Correspondence

I am, Mesdames,Your obedient servant,Thos. B. Harbottle.

I am, Mesdames,

Your obedient servant,

Thos. B. Harbottle.

The question is answered by Schopenhauer as follows:

“... Starting from the plane ofmental conception(Vorstellung), and proceeding on our way towards the attainment ofobjective knowledge, we shall never be able to arrive at a higher point than our own conception (imagination),i.e.of the external appearance of the object of our observation; but we shall never be able to penetrate into the interior of the things and to find out what they really are (not what they merely appear to be). So far I agree withKant. But as a counterpoise to this truth I have called attention to another one; namely, that we are not merely thecognising subject, but we are also ourselves a part of object of our cognition, we are ourselves theThing itself. There is consequently an interior way open to us from that self-existing and interior essence of things, which we cannot approach from the outside; a kind of subterraneanpassage, a secret connection, by which we by treason, as it were, may at once penetrate into a fortress which was impregnable from the outside. TheThing itselfcan as such enter our consciousness only in a direct manner,i.e.by becoming conscious of its own self. To attempt to know it objectively is to ask for a self-contradiction.” (The World as Will and Conception.Vol. ii., Cap. 18).

What Schopenhauer expresses in modern philosophical language might perhaps be stated in a few words by saying, that man cannot become conscious of the truth unless the truth is in him, and in that case it is not the man who recognises the truth, but the truth which recognises itself in man. He who wants to know it objectively must separate himself from it, because no one can see his own face without the help of a mirror; but if he separates himself from it, the truth exists in him no longer. It is therefore the truth itself which may become self-conscious in man, provided there exists any truth in him.

F. H.

I would much rather suffer an unintentional misrepresentation of my meaning than take the trouble to reply, and have no desire to magnify small matters of difference. But a very critical friend calls my attention to certain statements and apparent discrepancies in the “Esoteric Character of the Gospels,” on which I will beg leave to say a word.

I find it affirmed on p. 300, in a foot-note, that “Mr. G. Massey is not correct in saying that ‘The Gnostic form of the name Chrest or Chrestos denotes the Good God, not a human original,’ for it denoted the latter, that is, a good, holy man.” But either the statement has no meaning as an answer to me, or it is based on a misunderstanding of mine.[135]I was showing that theoriginalChrist of the Gnosis was not one particular form of human personality, like the supposed historic Christ, and that the name denoted a divine, and not a humanoriginal. I was perfectly well aware, as your quotations show, that the name wasafterwardsconferred on the “good” as the Chrestoi or Chrestiani. Nor do I say, or anywhere imply, that the “Karest,” or mummy-type of immortalitywastheonly form of the Christ, as your quotations again will prove. I have written enough about that Gnostic Christ who was the Immortal Self in man, the reflection of, or emanation from, the divine nature in humanity, and in both sexes, not merely in one.[136]This is the Christ that never could become a one person or be limitedto one sex. This you accept and preach; yet you can add “Still the personage (Jesus) so addressed by Paul—wherever he lived—was a great initiate, and a ‘Son of God.’”[137]But the Christos of Paul, being the Gnostic Christ, as you admit (301), it cannot be a personage named Jesus, or a great Initiate, who was addressed by him. It appears to me that in passages like these, you are giving away all that is worth contending for, and vouching for that which never has been, and never can be, proved. I have searched for Jesus many years in the Gospels and elsewhere without being able to catch hold of the hem of the garment of any human personality. Ben-Pandira we know a little of, but cannot make him out in the Christ of the Gospels. The Christ of the Gnosis can be identified, but not with any historic Jesus.

We do not go to the Christian Gospels to learn the true nature of the Christ, or the incarnation according to the Gnostic religion (I use this term in preference to yours of the “Wisdom-Religion,” as being more definite and explanatory; not as a religion, supposed by theIdiotaito have followed in the wake of Historic Christianity!). These were known in Egypt, more than six thousand years ago. When the monuments began the Cult of the Supreme God Atum was extant. We know not how many æons earlier, but six thousand years will do. Atum = Adam was the divine father of an eternal soul which was personated as his son, named Iu-em-hept (the Greek Imothos or Æsculapius), an image of whom used to be seen (on shelf 3,578, b. 1874), in the British Museum. He was the second Atum = Adam, and is called the “Eternal Word” in the Ritual. In external phenomena this type represented the Solar God, re-born monthly or annually in the lunar orb; in human phenomena the Christ or Son of God as the essential and eternal soul in man. But he was neither a man nor an Initiate. He was just what the Logos, the Word of Truth or Ma-Kheru, the Buddha or Christ is in other Cults.[138]

I cordially agree with “M,” a correspondent whom you quote, and wish that all our orthodox friends would as frankly face the facts. If any historic Jesus ever did claim to be the Gnostic Christ made flesh[139]once for all, he would be the supremest impostor in history.

Let us define to ourselves very strictly what it is we do mean, or we shall introduce the direst confusion into the conflict, and we shall be unable to distinguish the face of friend from foe in the cloud of battle-dust which we may raise. What I find is, that Historic Christianity was based either upon the suppression or the perversion of all thatwasesoteric in Gnostic Christianity. And to bring any aid from the one to the support of the other is to try and re-establish with the left hand all that you are knocking down with the right.

I am also taken to task on page 307 for alluding to the Bible as a “Magazine of falsehoods already exploded, or just going off,” by the writer who adds force to my words later on in characterizing these same writings as a “Magazine of (wicked) falsehoods”[140](p. 178), which was going farther than I went, who do set down as much to ignorance as to knavery. What I meant was, that the “Fall of Man” in the Old Testament, is a falsification of fable, now exploded, and that the redemption from that fall, which is promised in the New, whether by an “Initiate” or “Son of God” is a fraud based on the fable, and a falsehood that is going to be exploded. There is no call to mix up the Book of the Dead, the Vedas, or any other sacred writings, in this matter. Each tub must stand on its own bottom, and the one that won’t, can’t hold water.[141]

Gerald Massey.

P.S. By the by, I see the Adventists, and other misleading Delusionists are all agog just now about the wonderful fulfilment of prophecy, and corroborationof historic fact, that we are now witnessing. The “Star of Bethlehem” has reappeared, so they say, to prove the truth of the Christian story. But, sad to say, it is not the star of Christ that is now visible in the south-east before sunrise every morning. It is Venus in her heliacal rising. It is Venus as the Maleess, or Lucifer as “Sun of the Morning.” This particular Star of Bethlehem—there are various others less brilliant and less noticeable—generally does return once every nineteen months or so, when the planet Venus is the Morning Star. Only the gaping camel-swallowers, who know all about the “Star of Bethlehem,” and the fulfilment of prophecy, are not up in Astronomy, and they will no doubt squirm and strain at this small gnat of real fact offered to them by way of an explanation.

G. M.

[We give room to this remarkable letter with the object of comparison. The Secularists are loud in proclaiming the modes of expression of the Theosophists as “stultic profundity,” and the Esoteric Doctrine as “a hopeless chaos,” a “rudely methodised madness.” At the same time the Hylo-Idealists arePERSONÆ GRATISSIMÆin the “Secular Review,” and no such remarks are passed about their theories and style. Readers please to compare. “Fiat Justitia, ruat Saladinus!”—Ed.]

“Behold, the Kingdom of Heaven is within you.”

The primacy of Self is indisputable, if by reason of one fact only—that this, self-same, Self is the initial postulate of all sane philosophy. And, when Philosophy soars to Metaphysic, Scientific Analysis “takes up the wondrous tale,” and its burden is Self-hood also. All roads lead to Rome. All analysis runs into the Egoistic Synthesis. “The One [Ego] remains, the Many change and pass.” Yet the passing is only the flux and ebb of the One. In Hegel’s words, “that which passes away passes away into its own self: only the passing away passes away.” Which things are an allegory, and yet “solvitur ambulando.” A recent traveller in the United States tells us, that, in the Emerson country, he chanced upon cross-roads, and found there an apparently contradictory direction-post. One arm of it bore the inscription, “This is the way to Concord,” the other, pointing in the opposite direction, was similarly worded, “This is the way to Concord.” The Hylo-Ideal Thesis is this Ideal Concord, to be reached whether you travel by way of Eastern Idealism, or by the route of plainer Western Materialism. For, and here all contradictions are reconciled, in the one Subject-object which is Self, there is no diversity, neither Jew nor Greek, neither Idealism only, nor Materialism only, or exclusively, but all is one.[142]And in Unity there is no class distinction, no nomenclature, no “otherness,” no EbalandGerizim, but only the Mount of God. What the Ego is,allis.[143]It is thexof every problem and answers to any value save the spurious and indifferent one of the Dualist.

I find Hylo-Idealism (Auto-centricism)—this “pearl of great price”—canvassed and examined by many modern thinkers, only to be contemptuously cast away, though it would have made each one of them in turn “richer than all his tribe.” But it was ever thus. In this rejection there is no despair inthe view of theilluminati. All is ours, and paltering with the central truth of SOLIPSISM, as men have ever paltered, does not change or diminish the truth itself, or lessen the assurance of its ultimate victory, since to go from, or flee from, the Egoistic presence is an impossibility. We wander here and there, but to seek to transcend ourselves is vain. There must, sooner or later, be theresipiscentia, the coming home at last to Self, and Self only, as to the better home at last.

In this view there is noLogos—save that indisputable one, which maketh all things to every one of us—no “true Light” save that effulgent one which “lighteth every man that cometh into the world,” namely, his own creative and illuminating Egoity—sanswhich there is but nothingness. Such a Gospel as this should be termed the Evangel of common-sense were it not that that phrase shows only one side of the question—“Virginibus, puerisque est” but it is also the very acme of the exalted intelligence, “the last and sharpest height” of human thought where the atmosphere is all too rare for mortal breath.

The highest and the lowliest[144]are ever thus akin—“Aryan worship secreted in the Holy of Holies the utensils of the dairy.” Grasp but the centre truth of truths—that the Ego and its products areone, that every one of us spins, from his own consciousness, the web of thing and circumstance, which envelopes him—and you see at once and as it were instinctively, that in this Universe-circle of Egoity there is no “otherness” even thinkable, no lower and no higher, no difference, nothing essentially common or unclean, everything being, not so much cleansed of God, as very THEOBROMA,[145]God’s food and nutrient element, seeing that in it, and by it, and through it, we and all things CONSUBSTANTIALLY EXIST.

Thusveræ causæand other figments are not so much unsearchable, or past finding out, as out of court or indifferent. Whether all be of God, or all be from a “clam-shell,” does not matter—does not, by one jot, affect our Thesis. Indifferently we are by origin, patricians or “gutter-snipes.” The Ego is free of the Cosmos—equal to either fortune, high or low, makesits ownuniverse, calls it by its own name, and it “lives and moves and has its being.”

G. M. McC.

Mr. Massey has sent us a circular, the contents of which should be of interest to the lovers of Shakspeare and the buyers of rare books. The writer says:

“My work on the Secret Drama of Shakspeare’s Sonnets, with Sketches of his Private Friends, and of his own Life and Character, first published in the year 1866, the Second Edition of which was issued, with a Supplement, for Subscribers in 1872, has now been out of print many years. It is frequently enquired for, and very rarely to be found in the catalogues of second-hand booksellers. Therefore I am about to reproduce the work. It will have to be re-cast and re-written wherenecessary, as the writing can now be more definitely done. Errors must be confessed and corrected. The new volume will be on lines similar to those of the earlier work, accentuated in many of the details, but modified in others. There will be something new and more decisive to say concerning both sets of the Sonnets, which I call the Southampton and Herbert series; and not without reason or warrant will the Comparative method be pushed much farther than before. The work will be written up to date in the light of the latest knowledge. The most recent data, the latest results of Shakspearian Siftings, will be utilised; and something will have to be said concerning the current Baconian Craze, which was no doubt foreseen by the Great Humourist when he wrote, ‘A most fine figure! To prove you a Cypher!’ is my aim to fight one last battle on this field for what I maintain to be the cause of truth and right; to entrust a final answer on the Sonnet question to the types of John Guttenberg, and leave in his safe keeping a plea that shall be heard hereafter, as a permanent memorial to the writer’s love and admiration for Shakspeare the Poet and Man. After twenty years the ground is felt to be firmer underfoot. The building will have a more concrete base. I am enabled to give a closer clinch to my conclusions, and, as I think, complete my case. Necessarily the book must be large, 700 or 800 pp. The price will be One Guinea.”

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Correspondence

INTERESTING TO ASTROLOGERS.

ASTROLOGICAL NOTES—No. 3.

To the Editor ofLucifer.

Question, at London, 11.45 a.m., Feb. 26th, 1887.

Will the quesited die from his present illness?

Hearing by letter that my uncle, an octogenarian, was seriously ill from pneumonia, I drew a figure for the moment of the impression to do so, which occurred while reading the communication. His illness had commenced about February 7th, and he was now confined to his bed.

The following are the elements of the figure:—

Planets’ places: ♆ 25° 10’ ♉; ♅ 11° 46 R ♎; ♄ 15° 54’ R ♉. ♃ 5° 48’ R ♏; ♂ 20° 31’ 31” ♓; ☉ 7° 35’ 50” ♓; ♀ 27° 53’ 14” ♓; ☿ 23° 18’ 58” ♓; ☽ 16° 22’ 36” ♈. Caput Draconis 27° 35’ ☊; ⨁ 13 24’ ♌.

As the quesited was the 4th of my mother’s brothers and sisters, my mother being the 8th and last, I took the 10th house of the figure for herself, the 12th (or 3rd from the 10th) for her eldest brother or sister, the 2nd for the 2nd, the 4th for the 3rd, the 6th for the 4th—the quesited—and the 1st (the 8th from the 6th) for his 8th, or house of death. ♂ was lord of his first house, and ☽ of his 8th. The aspect was ☽ 25° 51’ 5” ♂, separating from the quindecile, and applying to the semisextile. As the significators were in good aspects, separating from one and applying to the other, and within orbs of both, it signified sure recovery; more especially as ♂ received ☽ by house, and was dignified by triplicity. Nevertheless, the severity of the illness was shown byCauda Draconisin quesited’s 4th house; by ♄, lord of quesited’s 4th, posited in quesited’s 8th, retrograde, in his detriment, and in close □ to ☽, lady of quesited’s 8th and posited in his 6th. Furthermore, as ☽, the applying planet of the two significators, was in a cardinal sign and in a succeedent house of the figure, each degree signified a week; therefore as ☽ wanted 4° 8’ 55” of the perfect semisextile aspect, I judged that he would be convalescent in 4 weeks and 1 day, or March 27th.On March 29th he walked out in his garden for the first time, and fully recovered from his attack.

Nemo.

Erratum.—Page 76, 2nd column, line 2,for♍read♏.

125. “Verbum Sap.” It is not our intention to notice anonymous communications, even though they should emanate in a round-about way from Lambeth Palace. The matter “Verbum Sap” refers to is not one of taste; the facts must be held responsible for the offence; and, as the Scripture hath it, “Woe to them by whom the offence cometh!”

126. “The Christ of esoteric science” is theChristosof Spirit—an impersonal principle entirely distinct from any carnalised Christ or Jesus. Is it this Christos that the learned Canon Roca means?—[Ed.]

127. The capitals are our own; for these “Mahatmas” are the real Founders and “Masters” of the Theosophical Society.—[Ed.]

128. Of course every occultist knows by reading Eliphas Levi and other authors that the “astral” plane is a plane of unequalised forces, and that a state of confusion necessarily prevails. But this does not apply to the “divine astral” plane, which is a plane where wisdom, and therefore order, prevails.

129.Posthumous Humanity, a study of Phantoms, by Adolphe d’Assier, Member of the Bordeaux Academy of Sciences. Translated and annotated by Henry S. Olcott, President of the Theosophical Society. George Redway, London, 1887. 8vo. pp. 360.

130. The Fernley Lecture, 1887, by Dr. Dallinger. T. Woolmer, 2, Castle Street, City Road, London E.C. (1s. 6d., paper covers.)

131. Both the Idealism of Mr. Herbert Spencer, and the Hylo-Idealism of Dr. Lewins are more materialistic and atheistic than any of the honestly declared materialistic views—Buchner’s and Molaschott’s included.—[Ed.]

132. A few years—and, who knows? perhaps only few months more, and Protestant England will have reverend scientists explaining to their congregations from the pulpits that Adam and Eve were but the“missing“missinglink”—two tailless baboons.—[Ed.]

133. Neverthelessobjectivelyviewed thoughts are actual entities to the occultist.

134. See also his letter under Correspondence.

135. The remark made has never been meant as “an answer,” but simply as an observation that the word “Chrestos” applied to a “good man,” a “human original,” and not to a “good God only.” If such was not the intention of Mr. Massey, and he amplifies his idea elsewhere, it was not so amplified in his article in the “Agnostic Annual.” It is, therefore, simply a bare statement of facts referring to that particular article and no more. I do not for one moment oppose Mr. Massey’s conclusions, nor doubt his undeniable learning in the direction of those particular researches,i.e., about the words “Christos” and “Chrestos.” What I say is, that he limits them to the negation of an historical Christ, and, for reasons no doubt very weighty, does not touch upon their principal esoteric meaning in the temple-phraseology of the Mysteries.—H.P.B.

136. This is absolutely and preeminently a Theosophical doctrine taught ever since 1875, when the Theosophical Society was founded.—[Ed.]

137. This, I am afraid, is a misunderstanding (due, no doubt, to my own fault) on the part of our learned correspondent, of the meaning that was intended to be conveyed in the articles now criticized. If he goes to the trouble of reading over again the paragraph that misled him (see p. 307, 5th paragraph), he will, perhaps, see that it is so. That which was really meant was that, though the termsChristosandChréstosare generic surnames, still, the personage so addressed (not by Paul, necessarily, but by any one), was a great Initiate and a “Son of God.” It is the name “Jesus,” placed in the sentence in parentheses that made it both clumsy and misleading. Whether Paul knew of Jehoshua Ben Pandira (and he must have heard of him), or not, he could never have applied the surname used by him to Jesus or any otherhistoricChrist. Otherwise hisEpistleswould not have been withheld and exiled as they were. The sentence which precedes the two incriminated statements, shows that no such thing, as understood by Mr. Massey, could have been really meant, as it is said “Occultism pure and simple finds the same mystic elements in the Christian as in other faiths,though it rejects emphatically its dogmatic and historic character.” The two statements, viz., that Jesus or Jehoshua Ben Pandirawhenever he lived, was a great Initiate and the “Son of God”—just as Apollonius of Tyana was—and that Paul never meant either him or any other living Initiate, but a metaphysical Christos present in, andpersonalto, every mystic Gnostic as to every initiated Pagan—are not at all irreconcileable. A man may know of several great Initiates, and yet place his own ideal on a far higher pedestal than any of these.—[H.P.B.]

138. Nor shall I dispute this statement in general. But this does not invalidate in one iotamyclaim. The temple priests assumed the names of the gods they served, and this is as well known a fact, as that the defunct Egyptian became an “Osiris”—was “osirified”—after his death. Yet Osiris was assuredly neither “man nor an Initiate,” but a being hardly recognised as such by the Royal Society of materialistic science. Why, then, could not an “Initiate,” who had succeeded in merging his spiritual being into theChristos state, be regarded as a Christos after his last and supreme initiation, just as he was calledChrestosbefore that? Neither Plotinus, Porphyry nor Apollonius were Christians, yet, according to esoteric teaching, Plotinus realized this sublime state (of becoming or uniting himself with hisChristos) six times, Apollonius of Tyana four times, while Porphyry reached the exalted state only once, when over sixty years of age. The Gnostics called the “Word” “Abraxas” and “Christos” indiscriminately, and by whatever name we may call it, whether Ma-Kheru, or Christos or Abraxas, it is all one. That mystic state which gives to our inner being the impulse that attracts “the soul toward its origin and centre, the Eternal good,” as Plotinus teaches, and makes of man a god, the Christos or the unknown made manifest, is a preeminently theosophical condition. It belonged to the temple mysteries, and the teachings of the Neo-Platonists.—[H.P.B.]

139. “Christ made flesh,” would be a claim worse than imposture, as it would beabsurdity, but a man of flesh assuming theChrist-conditiontemporarily, is indeed an occult, yet living, fact.—[Ed.]

140. Just so, if it has been originally written to be accepted in its dead letter sense. But, as I entirely agree with Mr. Massey, that historic Christianity was based upon the suppression, and especially theperversionof that which was esoteric in gnosticism, it is difficult to see in what it is that we disagree? The perversion of esoteric facts in the gospels is not so cleverly done as to prevent the true occultist from reading the Gospel narratives between the lines.—[H.P.B.]

141. If Mr. G. Massey kindly waits till the conclusion of “the Esoteric character of the gospels” to criticise the statements, he may perhaps arrive at the conviction that we are not so far apart in our ideas upon this particular question as he seems to think. Of course my critic being an Egyptologist, opposed to the Aryan theory, and arriving at his conclusions only by what he finds in strictly authenticated and accepted documents—and I, as a Theosophist and an Occultist of a certain school, accepting my proofs on data which he rejects—i.e.esoteric teachings—we can hardly agree upon every point. But the question is not whether there was or never was anhistoricalChrist, or Jesus, between the years 1 and 33A.D.—but simply were the Gospels of the gnostics (of Marcion and others, for instance) perverted later by Christians—esoteric allegories founded onfacts, or simply meaningless fictions? I believe the former, and esoteric teachings explain many of the allegories.—[H.P.B.]

142. Hence the Spirit ofNon-Separatenessin esoteric philosophy must be theONEtruth.—Ed.

143. Only this “Ego” isuniversal, notindividual:AbsoluteConsciousness, not thehumanBrain.—Ed.

144. Then why not term the philosophy “High-Low-Idealism”vice“Hylo-Idealism”?—Ed.

145. “Theobroma”—the same ascacao-butter. We take exceptionto the phraseology, not to Dr. Lewins’ ideas.—Ed.

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