AE in the Irish TheosophistRussell, George William
Religion
AE in the Irish Theosophist
Russell, George William
Theosophy
"Do not heed these forms!" cried Niam. Compare with this from
another source: "Flee from the Hall of Learning, it is dangerous
in its perfidious beauty. .... Beware, lest dazzled by illusive
radiance thy Soul should linger and be caught in its deceptive light.
.... It shines from the jewel of the Great Ensnarer." There are
centres in man corresponding to these appearances. They give vision
and entrance into a red and dreadful world, where unappeasable
desire smites the soul--a dangerous clairvoyence. But in the
sphere beyond their power has to be conquered, and here Oisin wars
with the giant Fomor. De Dannan and Romorian passed from Eire
wrestle still in the invisible world, say the legends. We, too--
would-be mystics--are met on the threshold of diviner spheres by
terrible forms embodying the sins of a living past when we misused
our spiritual powers in old Atlantean days. These forms must be
conquered and so Oisin battles with Fomor and releases the power--
a princess in the story. This fight with the demon must be fought
by everyone who would enter the land of the Gods, whether in
conscious occult adventure or half-consciously after death, when
the strange alchemist Nature separates the subtile from the gross
in the soul in this region which Oisin passes through. Tir-na-noge,
the land of Niam, is that region the soul lives in when its grosser
energies and desires have been subdued, dominated and brought under
the control of light; where the Ray of Beauty kindles and illuminates
every form which the imagination conceives, and where every form
tends to its archetype. It is a real region which has been approached
and described by the poets and sages who, at all times, have
endeavoured to express something of the higher realities. It is
not distant, but exists in earth as the soul within the body, and
may be perceived through and along with the surface forms. In a
sense it corresponds with the Tibetan Devachan, and in this region
Oisin lives for a hundred years, until desire to see Eire once more
arises and he parts from Niam. Nor the details of his return, the
drowsy land in which he slumbers; how he fell off the white horse
and became an old man with the weariness of his hundreds of years
upon him--I must refer the reader to the legends. He will read
not alone of Oisin, but of many an old hero, who, hailed by the
faery (divine) voice, went away to live in the heart of green hills
(to be initiated) or to these strange worlds.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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