The Theosophical Path Illustrated Monthly Volume 1, July-December, 1911
Religion
The Theosophical Path Illustrated Monthly Volume 1, July-December, 1911
Theosophy -- Periodicals
Glamor fills both regions; the one, a clean natural magic; the other,
not so decadent in the beginning, as to be wanting in some few waning
rays of the sun. In either case, it is partly the sense of a certain
depth in the things seen or heard; you know that the words of the
poem or story stand for something more than is actually spoken. Fairy
dwellings again; the grass-grown hillock that melts and reveals itself
a palace of the Immortals. In the poetry of the Right-hand Fairyland,
this is precisely what we find; beautiful is the seen, but infinitely
more beautiful and grander that which it symbolizes or indicates. In
that magical country, there is nothing not quickening with ancient
truth, and all the dramas enacted are leaves out of the diary of the
human soul. Hence the many tragedies, the many fallings of fate, dooms
that flow out of deeds done or undone. But in the other, we find none
of this. There, the esotericism is poorer than the outward form.
Fate is fate there, no longer Karma. At the best there may be some
moral taught; yet even then, it is doubtful if the lesson will be of
supreme value. It will not equal in weight the great superstructure
of art raised over it; as if one should sack the caves of the whole
sea, to find some not too-precious stone. It will be an after-thought,
a gem added, an excuse; not the seed and reason of the whole work.
More often, it will be some mere allegory of the passions, void of
truth in the deeper sense; or the deliberate esotericizing of a
Sandford-and-Mertonism. Yet these will be the very best the left-hand
fairyland has to offer; go a little further in, and you have simply
riot on the planes of delirium. Coleridge's _Genevieve_ and Keat's
_Belle Dame_ will point the difference. There is something of the same
color and mystery, even a parallelism in the subject-matter of the two
poems: but the first is mere sound and beauty, signifying nothing, and
the second a picture of the fate of one who has been lured away by
passion from the true paths of the Soul. They are surely wrong, who
ascribe to Coleridge the originality, and say that Keats followed him.
The truth is that the two are not comparable; Keat's voyagings were to
the right hand, Coleridge's, here, to the left.
And the last places in the witch-land? The House of Usher rears itself
gauntly beside its tarn there, and incontinently and dreadfully falls.
It is an "ultimate dim Thule," reached by a road haunted only of evil
angels. It is the home of decay, horror, and death; there is a godless
phosphorescence about it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account