The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 3 of 4: The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and PhilosophyBlavatsky, H. P. (Helena Petrovna)
Religion
The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 3 of 4: The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy
Blavatsky, H. P. (Helena Petrovna)
Theosophy
Who, then, of those who have consistently turned their faces away from
Occultism and even Spiritualism, as being “unphilosophical” and therefore
unworthy of scientific thought, has a right to say that he has studied the
Ancients; or that, if he has studied them, he has understood all they have
said? Only those who claim to be wiser than their generation, who think
that they know all that the Ancients knew, and thus, knowing far more to‐
day, fancy that they are entitled to laugh at their ancient simple‐
mindedness and superstition; those, who imagine they have discovered a
great secret by declaring the ancient royal sarcophagus, now empty of its
King Initiate, to be a “corn‐bin,” and the Pyramid that contained it, a
granary, perhaps a wine‐cellar!(35) Modern society, on the authority of
some men of Science, calls Magic charlatantry. But there are eight hundred
millions on the face of the globe who believe in it to this day; there are
said to be twenty millions of perfectly sane and often very intellectual
men and women, members of that same society, who believe in its phenomena
under the name of Spiritualism. The whole ancient world, with its Scholars
and Philosophers, its Sages and Prophets, believed in it. Where is the
country in which it was not practised? At what age was it banished, even
from our own country? In the New World as in the Old Country (the latter
far younger than the former), the Science of Sciences was known and
practised from the remotest antiquity. The Mexicans had their Initiates,
their Priest‐Hierophants and Magicians, and their crypts of Initiation. Of
the two statues exhumed in the Pacific States, one represents a Mexican
Adept, in the posture prescribed for the Hindu ascetic, and the other an
Aztec Priestess, in a head‐gear which might be taken from the head of an
Indian Goddess; while the “Guatemalan Medal” exhibits the “Tree of
Knowledge”—with its hundreds of eyes and ears, symbolical of seeing and
hearing—encircled by the “Serpent of Wisdom” whispering into the ear of
the sacred bird. Bernard Diaz de Castilla, a follower of Cortez, gives
some idea of the extraordinary refinement, intelligence and civilization,
and also of the magic arts of the people whom the Spaniards conquered by
brute force. Their pyramids are those of Egypt, built according to the
same secret canon of proportion as those of the Pharaohs, and the Aztecs
appear to have derived their civilization and religion in more than one
way from the same source as the Egyptians and, before these, the Indians.
Among all these three peoples arcane Natural Philosophy, or Magic, was
cultivated to the highest degree.
That it was natural, not supernatural, and that the Ancients so regarded
it, is shown by what Lucian says of the “laughing Philosopher,”
Democritus, who, he tells his readers,
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