Author: H P Blavatsky
Translator(s)/ Edito: Boris de Zirkoff
Publisher: Theosophical Publishing
Year: 2006
Language: English
Pages: 657
ISBN/UPC (if available): 817059507X
Description
The work now submitted to public judgment is the fruit of a somewhat intimate acquaintance with Eastern adepts and study of their science. It is offered to such as are willing to accept truth wherever it may be found, and to defend it, even looking popular prejudice straight in the face. It is an attempt to aid the student to detect the vital principles, which underlie the philosophical systems of old.
The book is written in all sincerity. It is meant to do even justice, and to speak the truth without malice or prejudice alike. But it show neither mercy for enthroned error, nor reverence for usurped authority. It demands for a spoliated past, that credit for its achievements which has been to long withheld. It calls for a restitution of borrowed robes, and the vindication of calumniated but glorious reputations. Toward no form of worship, no religious faith, no scientific hypothesis has its criticism been directed in any other spirit. Men and parties, sects and schools are but the mere ephemera of the world’s day. Truth, high-seated upon its rock of adamant, is alone eternal and supreme.
We believe in no Magic, which transcends the scope and capacity f the human mind, nor in “miracle,” whether divine or diabolical, if such imply a transgression of the laws of nature instituted form all eternity. Nevertheless, we accept the saying of the gifted author of Festus, that the human heart has not yet fully uttered itself, and that we have never attained or even understood the extent of its powers.
Is it too much to believe that man should be developing new sensibilities and a closer relation with nature? The logic of evolution must teach as much, if carried to its legitimate conclusions. If, somewhere, in the line of ascent from vegetable or ascidians to the noblest man a soul was evolved, gifted with intellectual qualities, it cannot be unreasonable to infer and believe that a faculty of perception is also growing in man, enabling him to descry facts and truths even beyond our ordinary ken.
Yet we do not hesitate to accept the assertion of Biffi, that “The essential is forever the same. Whether we cut away the marble inward the hides the statue in the block, or pile stone upon stone outward till the temple is completed our new result is only an old idea. The latest of all the eternities will find it’s destined other half-soul in the earliest.”
Contents
Preface
BEFORE THE VEIL
Dogmatic assumptions of modern science and theology
The Platonic philosophy affords the only middle ground
Review of the ancient philosophical systems
A Syriac manuscript on Simon magus
Glossary of terms used in this book
Volume First
THE "INFALLIBILITY" OF MODERN SCIENCE
CHAPTER I
OLD THINGS WITH NEW NAMES
The Oriental Kabala
Ancient traditions supported by modern research
The progress of mankind marked by cycles
Ancient cryptic science
Priceless value of the Vedas
Mutilations of the Jewish sacred books in translation
Magic always regarded as a divine science
Achievements of its adepts and hypotheses of their modern detractors
Man's yearning for immortality
CHAPTER II
PHENOMENA AND FORCES
The servility of society
Prejudice and bigotry of men of science
They are chased by psychical phenomena
Lost arts
The human will the master-force of forces
Superficial generalizations of the French savants
Mediumistic phenomena, to what attributable
Their relation to crime
CHAPTER III
BLIND LEADERS OF THE BLIND
Huxley's derivation from the Orohippus
Comte, his system and disciples
The London materialists
Borrowed robes
Emanation of the objective universe from the subjective
CHAPTER IV
THEORIES RESPECTING PSYCHIC PHENOMENA
Theory of de Gasparin
[[Theory]] of Thury
[[Theory]] of des Mousseaux, de Mirville
[[Theory]] of Babinet
[[Theory]] of Houdin
[[Theory]] of MM. Royer and Jobart de Lamballe
The twins -- "unconscious cerebration" and "unconscious ventriloquism"
Theory of Crookes
[[Theory]] of Faraday
[[Theory]] of Chevreuil
The Mendeleyeff commission of 1876
Soul blindness
CHAPTER V
THE ETHER, OR "ASTRAL LIGHT"
One primal force, but many correlations
Tyndall narrowly escapes a great discovery
The impossibility of miracle
Nature of the primordial substance
Interpretation of certain ancient myths
Experiments of the fakirs
Evolution in Hindu allegory
CHAPTER VI
PSYCHO-PHYSICAL PHENOMENA
The debt we owe to Paracelsus
Mesmerism -- its parentage, reception, potentiality
"Psychometry"
Time, space, eternity
Transfer of energy from the visible to the invisible universe
The Crookes experiments and Cox theory
CHAPTER VII
THE ELEMENTS, ELEMENTALS, AND ELEMENTARIES
Attraction and repulsion universal in all the kingdoms of nature
Psychical phenomena depend on physical surroundings
Observations in Siam
Music in nervous disorders
The "world-soul" and its potentialities
Healing by touch, and healers
"Diakka" and Porphyry's bad demons
The quenchless lamp
Modern ignorance of vital force
Antiquity of the theory of force-correlation
Universality of belief in magic
CHAPTER VIII
SOME MYSTERIES OF NATURE
Do the planets affect human destiny?
Very curious passage from Hermes
The restlessness of matter
Prophecy of Nostradamus fulfilled
Sympathies between planets and plants
Hindu knowledge of the properties of colors
"Coincidences" the panacea of modern science
The moon and the tides
Epidemic mental and moral disorders
The gods of the Pantheons only natural forces
Proofs of the magical powers of Pythagoras
The viewless races of ethereal space
The "four truths" of Buddhism
CHAPTER IX
CYCLIC PHENOMENA
Meaning of the expression "coats of skin"
Natural selection and its results
The Egyptian "circle of necessity"
Pre-Adamite races
Descent of spirit into matter
The triune nature of man
The lowest creatures in the scale of being
Elementals specifically described
Proclus on the beings of the air
Various names for elementals
Swedenborgian views on soul-death
Earth-bound human souls
Impure mediums and their "guides"
Psychometry an aid to scientific research
CHAPTER X
THE INNER AND OUTER MAN
Pere Felix arraigns the scientists
The "Unknowable"
Danger of evocations by tyros
Lares and Lemures
Secrets of Hindu temples
Reincarnation
Witchcraft and witches
The sacred soma trance
Vulnerability of certain "shadows"
Experiment of Clearchus on a sleeping boy
The author witnesses a trial of magic in India
Case of the Cevennois
CHAPTER XI
PSYCHOLOGICAL AND PHYSICAL MARVELS
Invulnerability attainable by man
Projecting the force of the will
Insensibility to snake-poison
Charming serpents by music
Teratological phenomena discussed
The psychological domain confessedly unexplored
Despairing regrets of Berzelius
Turning a river into blood a vegetable phenomenon
CHAPTER XII
THE "IMPASSABLE CHASM"
Confessions of ignorance by men of science
The Pantheon of nihilism
Triple composition of fire
Instinct and reason defined
Philosophy of the Hindu Jains
Deliberate misrepresentations of Lempriere
Man's astral soul not immortal
The reincarnation of Buddha
Magical sun and moon pictures of Thibet
Vampirism -- its phenomena explained
Bengalese jugglery
CHAPTER XIII
REALITIES AND ILLUSION
The rationale of talismans
Unexplained mysteries
Magical experiment in Bengal
Chibh Chondor's surprising feats
The Indian tape-climbing trick an illusion
Resuscitation of buried fakirs
Limits of suspended animation
Mediumship totally antagonistic to adeptship
What are "materialized spirits"?
The Shudala Madan
Philosophy of levitation
The elixir and alkahest
CHAPTER XIV
EGYPTIAN WISDOM
Origin of the Egyptians
Their mighty engineering works
The ancient land of the Pharaohs
Antiquity of the Nilotic monuments
Arts of war and peace
Mexican myths and ruins
Resemblances to the Egyptian
Moses a priest of Osiris
The lessons taught by the ruins of Siam
The Egyptian Tau at Palenque
CHAPTER XV
INDIA THE CRADLE OF THE RACE
Acquisition of the "secret doctrine"
Two relics owned by a Pali scholar
Jealous exclusiveness of the Hindus
Lydia Maria Child on Phallic symbolism
The age of the Vedas and Manu
Traditions of pre-diluvian races
Atlantis and its peoples
Peruvian relics
The Gobi desert and its secrets
Thibetan and Chinese legends
The magician aids, not impedes, nature
Philosophy, religion, arts and sciences bequeathed by Mother India to posterity