybantes. Their names were mystical--denoting Pluto, Ceres or Proserpina, Bacchus, and Æsculapius or Hermes, and they were all referred to as Daimons.
Apuleius, speaking in the same symbolical and veiled language, of the two Souls, the human and the divine, says:
The human soul is a demon that our language may name genius. She is an immortal god, though in a certain sense she is born at the same time as the man in whom she is. Consequently, we may say that she dies in the same way that she is born.
Eminent men were also called Gods by the ancients. Deified during life, even their "shells" were reverenced during a part of the Mysteries. Belief in Gods, in Larvæ and Umbræ, was a universal belief then, as it is fast becoming--now. Even the greatest Philosophers, men who have passed to posterity as the hardest Materialists and Atheists--only because they rejected the grotesque idea of a personal extra-cosmic God--such as Epicurus, for instance, believed in Gods and invisible beings. Going far back into antiquity, out of the great body of Philosophers of the pre-Christian ages, we may mention Cicero, as one who can least be accused of superstition and credulity. Speaking of those whom he calls Gods and who are either human or atmospheric spirits, he says:
We know that of all livings beings man is the best formed, and, as the gods belong to this number, they must have a human form. . . . I do not mean to say that the gods have body and blood in them; but I say that they seem as if they had bodies with blood in them. . . . Epicurus, for whom hidden things were as tangible as if he had touched them with his finger, teaches us that gods are not generally visible, but that they are intelligible; that they are not bodies having a certain solidity . . . but that we can recognize them by their passing images; that as there are atoms enough in the infinite space to produce such images, these are produced before us . . . and make us realize what are these happy, immortal beings.3
If, turning from Greece and Egypt to the cradle of universal civilization, India, we interrogate the Brâhmans and their most admirable Philosophies, we find them calling their Gods and their Daimonia by such a number and variety of appellations, that the thirty-three millions of these Deities would require a whole library to contain only their names and attributes. We will choose for the present time only two names out of the Pantheon. These groups are the most important as well as the least understood by the Orientalists--their true nature having been all along wrapped in obscurity by the unwillingness of the Brâhmans to divulge their philosophical secrets. We will speak of but the Devas and the Pitris.
The former aerial beings are some of them superior, others inferior, to man. The term means literally the Shining Ones, the resplendent; and it covers spiritual beings of various degrees, including entities from previous planetary periods, who take active part in the formation of new solar systems and the training of infant humanities, as well as unprogressed Planetary Spirits, who will, at spiritualistic séances, simulate human deities and even characters on the stage of human history.
As to the Deva Yonis, they are Elementals of a lower kind in comparison with the Kosmic "Gods," and are subjected to the will of even the sorcerer. To this class belong the gnomes, sylphs, fairies, djins, etc. They are the Soul of the elements, the capricious forces in Nature, acting under one immutable Law, inherent in these Centres of Force, with undeveloped consciousness and bodies of plastic mould, which can be shaped according to the conscious or unconscious will of the human being who puts himself en rapport with them. It is by attracting some of the beings of this class that our modern spiritualistic mediums invest the fading shells of deceased human beings with a kind of individual force. These beings have never been, but will, in myriads of ages hence, be evolved into men. They belong to the three lower kingdoms, and pertain to the Mysteries on account of their dangerous nature.
We have found a very erroneous opinion gaining ground not only
among Spiritualists--who see the spirits of their disembodied
fellow creatures everywhere--but even among several Orientalists
who ought to know better. It is generally believed by them that
the Sanskrit term Pitris means the spirits of our direct ancestors;
of disembodied people. Hence the argument of some Spiritualists
that fakirs, and other Eastern wonder-workers, are mediums;
that they themselves confess to being unable to produce anything
without the help of the Pitris, of whom they are the obedient
instruments. This is in more than one sense erroneous, the error
being first started, we believe, by M. L. Jacolliot, in his Spiritisme
dans le Monde, and Govinda Swami; or, as he spells it, "the
fakir Kovindasami's" phenomena. The Pitris are not the ancestors
of the present living men, but those of the human kind or primitive
race; the spirits of human races which, on the great scale
of descending evolution, preceded our races of men, and were physically,
as well as spiritually, far superior to our modern pigmies. In
Mânava-Dharma-Shâstra they are called the Lunar
Ancestors. The Hindû--least of all the proud Brâhman--has
no such great longing to return to this land of exile after he
has shaken off his mortal coil, as has the average Spiritualist;
nor has death for him any of the great terrors it has for the
Christian. Thus, the most highly developed minds in India will
always take care to declare, while in the act of leaving their
tenements of clay, "Nachapunarâvarti," "I
shall not come back," and by this very declaration is placed
beyond the reach of any living man or medium. But, it may be asked,
what then is meant by the Pitris? They are Devas, lunar and solar,
closely connected with human evolution, for the Lunar Pitris are
they who gave their Chhâyâs as the models of the First
Race in the Fourth Round, while the Solar Pitris endowed mankind
with intellect. Not only so, but these Lunar Devas passed through
all the kingdoms of the terrestrial Chain in the First Round,
and during the Second and Third Rounds "lead and represent
the human element."4
A brief examination of the part they play will prevent all future
confusion in the student's mind between the Pitris and the Elementals.
In the Rig Veda, Vishnu (or the pervading Fire,
Æther) is shown first striding through the seven regions
of the World in three steps, being a manifestation of the
Central Sun. Later on, he becomes a manifestation of our
solar energy, and is connected with the septenary form and
with the Gods, Agni, Indra and other solar deities. Therefore,
while the "Sons of Fire," the primeval Seven of our
System, emanate from the primordial Flame, the "Seven Builders"
of our Planetary Chain are the "Mind-born Sons" of the
latter, and--their instructors likewise. For, though in
one sense they are all Gods and are all called Pitris (Pitara,
Patres, Fathers), a great though very subtle distinction (quite
Occult) is made which must be noticed. In the Rig
Veda they are divided into two classes--the Pitris Agni-dagdha
("Fire-givers"), and the pitris Anagni-dagdha
("non-Fire-givers")5
i.e., as explained exoterically--Pitris who sacrificed
to the Gods and those who refused to do so at the "fire-sacrifice."
But the Esoteric and true meaning is the following. The first
or primordial Pitris, the "Seven Sons of Fire" or of
the Flame, are distinguished or divided into seven classes (like
the Seven Sephiroth, and others, see Vâyu Purâna
and Harivamsha, also Rig Veda); three of
which classes are Arûpa, formless, "composed of intellectual
not elementary substance," and four are corporeal. The first
are pure Agni (fire) or Sapta-jiva ("seven lives," now
become Sapta-jihva, seven-tongued, as Agni is represented with
seven tongues and seven winds as the wheels of his car). As a
formless, purely spiritual essence, in the first degree of evolution,
they could not create that, the prototypical form of which
was not in their minds, as this is the first requisite.
They could only give birth to "mind-born" beings, their
"Sons," the second class of Pitris (or Prajâpati,
or Rishis, etc.), one degree more material; these, to the third--the
last of the Arûpa class. It is only this last class that
was enabled with the help of the Fourth principle of the Universal
Soul (Aditi, Âkâsha) to produce beings that became
objective and having a form.6 But when these came to
existence, they were found to possess such a small proportion
of the divine immortal Soul or Fire in them, that they were considered
failures. "The third appealed to the second, the second to
the first, and the Three had to become Four (the perfect square
or cube representing the 'Circle Squared' or immersion of pure
Spirit), before the first could be instructed" (Sansk. Comment.).
Then only, could perfect Beings--intellectually and physically--be
shaped. This, though more philosophical, is still an allegory.
But its meaning is plain, however absurd may seem the explanation
from a scientific standpoint. The Doctrine teaches the Presence
of a Universal Life (or motion) within which all is,
and nothing outside of it can be. This is pure Spirit.
Its manifested aspect is cosmic primordial Matter coeval with,
since it is, itself. Semi-spiritual in comparison to the
first, this vehicle of the Spirit-Life is what Science calls Ether,
which fills the boundless space, and it is in this substance,
the world-stuff, that germinates all the atoms and molecules of
what is called matter. However homogeneous in its eternal origin,
this Universal Element, once that its radiations were thrown into
the space of the (to be) manifested Universe, the centripetal
and centrifugal forces of perpetual motion, of attraction and
repulsion, would soon polarize its scattered particles, endowing
them with peculiar properties now regarded by Science as various
elements distinct from each other. As a homogeneous whole, the
world-stuff in its primordial state is perfect; disintegrated,
it loses its property of conditionless creative power;
it has to associate with its contraries. Thus, the first
worlds and Cosmic Beings, save the "Self-Existent"--a
mystery no one could attempt to touch upon seriously, as it is
a mystery perceived by the divine eye of the highest Initiates,
but one that no human language could explain to the children of
our age--the first worlds and Beings were failures; inasmuch
as the former lacked that inherent creative force in them necessary
for their further and independent evolution, and that the first
orders of Beings lacked the immortal soul. Part and parcel of
Anima Mundi in its Prâkritic aspect, the Purusha element
in them was too weak to allow of any consciousness in the intervals
(entr' actes) between their existences during the evolutionary
period and the cycle of Life. The three orders of Beings, the
Pitri-Rishis, the Sons of Flame, had to merge and blend together
their three higher principles with the Fourth (the Circle), and
the Fifth (the microcosmic) principle before the necessary
union could be obtained and result therefrom achieved. "There
were old worlds, which perished as soon as they came into existence;
were formless, as they were called sparks. These sparks are the
primordial worlds which could not continue because the Sacred
Aged had not as yet assumed the form"7 (of
perfect
contraries not only in opposite sexes but of cosmical polarity).
"Why were these primordial worlds destroyed? Because,"
answers the Zohar, "the man represented by the ten
Sephiroth was not as yet. The human form contains everything {spirit,
soul and body}, and as it did not as yet exist the worlds were
destroyed."
Far removed from the Pitris, then, it will readily be seen are
all the various feats of Indian fakirs, jugglers and others, phenomena
a hundred times more various and astounding than are ever seen
in civilized Europe and America. The Pitris have naught to do
with such public exhibitions, nor are the "spirits of the
departed" concerned in them. We have but to consult the lists
of the principal Daimons or Elemental Spirits to find that their
very names indicate their professions, or, to express it clearly,
the tricks for which each variety is best adapted. So we have
the Mâdan, a generic name indicating wicked elemental spirits,
half brutes, half monsters, for Mâdan signifies one that
looks like a cow. He is the friend of the malicious sorcerers
and helps them to effect their evil purposes of revenge by striking
men and cattle with sudden illness and death.
The Shudâla-Mâdan, or graveyard fiend, answers to
our ghouls. He delights where crime and murder were committed,
near burial-spots and places of execution. He helps the juggler
in all the fire phenomena as well as Kutti Shâttan, the
little juggling imps. Shudâla, they say, is a half-fire,
half-water demon, for he received from Shiva permission to assume
any shape he chose, to transform one thing into another; and when
he is not in fire, he is in water. It is he who blinds people
"to see that which they do not see." Shûla
Mâdan is another mischievous spook. He is the furnace-demon,
skilled in pottery and baking. If you keep friends with him, he
will not injure you; but woe to him who incurs his wrath. Shûla
likes compliments and flattery, and as he generally keeps underground
it is to him that a juggler must look to help him raise a tree
from a seed in a quarter of an hour and ripen its fruit.
Kumil-Mâdan, is the undine proper. He is an Elemental Spirit
of the water, and his name means blowing like a bubble. He
is a very merry imp, and will help a friend in anything relative
to his department; he will shower rain and show the future and
the present to those who will resort to hydromancy or divination
by water.
Poruthû Mâdan is the "wrestling" demon;
he is the strongest of all; and whenever there are feats shown
in which physical force is required, such as levitations, or taming
of wild animals, he will help the performer by keeping him above
the soil, or will over-power a wild beast before the tamer has
time to utter his incantation. So, every "physical manifestation"
has its own class of Elemental Spirits to superintend it. Besides
these there are in India the Pisâchas, Daimons of the races
of the gnomes, the giants and the vampires; the Gandharvas, good
Daimons, celestial seraphs, singers; and Asuras and Nâgas,
the Titanic spirits and the dragon or serpent-headed spirits.
These must not be confused with Elementaries, the souls and shells
of departed human beings; and here again we have to distinguish
between what has been called the astral soul, i.e., the
lower part of the dual Fifth Principle, joined to the animal,
and the true Ego. For the doctrine of the Initiates is that no
astral soul, even that of a pure, good, and virtuous man, is immortal
in the strictest sense, "from elements it was formed--to
elements it must return." We may stop here and say no more:
every learned Brâhman, every Chelâ and thoughtful
Theosophist will understand why. For he knows that while
the soul of the wicked vanishes, and is absorbed without redemption,
that of every other person, even moderately pure, simply changes
its ethereal particles for still more ethereal ones; and, while
there remains in it a spark of the Divine, the god-like
man, or rather, his individual Ego, cannot die. Says Proclus:
while the purely human soul or the lower part of the Fifth Principle
is not. The above explanations and the meaning and the
real attributes and mission of the Pitris, may help to
better understand this passage of Plutarch:
The ancient Egyptians, who derived their knowledge from the Âryans
of India, pushed their researches far into the kingdoms of the
"elemental" and "elementary" beings. Modern
archæologists have decided that the figures found depicted
on the various papyri of The Book of the Dead, or other
symbols relating to other subjects painted upon their mummy cases,
the walls of their subterranean temples and sculptured on their
buildings, are merely fanciful representations of their Gods on
the one hand, and on the other, a proof of the worship by the
Egyptians of cats, dogs, and all manner of creeping things. This
modern idea is wholly wrong, and arises from ignorance of the
astral world and its strange denizens.
There are many distinct classes of "Elementaries" and
"E1ementals." The highest of the former in intelligence
and cunning are the so-called "terrestrial spirits."
Of these it must suffice to say, for the present, that they are
the Larvæ, or shadows of those who have lived on earth,
alike of the good and of the bad. They are the lower principles
of all disembodied beings, and may be divided into three general
groups. The first are they who having refused all spiritual light,
have died deeply immersed in the mire of matter, and from whose
sinful Souls the immortal Spirit has gradually separated itself.
These are, properly, the disembodied Souls of the depraved; these
Souls having at some time prior to death separated themselves
from their divine Spirits, and so lost their chance of immortality.
Eliphas Levi and some other Kabalists make little, if any, distinction
between Elementary Spirits who have been men, and those beings
which people the elements, and are the blind forces of nature.
Once divorced from their bodies, these Souls (also called "astral
bodies"), especially those of purely materialistic persons,
are irresistibly attracted to the earth, where they live a temporary
and finite life amid elements congenial to their gross natures.
From having never, during their natural lives, cultivated their
spirituality, but subordinated it to the material and gross, they
are now unfitted for the lofty career of the pure, disembodied
being, for whom the atmosphere of earth is stifling and mephitic.
Its attractions are not only away from earth, but it cannot, even
if it would, owing to its Devachanic condition, have aught to
do with earth and its denizens consciously. Exceptions
to this rule will be pointed out later on. After a more or less
prolonged period of time these material souls will begin to disintegrate,
and finally, like a column of mist, be dissolved, atom by atom,
in the surrounding elements.
These are the "shells" which remain the longest period
in the Kâma Loka; all saturated with terrestrial effluvia,
their Kâma Rûpa (body of desire) thick with sensuality
and made impenetrable to the spiritualizing influence of their
higher principles, endures longer and fades out with difficulty.
We are taught that these remain for centuries sometimes, before
the final disintegration into their respective elements.
The second group includes all those, who, having had their common
share of spirituality, have yet been more or less attached to
things earthly and terrestrial life, having their aspirations
and affections more centred on earth than in heaven; the stay
in Kâma Loka of the reliquiæ of this class
or group of men, who belonged to the average human being, is of
a far shorter duration, yet long in itself and proportionate to
the intensity of their desire for life.
Remains, as a third class, the disembodied souls of those whose
bodies have perished by violence, and these are men in all save
the physical body, till their life-span is complete.
Among Elementaries are also reckoned by Kabalists what we have
called psychic embryos, the "privation" of the form
of the child that is to be. According to Aristotle's
doctrine there are three principles of natural bodies: privation,
matter, and form. These principles may be applied in this particular
case. The "privation" of the child which is to be, we
locate in the invisible mind of the Universal Soul, in which all
types and forms exist from eternity--privation not being considered
in the Aristotelic philosophy as a principle in the composition
of bodies, but as an external property in their production; for
the production is a change by which the matter passes from the
shape it has not to that which it assumes. Though the privation
of the unborn child's form, as well as of the future form of the
unmade watch, is that which is neither substance nor extension
nor quality as yet, nor any kind of existence, it is still something
which is, though its outlines, in order to be, must acquire an
objective form--the abstract must become concrete, in short. Thus,
as soon as this privation of matter is transmitted by energy to
universal Æther, it becomes a material form, however sublimated.
If modern Science teaches that human thought "affects
the matter of another universe simultaneously with this,"
how can he who believes in a Universal Mind deny that the divine
thought is equally transmitted, by the same law of energy, to
our common mediator, the universal Æther--the lower World-Soul?
Very true, Occult Philosophy denies it intelligence and consciousness
in relation to the finite and conditioned manifestations of this
phenomenal world of matter. But the Vedântin and Buddhist
Philosophies alike, speaking of it as of Absolute Consciousness,
show thereby that the form and progress of every atom of the conditioned
universe must have existed in it throughout the infinite cycles
of Eternity. And, if so, then it must follow that once there,
the Divine Thought manifests itself objectively, energy faithfully
reproducing the outlines of that whose "privation" is
already in the divine mind. Only it must not be understood that
this Thought creates matter, or even the privations. No;
it develops from its latent outline but the design for the future
form; the matter which serves to make this design having always
been in existence, and having been prepared to form a human body,
through a series of progressive transformations, as the result
of evolution. Forms pass; ideas that created them and the material
which gave them objectiveness, remain. These models, as yet devoid
of immortal spirits, are "Elementals"--better yet, psychic
embryos--which, when their time arrives, die out of the invisible
world, and are born into this visible one as human infants, receiving
in transitu that Divine Breath called Spirit which completes
the perfect man. This class cannot communicate, either subjectively
or objectively, with men.
The essential difference between the body of such an embryo and
an Elemental proper is that the embryo--the future man--contains
in himself a portion of each of the four great kingdoms, to wit:
fire, air, earth and water; while the Elemental has but a portion
of one of such kingdoms. As for instance, the salamander, or the
fire Elemental, which has but a portion of the primordial fire
and none other. Man, being higher than they, the law of evolution
finds its illustration of all four in him. It results therefore,
that the Elementals of the fire are not found in water, nor those
of air in the fire kingdom. And yet, inasmuch as a portion of
water is found not only in man but also in other bodies, Elementals
exist really in and among each other in every substance just as
the spiritual world exists and is in the material. But the last
are the Elementals in their most primordial and latent state.
Another class are those elemental beings which will never evolve
into human beings in the present Manvantara, but occupy, as it
were, a specific step of the ladder of being, and, by comparison
with the others, may properly be called nature-spirits, or cosmic
agents of nature, each being confined to its own element and never
transgressing the bounds of others. These are what Tertullian
called the "princes of the powers of the air."
In the teachings of Eastern Kabalists, and of the Western Rosicrucians
and Alchemists, they are spoken of as the creatures evolved in
and from the four kingdoms of earth, air, fire and water, and
are respectively called gnomes, sylphs, salamanders and undines.
Forces of nature, they will either operate effects as the servile
agents of general law, or may be employed, as shown above, by
the disembodied spirits--whether pure or impure--and by living
adepts of magic and sorcery, to produce desired phenomenal results.
Such beings never become men.9
Under the general designation of fairies, and fays, these spirits
of the elements appear in the myths, fables, traditions, or poetry
of all nations, ancient and modern. Their names are legion--peris,
devs, djins, sylvans, satyrs, fauns, elves, dwarfs, trolls, norns,
nisses, kobolds, brownies, necks, stromkarls, undines, nixies,
goblins, ponkes, banshees, kelpies, pixies, moss people, good
people, good neighbours, wild women, men of peace, white ladies--and
many more. They have been seen, feared, blessed, banned, and invoked
in every quarter of the globe and in every age. Shall we then
concede that all who have met them were hallucinated?
These Elementals are the principal agents of disembodied but never
visible "shells" taken for spirits at séances,
and are, as shown above, the producers of all the phenomena
except the subjective.
In the course of this article we will adopt the term "Elemental"
to designate only these nature-spirits, attaching it to no other
spirit or monad that has been embodied in human form. Elementals,
as said already, have no form, and in trying to describe what
they are, it is better to say that they are "centres of
force" having instinctive desires, but no consciousness,
as we understand it. Hence their acts may be good or bad indifferently.
This class is believed to possess but one of the three chief attributes
of man. They have neither immortal spirits nor tangible bodies;
only astral forms, which partake, to a distinguishing degree,
of the element to which they belong and also of the ether. They
are a combination of sublimated matter and a rudimental mind.
Some remain throughout several cycles changeless, but still have
no separate individuality, acting collectively, so to say. Others,
of certain elements and species, change form under a fixed law
which Kabalists explain. The most solid of their bodies is ordinarily
just immaterial enough to escape perception by our physical eyesight,
but not so unsubstantial but that they can be perfectly recognized
by the inner or clairvoyant vision. They not only exist and can
all live in ether, but can handle and direct it for the production
of physical effects, as readily as we can compress air or water
for the same purpose by pneumatic and hydraulic apparatus; in
which occupation they are readily helped by the "human elementaries,"
or the "shells." More than this; they can so condense
it as to make for themselves tangible bodies, which by their Protean
powers they can cause to assume such likeness as they choose,
by taking as their models the portraits they find stamped in the
memory of the persons present. It is not necessary that the sitter
should be thinking at the moment of the one represented. His image
may have faded many years before. The mind receives indelible
impression even from chance acquaintances or persons encountered
but once. As a few seconds' exposure of the sensitized photograph
plate is all that is requisite to preserve indefinitely the image
of the sitter, so is it with the mind.
According to the doctrine of Proclus, the uppermost regions from
the Zenith of the Universe to the Moon belonged to the Gods or
Planetary Spirits, according to their hierarchies and classes.
The highest among them were the twelve Huper-ouranioi, or Super-celestial
Gods, with whole legions of subordinate Daimons at their command.
They are followed next in rank and power by the Egkosmioi, the
Inter-cosmic Gods, each of these presiding over a great number
of Daimons, to whom they impart their power and change it from
one to another at will. These are evidently the personified forces
of nature in their mutual correlation, the latter being represented
by the third class, or the Elementals we have just described.
Further on he shows, on the principle of the Hermetic axiom--of
types, and prototypes--that the lower spheres have their subdivisions
and classes of beings as well as the upper celestial ones, the
former being always subordinate to the higher ones. He held that
the four elements are all filled with Daimons, maintaining with
Aristotle that the universe is full, and that there is no void
in nature. The Daimons of the earth, air, fire, and water are
of an elastic, ethereal, semi-corporeal essence. It is these classes
which officiate as intermediate agents between the Gods and men.
Although lower in intelligence than the sixth order of
the higher Daimons, these beings preside directly over the elements
and organic life. They direct the growth, the inflorescence, the
properties, and various changes of plants. They are the personified
ideas or virtues shed from the heavenly Hylê into the inorganic
matter; and, as the vegetable kingdom is one remove higher than
the mineral, these emanations from the celestial Gods take form
and being in the plant, they become its soul. It is that
which Aristotle's doctrine terms the form in the
three principles of natural bodies, classified by him as privation,
matter, and form. His philosophy teaches that besides the original
matter, another principle is necessary to complete the triune
nature of every particle, and this is form; an invisible, but
still, in an ontological sense of the word, a substantial being,
really distinct from matter proper. Thus, in an animal or a plant--besides
the bones, the flesh, the nerves, the brains, and the blood, in
the former; and besides the pulpy matter, tissues, fibres, and
juice in the latter, which blood and juice, by circulating' through
the veins and fibres, nourishes all parts of both animal and plant;
and besides the animal spirits, which are the principles of motion,
and the chemical energy which is transformed into vital force
in the green leaf--there must be a substantial form, which Aristotle
called in the horse, the horse's soul; Proclus, the daimon
of every mineral, plant, or animal, and the mediæval
philosophers, the elementary spirits of the four
kingdoms.
All this is held in our century as "poetical metaphysics"
and gross superstition. Still on strictly ontological principles,
there is, in these old hypotheses, some shadow of probability,
some clue to the perplexing missing links of exact science. The
latter has become so dogmatic of late, that all that lies beyond
the ken of inductive science is termed imaginary; and we
find Professor Joseph Le Conte stating that some of the best
scientists
"ridicule the use of the term 'vital force,' or vitality,
as a remnant of superstition.''10 De Candolle
suggests the term "vital movement," instead of vital
force;11 thus preparing for a final scientific leap
which will transform the immortal, thinking man, into an automaton
with clock-work inside him. "But," objects Le Conte,
"can we conceive of movement without force? And if the movement
is peculiar, so also is the form of force."
In the Jewish Kabalah, the nature-spirits were known under the
general name of Shedim, and divided into four classes. The Hindûs
call them Bhûtas and Devas, and the Persians called them
all Devs; the Greeks indistinctly designated them as Daimons;
the Egyptians knew them as Afrites. The ancient Mexicans, says
Kaiser, believed in numerous spirit-abodes, into one of which
the shades of innocent children were placed until final disposal;
into another, situated in the sun, ascended the valiant souls
of heroes; while the hideous spectres of incorrigible sinner were
sentenced to wander and despair in subterranean caves, held in
the bonds of the earth-atmosphere, unwilling and unable to liberate
themselves. This proves pretty clearly that the "ancient"
Mexicans knew something of the doctrines of Kâma Loka. These
passed their time in communicating with mortals, and frightening
those who could see them. Some of the African tribes know them
as Yowahoos. In the Indian Pantheon, as we have often remarked,
there are no less than 330,000,000 of various kinds of spirits,
including Elementals, some of which were termed by the Brâhmans,
Daityas. These beings are known by the adepts to be attracted
toward certain quarters of the heavens by something of the same
mysterious property which makes the magnetic needle turn toward
the north, and certain plants to obey the same attraction If we
will only bear in mind the fact that the rushing of planets through
space must create as absolute a disturbance in the plastic and
attenuated medium of the ether, as the passage of a cannon shot
does in the air, or that of a steamer in the water, and on a cosmic
scale, we can understand that certain planetary aspects, admitting
our premises to be true, may produce much more violent agitation
and cause much stronger currents to flow in a given direction
than others. We can also see why, by such various aspects of the
stars, shoals of friendly or hostile Elementals might be poured
in upon our atmosphere, or some particular portion of it, and
make the fact appreciable by the effects which ensue. If our royal
astronomers are able, at times, to predict cataclysms, such as
earthquakes and inundations, the Indian astrologers and mathematicians
can do so, and have so done, with far more precision and correctness,
though they act on lines which to the modern sceptic appear ridiculously
absurd. The various races of spirits are also believed to have
a special sympathy with certain human temperaments, and to more
readily exert power over such than others. Thus, a bilious, lymphatic,
nervous, or sanguine person would be affected favourably or otherwise
by conditions of the astral light, resulting from the different
aspects of the planetary bodies. Having reached this general principle,
after recorded observations extending over an indefinite series
of years, or ages, the adept astrologer would require only to
know what the planetary aspects were at a given anterior date,
and to apply his knowledge of the succeeding changes in the heavenly
bodies, to be able to trace, with approximate accuracy, the varying
fortunes of the personage whose horoscope was required, and even
to predict the future. The accuracy of the horoscope would depend,
of course, no less upon the astrologer's astronomical erudition
than upon his knowledge of the occult forces and races of nature.
Pythagoras taught that the entire universe is one vast series
of mathematically correct combinations. Plato shows the Deity
geometrizing. The world is sustained by the same law of equilibrium
and harmony upon which it was built. The centripetal force could
not manifest itself without the centrifugal in the harmonious
revolutions of the spheres; all forms are the product of this
dual force in nature. Thus, to illustrate our case, we may designate
the spirit as the centrifugal, and the soul as the centripetal,
spiritual energies. When in perfect harmony, both forces produce
one result; break or damage the centripetal motion of the earthly
soul tending toward the center which attracts it; arrest its progress
by clogging it with a heavier weight of matter than it can bear,
and the harmony of the whole, which was its life, is destroyed.
Individual life can only be continued if sustained by this two-fold
force. The least deviation from harmony damages it; when it is
destroyed beyond redemption, the forces separate and the form
is gradually annihilated. After the death of the depraved and
the wicked, arrives the critical moment. If during life the ultimate
and desperate effort of the inner self to reunite itself with
the faintly-glimmering ray of its divine monad is neglected; if
this ray is allowed to be more and more shut out by the thickening
crust of matter, the soul, once freed from the body, follows its
earthly attractions, and is magnetically drawn into and held within
the dense fogs of the material atmosphere of the Kâma Loka.
Then it begins to sink lower and lower, until it finds itself,
when returned to consciousness, in what the ancients termed Hades,
and we--Avichî. The annihilation of such a soul is never
instantaneous; it may last centuries, perhaps; for nature never
proceeds by jumps and starts, and the astral soul of the personality
being formed of elements, the law of evolution must bide its time.
Then begins the fearful law of compensation, the Yin-youan of
the Buddhist initiates.
This class of spirits are called the "terrestrial,"
or "earthly elementaries," in contradistinction
to the other classes, as we have shown in the beginning. But there
is another and still more dangerous class. In the East, they are
known as the "Brothers of the Shadow," living men possessed
by the earth-bound elementaries; at times--their masters, but
ever in the long run falling victims to these terrible beings.
In Sikkhim and Tibet they are called Dugpas (red-caps), in contradistinction
to the Geluk-pas (yellow-caps), to which latter most of the adepts
belong. And here we must beg the reader not to misunderstand us.
For though the whole of Bûtan and Sikkhim belongs to the
old religion of the Bhons, now known generally as the Dug-pas,
we do not mean to have it understood that the whole of the population
is possessed, en masse, or that they are all sorcerers.
Among them are found as good men as anywhere else, and we speak
above only of the élite of their Lamaseries, of
a nucleus of priests, "devil-dancers," and fetish worshippers,
whose dreadful and mysterious rites are utterly unknown to the
greater part of the population. Thus there are two classes of
these terrible "Brothers of the Shadow"--the living
and the dead. Both cunning, low, vindictive, and seeking
to retaliate their sufferings upon humanity, they become, until
final annihilation, vampires, ghouls, and prominent actors at
séances. These are the leading "stars,"
on the great spiritual stage of "materialization," which
phenomenon they perform with the help of the more intelligent
of the genuine-born "elemental" creatures, which hover
around and welcome them with delight in their own spheres. Henry
Kunrath, the great German Kabalist, in his rare work, Amphitheatrum
Sapientæ Æternæ has a plate with representations
of the four classes of these human "elementary spirits."
Once past the threshold of the sanctuary of initiation, once that
an adept has lifted the "Veil of Isis," the mysterious
and jealous Goddess, he has nothing to fear; but till then he
is in constant danger.
Magi and theurgic philosophers objected most severely to the "evocation
of souls." "Bring her (the soul) not forth, lest in
departing she retain something," says Psellus. "It becomes
you not to behold them before your body is initiated, since,
by always alluring, they seduce the souls of the uninitiated"--says
the same philosopher, in another passage.
They objected to it for several good reasons. 1. "It is extremely
difficult to distinguish a good Daimon from a bad one," says
Iamblichus. 2. If the shell of a good man succeeds in penetrating
the density of the earth's atmosphere--always oppressive to it,
Often hateful--still there is a danger that it cannot avoid; the
soul is unable to come into proximity with the material world
without that on "departing, she retains something,"
that is to say, she contaminates her purity, for which she has
to suffer more or less after her departure. Therefore, the true
theurgist will avoid causing any more suffering to this pure denizen
of the higher sphere than is absolutely required by the interests
of humanity. It is only the practitioners of black magic--such
as the Dugpas of Bhûtan and Sikkhim--who compel the presence,
by the powerful incantations of necromancy, of the tainted souls
of such as have lived bad lives, and are ready to aid their selfish
designs.
Of intercourse with the Augœides, through the mediumistic
powers of subjective mediums, we elsewhere speak.
The theurgists employed chemicals and mineral substances to chase
away evil spirits. Of the latter, a stone called Mnizurin was
one of the most powerful agents. "When you shall see a terrestrial
Daimon approaching, exclaim, and sacrifice the stone Mnizurin"--exclaims
a Zoroastrian Oracle (Psel., 40).
These "Daimons" seek to introduce themselves into the
bodies of the simple-minded and idiots, and remain there until
dislodged therefrom by a powerful and pure will. Jesus,
Apollonius, and some of the apostles, had the power to cast out
"devils," by purifying the atmosphere within and
without the patient, so as to force the unwelcome tenant
to flight. Certain volatile salts are particularly obnoxious to
them; Zoroaster is corroborated in this by Mr. C. F. Varley, and
ancient science is justified by modern. The effect of some chemicals
used in a saucer and placed under the bed, by Mr. Varley, of London,12
for the purpose of keeping away some disagreeable physical phenomena
at night, are corroborative of this great truth. Pure or even
simply inoffensive human spirits fear nothing, for having rid
themselves of terrestrial matter, terrestrial compounds
can affect them in no wise; such spirits are like a breath.
Not so with the earth-bound souls and the nature-spirits.
It is for these carnal terrestrial Larvæ, degraded human
spirits, that the ancient Kabalists entertained a hope of reïncarnation.
But when, or how? At a fitting moment, and if helped by a sincere
desire for his amendment and repentance by some strong, sympathizing
person, or the will of an adept, or even a desire emanating from
the erring spirit himself, provided it is powerful enough to make
him throw off the burden of sinful matter. Losing all consciousness,
the once bright monad is caught once more into the vortex of our
terrestrial evolution, and repasses the subordinate kingdoms,
and again breathes as a living child. To compute the time necessary
for the completion of this process would be impossible. Since
there is no perception of time in eternity, the attempt would
be a mere waste of labour.
Speaking of the elementary, Porphyry says:
Homer describes them in the following terms:
The latter proves that these Gods were kind and beneficent Daimons,
and that, whether they were disembodied spirits or elemental
beings, they were no "devils."
The language of Porphyry, who was himself a direct disciple of
Plotinus, is still more explicit as to the nature of these spirits.
Further, he says:
Iamblichus, the great theurgist of the Neoplatonic school, a man
skilled in sacred magic, teaches that:
Further, he corroborates Porphyry, and tells how that:
Even the most practised theurgists sometimes found danger in their
dealings with certain elementaries, and we have Iamblichus stating
that:
The ancients, who named but four elements, made of ether a fifth.
On account of its essence being made divine by the unseen presence,
it was considered as a medium between this world and the next.
They held that when the directing intelligences retired from any
portion of ether, one of the four kingdoms which they are bound
to superintend, the space was left in possession of evil. An
adept who prepared to converse with the "invisibles,"
had to know his ritual well, and be perfectly acquainted with
the conditions required for the perfect equilibrium of the four
elements in the astral light. First of all, he must purify the
essence, and within the circle in which he sought to attract the
pure spirits, equilibrize the elements, so as to prevent the ingress
of the Elementals into their respective spheres. But woe to the
imprudent enquirer who ignorantly trespasses upon forbidden ground;
danger will beset him at every step. He evokes powers that he
cannot control; he arouses sentries which allow only their masters
to pass. For, in the words of the immortal Rosicrucian:
The spirit of harmony and union will depart from the elements,
disturbed by the imprudent hand; and the currents of blind forces
will become immediately infested by numberless creatures of matter
and instinct--the bad demons of the theurgists, the devils of
theology; the gnomes, salamanders, sylphs, and undines will assail
he rash performer under multifarious aërial forms. Unable
to invent anything, they will search your memory to its very depths;
hence the nervous exhaustion and mental oppression of certain
sensitive natures at spiritual circles. The Elementals will bring
to light long-forgotten remembrances of the past; forms, images,
sweet mementoes, and familiar sentences, long since faded from
our own remembrance, but vividly preserved in the inscrutable
depths of our memory and on the astral tablets of the imperishable
"Book of Life."
The author of the Homoiomerian system of philosophy, Anaxagoras
of Clazomene, firmly believed that the spiritual prototypes of
all things, as well as their elements, were to be found in the
boundless ether, where they were generated, whence they evolved,
and whither they returned from earth. In common with the
Hindûs
who had personified their Âkâsha, and made of it a
deific entity, the Greeks and Latins had deified Æther.
Virgil calls Zeus, Pater Omnipotens Æther,21
Magnus, the Great God, Ether.
These beings, the elemental spirits of the Kabalists,22
are those whom the Christian clergy denounce as "devils,"
the enemies of mankind!
Every organized thing in this world, visible as well as invisible,
has an element appropriate to itself. The fish lives and breathes
in the water; the plant consumes carbonic acid, which for animals
and men produces death; some beings are fitted for rarefied strata
of air, others exist only in the densest. Life to some is dependent
on sunlight, to others, upon darkness; and so the wise economy
of nature adapts to each existing condition some living form.
These analogies warrant the conclusion that, not only is there
no unoccupied portion of universal nature, but also that for each
thing that has life, special conditions are furnished, and, being
furnished, they are necessary. Now, assuming that there is an
invisible side to the universe, the fixed habit of nature warrants
the conclusion that this half is occupied, like the other half;
and that each group of its occupants is supplied with the indispensable
conditions of existence. It is as illogical to imagine that identical
conditions are furnished to all, as it would be to maintain such
a theory respecting the inhabitants of the domain of visible nature.
That there are "spirits" implies that there is a diversity
of "spirits"; for men differ, and human "spirits"
are but disembodied men.
To say that all "spirits" are alike, or fitted to the
same atmosphere, or possessed of like powers, or governed by the
same attractions--electric, magnetic, odic, astral, it matters
not which--is as absurd as though one should say that all planets
have the same nature, or that all animals are amphibious, or that
all men can be nourished on the same food. To begin with, neither
the elementals, nor the elementaries themselves, can be called
"spirits" at all. It accords with reason to suppose
that the grossest natures among them will sink to the lowest depths
of the spiritual atmosphere--in other words, be found nearest
to the earth. Inversely, the purest will be farthest away. In
what, were we to coin a word, we should call the "psychomatics"
of Occultism, it is as unwarrantable to assume that either of
these grades of ethereal beings can occupy the place, or subsist
in the conditions, of the other, as it would be in hydraulics
to expect that two liquids of different densities could exchange
their markings on the scale of Beaume's hydrometer.
Görres, describing a conversation he had with some Hindûs
of the Malabar coast, reports that upon asking them whether they
had ghosts among them, they replied:
Porphyry presents to us some hideous facts whose verity is
substantiated
in the experience of every student of magic. He writes:
Though spiritualists discredit them ever so much, these nature-spirits--as
much as the "elementaries," the "empty shells,"
as the Hindus call them--are realities. If the gnomes, sylphs,
salamanders and undines of the Rosicrucians existed in their days,
they must exist now. Bulwer Lytton's "Dweller on the Threshold"
is a modern conception, modelled on the ancient type of the Sulanuth
of the Hebrews and Egyptians, which is mentioned in the Book
of Jasher.26
The Christians are very wrong to treat them indiscriminately,
as "devils," "imps of Satan," and to give
them like characteristics names. The elementals are nothing of
the kind, but simply creatures of ethereal matter, irresponsible,
and neither good nor bad, unless influenced by a superior intelligence.
It is very extraordinary to hear devout Catholics abuse and misrepresent
the nature-spirits, when one of their greatest authorities, Clement
the Alexandrian, has described these creatures as they really
are. Clement, who perhaps had been a theurgist as well as an Neoplatonist,
and thus argued upon good authority, remarks, that it is absurd
to call them devils,27 for they are only
inferior
angels, "the powers which inhabit elements, move the winds
and distribute showers, and as such are agents and subject to
God."28 Origen, who before he became a
Christian
also belonged to the Platonic school, is of the same opinion.
Porphyry, as we have seen, describes these daimons more carefully
than any one else.
The Secret Doctrine teaches that man, if he wins immortality,
will remain for ever the septenary trinity that he is in
life, and will continue so throughout all the spheres. The astral
body, which in this life is covered by a gross physical envelope,
becomes--when relieved of that covering by the process of corporeal
death--in its turn the shell of another and more ethereal body.
This begins developing from the moment of death, and becomes perfected
when the astral body of the earthly form finally separates from
it. This process, they say, is repeated at every new transition
from sphere to sphere of life. But the immortal soul, the "silvery
spark," observed by Dr. Fenwick in Margrave's brain (in Bulwer
Lytton's Strange Story), and not found by him in the animals,
never changes, but remains indestructible "by aught that
shatters its tabernacle." The descriptions by Porphyry and
Iamblichus and others, of the spirits of animals, which inhabit
the astral light, are corroborated by those of many of the most
trustworthy and intelligent clairvoyants. Sometimes the animal
forms are even made visible to every person at a spiritual circle,
by being materialized. In his People from the Other World,
Colonel H. S. Olcott describes a materialized squirrel which
followed a spirit-woman into the view of the spectators, disappeared
and reappeared before their eyes several times, and finally followed
the spirit into the cabinet. The facts given in modern spiritualistic
literature are numerous and many of them are trustworthy.
As to the human spirit, the notions of the older philosophers
and mediæval Kabalists while differing in some particulars,
agreed on the whole; so that the doctrine of one may be viewed
as the doctrine of the other. The most substantial difference
consisted in the location of the immortal or divine spirit of
man. While the ancient Neoplatonists held that the Augœides
never descends hypostatically into the living man, but only more
or less sheds its radiance on the inner man--the astral soul--the
Kabalists of the middle ages maintained that the spirit, detaching
itself from the ocean of light and spirit, entered into man's
soul, where it remained through life imprisoned in the astral
capsule. This difference was the result of the belief of Christian
Kabalists, more or less, in the dead letter of the allegory of
the fall of man. The soul, they said, became, through the "fall
of Adam," contaminated with the world of matter, or Satan.
Before it could appear with its enclosed divine spirit in the
presence of the Eternal, it had to purify itself of the impurities
of darkness. They compared--
On the other hand, the philosophers who explained the "fall
into generation" in their own way, viewed spirit as something
wholly distinct from the soul. They allowed its presence in the
astral capsule only so far as the spiritual emanations or rays
of the "shining one" were concerned. Man and his spiritual
soul or the monad--i.e., spirit and its vehicle--had to
conquer their immortality by ascending toward the unity with which,
if successful, they were finally linked, and into which they were
absorbed, so to say. The individualization of man after death
depended on the spirit, not on his astral or human soul--Manas
and its vehicle Kâma Rûpa--and body. Although
the word "personality," in the sense in which it is
usually understood, is an absurdity, if applied literally to our
immortal essence, still the latter is a distinct entity, immortal
and eternal, per se; and when (as in the case of criminals
beyond redemption) the shining thread which links the spirit to
the soul, from the moment of the birth of a child, is violently
snapped, and the disembodied personal entity is left to share
the fate of the lower animals, to gradually dissolve into ether,
fall into the terrible state of Âvîchi, or
disappear entirely in the eighth sphere and have its complete
personality annihilated--even then the spirit remains a distinct
being. It becomes a planetary spirit, an angel; for the gods of
the Pagan or the archangels of the Christian, the direct emanations
of the One Cause, notwithstanding the hazardous statement of Swedenborg,
never were nor will they be men, on our planet, at least.
This specialization has been in all ages the stumbling-block of
metaphysicians. The whole esotericism of the Buddhistic philosophy
is based on this mysterious teaching, understood by so few persons,
and so totally misrepresented by many of the most learned scholars.
Even metaphysicians are too inclined to confound the effect with
the cause. A person may have won his immortal life, and remain
the same inner self he was on earth, throughout eternity;
but this does not imply necessarily that he must either remain
the Mr. Smith or Brown he was on earth, or lose his individuality.
Therefore, the astral soul, i.e., the personality, like
the terrestrial body and the lower portion of the human soul
of man, may, in the dark hereafter, be absorbed into the cosmical
ocean of sublimated elements, and cease to feel its personal individuality,
if it did not deserve to soar higher, and the divine spirit, or
spiritual individuality, still remain an unchanged entity, though
this terrestrial experience of his emanations may be totally obliterated
at the instant of separation from the unworthy vehicle.
If the "spirit," or the divine portion of the soul,
is preëxistent as a distinct being from all eternity, as Origen,
Synesius, and other Christian fathers and philosophers taught,
and if it is the same, and nothing more than the metaphysically-objective
soul, how can it be otherwise than eternal? And what matters it
in such a case, whether man leads an animal or a pure life, if,
do what he may, he can never lose his personality? This
doctrine is as pernicious in its consequences as that of vicarious
atonement. Had the latter dogma, in company with the false idea
that we are all personally immortal, been demonstrated to the
world in its true light, humanity would have been bettered by
its propagation. Crime and sin would be avoided, not for fear
of earthly punishment, or of a ridiculous hell, but for the sake
of that which lies the most deeply rooted in our nature--the desire
of a personal and distinct life in the hereafter, the positive
assurance that we cannot win it unless we "take the kingdom
of heaven by violence," and the conviction that neither human
prayers nor the blood of another man will save us from personal
destruction after death, unless we firmly link ourselves during
our terrestrial life with our own immortal spirit--our only
personal God.
Pythagoras, Plato, Timæus of Locris, and the whole Alexandrian
School derived the soul from the universal World-Soul; and a portion
of the latter was, according to their own teachings--ether; something
of such a fine nature as to be perceived only by our inner sight.
Therefore, it cannot be the essence of the Monas, or Cause,29
because the Anima Mundi is but the effect, the objective
emanation of the former. Both the divine spiritual soul and the
human soul are preëxistent. But, while the former exists
as a distinct entity, an individualization, the soul (the vehicle
of the former) exists only as preëxisting matter, an unscient
portion of an intelligent whole. Both were originally formed from
the Eternal Ocean of Light; but as the Theosophists expressed
it, there is a visible as well as invisible spirit in fire. They
made a difference between the Anima Bruta and the Anima Divina.
Empedocles firmly believed all men and animals to possess two
souls; and in Aristotle we find that he calls one the reasoning
soul, Nous, and the other, the animal soul, Psuche. According
to these philosophers, the reasoning soul comes from without
the Universal Soul (i.e., from a source higher than
the Universal Soul--in its cosmic sense; it is the Universal Spirit,
the seventh principle of the Universe in its totality), and the
other from within. This divine and superior region,
in which they located the invisible and supreme deity, was considered
by them (by Aristotle himself, who was not an initiate) as a fifth
element--whereas it is the seventh in the Esoteric Philosophy,
or Mûlaprakriti--purely spiritual and divine, whereas the
Anima Mundi proper was considered as composed of a fine, igneous,
and ethereal nature spread throughout the Universe, in short--Ether.30
The Stoics, the greatest materialists of ancient days, excepted
the Divine Principle and Divine Soul from any such a corporeal
nature. Their modern commentators and admirers, greedily seizing
the opportunity, built on this ground the supposition that the
Stoics believed in neither God nor soul, the essence of matter.
Most certainly Epicurus did not believe in God or soul as understood
by either ancient or modern theists. But Epicurus, whose doctrine
(militating directly against the agency of a Supreme Being and
Gods, in the formation or government of the world) placed him
far above the Stoics in atheism and materialism, nevertheless
taught that the soul is of a fine, tender essence formed from
the smoothest, roundest, and finest atoms--which description still
brings us to the same sublimated ether. He further believed in
the Gods. Arnobius, Tertullian, Irenæus, and Origen, notwithstanding
their Christianity, believed, with the more modern Spinoza and
Hobbes, that the soul was corporeal, though of a very fine nature--an
anthropomorphic and personal something, i.e., corporeal,
finite and conditioned. Can it under such conditions become immortal?
Can the mutable become the immutable?
This doctrine of the possibility of losing one's soul and, hence,
individuality, militates with the ideal theories and progressive
ideas of some spiritualists, though Swedenborg fully adopts it.
They will never accept the kabalistic doctrine which teaches that
it is only through observing the law of harmony that individual
life hereafter can be obtained; and that the farther the inner
and outer man deviate from this fount of harmony, whose source
lies in our divine spirit, the more difficult it is to regain
the ground.
But while the spiritualists and other adherents of Christianity
have little, if any, perception of this fact of the possible death
and obliteration of the human personality by the separation of
the immortal part from the perishable, some Swedenborgians--those,
at least, who follow the spirit of a philosophy, not merely the
dead letter of a teaching--fully comprehend it. One of the most
respected ministers of the New Church, the Rev. Chauncey Giles,
D.D., of New York, recently elucidated the subject in a public
discourse as follows. Physical death, or the death of the body,
was a provision of the divine economy for the benefit of man,
a provision by means of which he attained the higher ends of his
being. But there is another death which is the interruption of
the divine order and the destruction of every human element in
man's nature, and every possibility of human happiness. This is
the spiritual death which takes place before the dissolution of
the body. "There may be a vast development of man's natural
mind without that development being accompanied by a particle
of the divine love, or of unselfish love of man." When one
falls into a love of self and love of the world, with its pleasures,
losing the divine love of God and of the neighbour, he falls from
life to death. The higher principles which constitute the essential
elements of his humanity perish, and he lives only on the natural
plane of his faculties. Physically he exists, spiritually he is
dead. To all that pertains to the higher and the only enduring
phase of existence he is as much dead as his body becomes dead
to all the activities, delights, and sensations of the world when
the spirit has left it. This spiritual death results from disobedience
of the laws of spiritual life, which is followed by the same penalty
as the disobedience of the laws of the natural life. But the spiritually
dead have still their delights; they have their intellectual endowments,
and power, and intense activities. All the animal delights are
theirs, and to multitudes of men and women these constitute the
highest ideal of human happiness. The tireless pursuit of riches,
of the amusements and entertainments of social life; the cultivation
of graces of manner, of taste in dress, of social preferment,
of scientific distinction, intoxicate and enrapture these dead-alive;
but, the eloquent preacher remarks, "these creatures, with
all their graces, rich attire, and brilliant accomplishments,
are dead in the eye of the Lord and the angels, and when measured
by the only true and immutable standard have no more genuine life
than skeletons whose flesh has turned to dust."
Although we do not believe in "the Lord and the angels"--not,
at any rate, in the sense given to these terms by Swedenborg and
his followers, we nevertheless admire these feelings and fully
agree with the reverend gentleman's opinions.
A high development of the intellectual faculties does not imply
spiritual and true life. The presence in one of a highly developed
human, intellectual soul (the fifth principle, or Manas), is quite
compatible with the absence of Buddhi, or the spiritual soul.
Unless the former evolves from and develops under the beneficent
and vivifying rays of the latter, it will remain for ever but
a direct progeny of the terrestrial, lower principles, sterile
in spiritual perceptions; a magnificent, luxurious sepulchre,
full of the dry bones of decaying matter within. Many of our greatest
scientists are but animate corpses--they have no spiritual sight
because their spirits have left them, or, rather, cannot reach
them. So we might go through all ages, examine all occupations,
weigh all human attainments, and investigate all forms of society,
and we would find these spiritually dead everywhere.
Although Aristotle himself, anticipating the modern physiologists,
regarded the human mind as a material substance, and ridiculed
the hylozoïsts, nevertheless he fully believed in the existence
of a "double" soul, or soul plus spirit, as one
can see in his De Generat. et Corrupt. (Lib. ii.). He laughed
at Strabo for believing that any particles of matter, per se,
could have life and intellect in themselves sufficient to
fashion by degrees such a multiform world as ours.31
Aristotle is indebted for the sublime morality of his Nichomachean
Ethics to a thorough study of the Pythagorean Ethical Fragments;
for the latter can be easily shown to have been the source at
which he gathered his ideas, though he might not have sworn "by
him who the Tetraktys found."32 But indeed
our
men of science know nothing certain about Aristotle. His philosophy
is so abtruse that he constantly leaves his reader to supply by
the imagination the missing links of his logical deductions. Moreover,
we know that before his works ever reached our scholars, who delight
in his seemingly atheistical arguments in support of his doctrine
of fate, they passed through too many hands to have remained immaculate.
From Theophrastus, his legator, they passed to Neleus, whose heirs
kept them mouldering in subterranean caves for nearly 150 years;
after which, we learn that his manuscripts were copied and much
augmented by Appelicon of Theos, who supplied such paragraphs
as had become illegible, by conjectures of his own, probably
many of these drawn from the depths of his inner consciousness.
Our scholars of the nineteenth as anxious to imitate him practically
as they are to throw his inductive method and materialistic theories
at the heads of the Platonists. We invite them to collect facts
as carefully as he did, instead of denying those they know
nothing about.
What we have said here and elsewhere of the variety of
"spirits" and other invisible beings evolved in the
astral light, and what we now mean to say of mediums and the tendency
of their mediumship, is not based upon conjecture, but upon actual
experience and observation. There is scarcely one phase of mediumship,
of either kind, that we have not seen exemplified during the past
thirty-five years, in various countries. India, Tibet, Borneo,
Siam, Egypt, Asia Minor, America (North and South), and other
parts of the world, have each displayed to us its peculiar phase
of mediumistic phenomena and magical power. Our varied experience
has fully corroborated the teachings of our Masters and of The
Secret Doctrine, and has taught us two important truths, viz.,
that for the exercise of "mediumship" personal purity
and the exercise of a trained and indomitable will-power are indispensable;
and that spiritualists can never assure themselves of the genuineness
of mediumistic manifestations unless they occur in the light and
under such reasonable test conditions as would make an attempted
fraud instantly noticed.
For fear of being misunderstood, we would remark that while, as
a rule, physical phenomena are produced by the nature-spirits,
of their own motion and under the impulse of the elementaries,
still genuine disembodied human spirits, may, under exceptional
circumstances--such as the aspiration of a pure, loving heart,
or under the influence of some intense thought or unsatisfied
desire, at the moment of death--manifest their presence, either
in dream, or vision, or even bring about their objective appearance--if
very soon after physical death. Direct writing may be produced
in the genuine handwriting of the "spirit," the medium
being influenced by a process unknown as much to himself as to
the modern spiritualists, we fear. But what we maintain and shall
maintain to the last is, that no genuine human spirit can
materialize, i.e., clothe his monad with an objective form.
Even for the rest it must be a mighty attraction indeed to draw
a pure, disembodied spirit from its radiant, Devachanic state--its
home--into the foul atmosphere from which it escaped upon leaving
its earthly body.
When the possible nature of the manifesting intelligences, which
science believes to be a "psychic force," and spiritualists
the identical "spirits of the dead," is better known,
then will academicians and believers turn to the old philosophers
for information. They may in their indomitable pride, that becomes
so often stubbornness and arrogance, do as Dr. Charcot, of the
Salpêtrière of Paris, has done: deny for years the
existence of Mesmerism and its phenomena, to accept and finally
preach it in public lectures--only under the assumed name, Hypnotism.
We have found in spiritualistic journals many instances where
apparitions of departed pet dogs and other animals have been seen.
Therefore, upon spiritualistic testimony, we must think that such
animal "spirits" do appear although we reserve the right
of concurring with the ancients that the forms are but tricks
of the elementals. Notwithstanding every proof and probability
the spiritualists will, nevertheless, maintain that it is the
"spirits" of the departed human beings that are at work
even in the "materialization" of animals. We will now
examine with their permission the pro and con of
the mooted question. Let us for a moment imagine an intelligent
orang-outang or some African anthropoid ape disembodied, i.e.,
deprived of its physical and in possession of an astral, if not
an immortal body. Once open the door of communication between
the terrestrial and the spiritual world, what prevents the ape
from producing physical phenomena such as he sees human spirits
produce? And why may not these excel in cleverness and ingenuity
many of those which have been witnessed in spiritualistic circles?
Let spiritualists answer. The orang-outang of Borneo is little,
if any, inferior to the savage man in intelligence. Mr. Wallace
and other great naturalists give instances of its wonderful acuteness,
although its brains are inferior in cubic capacity to the most
undeveloped of savages. These apes lack but speech to be men of
low grade. The sentinels placed by monkeys; the sleeping chambers
selected and built by orang-outangs; their prevision of danger
and calculations, which show more than instinct; their choice
of leaders whom they obey; and the exercise of many of their faculties,
certainly entitle them to a place at least on a level with many
a flat-headed Australian. Says Mr. Wallace, "The mental requirements
of savages, and the faculties actually exercised by them, are
very little above those of the animals."
Now, people assume that there can be no apes in the other world,
because apes have no "souls." But apes have as much
intelligence, it appears, as some men; why, then, should these
men, in no way superior to the apes, have immortal spirits, and
the apes none? The materialists will answer that neither the one
nor the other has a spirit, but that annihilation overtakes each
at physical death. But the spiritual philosophers of all times
have agreed that man occupies a step one degree higher than the
animal, and is possessed of that something which it lacks, be
he the most untutored of savages or the wisest of philosophers.
The ancients, as we have seen, taught that while man is a septenary
trinity of body, astral spirit, and immortal soul, the animal
is but a duality--i.e., having but five instead of seven
principles in him, a being having a physical body with its
astral body and life-principle, and its animal soul and vehicle
animating it. Scientists can distinguish no difference in the
elements composing the bodies of men and brutes; and the Kabalists
agree with them so far as to say that the astral bodies (or, as
the physicists would call it, the "life-principle")
of animals and men are identical in essence. Physical man
is but the highest development of animal life. If, as the scientists
tell us, even thought is matter, and every sensation
of pain or pleasure, every transient desire is accompanied by
a disturbance of ether; and those bold speculators, the authors
of the Unseen Universe believe that thought is conceived
"to affect the matter of another universe simultaneously
with this"; why, then, should not the gross, brutish thought
of an orang-outang, or a dog, impressing itself on the ethereal
waves of the astral light, as well as that of man, assure the
animal a continuity of life after death, or a "future state"?
The Kabalists held, and now hold, that it is unphilosophical to
admit that the astral body of man can survive corporeal death,
and at the same time assert that the astral body of the ape is
resolved into independent molecules. That which survives as an
individuality after the death of the body is the astral soul,
which Plato, in the Timæus and Gorgias, calls
the mortal soul, for, according to the Hermetic
doctrine, it throws off its more material particles at every progressive
change into a higher sphere.
Let us advance another step in our argument. If there is such
a thing as existence in the spiritual world after corporeal death,
then it must occur in accordance with the law of evolution. It
takes man from his place at the apex of the pyramid of matter,
and lifts him into a sphere of existence where the same inexorable
law follows him. And if it follows him, why not everything else
in nature? Why not animals and plants, which have all a life-principle,
and whose gross forms decay like his, when that life-principle
leaves them? If his astral body becomes more ethereal upon attaining
the other sphere, why not theirs?*
Lucifer, August, 1893
2 Plutarch, De Isid., ch. xxv, p. 360.
3 De Natura Deorum, lib. i. Cap. xviii.
4 Let the student consult The Secret Doctrine
on this matter, and he will there find full explanations.
5 In order to create a blind, or throw a veil upon
the mystery of primordial evolution, the later Brâhmans,
with a view also to serve orthodoxy, explained the two, by an
invented fable; the first Pitris were "sons of God"
and offended Brahmâ by refusing to sacrifice to him, for
which crime, the Creator cursed them to become fools, a
curse they could escape only by accepting their own sons as instructors
and addressing them as their Fathers--Pitris. This is the
exoteric version.
6 We find an echo of this in the Codex
Nazaræus.
Bahak-Zivo, the "father of Genii" (the seven) is
ordered to construct creatures. But, as he is "ignorant of
Orcus" and unacquainted with "the consuming fire which
is wanting in light," he fails to do so and calls in Fetahil,
a still purer spirit, to his aid, who fails still worse and sits
in the mud (Ilus, Chaos, Matter) and wonders why the living
fire is so changed. It is only when the "Spirit"
(Soul) steps on the stage of creation (the feminine Anima Mundi
of the Nazarenes and Gnostics) and awakens Karabtanos--the spirit
of matter and concupiscence--who consents to help his mother,
that the "Spiritus" conceives and bring forth "Seven
Figures," and again "Seven" and once more "Seven"
(the Seven Virtues, Seven Sins and Seven Worlds). Then Fetahil
dips his hand in the Chaos and creates our planet. (See
Isis Unveiled, vol. i. 298-300 et seq.)
7 Idra Suta, Zohar, iii. 292b.
8 Of late, some narrow-minded critics--unable to understand
the high philosophy of the above doctrine, the Esoteric meaning
of which reveals when solved the widest horizons in astro-physical
as well as in psychological sciences--chuckled over and pooh-poohed
the idea of the eighth sphere, that could discover to their minds,
befogged with old and mouldy dogmas of an unscientific faith,
nothing better than our "moon in the shape of a dust-bin
to collect the sins of men!"
9 Persons who believe in clairvoyant power, but are
disposed to discredit the existing 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 29th, 1877. A thunderstorm 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.
The well-known lecturer, author, and clairvoyant, Mrs. Emma Hardinge
Britten, has published accounts of her frequent experiences with
these elemental spirits. If Spiritualists will accept her "spiritual"
experience they can hardly reject her evidence in favour of the
occult theories.
10 Correlation of Vital with Chemical and Physical
Forces, by J. Le Conte.
11 Archives des Sciences, xiv. 345, December,
1872.
12 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 14th, 1876, pp. l74, 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 at as a "superstition" the herbs and incenses
employed by Hindus, Chinese, Africans, and other races to accomplish
the self-same purpose!
13 "Of Sacrifices to Gods and
Daimons,"
chap. ii.
14 Odyssey, vii.
15 Porphyry, "Of Sacrifices to Gods and
Daimons,"
chap. ii.
16 Ibid.
17 Iamblichus, De Mysteriis Egyptorum.
18 Ibid., "On the Difference between the
Daimons, the Souls," etc.
19 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.
20 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
of these, 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.
21 Virgil, Georgica. book ii.
22 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 Neoplatonist.
"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. Det,
x. 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. So far, so good,
and he is right there, 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!!!
23 Görres, Mystique, iii; 63.
24 The ancients called the spirits of bad people
"souls";
the soul was the "larva" and "lemure." Good
human spirits became "gods."
25 Porphyry, De Sacrificiis. Chapter on the
true Cultus.
26 Chap. lxxx. vv. 19, 20. "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."
27 Strom., vi. 17, § 159.
28 Ibid., vi. 3, §30.
29 As says Krishna--who is at the same time Purusha
and Prakriti in its totality, and the seventh principle,
the divine spirit in man--in the Bhagavad Gita: "I
arn the Cause. I am the production and dissolution
of the whole of Nature. On me is all the Universe suspended as
pearls upon a string." (Ch. vii.) "Even though myself
unborn, of changeless essence, and the Lord of all existence,
yet in presiding over Nature (Prakriti) which is mine, I am born
but through my own Mâyâ [the mystic power of Self-ideation,
the Eternal Thought in the Eternal Mind]." (Ch. iv.)
30 Ether is the Âkâsha of the Hindus.
Âkâsha
is Prakriti, or the totality of the manifested Universe, while
Purusha is the Universal Spirit, higher than the Universal Soul.
31 De Part., i. 1.
32 A Pythagorean oath. The Pythagoreans swore by their
Master.
*The article here comes to an abrupt termination--whether it
was
ever finished or whether some of the MS. was lost, it is impossible
to say.--EDS. [Lucifer].
After death, the soul (the spirit) continueth to linger in the
aërial body (astral form), till it is entirely purified from
all angry and voluptuous passions . . . then doth it put off by
a second dying the aërial body as it did the earthly one.
Whereupon, the ancients say that there is a celestial body always
joined with the soul, which is immortal, luminous, and star-like--
And of these souls the moon is the element, because souls resolve
into her, as the bodies of the deceased do into earth. Those,
indeed, who have been virtuous and honest, living a quiet and
philosophical life, without embroiling themselves in troublesome
affairs, are quickly resolved; being left by the nous (understanding)
and no longer using the corporeal passions, they incontinently
vanish away.8
These invisible beings have been receiving from men honours as
gods; . . . a universal belief makes them capable of becoming
very malevolent; it proves that their wrath is kindled against
those who neglect to offer them a legitimate worship.13
Our gods appear to us when we offer them sacrifice . . . sitting
themselves at our tables, they partake of our festival
meals.
Whenever they meet on his travels a solitary Phœnician, they
serve to him as guides, and otherwise manifest their presence.
We can say that our piety approaches us to them as much
as crime and bloodshed unite the Cyclopes and the ferocious race
of Giants.14
Daimons are invisible; but they know how to clothe themselves
with forms and configurations subjected to numerous variations,
which can be explained by their nature having much of the corporeal
in itself. Their abode is in the neighbourhood of the earth
. . . and when they can escape the vigilance of the good Daimons,
there is no mischief they win not tare commit. One day they
will employ brute force; another, cunning.15
It is a child's play for them to arouse in us vile passions, to
impart to societies and nations turbulent doctrines, provoking
wars, seditions, and other public calamities, and then tell you
"that all of these are the work of the gods." . . .
These spirits pass their time in cheating and deceiving mortals,
creating around them illusions and prodigies; their greatest
ambition is to pass as gods and souls (disembodied
spirits).16
Good Daimons appear to us in reality, while the bad ones
can manifest themselves but under the shadowy forms of phantoms.
The good ones fear not the light, while the wicked ones
require darkness . . . The sensations they excite in us make
us believe in the presence and reality of things they show, though
these things be absent.17
The gods, the angels, and the Daimons, as well as the souls,
may be summoned through evocation and prayer . . . But when,
during theurgic operations, a mistake is made, beware! Do not
imagine that you are communicating with beneficent divinities,
who have answered your earnest prayer; no, for they are bad Daimons,
only under the guise of good ones! For the elementaries often
clothe themselves with the similitude of the good, and assume
a rank very much superior to that they really occupy. Their boasting
betrays them.18
Once that thou hast resolved to become a coöperator with
the spirit of the living God, take care not to hinder Him
in His work; for, if thy heat exceeds the natural proportion,
thou hast stirr'd the wrath of the moyst19
natures,
and they will stand up against the central fire, and
the central fire against them, and there will be a terrible division
in the chaos.20
Yes, but we know them to be bad bhûts [spirits, or
rather, the "empty" ones, the "shells"], .
. . good ones can hardly ever appear at all. They are principally
the spirits of suicides and murderers, or
of those who die violent deaths. They constantly flutter about
and appear as phantoms. Night-time is favourable to them, they
seduce the feeble-minded and tempt others in a thousand different
ways.23
The soul,24 having even after death
a
certain affection for its body, art affinity proportioned to the
violence with which their union was broken, we see many spirits
hovering in despair about their earthly remains; we even see them
eagerly seeking the putrid remains of other bodies, but above
all freshly-spilled blood, which seems to impart to them for the
moment some of the faculties of life.25.
The spirit imprisoned within the soul to a drop of water enclosed
within a capsule of gelatine and thrown in the ocean; so long
as the capsule remains whole the drop of water remains isolated;
break the envelope and the drop becomes a part of the ocean--its
individual existence has ceased. So it is with the spirit. As
long as it is enclosed in its plastic mediator, or soul, it has
an individual existence. Destroy the capsule, a result which may
occur from the agonies of withered conscience, crime, and moral
disease, and the spirit returns back to its original abode. Its
individuality is gone.
1 Bulwer-Lytton, Zanoni.
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