Theosophical Society,
H P Blavatsky
THE HIMALAYAN BROTHERS
by
H. P. Blavatsky
First Published 1881
SIR,--
"On
the authority of an adept" (?) "they" (the Theosophists and
Madame
Blavatsky)
"are all mediums under the influence of the lower spirits." Such is
the
sentence used by you in an editorial review of Mr. Sinnett's Occult World
(Spiritualist,
June 17th).
Doubtful
as its pertinency might appear, I personally found nothing very objectionable
in it, the more so, as elsewhere you do me the honour to express your
conviction that (whether controlled by good or bad spirits) I yet am a
"strong physical medium"--that term precluding at least the suspicion
of my being a regular impostor. This letter then is not directed against you,
but rather against the pretensions of a would-be "adept." Another point
should be also attended to before I proceed, in order that the situation may be
as clearly defined as possible.
Finding
myself for the period of nearly seven years one of the best abused
individuals
under the sun, I rather got accustomed to that sort of thing. Hence,
I
would hardly take up the pen now to defend my own character. If people,
besides
forgetting that I am a woman, and an old woman, are dull enough to fail
to
perceive that had I declared myself anything in creation, save a Theosophist
and
one of the founders of our Society, I would have been in every
respect--materially
as well as socially--better off in the world's consideration, and that
therefore, since, notwithstanding all the persecution and opposition
encountered, I persist in remaining and declaring myself one, I cannot well be
that charlatan and pretender some people would see in me--I really cannot help
it. Fools are unable, and the wise unwilling to see the absurdity of such an
accusation, for as Shakespeare puts it: Folly in fools bears not so strong a
note
as
foolery in the wise, when wit doth dote.It is not then to defend myself that I
claim space in your columns, but to answer one whose ex-cathedra utterances
have revolted the sense of justice of more than one of our Theosophists in
India, and to defend them--who have a claim on all the reverential feeling that
my nature is capable of.
A
new correspondent, one of those dangerous, quasi-anonymous individuals who abuse
their literary privilege of hiding their true personality and thus shirk
responsibility
behind an initial or two, has lately won a prominent place in the
columns
of your journal. He calls himself an "adept"; that is easy enough,
but
does
or rather can he prove it? To begin with, in the sight of the Spiritualists
as
much as in that of sceptics in general, an "adept," whether he hails
from
impostor;
and the former, were he even to prove his powers, in seeing in him
either
a medium or a juggler. Now your "J.K." when he states in the
Spiritualist
of
June 24th, that "the phenomena attendant upon real adeptship are on an
entirely
different plane from "Spiritualism" risks, nay is sure, to have every
one
of the above expletives flung in his face by both the above-mentioned
classes.
Could
he but prove what he claims, namely, the powers conferring upon a person the
title of an initiate, such epithets might well be scorned by him. Aye,--but I
ask again, is he ready to make good his claim? The language used by him, to begin
with, is not that which a true adept would ever use. It is dogmatic and
authoritative
throughout, and too full of insulting aspersions against those who
are
not yet proved to be worse or lower than himself; and fails entirely to
carry
conviction to the minds of the profane as of those who do know something of
adepts and initiates--that it is one of such proficients who now addresses them.
Styling himself an adept, whose "Hierophant is a western gentleman,"
but a few lines further on he confesses his utter ignorance of the existence of
a body which cannot possibly be ignored by any true adept! I say
"cannot" for there is no accepted neophyte on the whole globe but at
least knows of the Himalayan Fraternity.
The
sanction to receive the last and supreme initiation, the real
"word
at low breath" can come but through those fraternities in
and
Thibet to one of which belongs "Koot Hoomi Lal Singh." True, there is
"adept"
and adept, and they differ, as there are adepts in more than one art and
science.
I, for one, know in
"an
adept in the high art of manufacturing Parisian cothurns." J.K. speaks of
Brothers
"on the soul plane," of "divine Kabbalah culminating in
God," of "slave
magic,"
and so on, a phraseology which proves to me most conclusively that he is but
one of those dabblers in western occultism which were so well represented some
years ago, by French-born "Egyptians" and "Algerians," who
told people their fortunes by the Tarot, and placed their visitors within
enchanted circles with a Tetragrammaton inscribed in the centre. I do not say
J.K. is one of the latter, I beg him to understand. Though quite unknown to me
and hiding behind his two initials, I will not follow his rude example and
insult him for all
that.
But I say and repeat that his language sadly betrays him. If a Kabbalist
at
all, then himself and his "Hierophant" are but the humble self-taught
pupils
of
the mediaeval, and so-called "Christian" Kabbalists; of adepts, who,
like
Agrippa,
Khunrath, Paracelsus, Vaughan, Robert Fludd, and several others,
revealed
their knowledge to the world but to better conceal it, and who never
gave
the key to it in their writings. He bombastically asserts his own knowledge
and
power, and proceeds to pass judgment on people of whom he knows and can know
nothing. Of the "Brothers" he says: "If they are true adepts,
they have not shown much worldly wisdom, and the organization which is to
inculcate their doctrine is a complete failure, for even the very first
psychical and physical
principles
of true Theosophy and occult science are quite unknown to and
unpractised
by the members of that organization--the Theosophical Society."
How
does he know? Did the Theosophists take him into their confidence? And if he knows
something of the British Theosophical Society, what can he know of those in
body
and is a traitor. And if he does not, what has he to say of its
practitioners,
since the Society in general, and especially its esoteric
sections
that count but a very few "chosen ones"--are secret bodies?
The
more attentively I read his article the more am I inclined to laugh at the
dogmatic
tone prevailing in it. Were I a Spiritualist, I would be inclined to
suspect
in it a good "goak" of John King, whose initials are represented in
the
signature
of J.K. Let him first learn, that mirific Brother of the "Western
Hermetic
Circle in the soul-plane," a few facts about the adepts in general,
before
he renders himself any more ridiculous.
(1)
No true adept will on any consideration whatever reveal himself as one, to
the
profane. Nor would he ever speak in such terms of contempt of people, who
are
certainly no more silly, and, in many an instance, far wiser than himself.
But
were even the Theosophists the poor misled creatures he would represent them to
be, a true adept would rather help than deride them.
(2)
There never was a true Initiate but knew of the secret Fraternities in the
East.
It is not Eliphas Levi who would ever deny their existence, since we have
his
authentic signature to the contrary. Even P. B. Randolph, that wondrous,
though
erratic, genius of
knowledge
in the East, had good reasons to know of their actual existence, as
his
writings can prove.
(3)
One who ever perorates upon his occult knowledge, and speaks of practising
his
powers in the name of some particular prophet, deity, or Avatar, is but a
sectarian
mystic at best. He cannot be an adept in the Eastern sense--a Mahatma,
for
his judgment will always be biased and prejudiced by the colouring of his
own
special and dogmatic religion.
(4)
The great science, called by the vulgar "magic," and by its Eastern
proficients
Gupta Vidya, embracing as it does each and every science, since it
is
the acme of knowledge, and constitutes the perfection of philosophy, is
universal:
hence--as very truly remarked--cannot be confined to one particular
nation
or geographical locality. But, as Truth is one, the method for the
attainment
of its highest proficiency must necessarily be also one. It cannot be
subdivided,
for, once reduced to parts, each of them, left to itself, will, like
rays
of light, diverge from, instead of converging to, its centre, the ultimate
goal
of knowledge; and these parts can rebecome the Whole only by collecting
them
together again, or each fraction will remain but a fraction.
This
truism, which may be termed elementary mathematics for little boys, has to
be
re-called, in order to refresh the memory of such "adepts" as are too
apt to
forget
that "Christian Kabbalism" is but a fraction of Universal Occult
Science.
And,
if they believe that they have nothing more to learn, then the less they
turn
to "Eastern Adepts" for information the better and the less trouble
for
both.
There is but one royal road to "Divine Magic"; neglect and abandon it
to
devote
yourself specially to one of the paths diverging from it, and like a
lonely
wanderer you will find yourself lost in an inextricable labyrinth. Magic,
I
suppose, existed millenniums before the Christian era; and, if so, are we to
think
then, with our too learned friends, the modern "
it
was all Black Magic, practised by the "Old firm of Devil & Co."?
But together
with
every other person who knows some-thing of what he or she talks about, I
say
that it is nothing of the kind; that J.K. seems to be superbly ignorant even
of
the enormous difference which exists between a Kabbalist and an Occultist.
Is
he aware, or not, that the Kabbalist stands, in relation to the Occultist, as a
little
detached hill at the foot of the
is
known as the Jewish Kabbala of Simon Ben Jochai, is already the disfigured
version
of its primitive source, the Great Chaldean Book of Numbers? That as the former,
with its adaptation to the Jewish Dispensation, its mixed international
Angelology
and Demonology, its Orphiels and Raphaels and Greek Tetragrams, is a pale copy
of the Chaldean, so the Kabbala of the Christian Alchemists and
Rosicrucians
is naught in its turn but a tortured edition of the Jewish. By
centralizing
the Occult Power and his course of actions, in some one national
God
or Avatar, whether in Jehovah or Christ, Brahma or Mahomet, the Kabbalist diverges
the more from the one central Truth.
It
is but the Occultist, the Eastern adept, who stands a Free Man, omnipotent
through
its own Divine Spirit as much as man can be on earth. He has rid himself
of
all human conceptions and religious side-issues; he is at one and the same
time
a Chaldean Sage, a Persian Magi, a Greek Theurgist, an Egyptian Hermetist,
a
Buddhist Rahat and an Indian Yogi. He has collected into one bundle all the
separate
fractions of Truth widely scattered over the nations, and holds in his
hand
the One Truth, a torch of light which no adverse wind can bend, blow out or even
cause to waver. Not he the Prometheus who robs but a portion of the Sacred Fire,
and therefore finds himself chained to Mount Caucasus for his intestines to be
devoured by vultures, for he has secured God within himself and depends no more
on the whim and caprice of either good or evil deities.
True,
"Koot Hoomi" mentions Buddha. But it is not because the brothers hold
him in the light of God or even of "a God," but simply because he is
the Patron of the Thibetan Occultists, the greatest of the Illuminati and
adepts,
self-initiated
by his own Divine Spirit or "God-self" unto all the mysteries of
the
invisible universe. Therefore to speak of imitating "the life of
Christ," or
that
of Buddha, or Zoroaster, or any other man on earth chosen and accepted by any
one special nation for its God and leader, is to show oneself a Sectarian
even
in Kabbalism, that fraction of the one "Universal
Science"--Occultism. The
latter
is pre-historic and is coeval with intelligence. The Sun shines for the
heathen
Asiatic as well as for the Christian European and for the former still
more
gloriously, I am glad to say.
To
conclude, it is enough to glance at that sentence of more than questionable
propriety,
and more fit to emanate from the pen of a Jesuit than that of a
Kabbalist,
which allows of the supposition that the "Brothers" are only a branch
of
the old established firm of "Devil and Co." to feel convinced that
beyond
some
"Abracadabra" dug out from an old mouldy MS. of Christian Kabbalism,
J.K. knows nothing. It is but on the unsophisticated profane, or a very
innocent
Spiritualist,
that his bombastic sentences, all savouring of the Anche is son
pittore,
that he may produce some sensation.
True,
there is no need of going absolutely to Thibet or
knowledge
and power "which are latent in every human soul"; but the acquisition
of
the highest knowledge and power require not only many years of the severest
study
enlightened by a superior intelligence and an audacity bent by no peril;
but
also as many years of retreat in comparative solitude, and association with
but
students pursuing the same object, in a locality where nature itself
preserves
like the neophyte an absolute and unbroken stillness if not silence!
where
the air is free for hundreds of miles around of all mephytic influence;
the
atmosphere and human magnetism absolutely pure, and--no animal blood is
spilt.
Is it in
such
conditions can be found?
H.
P.BLAVATSKY First published 1881
.
Cardiff Blavatsky Archive
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