The Theosophist says that all these great names represent members
of the one single brotherhood, who all have a single doctrine. And
the extraordinary characters who now and again appear in western
civilization, such as St. Germain, Jacob Boehme, Cagliostro,
Paracelsus, Mesmer, Count St. Martin, and Madame H. P. Blavatsky,
are agents for the doing of the work of the Great Lodge at the
proper time. It is true they are generally reviled and classed as
impostors—though no one can find out why they are when they generally
confer benefits and lay down propositions or make discoveries of
great value to science after they have died. But Jesus himself would
be called an impostor to-day if he appeared in some Fifth avenue
theatrical church rebuking the professed Christians. Paracelsus was
the originator of valuable methods and treatments in medicine now
universally used. Mesmer taught hypnotism under another name. Madame
Blavatsky brought once more to the attention of the West the most
important system, long known to the Lodge, respecting man, his nature
and destiny. But all are alike called imposters by a people who have
no original philosophy of their own and whose mendicant and criminal
classes exceed in misery and in number those of any civilization on the
earth.
It will not be unusual for nearly all occidental readers to wonder how
men could possibly know so much and have such power over the operations
of natural law as I have ascribed to the Initiates, now so commonly
spoken of as the Mahatmas. In India, China, and other Oriental lands no
wonder would arise on these heads, because there, although everything
of a material civilization is just now in a backward state, they have
never lost a belief in the inner nature of man and in the power he may
exercise if he will. Consequently living examples of such powers and
capacities have not been absent from those people. But in the West a
materialistic civilization having arisen through a denial of the soul
life and nature consequent upon a reaction from illogical dogmatism,
there has not been any investigation of these subjects and, until
lately, the general public has not believed in the possibility of
anyone save a supposed God having such power.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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