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"Isis Unveiled"(English) Isis Unveiled) - a book on hermetic philosophy in 2 volumes by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. Written from to 1877.

The book examines the religious aspects of the philosophical works of Plato, Plotinus, Pythagoras, Paracelsus, Giordano Bruno, and others, the classical religious texts of Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, and others, with the aim of "recognizing hermetic philosophy, ... which is the only key to the Absolute in science and theology."

History of writing and publication

Beginning of work

Invisible collaborators

Olcott came to the conclusion that H. P. B. herself borrowed her body, as one borrows, for example, a typewriter, and moved on to other activities in the astral body. A certain group of adepts entered her body and acted upon it in turn. He says that the personality of H.P.B. was thus an instrument that distributed all the material, controlled its form, shades, expressiveness, thereby imprinting its own style. The various owners of H. P. B.'s body only changed her habitual handwriting, but did not write in their own; thus, using her brain, they had to let her color their thoughts and arrange the words in a certain order. Just as the daylight, penetrating the windows of the temple, takes on the shades of colored glass, so the thoughts transmitted through the brain of H. P. B. were changed by the literary style and way of expression developed by her.

Name choice

In a letter to A. Aksakov dated September 20, 1875, Blavatsky reports the proposed title of the future book: Skeleton Key to Mysterious Gates("The key to the mysterious gates"). The book was later called The veil of Isis("The Veil of Isis"), and the first volume was published under this title. However, J. W. Boughton, the publisher of the book, found out that a book with the same title had already been published in England. As a result, the book received its final title Isis Unveiled. non-authoritative source?] .

Publication

The book was published in September 1877 in New York by J.W. Bouton. New York newspaper The Herald Tribune called this work one of the "most interesting books of the century", many newspapers and magazines gave similar reviews.

Main ideas of the book

The book consists of two volumes, the first is concentrated mainly on science, the second - on theology.

“Between these two colliding titans - science and theology - there is a stunned public, quickly losing faith in the immortality of man and in any deity, quickly descending to the level of a purely animal existence. Such is the picture of the hour illuminated by the radiant midday sun of the Christian and scientific era!” ("Before the Veil" - preface).

Blavatsky emphasizes the difference between spiritualistic phenomena and spiritualism as a system of views. It defends the truth of spiritualistic phenomena, but by no means the ideas of spiritualists. In the volume on science, she tries to prove that science can be as dogmatic as religion, and criticizes the scientific approach that denies spiritual phenomena without any serious study of them, while quoting various celebrity scientists who recognize the need to study the spiritual component of the universe. .

“Such a dogmatic assertion that mesmerism and animal magnetism are only hallucinations suggests that proof is needed… Thousands of times academicians have been given the opportunity to convince themselves of the truth, but they have invariably shied away. In vain did the mesmerists and healers call to testify the deaf, the lame, the ill, and the dying, who were healed and brought back to life by simple manipulation and the apostolic "laying on of hands." "Coincidence" is the usual response when a fact is too obvious to be completely denied; “delusion”, “exaggeration”, “quackery” - these are the favorite expressions of our too numerous followers of Thomas the Unbeliever” (T. 1, ch. VI).

In the second volume ("theological"), she criticizes the hypocrisy of some religions, focusing on when and how they deviated from the ideas of their founders and began to move in the wrong direction.

“As an analysis of religious beliefs in general, this volume is especially directed against theological Christianity, the main opponent of free thought. It does not contain a single word against the pure teachings of Jesus, but mercilessly exposes their degeneration into perniciously harmful church systems ... ”(Preface to the second volume).

At the same time, she traces the doctrines of the most authoritative mystics and philosophers, gradually moving towards their common spiritual root. Thus, the book examines the history, distribution and development of the occult sciences, the nature and origin of magic, the roots of Christianity, a comparative analysis of Christianity and Buddhism, and criticizes the generally accepted concepts of orthodox science.

In the last chapter of the second volume, Blavatsky gives ten main points of Eastern philosophy:

"one. There are no miracles. Everything that happens is the result of the law - eternal, indestructible, always acting ...
2. Nature is triune: there is a visible, objective nature; the invisible, contained within, energy-communicating nature, the exact model of the former and its vital principle; and above these two - spirit, the source of all forces, one only eternal and indestructible. The two lower ones are constantly changing; the third, the highest, does not change.
3. Man is also triune: he has an objective, physical body; animating astral body (or soul) ... and above these two a third hovers and illuminates them - the ruler, the immortal spirit ...
4. Magic as a science is the knowledge of these principles and the manner in which the omniscience and omnipotence of the spirit and its power over the forces of nature can be acquired by man while he is still in the body. Magic, as an art, is the application of this knowledge in practice.
5. Abuse of secret knowledge is sorcery; application for good is true magic, or WISDOM.
6. Mediumship is the opposite of adeptship; the medium is a passive instrument of foreign influences; the adept actively governs himself and all forces below him.
7. Since everything that ever was, is or will be, leaves a record of itself in the astral light, or tablets of the invisible universe, then the initiated adept, using the sight of his spirit, can know everything that has ever been known or can become famous.
8. Human races differ in spiritual endowments as well as in skin color, stature, or any other external qualities; among some peoples the gift of foresight predominates by nature, among others mediumship ...
9. One of the phases of magical art is the voluntary and conscious separation of the inner man (astral form) from the outer man (physical body). In the case of some mediums this separation occurs, but it is unconscious and involuntary...
10. The cornerstone of MAGIC is a detailed practical knowledge of magnetism and electricity, their qualities, ratios and potencies ... In many minerals there are occult properties, no less strange than the properties of a magnet, about which all practitioners of magic obliged know and about which the so-called exact science knows nothing. Plants also have similar properties to a very surprising degree, and the secrets of herbs, dreams and charms are lost only for European science ... ”(T. 2, ch. XII).

Skeptic's view

Theosophical truths set forth in the books of Blavatsky and other members of the Theosophical Society have been subjected to repeated criticism (See Hodgson Report, W.C. Judge#New York Sun Publication). Many writers have expressed doubt about the sources of the information reported by Theosophists. In particular, Kenneth Paul Johnson (English) Russian claims that the "Mahatmas" about whom Theosophists have written and whose letters they have submitted are in reality idealizations of the people who were Blavatsky's mentors. Johnson states that the Mahatma Koot Hoomi is Thakur Singh Sandhanwalia, a member of the Singh Saba, the Indian National Liberation Movement and the Sikh reform movement. Mahatma Morya is Maharaja Ranbir Singh of Kashmir who died in 1885. Skeptical authors point out that there is little evidence that Blavatsky's "mahatmas" ever existed.

Literature

Henry S Olcott Old Diary Leaves: The True Story of the Theosophical Society
Olcott G. S. "The Count of St. Germain and H. P. B. - Two Heralds of the White Lodge"
Incidents in the Life of Madame Blavatsky, compiled and edited by A.P. Sinnet - London, 1886

Secret Doctrine

The seven principles of Eastern initiates were not explained when it was written " Isis Unveiled", but only three were given Kabbalistic aspects semi-exoteric Kabbalah.

We have discussed this in detail in Unveiled Isis, and the idea of an evolution analogous if not identical to Darwin's, the idea of the struggle for existence and primacy and the "experience of the strongest" among the Many above as well as among the Many below, runs like a red thread through both volumes of our early work, written in 1876 . But this idea is not ours, it belongs to ancient times.

Some hostile critics are trying to prove that in our early writings in " Unveiled Isis” was not spoken about the Seven Principles of Man, nor about the Septenary Structure of Our Chain. Although in that work the doctrine could only be given in hints, yet there are many passages in which the Septenary Structure, both of Man and of the Chain, is explicitly mentioned. Speaking of Elohim (II, 420), it is said: “They remain above the Seventh Heaven (or the spiritual world), for it is they who, according to the Kabbalists, formed the six material worlds in their succession, or rather the attempts of the worlds that preceded ours, which they say is the seventh." Our Globe in the diagram representing the Chain is, of course, the seventh and lowest; although, since the evolution on these Spheres is cyclical, it is the fourth on the descending arc of matter. Further it is said (II, 367): “In the ideas of Egypt, also, as in all other beliefs based on philosophy, man was not just only ... a combination of soul and body; he was threefold when the spirit was attached to him. In addition, this doctrine taught that he had... a body... an astral form or shadow... an animal soul... a higher soul and... an earthly mind... (and) a sixth principle, etc. - the seventh is the SPIRIT. These principles are so clearly mentioned that even in Index(II, 683) one finds the "Six Principles of Man", the seventh being, strictly speaking, a synthesis of the six and not a principle, but only by the Ray of the Absolute ALL.

in "Isis Unmasked" in a work which is full of such pointing links between ancient, medieval and modern thought, but, unfortunately, this work was published too carelessly.

In Isis Unveiled, everything that could be said about Magic was stated under the guise of allusions; and thus, owing to the large amount of material scattered over two large volumes, much of the significance did not reach the reader, while the unfortunate distribution of the material all the more diverted his attention.

In Isis Unveiled the reader will find more complete information than can be given here about the Zohar and its author, the great Kabbalist Simeon ben Yochai.

Isis Unveiled

The book, which is now being brought to the attention of the public, is the fruit of a fairly close acquaintance with the Eastern adepts and the study of their science. It is offered to those who are ready to accept the truth wherever they find it, and to defend it, even facing the prevailing prejudice straight in the face. This is an attempt to help researchers discern the vital principles underlying the philosophical systems of antiquity.

The book is written with all sincerity. It wants to pay tribute and speak the truth, without malice or prejudice. But it shows neither condescension to delusion sitting on the throne, nor respect for self-proclaimed authority. It demands respect for a maligned past for its accomplishments, a respect that has not been given to it for so long. It demands the return of other people's robes to their owners and the restoration of slandered but glorious reputations. No form of worship, no religious belief, no scientific hypothesis will be criticized in any other spirit.

< ... >

Our work is therefore an argument in favor of the recognition of the Hermetic philosophy, the ancient universal religion of wisdom, which is the only key to the Absolute in science and in theology.

when we use the term archaic throughout the following chapters, it means the time before Pythagoras; when we use the term ancient, it means the time before Mahomet; and when medieval, it means the time between Mohammed and Martin Luther. It will only be necessary from time to time to break this rule when we speak of nationalities before Pythagorean antiquity and apply to them, according to established custom, the name "ancient."

Before concluding this chapter of the introduction, we venture to say a few words to explain the plan of this work. Its purpose is not to impose on the public the personal views and theories of the author; nor does it have the pretensions of a scientific work that aims to make a revolution in any department of human thought. Rather, it is a short summary of the religions, philosophies, universal traditions of the human race, and their interpretation in the spirit of secret doctrines, of which none, through prejudice and blind piety, have reached the Christian part of mankind so undistorted as to ensure a fair judgment of it. Since the days of the unfortunate medieval philosophers who were the last to keep them and write about them, there have been few people who despised persecution and prejudice so much as to dare to write about them. And these few who wrote, as a rule, did not write for the public, but only for those like themselves who possessed the keys to their jargon. The masses of mankind, who did not understand either them or their teachings, looked at them as charlatans or as dreamers. Hence arose that undeserved contempt into which the noblest of sciences, the science of the spiritual man, was plunged.

Having taken up the study of the assumed infallibility of modern science and theology, the author was forced, even at the risk of being considered jumping from one topic to another, to make constant comparisons of the ideas, achievements and claims of modern representatives of science and religion with the ideas and achievements of ancient philosophers and religion teachers. The phenomena most remote in time can thus be put side by side for comparison and decide who owns the primacy and paternity of discoveries and dogmas. In discussing the merits of our scientific contemporaries, their own confessions of failure in experimental research, of embarrassing mysteries, of missing links in their theoretical chains, of an inability to uncover natural phenomena, of ignorance of the laws of the world of causality served as the basis for this study. In particular (since psychology is so neglected and the East so far away that few of our researchers will ever get there to study this science where it is the only one understood), we will review the reasoning, speculation and behavior of famous authorities in connection with modern psychological phenomena, a line of conduct that began in Rochester and has now spread throughout the world. We wish to show how inevitable their innumerable errors were, and how they must continue until these feigned authorities of the West go to the Brahmins and Lamaists of the East and respectfully ask them to give them the alphabet of true science. We have not made a single accusation against scientists that was not backed up by their own public confessions; and if our quotations from ancient records take away from them what they considered their well-deserved laurels, then it is not we who are to blame, but Truth. And no one, if he is worthy of the title of philosopher, will want to receive honors that rightfully belong to others.

Deeply aware of the titanic struggle which is now going on between materialism and the spiritual aspirations of mankind, we are making constant efforts to collect in our few chapters, like a weapon in an arsenal, every fact and proof that the latter can use to defeat the former. The sickly and deformed child that he is now, the materialism of Today was born from a rough Yesterday. If his growth is not checked, he will become our master. He is an illegitimate descendant of the French Revolution and its reaction against blind religious piety and oppression. In order to prevent the destruction of these spiritual aspirations, the death of hopes and the death of that intuition that teaches us about God and the afterlife, we must denounce our false theology, its naked absurdity and point out the difference between divine religion and human dogmas. We raise our voice for spiritual freedom, we are for liberation from any tyranny, whether it be the tyranny of science or theology.

No other assertion is made of the opinions contained in this work than that they are based on many years of study of ancient magic and its modern form, Spiritualism.

As an analysis of religious beliefs in general, this volume is especially directed against theological Christianity, the chief opponent of free thought. It does not contain a single word against the pure teachings of Jesus, but mercilessly exposes their degeneration into perniciously harmful church systems that destroy a person's faith in his immortality, in his God, and undermine all moral freedom.

Articles

About ten years ago, when I wrote Isis Unveiled, the most important purpose of the work was to demonstrate the following: (a) the reality of the occult in nature; (b) thorough familiarization with all occult fields in "certain people" and skill in this field; (c) the insufficiency of an art or science of our time that does not even mention the Vedas; (d) that hundreds of things, especially the secrets of nature - in abscondito, as the alchemists called it - were known to the Aryans in the pre-Habharat period, and they are also unknown to us modern sages of the 19th century.

"Isis Unveiled" - occupies a central place in the work of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. This book can rightly be called an encyclopedia of the occult sciences. Among the topics covered in it are Eastern Kabbalah and the lost magical arts, the influence of stars and planets on human destinies and the mysteries of the Gobi desert, the materialization of Spirits and life after death.

Helena BLAVATSKY
ISIS DISCOVERED
Volume I
THE SCIENCE

the Theosophical Society,
which was founded in New York in 1875 to study what these volumes deal with.

Isis Unveiled
A MASTER-KEY TO THE MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT AND MODERN SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY
BY H. P. BLAVATSKY,
CORRESPONDING SECRETARY OF THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY
Isis Unveiled
H. P. BLAVATSKY
THE KEY TO THE MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT AND
OF MODERN SCIENCE AND THEOSOPHY

Introduction

We do not believe in any magic that would surpass the horizon and ability of the human mind, nor in a "miracle", divine or diabolical, if it implies a violation of the laws of nature, eternally existing. Nevertheless, we accept as correct the statement of the talented author of "Festus" that the human heart has not yet fully expressed itself and that we have never yet comprehended or even understood the extent of its powers. Is it too much to believe that man should develop new feelings and a closer connection with nature? The logic of evolution must teach this if carried to its rightful conclusions. If somewhere during the ascent from a plant or to the noblest man a soul gifted with rationality was born, then it would not be unreasonable to conclude and believe that a capacity is growing in a person that gives him the opportunity to understand facts and truths that surpass our present horizons. Yet we do not hesitate to accept Bife's assertion that "essence is always the same." Whether we beat the marble from the outside, moving inside the block that hides the future statue, or we put stone on stone, moving from the inside out until the temple is completed, our new the result is only old idea. The very last of all eternities will find its constricted other half of the soul in the earliest.

When, many years ago, we first traveled through the East, exploring the secrets of its deserted sanctuaries, two awe-inspiring and ever-recurring questions oppressed our minds: who and what there is God? Who has ever seen immortal spirit man and thus convinced of his own immortality?

And when we were most concerned with the solution of these perplexing questions, we came into contact with certain people who possessed mysterious powers and such deep knowledge that we can truly call them the wise men of the East. We listened carefully to their instructions. They have shown us that by combining science with religion, the existence of God and the immortality of the human spirit can be proved in the same way as the theorems of Euclid. For the first time, we were convinced that in the philosophy of the East there is no place for any other faith, except for the absolute and unshakable faith in the omnipotence of the immortal self of man. We were taught that this omnipotence comes from the kinship of the human spirit with the Universal Soul - God! The latter can never be demonstrated except by means of the former. The human spirit proves the existence of the divine spirit, just as one drop of water proves the existence of the source whence it came. Tell someone who has never seen water that there is an ocean of water and they will have to accept it, or deny it altogether. But let one drop fall on his hand, and then he will be able to draw all other conclusions from this fact. And after that, he can gradually come to the understanding that there is a boundless immeasurable ocean. He will no longer need blind faith; he will replace it with knowledge. When one sees mortal man exercising great powers, controlling the forces of nature, and opening a view of the spirit world, the rational mind is shocked by the conviction that if the spiritual Ego one person can accomplish so much, then the ability Spirit Father accordingly, they must be as powerful and vast as the ocean is more powerful and vast than one drop. Ex nihilo nihil fit; prove the existence of the soul in man by means of its miraculous powers - and you will prove the existence of God!

In our studies we were shown that secrets are not secrets. Names and places which, to the Western mind, had the meaning only of Eastern tales, were shown to us as realities. With blessings, we entered in spirit into the temple of Isis, in order to lift the veil of "he who is, was, and will be" in Sais; to look through the torn veil into the Holy of Holies of Jerusalem and even ask questions in the underground chapel that once existed under the sacred building - the mysterious Bat-Kol. Filia Votsis- the daughter of the divine voice - answered from the seat of mercy behind the veil, and science, theology and all human hypotheses, born of imperfect knowledge, forever lost their authoritative character in our eyes. The only living God spoke through his human oracle, and we were satisfied. Such knowledge is priceless; and it was denied only to those who overlooked it, ridiculed it and denied its existence.

Helena Blavatsky - Isis Unveiled: Science. Volume 1 - read a book online for free

Abstract

Volume I

Helena BLAVATSKY

ISIS DISCOVERED
Volume I
THE SCIENCE

the Theosophical Society,

which was founded in New York in 1875 to study what these volumes deal with.

Vol. I. SCIENCE

Isis Unveiled

A MASTER-KEY TO THE MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT AND MODERN SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY

BY H. P. BLAVATSKY,

CORRESPONDING SECRETARY OF THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY

Isis Unveiled

H. P. BLAVATSKY

THE KEY TO THE MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT AND

OF MODERN SCIENCE AND THEOSOPHY

Introduction

H. P. BLAVATSKY

ISIS EXPOSED
Volume I

Translation by K. Leonov, O. Kolesnikov

BEFORE THE VEIL h 9
The Dogmatic Arrogance of Modern Science and Theology
Plato's philosophy provides the only ground for reconciliation
Overview of ancient philosophical systems
Syriac manuscript about Simon Magus
Glossary of terms used in this book

PART I
"INERRORITY" OF MODERN SCIENCE

CHAPTER I. OLD THINGS WITH NEW NAMES h 37
Eastern Kabbalah
Ancient traditions confirmed by the latest research
The progress of humanity is marked by cycles
ancient encrypted science
The inestimable value of the Vedas
Corruption of European sacred books by translators
Magic has always been regarded as a divine science
Achievements of adepts of magic and hypotheses of its modern detractors
Human striving for immortality

CHAPTER II. POWER PHENOMENON h 65
The servility of society
Prejudice and hypocrisy of men of science
They are haunted by psychic phenomena
Lost arts
The human will is power over powers
Superficial generalizations of French scientists
Mediumistic phenomena - what to attribute them to
Their connection to crime

CHAPTER III. BLIND DRIVERS OF THE BLIND h 91
Huxley derivative of orogippus
Komte, his system and followers
London materialists
Robes from someone else's shoulder
Emanation of the objective universe from the subjective

CHAPTER IV. THEORIES ABOUT MENTAL PHENOMENA h 111
Gasparin's theory
Tury theory
Theory of de Musset and de Mirville
Houdini's theory
Babinet's theory
Theory of Royer and Jobart de Lambal
Gemini - "unconscious cerebration" and "unconscious ventriloquism"
Crookes theory
Faraday theory
Chevrolet theory
Mendeleev Commission 1876
Blindness of the soul.

CHAPTER V. ETHER OR "ASTRAAL LIGHT" h 131
One Primary Power, But Many Correlations
Tyndall almost made a great discovery
The impossibility of a miracle
The nature of the original substance
Interpretation of some ancient myths
Experiences of fakirs
Evolution in Indian allegory

CHAPTER VI. PSYCHOPHYSICAL PHENOMENA h 160
Our debt to Paracelsus
Mesmerism - its origin, reception, possibilities
"Psychometry"
Time, space, eternity
The transfer of energy from the visible to the invisible universe
Crookes' experiments and Cox's theory

CHAPTER VII. ELEMENTS, ELEMENTALS AND ELEMENTARY h 192
Attraction and repulsion are inherent in all kingdoms of nature.
Psychic Phenomena Depend on the Physical Environment
Sightings in Siam
Music for nervous disorders
"Soul of the World" and its potentialities
Touch Healing and Healers
"Diacca" and the evil demons of Porfiry
Inextinguishable lamp
Modern ignorance about life force
Antiquity of force correlation theory
The universality of belief in magic

CHAPTER VIII. SOME SECRETS OF NATURE h 228
Do planets influence human destinies?
A very curious passage from Hermes
Restless state of matter
Fulfilled prophecy of Nostradamus
Sympathies between planets and plants
Indian knowledge of the properties of color
"Random coincidences" - the panacea of modern science
moon and tides
Epidemic mental moral disorders
The gods of the pantheon are only forces of nature
Evidence of the magical power of Pythagoras
Invisible races of the inhabitants of ethereal space
"Four Truths" of Buddhism

CHAPTER IX. CYCLIC PHENOMENA h 258
The meaning of the expression "leather bedspreads"
Natural selection and its results
Egyptian "circle of necessity"
Pre-Adamic races
Descent of spirit into matter
The Triune Nature of Man
Lowest on the creature scale
Descriptions of elementals
Proclus and the Creatures of the Air
Various names for the elementals
Swedenborg's views on the death of the soul
Human souls tied to the earth
Impure mediums and their "drivers"
Psychometrics to aid scientific research

CHAPTER X. INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL MAN h 290
Father Felix sues scientists
"Unknowable"
Danger of Evocations
Larvae and lemurs
Secrets of Indian Temples
reincarnation
Witchcraft and sorceresses
Sacred Soma Trance
Vulnerability of some "shadows"
Clearchus' experiments on a sleeping boy
Testimony of the author on the competition of the magicians of India
Case of Cevenna

CHAPTER XI. PSYCHOLOGICAL AND PHYSICAL MIRACLES h 322
Man becomes invulnerable
Sending Willpower
Insensitivity to snake venom
Charming snakes with music
Discussion of the teratological phenomenon
The field of psychology is recognized as unexplored
The Desperate Regrets of Berselius
The conversion of river water into blood is a phenomenon of the vegetable kingdom

CHAPTER XII. "AN INBALANCED ACCESS" h 352
Recognition of one's ignorance by men of science
Pantheon of Nihilism
The triple composition of fire
Definition of instinct and reason
Philosophy of Indian Jains
Deliberately incorrect interpretations of Lemprier
The astral soul of man is not immortal
Reincarnation of the Buddha
Magical image of the sun and moon in Tibet
Explanation of vampirism
Bengal magicians

CHAPTER XIII. REALITIES AND ILLUSIONS h 386
Reasonable explanation of talismans
Unexplained mysteries
Magical Experience in Bengal
Amazing Phenomena of Chib Chondora
Indian Ribbon Climbing Trick - Illusion
The return to life of the buried fakirs
Limits of delayed vital activity
Mediumship is the direct opposite of adeptship.
What are "materialized spirits"?
Shudala Madan
Philosophy of levitation
Elixir and Alkahest

CHAPTER XIV. EGYPTIAN WISDOM h 427
Origin of the Egyptians
Their powerful engineering facilities
ancient land of the pharaohs
Antiquity of the Nilotic Sites
Arts of War and Peace
Mexican myths and ruins
Similarity to Egypt
Moses - Priest of Osiris
What the ruins of Siam teach
Egyptian Tao in Palenque

CHAPTER XV. INDIA - CRADE OF HUMANITY h 472
Obtaining the "Secret Doctrine"
Two relics belonging to a Pali scholar
The stubborn aloofness of the Hindus
Lydia Maria Child on phallic symbolism
Age of Vedas and Manu
Traditions of pre-Flood races
Atlantis and its peoples
Relics of Peru
The Gobi Desert and its secrets
Tibetan and Chinese legends
The magician helps, not hinders nature
Philosophies, religions, arts and sciences - a legacy to descendants from Mother India

BEFORE THE VEIL
John - Bring unfolded banners to the walls!
— King Henry VI, act IV.
"My life has been devoted to the study of man, his destinies and his happiness"
— J. R. Buchanan, Lecture Notes in Anthropology.

We are told that already nineteen centuries have passed since the night of paganism was first dispelled by the divine light of Christianity; and two and a half centuries have passed since the bright lamp of modern science began to shine in the darkness of the ignorance of the ages. We are required to believe that during the said epochs the true progress of the moral and intellectual development of our race began. The ancient philosophers, they say, were good enough for their respective generations, but they are illiterate compared to our modern men of science. The ethics of paganism, perhaps, met the requirements of the uncultured people of antiquity, but only as long as the appearance of the shining "Star of Bethlehem" did not indicate a clear path to moral perfection and salvation. In the old days, animality was the rule, virtue and spirituality the exception. Now even the most stupid can read the will of God in the word of His revelation; people now have enough motivation to be kind, and they are getting better all the time.
So they think: but what are the facts? On the one hand, devoid of spirituality, dogmatic, very often corrupted clergy; a lot of sects and three great religions warring among themselves; disagreements instead of unity, dogmas without evidence, sensation-loving preachers, parishioners seeking wealth and pleasure, hypocrisy and hypocrisy born of tyrannical excesses in the demands of decency, respectability, dominant views - the sincerity and reality of piety become exceptions. On the other hand, scientific hypotheses built on sand; there is not a single issue on which agreement has been reached; ardent quarrels and envy; general trend towards materialism. The fight to the death between science and theology for infallibility is the "secular conflict".
In Rome, in the self-appointed stronghold of Christianity, the ostensible heir to Peter's chair is undermining social order through his invisible but ubiquitous network of loyal, sanctimonious agents, inciting them to revolutionize Europe for his temporary as well as spiritual leadership. We see him calling himself "Christ's Vicar" as he fraternizes with anti-Christian Islam against another Christian nation, publicly invoking God's blessing on the arms of those who with fire and sword hindered his Christ's claim to divinity. In Berlin, in one of the great strongholds of learning, professors of modern exact sciences, turning their backs on the lauded results of enlightenment after the Galilean era, extinguished the candle of the great Florentine, trying to prove that the entire heliocentric system and even the very rotation of the earth is nothing but the deceptive dreams of misguided scientists ; Newton, on the other hand, is a visionary, and all astronomers, past and present, are just clever manipulators of numbers, trying to prove unverifiable problems.
Between these two colliding titans - science and theology - there is a stunned public, quickly losing faith in the immortality of man and in any deity, quickly descending to the level of a purely animal existence. Such is the picture of the hour illuminated by the radiant midday sun of the Christian and scientific era!
Is it strictly fair to condemn to stoning the critics of the humblest and most modest of authors for completely rejecting the authority of both of these combatants? Are we not obliged to accept as true the aphorism of our age proclaimed by Horace Greeley:
"I do not unreservedly accept the views of any man, living or dead.">
This, in any case, will be our motto, and we want to be guided by this principle throughout this work.
Among the many unusual shoots of our age, the strange creed of the so-called spiritualists has sprung up amid the crumbling remnants of self-styled revelation religions and materialistic philosophies; and for the time being it alone provides the last refuge for a compromise between the two. That this unexpected spirit of pre-Christian times was not very hospitably received by our sober and positive age is nothing to be surprised at. Times have changed strangely. And just recently, a well-known Brooklyn preacher very opportunely pointed out in his sermon that if Jesus could reappear on earth and behave on the streets of New York as he behaved on the streets of Jerusalem, he would be imprisoned in prison. What kind of meeting could then be expected by Spiritualism? True, this prophetic stranger at first glance does not look either attractive or promising. Ugly and unsightly, like a child from seven nannies, he emerges from his early childhood lame and crippled. His enemies are legion; he has a handful of friends and defenders. But what of it? When was truth immediately accepted a priori? That the adherents of Spiritualism, in their fanaticism, exaggerated its qualities and remained blind to its imperfections, this does not give grounds for doubting its reality. Forgery is impossible when there is nothing to fake. The very fanaticism of the Spiritualists is proof of the authenticity and possibility of their phenomena. They give us facts that we can investigate, not statements that we must believe without evidence. Millions of intelligent men and women do not easily succumb to collective hallucinations. And so, while the clergy, adhering to their own interpretations of the Bible, and science, reckoning only with its self-made Code of the possible in nature, refuse even to listen to the Spiritualists, true science and true religion are silent and with serious attention await what is to come.
The whole question of phenomena rests on a correct understanding of the old philosophies. Where, then, should we turn in our bewilderment, if not to the ancient sages, if, under the pretext of superstition, modern science refuses to explain us? Let's ask them what they know about true science and religion; we will not go into details, but in the full breadth of understanding of these twin truths, so strong in unity and so weak when they are separated. Moreover, it may be to our advantage to compare this vaunted modern science with the ancient ignorance, the perfected modern theology with the "Secret Doctrine" of the ancient universal religion. Maybe in this way we will open a neutral ground from where we can benefit from both.
Only the philosophy of Plato, being a finely crafted compendium of the hard-to-understand systems of old India, can provide us with this neutral ground. Although twenty-two and a quarter centuries have passed since the death of Plato, the great minds of the world are still busy studying his writings. He was, in the fullest sense of the word, a world interpreter. And this greatest philosopher of the pre-Christian era faithfully reflected in his writings the spirituality of the Vedic philosophers who lived thousands of years before himself - correctly reflected their metaphysical expressions. One can find how Vyasa, Jaimini, Kapila, Vrihaspati, Sumati and many others, despite the separating centuries, have left their indelible stamp on the writings of Plato and his school. Thus the conclusion is assured that the same wisdom was revealed to Plato and the ancient sages of India alike. And if this wisdom could survive such a blow of time, then what kind of wisdom could it be if not divine and eternal?
Plato taught that justice exists in the soul of its owner and is his greatest blessing.
"People, in proportion to their reason, recognized its (justice) transcendental requirements"
Yet commentators almost unanimously shy away from every paragraph showing that his metaphysics is based on solid foundations and not on ideal concepts.
But Plato could not accept a philosophy devoid of spiritual aspirations; with him the two always made one. For for the old Greek sage there was only one single goal - real knowledge. He believed that only he is a true philosopher or student of truth who has knowledge of the real-existent, as opposed to that which waxes and wanes, that develops and annihilates alternately.
"Behind all finite existences and secondary causes, all laws, ideas and principles, there is REASON or MIND [???? , nous. ?uh], the first principle of all principles, the Supreme Idea on which all other ideas are based; Monarch and Legislator universe; the one substance from which all things derive their origin and essence, the root cause of all order and harmony, beauty, excellence and virtue, permeating the entire universe - who is called for the sake of exaltation the Supreme Good, God (o ??o?) "? god above everyone", (o ??? ???? ??o?)" .
He is neither reason nor truth, but "their father." Although this eternal essence of things is not perceived by our physical senses, it is comprehensible to the minds of those who are not stubborn fools.
“To you,” Jesus said to his chosen disciples, “it has been given to know the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven, but it has not been given to them [ ??????] ... therefore I speak to them in parables [allegories]; for they looking do not see listening, they do not hear and do not understand." [Matthew, XIII, 11, 13.]
Porphyry of the Neoplatonic school testifies that Plato's philosophy was taught and illustrated in the mysteries. Many doubted and rejected it; and Lobec, in his Aglaophomus, even went so far as to depict the sacred orgies as little more than an empty performance, to captivate the imagination. And this, despite the fact that Athens and Greece for more than twenty centuries visited the Eleusinian mysteries every five years to watch a solemn religious action. Augustine, Pope Bishop of Hippo, clarified these claims. He states that the doctrines of the Alexandrian Platonists were the original esoteric doctrines. He claims that the doctrines of the Alexandrian Platonists were the genuine esoteric doctrines of the early followers of Plato, and describes Plotinus as a resurrected Plato. He also gives the great philosopher's motives which made him veil the inner meaning of what he taught.
As regards the myths, Plato declares in the Gorgias and the Phaedo that the myths are vessels of great truths, very worthy to be sought. But the commentators had so little en rapport with the great philosopher that they were forced to confess that they did not know "where doctrine ends and myth begins." Plato put to flight the popular superstitions about magic and demons, and developed the exaggerated theories of the day into reasonable theories and metaphysical concepts. Perhaps they would not quite correspond to the inductive method of reasoning established by Aristotle; nevertheless, they are highly satisfying to those who perceive existence with the highest faculty of inner vision, intuition, which provides the criterion for asserting truth.
Basing all his doctrines on the presence of the Supreme Mind, Plato taught that nous, spirit; or the rational soul of man, being "begotten by the divine Father", has a nature akin to or even homogeneous with the deity and is able to contemplate eternal realities. This ability to contemplate reality directly and directly belongs only to God; the pursuit of this knowledge is what is really meant by the word philosophy - the love of wisdom. The love of truth is an inborn love of the good; and dominating over all other desires of the soul, purifying it and bringing it into contact with the divine, and directing every action of the individual, it raises the person to participation and communion with the divine and restores in him the likeness of God.
“This flight,” says Plato in Theaetetus, “consists of becoming like God, and the assimilation of this is expressed in the fact that a person becomes just and holy wisdom.”
The pre-existence of spirit or nous is always affirmed as the basis of this assimilation. In the allegory of the chariot and winged horses given in the Phaedrus, he depicts the psychic nature as complex and dual; thumos or epitumic part, formed from the substances of the phenomenal world, and ????????? , tumoides, whose essence is connected with the eternal world. The present earthly life is a fall and a punishment. The soul dwells "in the coffin which we call the body," and in its embodied state, before passing through the discipline of education, the poetic or spiritual element is in a "dormant state." Life thus is more a dream than a reality. Like the prisoners in the underground cave described in The Republic, our backs are turned to the light, and we perceive only the shadows of objects and think that these are realities. Is this not the idea of Maya, or the illusion of the senses in physical life, which is a feature in Buddhist philosophy? But these shadows, if we have not completely withdrawn into the power of sensual nature, awaken in us vague memories of that higher world in which we once inhabited.
"The imprisoned spirit has some vague and obscure memories of its state of bliss before the beginning of the cycle of birth, and some longing to return there."
The task of the discipline of philosophy is to liberate the spirit from the fetters of feelings and raise it to the realm of pure thought, to the vision of eternal truth, goodness and beauty.
“The soul,” Plato says in Theaetetus, “cannot incarnate in the form of a person if it has never seen the truth. These are memories of what our soul has seen before, when it hovered with the deity, despising those things about which we now we say that they exist, and looked at what really really exists.This is the reason why the nous or spirit of the philosopher (or student of the highest truth) takes wings, for he tries with all his might to keep these things in his mind, the contemplation of which elevates even the deity itself Correctly using the memories of a former life, by constant self-improvement in the perfect mysteries, a person becomes truly perfect - initiated into divine wisdom.
From this it becomes clear to us why the most exalted scenes in the mysteries were always performed at night. The life of the inner spirit is the death of the outer nature, and the night of the physical world signifies the day of the spiritual world. Dionysius is the night sun, therefore he is revered more than Helios, the daylight. The mysteries symbolized the conditions for the preexistence of the spirit and soul, the fall of the latter into earthly life and Hades, the hardships of this life, the purification of the soul and its return to divine bliss and reunion with the spirit. Theon of Smyrna aptly equates philosophical discipline with mystical rites:
“Philosophy,” he says, “may be called initiation into the true innermost mysteries and real mysteries. There are five parts of the initiation: I - preliminary purification, II - admission to participation in the secret rites, III - epoptotic revelation, IV - vestment or erection to the throne, V - the last, arising from all the previous ones - friendship and inner communion with God and the joyful enjoyment of those benefits that arise from close communion with divine beings. Plato designates the name epopteia or personal contemplation of the perfect contemplation of things that were vaguely, intuitively foreseen, as well as absolute truths and ideas. He also considers the binding of the head and the crowning to be analogous to the power that the initiate receives from his mentors - the power to lead others to the same contemplation. The fifth degree is the highest happiness that arises from here, according to Plato, consists in joining to divinity , its assimilation as far as human pr Herod".
Such is Platonism.
"Everything comes from Plato," says Ralph Waldo Emerson, "what thinkers write and argue about."
He absorbed all the learning of his time - Greek from the Philosopher to Socrates, then Pythagorean in Italy, and then all that he could get from Egypt and the East. He was so broad-minded that the whole philosophy of Europe and Asia entered into his doctrines. And in addition to culture and mental abilities, he still possessed the soul and talent of a poet.
The followers of Plato, in general, strictly adhered to his psychological theories. However, some, like Xenocrates, have ventured into bolder speculations Speusippus, the great philosopher's nephew and heir, was the author of the "Analysis of Numbers", a treatise on Pythagorean numbers. Some of his speculations did not make it into the Dialogues he wrote; but he was a student of Plato's unwritten lectures, and Enfield is right in saying that he did not deviate from his teacher. Although he is not mentioned by name, he seems to have been the opponent Aristotle criticized when he spoke of the quotation in Plato's argument against the Pythagorean doctrine that all things are themselves numbers, or rather inseparable from the idea of numbers. He was especially anxious to show that the Platonic doctrine of ideas differed essentially from the Pythagorean doctrine, that it assumed that numbers and magnitudes exist separately from things. He also argued that Plato teaches that there can be no real knowledge if the subject of this knowledge is not taken out of the bounds of sober thinking.
But Aristotle was not a credible witness. He distorted Plato and almost caricatured the doctrines of Pythagoras. There is a canon of interpretation by which we must guide our investigations of all philosophical opinions:
"The human mind, under the action of its own laws, has always been compelled to nourish the same basic ideas, and the human heart to cherish the same sentiments in all ages."
Undoubtedly, Pythagoras aroused the deepest intellectual sympathies of his age, and his doctrines had a powerful effect on the mind of Plato. His cardinal idea was that there is a permanent principle of unity hidden under the forms, changes and other phenomena of the universe. Aristotle claimed that he taught that "numbers are the first principles of all things." Ritter expressed the opinion that this Pythagorean formula should be understood symbolically, which is undoubtedly correct. Aristotle continues to associate these numbers with the "forms" and "ideas" of Plato. He even claims that Plato said "forms are numbers" and that "ideas exist as things of substance, they are real beings." Yet Plato taught differently. He stated that the ultimate goal is the Greater Good - ?? ??????.
"Ideas are the objects of understanding for the human mind, and they are attributes of the divine mind."
Nor did he ever say "forms are numbers." What he really said we find in the Timaeus:
"God created in proportion to the emergence of things, according to forms and numbers."
It is recognized by modern science that all the higher laws of nature take the form of a quantitative expression. This is perhaps a more complete development and more exhaustive confirmation of the Pythagorean doctrine. Numbers were considered as the best representatives of the laws of harmony that exist in space. We also know that in chemistry the doctrine of atoms and their combinations is based on numbers. As Archer Butler put it in this regard:
"The world in all its departments represents living arithmetic in its progressive development and realized geometry in its rest."
The key to the Pythagorean dogmas is the general formula of unity in plurality, the one that passes into the multitude and nourishes the multitude. This is the ancient doctrine of emanation, expressed in a few words. Even the apostle Paul accepted it as the truth. "?? ?????, ??? ?? ?????, ??? ??? ???o? ?? ?????" - all from it and through it and in it contained. This, as you will now see, is purely Indian and Brahminical:
"When the dissolution - pralaya - reached its end, the Great Essence - Para-Atma or Para-Purusha - the Lord, existing from himself, from whom and through whom everything became and will decide to emanate from his own substance of various creatures" .
The mystical decade 1+2+3+4=10 is an expression of this idea. One is God, Two is matter, Three is a combination of Monads and Duads (ones and twos), carrying the nature of both, is the phenomenal world; The tetrad, or form of perfection, expresses the emptiness of everything, and the Decade, or the sum of all, includes the entire cosmos. The universe is a combination of thousands of elements, and yet it is the expression of a single spirit - chaos for the senses and cosmos for the mind.
This whole combination of numbers expressing the idea of creation is Indian. Self-existent Svayambhu, or Svayambhava as some call it, is one. It emanates from itself the creative power of Brahma or Purusha (the divine masculine principle) and the one becomes Two; from this Duad, the union of the purely intellectual principle with the principle of matter, comes the third, the viraj, the phenomenal world. From this invisible and incomprehensible trinity, the Brahminical Trimurti, comes the second triad, which represents the three forces: creative, preserving and transforming. They are personified by Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, but they are again merged into one. United, Brahma, or as he is called in the Vedas, Tridendi, is the threefold manifested God, from whom the symbolic Aum or abbreviated Trimurti originated. And only under this trinity, always active and tangible for all our senses, the invisible and unknown Monas can manifest itself in the mortal world. When he becomes Sharira, or one who takes a visible form, he personifies all the principles of matter, all the germs of life, he is Purusha, the three-faced god or threefold power, the essence of the Vedic triad.
"Let the Brahmins know the sacred Syllable (Aum), three words from Savitri, and let them read the Vedas every day."
"After the creation of the universe, the One whose power is incomprehensible disappeared again, being absorbed by the Supreme Soul... Retiring into the original darkness, the Great Soul remains within the unknowable and devoid of any form..."
"When, once again united with the subtlest elementary principles, it enters a vegetable or animal seed, it will take on a new form in each."
"And thus, alternately awakening and resting, the Immutable Being eternally causes all existing creatures, both active and inert, to come to life and die."
Whoever studied Pythagoras and his reflections on the Monad, which, after emanating the Duad, plunges into silence and darkness and thus creates the Triad, understands where the philosophy of the great sage from Samossa came from, and after him - Socrates and Plato.
Speusippus seems to have taught that the psychic or thumetic soul is as immortal as the spiritual or rational soul; Next, we will introduce his arguments. He also, like Philolaus and Aristotle, in his research on the soul - makes an element out of ether; in this way, five initial elements were obtained, which corresponded to the five regular figures of geometry. This also became the doctrine of the Alexandrian school. Indeed, there was much of Philolethianism in this doctrine, which did not appear in the writings of the later Platonists, but was undoubtedly taught in essence by the philosopher himself, but, in his usual caution, was not set down in writing, as it was too secret for publication. Speusippus and Xenocrates after him, like their great teacher, believed that the Anima Mundi, or world soul, was not a deity, but a manifestation. These philosophers never thought of the One as living nature. The original One did not exist in the sense we understand the term. Until he united with many - emanated existences (monad and duad) - not a single being was created. ??????, ?readable - something manifested, lives in the center as well as in the circumference, but this is only a reflection of the deity - the world soul. In this doctrine we find the spirit of esoteric Buddhism.
The human idea of God is that image of the blinding light that he sees in the crooked mirror of his soul, and all this, in truth, is not God, but only his reflection. His brilliance and glory are there, but what a man sees is only the light of his own spirit, and that is all he can look at. The clearer the mirror, the brighter the divine image will be. But the external world cannot be observed in it at the same time. In ecstatic yoga, in the illumined seer, the spirit will shine like the midday sun; in the corrupted victim of earthly inclinations this radiance disappears, because the mirror is darkened by stains of matter. Such people deny their God and are ready to deprive humanity of the soul with one blow.
No God? No soul? Terrible destructive thought! The maddening nightmare of the insane atheist, which appears to his feverish gaze like an ugly incessant procession of sparks of cosmic matter, created by no one, self-appearing, self-existing and self-developing, and this I am not I, for it is nobody and nothing, and it floats from nowhere, and there is no Cause, moving it, because there is no First Cause, and everything is rapidly rushing nowhere. And all this happens in the circle of Eternity, blind, inert and causeless. What then, in comparison with this, does Buddhist nirvana represent, even in the misconception as some understand it? Nirvana is preceded by innumerable transformations of the spirit and metempsychoses, during which the being does not for a moment lose the sense of his own individuality, and which may last for millions of ages until the final nothingness is comprehended.
Although some place Speusippus below Aristotle, yet the world is indebted to him for defining and expounding much that Plato left obscured in his doctrine of the Sensible and the Ideal. His maxim was:
"The non-material is cognized through scientific thought, the material is cognized by scientific perception."
Xenocrates expounded many of his teacher's unwritten theories and teachings. He also appreciated the Pythagorean doctrine and its number system and mathematics. Recognizing only three degrees of knowledge - Thought, Perception and Illumination (or Intuitive Knowledge) - he forced the first to deal with everything that is beyond heaven; To perception he averted that which is in the heavens; Intuitions are heaven itself.
We find these theories again and in almost the same words in the Manavadharmashastra, which speaks of the creation of man:
"He (the Supreme) extracted from his own essence an immortal breath that does not perish in the being, and to this soul of the being he gave Ahankara (self-consciousness), the supreme driver. Then he gave the soul of this being (man) a mind formed from three qualities and five organs of external perception.
These three qualities are Reason, Consciousness and Will. They correspond to the Thought, Perception and Illumination of Xenocrates. The connection of numbers with Ideas was further developed by him than by Speusippus, and he surpassed Plato in his definition of the doctrine of the Invisible Quantities. By reducing them to their ideal primary elements, he demonstrated that every figure and form originated from the thinnest indivisible line. That Xenocrates believed in the same theories as Plato regarding the human soul (considered by them to be a number) is obvious, although Aristotle contradicts this, as well as all other teachings of this philosopher. This serves as final proof that many of Plato's teachings were transmitted orally, even if they began to prove that not Plato, but Xenocrates was the first to create the theory of indivisible (infinitely small) quantities. He produces the soul from the first Duad and calls it the spontaneously moving number. Theophrastus notes that he studied and developed the theory of the soul more than any other Platonist. He built a cosmological doctrine on it and proved the necessity of the existence in all parts of the universal space of successive gradually increasing series of living and thinking, albeit spiritual, beings. He depicts the human soul as a complex composite of the most spiritual properties of the monad and the duad, possessing the highest principles of both. If, like Plato and Prodicus, he mentions the Elements as divine forces, and calls them gods, then neither he nor others associated any anthropomorphic ideas with this name. Kriski points out that he called them gods only so that these elemental forces would not be confused in human ideas with the demons of the invisible world (elementary spirits). Since the "world soul" saturates the entire cosmos, even animals must have something divine in them. This is also the doctrine of the Buddhists and Hermetists, and Manu endows even plants and the smallest blade of grass with a living soul.
Demons, according to this theory, are intermediate beings between divine perfection and human sinfulness, and he divides them into classes, each class being divided into many more subclasses. But he says precisely and clearly that the individual or personal soul is the leading guardian angel of every man, and that no demon has more power over us than our own. Thus the Demonion of Socrates is the god or divine being who inspired him all his life. It depends on the person whether he will open or close his perceptions towards the divine voice. Like Speusippus, he attributed immortality to the ????, the psychic body, or the unreasoning soul. But some Hermetic philosophers have taught that the soul has a separate continuing existence only so long as it passes through the spheres while there are any material or terrestrial particles in it; and when it is completely purified, it is destroyed, and only the quintessence of this soul merges with its divine spirit (Reasonable soul), after which the two are transformed into one.
Zeller narrates that Xenocrates forbade the eating of animal food, not because he attributed to animals some kind of affinity with man, as he attributed to them the consciousness of God, but for the exact opposite reason -
"so that the unreasonableness of the animal soul does not acquire any influence on us."
But we believe that, most likely, he spoke this way because, like Pythagoras, he had Indian sages as his teachers and behavioral models. Cicero describes Xenocrates that the latter despised everything except the highest virtues.
"To free ourselves from subjection to sensual existence, to overcome the titanic elements in our earthly nature with the help of the divine nature - this is our task."
Zeller credits him with the words:
"Purity, even in the secret dreams of the heart, is our greatest duty, and only philosophy and initiations into the mysteries help to achieve this goal."
Crantor, another philosopher associated with the early days of Plato's Academy, thought of the human soul as being created from the primary substance of all things, the Monad or One and the Duad or Duality Plutarch speaks at length about this philosopher, who, like his teacher, believed that souls distributed over earthly bodies , are punished and are in exile.
Heraclitus, although some critics do not believe that he strictly adhered to Plato's original philosophy, taught the same ethics. Zeller introduces him to us as a teacher who, like Hycetas and Ekphantus, taught the Pythagorean doctrine of the earth's daily rotation and the fixedness of some stars, but he adds that Heraclitus did not know about the annual rotation of the earth around the sun and about the heliocentric system. But we have reliable evidence that the heliocentric system was taught in the mysteries, and that Socrates died on the charge of atheism, that is, divulging sacred secrets. Heraclitus fully accepted the Pythagorean and Platonic views about the human soul and its abilities. He describes it as a luminous, very ethereal entity. He confirms that souls dwell in the "milky way" before descending into "generation" or sublunar existence. His demons or spirits have airy or vaporous bodies.
In "Epinomis" the doctrine of Pythagorean numbers and their relationship with the created is fully stated. Like a true Platonist, its author argues that wisdom can only be achieved by a careful study of the occult nature of creation, this alone only gives us the assurance of a blissful existence after death. In this treatise there are many reflections on immortality, but the author of these reflections adds that we can only achieve this knowledge through a complete understanding of the meaning of numbers, for a person who is unable to distinguish a straight line from a curve will never have enough wisdom to reach a mathematical demonstration. invisible, that is, we must be convinced of the objective existence of our soul (astral body) before we know that we have a divine and immortal spirit. Iamblichus says the same thing, adding, moreover, that this is the secret of the highest initiation. The divine force, he says, always resents those "who make evident the composition of the icostagonus," namely, those who convey the mode of inscribing in the sphere of the dodecahedron.
The idea that the "numbers" of the greatest virtue always produce good and never produce evil, refers to justice, a balanced temperament, and everything that is harmonious. When the author speaks of each star as an individual soul, he only means what the Indian Initiates and Hermetists taught before and after him, namely, that each star is an independent planet, which, like our earth, has its own soul, and each atom of matter is saturated with the divine tide of the world soul. She breathes and lives, she feels, and suffers and enjoys life in her own way. What natural scientist is able to dispute this with sufficiently convincing evidence? Therefore we must regard the celestial bodies as images of the gods sharing the powers of their substances, and although they are not immortal in their psychic being, their role in the universal economy deserves a divine veneration, such as we pay to the lesser gods. The idea of what has been said is clear, and, indeed, one must be malicious

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Secret Doctrine

Isis Unveiled

Articles

Helena BLAVATSKY ISIS DISCOVERED Volume I THE SCIENCE

Introduction

Abstract

Volume I

Helena BLAVATSKY

Vol. I. SCIENCE

Isis Unveiled

A MASTER-KEY TO THE MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT AND MODERN SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY

BY H. P. BLAVATSKY,

CORRESPONDING SECRETARY OF THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY

Isis Unveiled

H. P. BLAVATSKY

THE KEY TO THE MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT AND

OF MODERN SCIENCE AND THEOSOPHY

Introduction

Helena BLAVATSKY
ISIS DISCOVERED
Volume I
THE SCIENCE