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Title: Pythagoras and the Delphic mysteries
Author: Édouard Schuré
Translator: Fred Rothwell
Release date: July 17, 2025 [eBook #76522]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: The Theosophical Publishing Co, 1909
Credits: Mairi, Carol Brown, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PYTHAGORAS AND THE DELPHIC MYSTERIES ***
PYTHAGORAS
“Know thyself, and thou wilt know the Universe and the
Gods.”--_Inscription on the Temple of Delphi._
Evolution is the law of Life,
Number is the law of the Universe,
Unity is the law of God.
PYTHAGORAS
AND
THE DELPHIC MYSTERIES
BY
EDOUARD SCHURÉ
TRANSLATED BY
F. ROTHWELL, B.A.
NEW YORK
THE THEOSOPHICAL PUBLISHING CO.
244, LENOX AVENUE
1909
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. GREECE IN THE SIXTH CENTURY 3
II. YEARS OF TRAVEL 12
III. THE TEMPLE OF DELPHI 32
_The Science of Apollo--Theory of Divination--The
Pythoness Theoclea._
IV. THE ORDER AND THE DOCTRINE 63
_The Test--First Degree: Preparation--Second
Degree: Purification--Third Degree: Perfection--
Fourth Degree: Epiphany._
V. MARRIAGE OF PYTHAGORAS--REVOLUTION AT CROTON--THE
MASTER’S END--THE SCHOOL AND ITS DESTINY 162
PYTHAGORAS
CHAPTER I
GREECE IN THE SIXTH CENTURY
The soul of Orpheus had passed like a divine meteor across the troubled
heavens of a new-born Greece. When the meteor had disappeared, the land
was again wrapt in darkness. After a series of revolutions, the tyrants
of Thrace committed his books to the flames, overthrew his temples and
drove away his disciples. The Greek kings and numerous cities followed
this example, more jealous of their unbridled licence than of that
justice which is the source of pure doctrine. They were determined to
efface his very memory, to leave no sign of his existence, and they
succeeded so well, that, a few centuries after his death, a portion of
Greece even doubted whether he had ever lived. It was in vain that the
initiates kept alive his tradition for over a thousand years; in vain
that Pythagoras and Plato spoke of him as divine; the sophists and
the rhetoricians saw in him no more than a legend regarding the origin
of music. Even at the present time, savants stoutly deny the existence
of Orpheus, basing their assertion on the fact that neither Homer
nor Hesiod mentioned his name. The silence of these poets, however,
is fully explained by the interdict under which the local government
had placed the great initiator. The disciples of Orpheus lost no
opportunity of rallying all the powers under the supreme authority of
the temple of Delphi, and never tired of repeating that the differences
arising between the divers states of Greece must be laid before the
council of the Amphictyons. This was displeasing to demagogues and
tyrants alike. Homer, who probably received his initiation in the
sanctuary of Tyre, and whose mythology is the poetical translation of
the theology of Sankoniaton, Homer the Ionian might very well have
known nothing of the Dorian Orpheus whose tradition was kept all the
more secret as it was the more exposed to persecution. As regards
Hesiod, who was born near Parnassus, he must have known the name and
doctrine of Orpheus through the temple at Delphi; but silence was
imposed on him by his initiators, and that for good reasons.
And yet Orpheus was living in his work, in his disciples, and even in
those who denied his very existence. What is this work, where can the
soul of his life be sought? In the ferocious, military oligarchy of
Sparta, where science was despised, ignorance erected into a system,
and brutality exacted as being the complement of courage? In those
implacable wars of Messenia in which the Spartans were seen persecuting
a neighbouring people to the point of extermination, and these Romans
of Greece preparing for the Tarpeian rock and the bleeding laurels of
the Capitol by hurling the heroic Aristomenes, the defender of his
country, into an abyss? Or should it rather be sought in the turbulent
democracy of Athens, ever ready to convert itself into a tyranny? Or
in the praetorian guard of Pisistratus, or the dagger of Harmodius and
Aristogiton, concealed under a myrtle branch? Or in the many towns and
cities of Hellas, of greater Greece and Asia Minor, of which Athens and
Sparta offer us two opposing types? Is it in all these envious, these
jealous democracies and tyrannies ever ready to tear one another into
pieces?--No; the soul of Greece is not there. It is in her temples,
her mysteries and their initiates. It is in the sanctuary of Jupiter
at Olympia, of Juno at Argos, of Ceres at Eleusis; it reigns over
Athens with Minerva, it sheds its beams over Delphi with Apollo, who
penetrates every temple with his light. Here is the centre of Hellenic
life, the heart and brain of Greece. Here come for instruction poets
who translate sublime truth into living images for the masses, sages
who propagate these truths in subtle dialectics. The spirit of Orpheus
is felt wherever beats the heart of immortal Greece. We find it in
poetry and gymnastic contests, in the Delphic and Olympian games,
a glorious project instituted by the successors of the Master with
the object of drawing nearer together and uniting the twelve Greek
tribes. We are brought into direct contact with it in the court of
the Amphictyons, in that assembly of the great initiates, a supreme,
arbitrary tribunal, which met at Delphi, a mighty centre of justice and
concord, in which alone Greece recovered her unity in times of heroism
and abnegation.[1]
And yet Greece in the time of Orpheus; her intellect, an unsullied,
temple-guarded doctrine; her soul, a plastic religion; and her body,
a lofty court of justice with Delphi as its centre, had begun to
decline early in the seventh century. The orders sent out from Delphi
were no longer respected, the sacred territories were violated. The
race of men of mighty inspiration had disappeared, the intellectual and
moral tone of the temples deteriorated; the priests sold themselves to
politicians. From that time the Mysteries themselves became corrupted.
The general aspect of Greece had changed. The old sacerdotal and
agricultural royalty was succeeded either by tyranny pure and simple,
by military aristocracy, or by anarchical democracy. The temples had
become powerless to check the threatening ruin. A new helper was
needed. It was therefore necessary to popularize esoteric teaching. To
enable the thought of Orpheus to live and expand in all its beauty,
the knowledge of the temples must pass over to the lay classes.
Accordingly, under different disguises, it penetrated the brains of
civil legislators, the schools of the poets, and the porticoes of the
philosophers. The latter felt in their teachings the very necessity
Orpheus had recognized in religion, that of two doctrines: the one
public and the other secret, manifesting the same truth in different
degree and form, and suited to the development of the pupil. This
evolution gave Greece her three great centuries of artistic creation
and intellectual splendour. It permitted the Orphic thought, at once
the initial impulse and the ideal synthesis of Greece, to concentrate
its entire light and radiate it over the whole world, before her
political edifice, undermined by internal dissensions, tottered beneath
the power of Macedonia and finally crumbled away under the iron hand of
Rome.
Many contributed to the evolution we are speaking of. It brought out
natural philosophers like Thales, legislators like Solon, poets like
Pindar, and heroes like Epaminondas. It had also a recognized head,
an initiate of the very first rank, a sovereign, organizing, creating
intelligence. Pythagoras is the master of lay as Orpheus is the master
of sacerdotal Greece. He translates and continues the religious thought
of his predecessor, applying it to the new times. His translation,
however, is a creation, for he co-ordinates the Orphic inspirations
into a complete system, gives scientific proof of them in his teachings
and moral proof in his institute of education, and in the Pythagorean
order which survived him.
Although appearing in the full light of historical times, Pythagoras
has come down to us as almost a legendary character. The main reason
for this is the terrible persecution of which he was the victim in
Sicily, and which cost so many of his followers their lives. Some
were crushed to death beneath the ruins of their burning schools,
others died of hunger in temples. The Master’s memory and teaching
were only perpetuated by such survivors as were able to escape into
Greece. Plato, at great trouble and cost, obtained through Archytas a
manuscript of the Master, who, it must be mentioned, never transferred
to writing his esoteric teachings except under symbols and secret
characters. His real work, like that of all reformers, was effected
by oral instruction. The essence of the system, however, comes down
to us in the _Golden Verses_ of Lysis, the commentary of Hierocles,
fragments of Philolaus and in the Timaeus of Plato, which contains the
cosmogony of Pythagoras. To sum up, the writers of antiquity are full
of the spirit of the Croton philosopher. They never tire of relating
anecdotes depicting his wisdom and beauty, his marvellous power over
men. The Neoplatonists of Alexandria, the Gnostics, and even the early
Fathers of the Church quote him as an authority. These are precious
witnesses through whom may be felt continually vibrating that mighty
wave of enthusiasm the great personality of Pythagoras succeeded in
communicating to Greece, the final eddies of which were still to be
felt eight hundred years after his death.
His teaching, regarded from above, and unlocked with the keys of
comparative esoterism, affords a magnificent whole, the different
parts of which are bound together by one fundamental conception. In
it we find a rational reproduction of the esoteric teaching of India
and Egypt, which he illumined with Hellenic simplicity and clearness,
giving it a stronger sentiment and a clearer idea of human liberty.
At the same time and at different parts of the globe, mighty reformers
were popularizing similar doctrines. Lao-Tse in China was emerging from
the esoterism of Fo-Hi; the last Buddha Sakya-Mouni was preaching on
the banks of the Ganges; in Italy, the Etrurian priesthood sent to Rome
an initiate possessed of the Sibylline books. This was King Numa, who,
by wise institutions, attempted to check the threatening ambition of
the Roman Senate. It was not by chance that these reformers appeared
simultaneously among such different peoples. Their diverse missions
had one common end in view. They prove that, at certain periods, one
identical spiritual current passes mysteriously through the whole of
humanity. Whence comes it? It has its source in that divine world, far
away from human vision, but of which prophets and seers are the envoys
and witnesses.
Pythagoras crossed the whole of the ancient world before giving his
message to Greece. He saw Africa and Asia, Memphis and Babylon, along
with their methods of initiation and political life. His own troubled
life resembles a ship driving through a storm, pursuing its course,
with sails unfurled, a symbol of strength and calmness in the midst
of the furious elements. His teachings convey the impression of a
cool fragrant night after the bitter fire and passion of an angry,
blood-stained day. They call to mind the beauty of the firmament
unrolling, by degrees, its sparkling archipelagoes and ethereal
harmonies over the head of the seer.
And now we will attempt to set forth both his life and his teaching
apart from the obscurities of legend and the prejudices of the schools
alike.
CHAPTER II
YEARS OF TRAVEL
At the beginning of the sixth century before our era, Samos was one of
the most flourishing islands of Ionia. Its harbour fronted the violet
peaks of a slumbering Asia Minor, the abode of luxury and charm. The
town was situated on a wide bay with verdant coasts, and retreated,
tier upon tier, up the mountain in the form of an amphitheatre,
itself lying at the foot of a promontory on which stood the temple of
Neptune. It was dominated by the colonnades of a magnificent palace,
the abode of the tyrant Polycrates. After depriving Samos of her
liberty he had given the island all the lustre of art and Asiatic
splendour. Courtesans from Lesbos had, at his bidding, taken up their
abode in a neighbouring palace to which they invited the young men
and maidens of the town. At these _fêtes_ they taught them the most
refined voluptuousness, accompanied with music, dancing and feasting.
Anacreon, on the invitation of Polycrates, was transported to Samos in
a trireme with purple sails and gilded masts; the poet, a goblet of
chased silver in his hand, sang before this high court of pleasure his
languishing odes. The good fortune of Polycrates had become proverbial
throughout Greece. He had as a friend the Pharaoh Amasis who often
warned him to be on his guard against such unbroken fortune, and above
all not to pride himself on it. Polycrates answered the Egyptian
monarch’s advice by flinging his ring into the sea. “This sacrifice I
offer unto the gods,” he said. The following day a fisherman brought
back to the tyrant the precious jewel, which he had found in the belly
of a fish. When the Pharaoh heard of this, he said he would break off
his friendship with Polycrates, for such insolent good fortune would
draw down on him the vengeance of the gods.--Whatever we may think
of the anecdote, the end of Polycrates was a tragic one. One of his
satraps enticed him into a neighbouring province, tortured him to
death, and ordered his body to be fastened to a cross on Mount Mycale.
And so, one evening as the blood-red orb of the sun was sinking in
the west, the inhabitants of Samos saw the corpse of their tyrant,
crucified on a promontory in sight of the island over which he had
reigned in glory and abandonment.
To return to the beginning of Polycrates’ reign. One star-lit night a
young man was seated in a wood of agnus castus, with its glimmering
foliage, not far from the temple of Juno, the Doric front of which was
bathed in the rays of the moon, whose light added to the mystic majesty
of the building. A papyrus roll, containing a song of Homer, had
slipped to the ground, and lay at his feet. His meditation, begun at
twilight, was continued into the silence of the night. The sun had long
ago disappeared beneath the horizon, but its flaming disc still danced
in unreal presence before the eyes of the young dreamer. His thoughts
had wandered far from the world of visible things.
Pythagoras was the son of a wealthy jeweller of Samos and of a woman
named Parthenis. The Pythoness of Delphi, when consulted during a
journey by the young married couple, had promised them: “a son who
would be useful to all men and throughout all time.” The oracle had
sent them to Sidon, in Phoenicia, so that the predestined son might be
conceived, formed, and born far from the disturbing influences of his
own land. Even before his birth the wonderful child, in the moon of
love, had been fervently consecrated to the worship of Apollo by his
parents. The child was born; and when he was a year old his mother,
acting on advice already received from the priest of Delphi, bore him
away to the temple of Adonaï, in a valley of Lebanon. Here the high
priest had given him his blessing and the family returned to Samos.
The child of Parthenis was very beautiful and gentle, calm and sedate.
Intellectual passion alone gleamed from his eyes, giving a secret
energy to his actions. Far from opposing, his parents had encouraged
him in his precocious leaning towards the study of wisdom. He had been
left free to confer with the priests of Samos and the savants who were
beginning to establish in Ionia schools in which the principles of
natural philosophy were taught. At the age of eighteen he had attended
the classes of Hermodamas of Samos, at twenty those of Pherecydes at
Syros; he had even conferred with Thales and Anaximander at Miletus.
These masters had opened out new horizons, though none had satisfied
him. In their contradictory teachings he tried to discover the bond
and synthesis, the unity of the great whole. The son of Parthenis had
now reached one of those crises in which the mind, over-excited by the
contradictions of things, concentrates all its faculties in one supreme
effort to obtain a glimpse of the end, to find a path leading to the
sun of truth, to the centre of life.
Throughout that glorious night Pythagoras fixed his gaze on the earth,
the temple, and the starry heavens in turn. Demeter, the earth-mother,
the Nature whose secrets he wished to pierce, was there, beneath and
around him. He inhaled her powerful emanations, felt the invincible
attraction which enchained him, the thinking atom, to her bosom, an
inseparable part of herself. The sages he had consulted had said to
him: “It is from her that all springs. Nothing comes from nothing. The
soul comes from water, or fire, or from both. This subtle emanation of
the elements issues from them only to return. Eternal Nature is blind
and inflexible, resign thyself to her fatal laws. The only merit thou
wilt have will be that thou knowest them, and art resigned thereto.”
Then he looked at the firmament and the fiery letters formed by the
constellations in the unfathomable depths of space. These letters must
have a meaning. For if the infinitely small, the movement of atoms,
has its _raison d’être_, why not also the infinitely great, the widely
scattered stars, whose grouping represents the body of the universe?
Yes; each of these worlds has its own law; all move together according
to number and in supreme harmony. But who will ever decipher the
alphabet of the stars? The priests of Juno had said to him: “This is
the heaven of the gods, which was before the earth. Thy soul comes
therefrom. Pray to them, that it may mount again to heaven.”
These meditations were interrupted by a voluptuous chant, coming from
a garden on the banks of the Imbrasus. The lascivious voices of the
Lesbian women, in languishing strains, were heard accompanying the
music of the cithara, responded to in the Bacchic airs chanted by the
youths. Suddenly other cries, piercing and mournful, from the direction
of the harbour, mingled with these voices. They were the cries of
rebels whom Polycrates was embarking to sell as slaves in Asia. They
were being struck with nail-studded thongs, to compel them to crouch
beneath the pontoons of the rowers. Their shrieks and blasphemous cries
died away in the night and silence reigned over all.
A painful thrill ran through the young man’s frame; he checked it in
an attempt to regain possession of himself. The problem lay before
him, more pressing and poignant than before. Earth said: _Fatality_.
Heaven said: _Providence_. Mankind, between the two, replied: _Madness!
Pain! Slavery!_ In the depths of his own nature, however, the future
adept heard an invincible voice replying to the chains of earth and
the flaming heavens with the cry: _Liberty!_ Who were right; sages, or
priests, the wretched or the mad, or was it himself? In reality all
these voices spoke the truth, each triumphed in its own sphere, but
none gave up to him its _raison d’être_. The three worlds all existed,
unchangeable as the heart of Demeter, the light of the constellations
and the human breast, but only the one who could find agreement between
them and the law of their equilibrium would be truly wise; he alone
would be in possession of divine knowledge and capable of aiding
mankind. It was in the synthesis of the three worlds that the secret of
the _Kosmos_ lay!
As he gave utterance to this discovery he had just made, Pythagoras
rose to his feet. His eager glance was fixed on the Doric façade of
the temple; the majestic building seemed transfigured beneath Diana’s
chaste beams. There he believed that he saw the ideal image of the
world and the solution of the problem he was seeking. The base,
columns, architrave, and triangular pediment suddenly represented, in
his eyes, the triple nature of man and the universe, of the microcosm
and the macrocosm crowned by divine unity, itself a trinity. The
Kosmos, controlled and penetrated by God, formed
“The sacred Quaternion, the source of Nature; whose cause is
eternal.”[2]
Yes, here concealed in these geometrical lines was the key of the
universe, the science of numbers, the ternary law regulating the
constitution of beings, and the septenary law that governs their
evolution. Pythagoras saw the worlds move through space in accordance
with the rhythm and harmony of the sacred numbers. He saw the
balance of earth and heaven of which human liberty holds control;
the three worlds, the natural, the human, and the divine, sustaining
and determining one another, and playing the universal drama in a
double--ascending and descending--movement. He divided the spheres
of the invisible enveloping the visible world and ever animating it;
finally, he conceived of the purification and liberation of man, on
this globe, by triple initiation. All this he saw, along with his life
and work, in an instantaneous flash of illumination, with the absolute
certainty of the spirit brought face to face with Truth. Now he must
prove by Reason what his pure Intelligence had obtained from the
Absolute, and this needed a human life, it was the task of a Hercules.
Where could he find the knowledge necessary to bring such a labour to a
successful issue? Neither the songs of Homer, nor the sages of Ionia,
nor the temples of Greece would suffice.
The spirit of Pythagoras, which had suddenly found wings, began to
plunge into his past life, into his mist-enveloped birth and his
mother’s mysterious love. Childhood’s memory returned to him with
striking clearness. He recalled the fact that his mother had carried
him in her arms, when only a babe of twelve months, to the temple
of Adonaï, in a vale of Lebanon. He saw himself again as a child,
clinging to the neck of Parthenis, with mighty forests and mountains
all around, whilst the river formed a waterfall close by. She was
standing on a terrace shaded with giant cedars. In front of her stood a
majestic-looking, white-bearded priest, smiling on the mother and child
as he uttered grave-sounding words the little one did not understand.
Often had his mother brought back to his mind the strange utterance of
the hierophant of Adonaï: “O woman of Ionia, thy son shall be great
in wisdom; but remember that, though the Greeks still possess the
science _of the gods_, the knowledge _of God_ can no longer be found
elsewhere than in Egypt.” These words came back to him along with his
mother’s smile, the old man’s beautiful face, and the distant murmur of
the waterfall dominated by the priest’s voice, with that magnificent
scenery all around, like the dream of another life. For the first
time he guessed the meaning of the oracle. He had indeed heard of the
wonderful knowledge of Egyptian priests and their dreadful mysteries,
though he thought he could do without it all. Now he understood that
he needed this “science of God,” to penetrate to the very heart of
nature, and that he could find it only in the temples of Egypt. It was
the gentle Parthenis who, with maternal instinct, had prepared him for
this work, and borne him as an offering to the sovereign God! From this
moment he made up his mind to go to Egypt, and there undergo initiation.
Polycrates prided himself on being the protector of philosophers
as well as of poets. He willingly gave Pythagoras a letter of
recommendation to Pharaoh Amasis, who introduced him to the priests of
Memphis. The latter were opposed to receiving him, and were induced
to consent only with the utmost difficulty. Egyptian sages distrusted
Greeks, whom they charged with being fickle and inconstant. They did
all they could to discourage the young Samian. The novice, however,
submitted with unfaltering patience and courage to the delays and
tests imposed on him. He knew beforehand that he would only attain to
knowledge by entirely mastering his will throughout his entire being.
His initiation under the pontificate of Sonchis the high priest lasted
twenty-two years. All the trials and temptations, the soul-rending
dread and ecstatic joy passed through by Hermes, the initiate of
Isis, even to the apparent, or cataleptic death of the adept and his
resurrection in the light of Osiris, were experienced by Pythagoras,
so that he now realized, not as a vain theory, but as something lived
through, the doctrine of the Logos-Light, or of the universal Word, and
that of human evolution through seven planetary cycles. At each step
of this giddy ascent the tests became more formidable. A hundred times
the risk of death was incurred, especially if one’s object was to gain
control over occult forces, and attain to the dangerous practice of
magic and theurgy. Like all great men, Pythagoras believed in his star.
No path that led to knowledge disheartened him, the fear of death could
not check him, for he saw life beyond. When the Egyptian priests had
recognized that he possessed extraordinary strength of soul and that
impersonal passion for wisdom, which is the rarest thing in the world,
they opened out to him the treasures of their experience. Whilst with
them he daily improved, and became filled with divine knowledge. He
mastered sacred mathematics and the science of numbers, or universal
principles, which he formulated anew and made the centre of his system.
The severity of the Egyptian discipline in the temples also impressed
on him the prodigious power of the human will when wisely trained and
exercised, the endless applications, both to body and to soul, that
can be made of it. “The science of numbers and the art of will-power,”
said the priests of Memphis, “are the two keys of magic; they open
up all the gates of the universe.” It was in Egypt that Pythagoras
obtained that view from above, which allows of one seeing the spheres
of life and the sciences in concentric order, and understanding the
_involution_ of the spirit into matter by universal creation, and
its _evolution_ or re-ascent towards unity by way of that individual
creation called the development of a consciousness.
Pythagoras had reached the summit of Egyptian priesthood, and was
perhaps thinking of returning to Greece, when war, with all its misery,
burst upon the valley of the Nile, carrying away the initiate of Osiris
in another direction. The despots of Asia had long been meditating
the ruin of Egypt. Their repeated attacks had failed, for centuries
past, before the wisdom of the Egyptian institutions, the power of
the priesthood, and the energy of the Pharaohs. But the refuge of the
science of Hermes, the kingdom from time immemorial, was not to remain
for ever. Cambyses, son of the conqueror of Babylon, descended on Egypt
with his innumerable hosts, famished as clouds of locusts, and put an
end to the institution of the Pharaohs, the origin of which was lost
in the night of time. In the eyes of the sages this was a catastrophe
for the whole world. Hitherto Egypt had sheltered Europe against
Asia. Her protecting influence still extended over the whole basin
of the Mediterranean, by means of the temples of Phoenicia, Greece,
and Etruria, with which the high Egyptian priesthood were in constant
connection. This rampart once overthrown, the Bull, with lowered head,
was about to burst upon the land of Greece. Pythagoras saw Cambyses
invade Egypt, he may have beheld the Persian despot, worthy scion of
the crowned villains of Nineveh and Babylon, plunder the temples of
Memphis and Thebes, and destroy that of Ammon. He may have seen the
Pharaoh Psammitichus brought in chains before Cambyses, placed on a
mound, and surrounded by the priests, the principal families, and the
royal court. He may have witnessed the Pharaoh’s daughter, clad in
rags and followed by all her maids of honour similarly demeaned, the
royal prince and two thousand young men, brought forward, bit in mouth
and bridle on neck, before being beheaded; the Pharaoh Psammitichus,
choking back his sobs before the frightful scene, and the infamous
Cambyses, seated on his throne, gloating over the anguish of his
vanquished enemy. Cruel though instructive this lesson of history
after those of science! What a picture of the animal nature let
loose in man, culminating in this monster of despotism who tramples
everything under foot, and, by his horrible apotheosis, imposes on
humanity the reign of a most implacable destiny!
Cambyses had Pythagoras taken to Babylon, with a portion of the
Egyptian priesthood, and kept him within the gates.[3] This colossal
city, which Aristotle compares to a country surrounded by walls,
offered at that time an immense field for observation. Ancient Babel,
the great prostitute of the Hebrew prophets, was more than ever,
after the Persian conquest, a pandemonium of nations, tongues, and
religions, in whose midst Asiatic despotism raised aloft its dizzy
tower. According to Persian tradition, its foundation dates back to the
legendary Semiramis. She it is who was said to have constructed the
monster _enceinte_, over fifty miles in circumference: the Imgur-Bel,
its walls on which two chariots ran abreast, its superimposed terraces,
massive palaces with polychrome reliefs, temples supported on stone
elephants and surmounted by many-coloured dragons. There had followed
in succession the series of despots who had brought into subjection
Chaldea, Assyria, Persia, a part of Tartara, Judaea, Syria, and Asia
Minor. Hither Nebuchadnezzar, the assassin of the magi, had led
captive the Jewish people who continued to practise their religion
in one corner of the immense city which would have contained London
four times over. The Jews had even given the great king a powerful
minister in the person of the prophet Daniel. With Balthazar, the son
of Nebuchadnezzar, the walls of the old Babel had finally disappeared
beneath the avenging hand of Cyrus, and Babylon passed for several
centuries under Persian rule. By reason of this series of preceding
events, at the time Pythagoras came there, there were three different
religions side by side in the high priesthood of Babylon: the ancient
Chaldean priests, the survivors of the Persian magi, and the _élite_ of
the Jewish captivity. The proof that these different priesthoods were
in mutual agreement, on the esoteric side, is found in the part played
by Daniel, who, whilst acknowledging the God of Moses, remained first
minister under Nebuchadnezzar, Balthazar, and Cyrus.
Pythagoras was now obliged to enlarge his horizon, already so vast,
by studying these doctrines and religions, the synthesis of which
was still preserved by a few initiates. In Babylon he was able to
thoroughly study the knowledge in the possession of the magi, the heirs
of Zoroaster. Though the Egyptian priests alone possessed the universal
keys of the sacred sciences, the Persian magi had the reputation
of carrying farther the practice of certain arts. They claimed to
control those occult powers of nature called pantomorphic fire and
astral light. In their temples, it was said, darkness reigned in broad
daylight, lamps were lit without human agency, the radiance of the Gods
was visible and the rumble of thunder could be heard. The magi gave
the name of _celestial lion_ to this incorporeal fire, the agent that
generates electricity, which they could condense or disperse at will,
and that of _serpents_ to the electric currents of the atmosphere and
the magnetic currents of the earth, which they claimed to be able to
direct like arrows against mankind. They had also made a special study
of the suggestive, attractive, and creative power of the human word.
To evoke spirits they employed graduated formulas, borrowed from the
most ancient languages on earth. The following is the psychic reasoning
they themselves gave thereof: “Make no change in the barbarous
names employed in evocation; for they are the pantheistic names of
God; they are magnetized with the worship of multitudes, and their
power is ineffable.”[4] These evocations, accompanied by prayer and
purification, were, properly speaking, what was called at a later date,
white magic.
Accordingly we now see Pythagoras in Babylon, penetrating the arcana of
ancient magic. At the same time, in this den of despotism, he witnessed
a glorious spectacle; on the ruins of the crumbling religions of the
East, above their decimated and degenerate priesthood, a band of
dauntless initiates, grouped together, were defending their science,
their faith, and as well as they could, justice. Boldly facing the
despots, like Daniel in the den of lions, ever prepared to be torn to
pieces, they tamed and fascinated the wild beast of absolute power by
their intellectual might, disputing, foot by foot, the ground they had
won.
After his Egyptian and Chaldaean initiation, the child of Samos knew
far more than his teachers of natural philosophy, far more than any
Greek, either priest or laic, of his time. He was acquainted with the
eternal principles of the universe and their application. Nature had
opened up to him her secrets; the gross veils of matter had been torn
from his eyes, enabling him to see the marvellous spheres of nature and
spiritualized humanity. In the temples of Neith-Isis in Memphis, and
Bel in Babylon, he had learned many secrets as to the past history
of religions, continents, and races. He had been able to compare the
advantages with the disadvantages of the Jewish monotheism, the Greek
polytheism, the Hindu trinitarianism, and the Persian dualism. He knew
that all these religions were rays of one same truth, strained down
through different degrees of intelligence and intended for different
social conditions. He held the key, _i. e._ the synthesis of all these
doctrines, in esoteric science. His vision, compassing the past and
plunging into the future, was bound to judge the present with singular
lucidity. His experience showed him humanity threatened with the most
terrible evils, through the ignorance of the priests, the materialism
of the savants, and the lack of discipline in the democracies. In the
midst of this universal decay he saw Asiatic despotism increase; from
this dark cloud a terrible cyclone was about to burst upon defenceless
Europe.
Accordingly it was now the hour to return to Greece, there to fulfil
his mission and begin his work.
Pythagoras had been kept in Babylon for twelve years. To leave the
city, an order from the king of Persia was necessary. Democedes,
a compatriot of his and the king’s physician, interceded in his
favour and obtained liberty for the philosopher. After an absence of
thirty-four years Pythagoras returned to Samos. He found his country
crushed and ruined by a satrap of the great king. Schools and temples
were closed, poets and savants had fled like a cloud of swallows
before Persian caesarism. He had the consolation however, of seeing
Hermodamas, his first master, take his last breath, and of meeting
Parthenis, his mother, the only one who had never doubted that he would
return. For everyone thought that the adventurous son of the jeweller
of Samos was dead. Not for a moment had she doubted the oracle of
Apollo. Well she divined that beneath the Egyptian priest’s white robe,
her son was preparing himself for some lofty mission. She knew that
there would come forth from the temple of Neith-Isis the beneficent
master, the light-bearing prophet, of whom she had dreamed in the
sacred wood of Delphi, and whom the hierophant of Adonaï had promised
her beneath the cedars of Lebanon.
And now a light skiff was bearing away mother and son to a new exile
over the azure waves of the Aegean sea. They were fleeing, with all
their possessions, from an oppressed and ruined Samos, and were
making sail for Greece. Neither the Olympic crowns nor the poet’s
laurels tempted the son of Parthenis. His work was greater and more
mysterious; it was to rouse to life the slumbering soul of the gods in
the sanctuaries, to restore the temple of Apollo to its former might
and prestige, and then to found somewhere a school of science and of
life whence should come forth, not politicians and sophists, but men
and women initiates, true mothers and pure heroes!
CHAPTER III
THE TEMPLE OF DELPHI--THE SCIENCE OF
APOLLO--THEORY OF DIVINATION--THE
PYTHONESS THEOCLEA
From the plain of Phocis the traveller mounts the smiling meadows
bordering the banks of the Pleistus to plunge into a winding valley
shut in between lofty mountains. At every step the way becomes narrower
and the country more sublime and deserted. Finally a circle of rugged
mountains, crowned with wild-looking peaks, a veritable storehouse of
electricity, over which storms often raged, is reached. Suddenly, far
up the sombre gorge appears the town of Delphi, like an eagle’s nest,
on a rock surrounded by precipices and dominated by the two peaks of
Parnassus. From the distance the bronze Victories are seen sparkling
in the light, as well as the brazen horses, the innumerable statues of
gold, marshalled along the sacred path and arranged like a guard of
heroes and gods round the Doric temple of Phœbus Apollo.
This was the most sacred spot in Greece. Here, the Pythoness
prophesied and the Amphictyons assembled; here, the different Hellenic
peoples had built round the sanctuary chapels containing treasured
offerings. Here, processions of men, women, and children, coming
from afar, mounted the sacred path to greet the God of Light. From
time immemorial religion had consecrated Delphi to the veneration of
the people. Its central situation in Hellas, its rock sheltered from
profane hands and easy to defend, had contributed to this result.
The place was calculated to strike the imagination, for a singular
quality gave it great prestige. In a cavern behind the temple was a
cleft in the rock from which issued a cold, vapoury mist, inducing, it
was said, a state of inspiration and ecstasy. Plutarch relates that
in by-gone times a shepherd, when seated by the side of this cleft,
began to prophesy. At first he was looked upon as mad, but when his
predictions became realized, people began to investigate. The priests
took possession of the spot and consecrated it to the divinity. Hence
the institution of the Pythoness, who was seated above the cleft on a
tripod. The vapours exhaling from the abyss occasioned convulsions and
strange crises, provoking in her that _second sight_ noticed in certain
somnambulists. Eschylus, whose affirmation is not without weight, for
he was the son of a priest of Eleusis, and an initiate himself, tells
us in his _Eumenides_, by the mouth of the Pythoness, that Delphi
had first been consecrated to the Earth, then to Themis (Justice),
afterwards to Phœbe (the interceding moon), and finally to Apollo, the
solar god. In temple symbolism each of these names represents long
periods, and embraces centuries of time. The fame of Delphi, however,
dates from Apollo. Jupiter, according to the poets, wishing to find
the centre of the earth, started two eagles in their flight from east
and west, and they met at Delphi. Whence comes this prestige, this
world-wide and unchallenged authority which constituted Apollo as the
god of Greece _par excellence_, and now makes the glory of his name
inexplicable to us?
History is dumb on this important point. Question orators, poets, and
philosophers, they will only give you superficial explanations. The
real answer to this question remained the secret of the temple. Let us
try to fathom it.
In Orphic thought, Dionysos and Apollo were two different revelations
of the same divinity. Dionysos represented esoteric truth, the
foundation and interior of things, open to initiates alone. He held the
mysteries of life, past and future existences, the relations between
soul and body, heaven and earth. Apollo personified the same truth
applied to life on earth and social order. The inspirer of poetry,
medicine, and laws, he was science by divination, beauty by art,
peace among nations by justice, and harmony between soul and body by
purification. In a word, to the initiate Dionysos signified nothing
less than the divine spirit in evolution in the universe; and Apollo,
the manifestation thereof to mankind on earth. The people had been made
to understand this by a legend. The priests had told them that, in the
time of Orpheus, Bacchus and Apollo had vied with one another for the
tripod of Delphi. Bacchus had willingly given it up to his brother, and
withdrawn to one of the peaks of Parnassus, where the Theban women were
wont to celebrate his mysteries. In reality the two sons of Jupiter
divided between themselves the empire of the world. The one reigned
over the mysterious Beyond, the other over the World of the Living.
So that we find in Apollo the solar Logos, the universal Word, the
mighty Mediator, the Vishnu of the Hindus, the Mithras of the Persians,
and the Horus of the Egyptians. The old ideas of Asiatic esoterism,
however, took on, in the legend of Apollo, a plastic beauty, and an
incisive splendour which made them penetrate the more deeply into human
consciousness, like the shafts of the God. “White-winged serpents
springing forth from his golden bow,” says Eschylus.
Apollo springs forth from the mighty night at Delos; all the goddesses
greet his birth; he walks and takes up his bow and lyre, his locks
stream in the air and his quiver rattles on his shoulder; the sea
quivers, and the whole island shines with his glory scattered abroad
in floods of golden flame. This is the epiphany of divine light, which
by its august presence creates order, splendour, and harmony, of which
poetry is the marvellous echo. The god goes to Delphi and pierces with
his arrows a monstrous serpent which was ravaging and laying waste the
land, he purifies the country and establishes the temple; the image of
the victory of this divine light over darkness and evil. In ancient
religions, the serpent symbolized at once the fatal circle of life and
the evil resulting therefrom. And yet, from this life once understood
and overcome, springs forth knowledge. Apollo, slayer of the serpent,
is the symbol of the initiate who pierces nature by science, tames it
by his will, and breaking the Karmic circle of the flesh mounts aloft
in spiritual splendour, whilst the broken fragments of human animality
lie writhing in the sand. For this reason Apollo is the master of
expiation, of the purification of soul and body. Bespattered with the
monster’s blood, he performed expiation, purified himself during an
eight years’ exile beneath the bitter, health-giving laurels of the
vale of Tempe.--Apollo, trainer of men, likes to take up his abode in
their midst, he is pleased to be in towns with the youths and young
men, at contests of poetry and the palaestra, though he remains only
for a time. In autumn he returns to his own land, the home of the
Hyperboreans. This is the mysterious people of luminous and transparent
souls who dwell in the eternal dawn of perfect felicity. Here are his
true priests, his beloved priestesses. He lives with them in strong,
intimate communion, and when he wishes to make mankind a royal gift, he
brings back from the country of the Hyperboreans one of those mighty,
radiant souls who is born on earth to teach and delight mortals. He
himself returns to Delphi every spring, when poems and hymns are sung
in his honour. Visible to none but initiates he comes in dazzling
Hyperborean glory, in a chariot drawn by sweetly-singing swans. Again
he takes up his abode in the sanctuary, where the Pythoness speaks
forth his oracles, and sages and poets listen. Then is heard the song
of nightingales, the fountain of Castalia scatters silver spray on
every hand, dazzling light and celestial music penetrate the heart of
man and reach the very veins of nature.
In this legend of the Hyperboreans may be found much light thrown on
the esoteric basis of the Apollo myth. The land of the Hyperboreans is
the Beyond, the empyrean of victorious souls, whose astral dawns light
up its many-coloured zones. Apollo himself personifies the immaterial
and intelligible light of which the sun is merely the physical image,
and from which flows down all truth. The wonderful swans which bring
him are poets and divine geniuses, messengers of his mighty solar soul,
leaving behind them flashes of light and strains of glorious music.
Hyperborean Apollo, accordingly, personifies the descent of heaven on
to earth, the incarnation of spiritual beauty in flesh and blood, the
inflow of transcendent truth by inspiration and divination.
It is now the moment to raise the golden veil of legend and enter the
temple itself. How was divination practised therein? Here we touch upon
the secrets of Apollonian science and of the mysteries of Delphi.
In antiquity, a strong tie united divination to the solar cults, and
here we have the golden key to all the so-called magic mysteries.
The worship of Aryan humanity from the beginning of civilization was
directed towards the sun as the source of light, heat, and life. When,
however, the thought of the sages rose from the phenomenon to the
cause, behind this sensible fire, this visible light, they formed the
concept of an immaterial fire, an intelligible light. They identified
the form with the male principle, the creative spirit or intellectual
essence of the universe, and the latter with its female principle, its
formative soul, its plastic substance. This intuition dates back to
time immemorial. The conception I speak of is connected with the most
ancient mythologies. It circulates in the Vedic hymns under the form
of Agni, the universal fire which penetrates all things. It blossoms
forth in the religion of Zoroaster, the esoteric part of which is
represented by the cult of Mithras. Mithras is the male fire and Mitra
the female light. Zoroaster formally states that the Eternal, by means
of the living Word, created the heavenly light, the seed of Ormuzd,
the principle of material light and material fire. For the initiate of
Mithras the sun is only a rude reflection of this light. In his obscure
grotto, whose vault is painted with stars, he invokes the sun of grace,
the fire of love, conqueror of evil, reconciler of Ormuzd and Ahriman,
purifier and mediator, who dwells in the soul of the holy prophets. In
the crypts of Egypt, the initiates seek this same sun under the name
of Osiris. When Hermes asks to be allowed to contemplate the origin
of things, at first he feels himself plunged into the ethereal waves
of a delicious light, in which move all living forms. Then, plunging
into the darkness of dense matter, he hears a voice which he recognizes
as _the voice of light_. At the same time fire darts forth from the
depths, immediately all is light and chaos becomes order. In the _Book
of the Dead_ of the Egyptians the souls journey painfully towards that
light in the barque of Isis. Moses fully adopted this doctrine in
Genesis: “Elohim said: Let there be light; and there was light.” Now
the creation of this light precedes that of the sun and stars. This
means that, in the order of principles and cosmogony, intelligible
precedes material light. The Greeks, who moulded into human form and
dramatized the most abstract ideas, expressed the same doctrine in the
myth of Hyperborean Apollo.
Consequently the human mind, by inner contemplation of the universe,
from the point of view of the soul and the intelligence, came to
conceive of an intelligible light, an imponderable element serving as
an intermediary between matter and spirit. It would be easy to show
that natural philosophers of modern times insensibly draw somewhere
near the same conclusion along an opposite path, _i. e._ by searching
for the constitution of matter and seeing the impossibility of
explaining it by itself. Even in the sixteenth century, Paracelsus,
whilst studying the chemical combinations and metamorphoses of bodies,
went so far as to admit of a universal occult agent by means of which
they are brought about. The natural philosophers of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, who conceived of the universe as being a dead
machine, believed in the absolute void of celestial space. Yet when
it was discovered that light is not the emission of a radiant matter,
but rather the vibration of an imponderable element, one was obliged
to admit that the whole of space is filled by an infinitely subtile
fluid penetrating all bodies and through which waves of heat and light
are transmitted. Thus a return was made to the Greek ideas of natural
philosophy and theosophy. Newton, who had spent his whole life in
studying the movements of the heavenly bodies, went even farther than
this. He called this ether _sensorium Dei_, or the brain of God, _i.
e._ the organ by which divine thought acts in the infinitely great
as well as in the infinitely small. In emitting this idea, which he
regarded as necessary to explain the simple rotation of the heavenly
bodies, the great natural philosopher had embarked on the open sea of
esoteric philosophy. The very ether Newton’s thought found in space
Paracelsus had discovered at the bottom of his alembics, and had named
it astral light. Now this imponderable fluid, which is everywhere
present, penetrating all things, this subtile but indispensable agent,
this light, invisible to our eyes, but which is at the bottom of all
phosphorescence and scintillation, has been proved to exist by a
German natural philosopher in a series of well-appointed experiments.
Reichenbach had noticed that subjects of very sensitive nerve fibre,
when placed in a perfectly dark room in front of a magnet, saw at its
two ends strong rays of red, yellow, and blue light. Sometimes these
rays vibrated with an undulatory movement. He continued his experiments
with all kinds of bodies, especially with crystals. Luminous emanations
were seen, by sensitive subjects, round all these bodies. Around the
heads of men placed in the dark room they saw white rays; from their
fingers issued small flames. In the first portion of their sleep
somnambulists sometimes see their magnetizer with these same signs.
Pure astral light appears only in a condition of lofty ecstasy, but
it is polarized in all bodies, combines with all terrestrial fluids
and plays diverse _rôles_ in electricity, in terrestrial and animal
magnetism.[5] The interest of Reichenbach’s experiments is that
they make precise the limits and transition from physical to astral
vision capable of leading on to spiritual vision. They also enable us
to obtain a faint glimpse of the infinite subtleties of imponderable
matter. Along this path there is nothing to prevent our conceiving it
as so fluid, so subtile and penetrating, that it becomes in some way
homogeneous with spirit, serving the latter as a perfect garment.
We have just seen that modern natural philosophy, in order to explain
the world, has been obliged to recognize an imponderable, universal
agent, that it has even proved its presence, and, in this way, without
knowing it, has fallen in with the notions of ancient theosophies.
Let us now try to define the nature and function of cosmic fluid in
accordance with the philosophy of occultism in all ages. On this main
principle of cosmogony, Zoroaster is in agreement with Heraclitus,
Pythagoras with Saint Paul, the Kabbalists with Paracelsus. Cybele-Maïa
reigns everywhere, the mighty soul of the world, the vibrating and
plastic substance which the breath of the creative spirit uses at its
will. Her oceans of ether serve to cement together all the worlds. She
is the great mediator between the invisible and the visible, between
spirit and matter, between the within and the without of the universe.
Condensed in enormous masses in the atmosphere beneath the action of
the sun, she flashes forth in a thunderbolt. Absorbed by the earth
she circulates in magnetic currents. Subtilized in the nervous system
of the animal she transmits her will to the limbs, her sensations to
the brain. More than that, this subtile fluid forms living organisms
similar to material bodies. It serves as substance to the astral body
of the soul, a garment of light which the spirit is ever weaving
for itself. The fluid becomes transformed, it rarefies or densifies
according to the souls it clothes or the worlds it envelops. Not only
does it embody spirit and spiritualize matter in its living bosom, it
reflects in a perpetual mirage both things and the thoughts and wills
of mankind. The strength and duration of these images is in proportion
to the intensity of the will producing them. And, in truth, there
is no other means of explaining thought suggestion and transmission
at a distance, that principle of magic now-a-days acknowledged and
recognized by science.[6] Thus in the astral light the past of the
worlds trembles in vague images, and the future is there also, with the
living souls inevitably destined to descend into flesh. This is the
meaning of the veil of Isis and the mantle of Cybele, into which all
beings are woven.
It is now seen that the theosophical doctrine of the astral light is
identical with the secret doctrine of the solar Word in the religions
of Greece and the East. It is also seen how closely allied this
doctrine is to that of divination. The astral light is there revealed
as the universal medium of the phenomena of vision and of ecstasy which
it explains. It is at once the vehicle which transmits the movements
of thought, and the living mirror in which the soul contemplates the
images of the material and spiritual world. Once transported into this
element, the spirit of the seer leaves corporeal conditions. For him
the measure of time and space is changed. In some way he participates
in the ubiquity of the universal fluid. For him opaque matter becomes
transparent, and the soul, disengaging itself from the body and rising
in its own light, penetrates, in a state of ecstasy, into the spiritual
world, sees souls clothed in their ethereal bodies and communicates
with them. All the initiates of former times had a clear notion of this
_second sight_, or direct spiritual vision. Witness Eschylus, who puts
into the mouth of the shade of Clytemnestra: “Look at these wounds,
thy spirit can see them; when one is asleep, the spirit possesses a
more piercing vision; in broad daylight, the eyes of mortals see but a
little way.”
Let me add that this theory of clairvoyance and ecstasy is in wonderful
agreement with the numerous experiments, scientifically carried out
by savants and doctors of modern times, on lucid somnambulists and
clairvoyants of every kind.[7] From these contemporary facts I shall
endeavour briefly to characterize the successive psychic conditions
from simple clairvoyance to cataleptic ecstasy.
The state of clairvoyance, as is seen by thousands of well-established
facts, is a psychic one, differing as greatly from sleep as from a
waking condition. The intellectual faculties of the clairvoyant, far
from diminishing, increase in marvellous fashion. His memory is more
correct, his imagination more active, his intelligence more alert. The
main point, in a word, is that we have here developed a new sense,
which is no longer corporeal, but rather belongs to the soul. Not
only are the thoughts of the magnetizer transmitted to him as in the
simple phenomenon of suggestion, which itself is outside the physical
plane, but the clairvoyant even reads the thoughts of those present,
sees through walls, penetrates hundreds of miles into homes where he
has never been, and reads the private life of people he does not know.
His eyes are closed, incapable of seeing anything, but his spirit sees
farther and better than his open eyes and seems to travel about freely
in space.[8] In a word, though clairvoyance may be abnormal from the
bodily point of view, it is a normal and superior state from the point
of view of the spirit. The consciousness has become deeper, the vision
wider. The ego remains the same, but it has passed over to a higher
plane, where the vision, freed from the coarse organs of the body,
embraces and penetrates a vaster horizon.[9] It is to be noted that
certain somnambulists, when submitting to the passes of the magnetizer,
feel themselves flooded with increasingly dazzling light, whilst the
awaking seems to them an unpleasant return to darkness.
Suggestion, thought reading, and distant vision are facts which already
prove the independent existence of the soul, and transport us above the
physical plane of the universe without making us leave it altogether.
Clairvoyance, however, has infinite varieties and a scale of different
states far wider than that of the waking condition. In proportion as
the scale is mounted the phenomena become rarer and more extraordinary.
I will mention only the principal stages. _Retrospection_ is a
vision of past events preserved in the astral light and revived by
the sympathy of the seer. _Divination_, properly so called, is a
problematical vision of things to come either by introspection of the
thoughts of the living which contain future actions in germ, or by
the occult influence of superior spirits which unfold the future in
living images before the soul of the clairvoyant. In both cases they
are projections of thoughts into the astral light. Finally _ecstasy_ is
defined as a vision of the spiritual world, where good or evil spirits
appear to the seer in human form and communicate with him. The soul
seems really to be transported out of the body, which life has almost
left, and which stiffens into a state of catalepsy resembling death.
From what those who have been in a condition of sublime ecstasy tell
us, nothing in the universe can express the beauty and splendour of
these visions, or the sentiment of an ineffable fusion with the divine
essence which they bring back, a very transport of light and music.
The reality of these visions may be doubted. It must, nevertheless, be
added that if the soul, in the average state of clairvoyance, has a
correct perception of distant places and of absent ones, it is logical
to admit that, in its loftiest exaltation, it may have the vision of a
higher and an immaterial reality.
In my opinion, it will be the task of the future to restore to the
transcendent faculties of the human soul their dignity and social
function, by reorganizing them under the control of science and on the
basis of a religion which is truly universal, open to all truths. Then
science, regenerated by real faith and the spirit of love, will, with
open eyes, mount aloft to those spheres in which speculative philosophy
gropes about with bandaged eyes. Yes, science will become clear-sighted
and redeeming in her mission, just in proportion as the consciousness
and love of humanity increase in her. Perhaps it is through “the gate
of sleep and dreams,” as Homer said, that divine Psyche, banished from
our civilized life and weeping in silence beneath her veil, will regain
possession of her altars.
Anyhow, the phenomena of clairvoyance, studied from every aspect by
present-day savants and doctors, throw an altogether new light on
the _rôle_ of divination in antiquity and on a host of apparently
supernatural phenomena, with which the annals of every nation and
people are filled. Of course, a distinction must be made between legend
and history, hallucination and real vision. Still, the experimental
psychology of our times teaches us not to reject, in a body, facts
which fall within human possibility, but rather to investigate them
from the point of view of well-ascertained laws. If clairvoyance is a
faculty of the soul, we may no longer simply consign prophets, oracles,
and sybils to the domain of superstition. Divination has really been
known and practised in temples of old, with fixed principles and a
social and religious end in view. The comparative study of religions
and esoteric traditions shows that these principles were the same
everywhere, although their application may have varied infinitely. What
has discredited the art of divination is that its corruption has given
rise to the worst abuses, and that its glorious manifestations are
possible only in beings of exceptional purity.
Divination, as practised at Delphi, was founded on the principles we
have just set forth, the inner organization of the temple corresponded
thereto. As in the great temples of Egypt, it consisted of an art
and a science. The art consisted in penetrating the far-away past
and future by clairvoyance or prophetic ecstasy; the science, in
calculating the future in accordance with the laws of universal
evolution. Art and science checked one another. All I will say of
this science, called genethlialogy by the ancients, and of which
the astrology of the middle ages is only an imperfectly understood
fragment, is that it took for granted the esoteric encyclopedia as
applied to the future of peoples and individuals. Though very useful
in showing the direction things were taking, it was always of very
doubtful application. Only the very loftiest minds knew how to use it.
Pythagoras had thoroughly mastered it in Egypt, but in Greece it was
practised with a less thorough or clear understanding. On the other
hand, clairvoyance and prophecy had made considerable progress.
It is well known that this art was practised in Delphi through the
agency of women, both young and old. They were called Pythonesses,
and played the passive _rôle_ of clairvoyant somnambulists. Their
oracles, often obscure, were interpreted, translated, and arranged by
the priests in accordance with their own lights. Modern historians have
seen in the institution of Delphi scarcely anything more than the
exploitation of superstition by intelligent charlatans. Besides the
assent, however, given by the whole of philosophic antiquity to the
Delphic science of divination, several oracles related by Herodotus,
such as those regarding Croesus and the battle of Salamis, speak in
its favour. Doubtless their art had its beginning, its condition of
prosperity, and its decay. Charlatanism and corruption exercised
their demoralizing influence in the end, as we see in the case of
king Cleomenes, who bribed the high priestess of Delphi to deprive
Demaratus of his throne. Plutarch wrote a treatise inquiring into the
reasons for the decline and extinction of the oracles; this degeneracy
was felt to be a misfortune throughout all classes of antiquity. At
first, divination was practised with a degree of religious sincerity
and scientific thoroughness which raised it to the height of a
real ministration. On the pediment of the temple could be read the
inscription: “Know thyself,” and another one above the entrance door:
“Let no one enter here with impure hands.” These words explained to
all comers that earthly passions, falsehood and hypocrisy were not to
pass the threshold of the sanctuary, that within, in awe-inspiring
solemnity, reigned divine Truth.
Pythagoras reached Delphi only after having visited all the temples
of Greece. He had stayed with Epimenides in the sanctuary of Idaean
Jupiter; he had been present at the Olympic games, and presided over
the mysteries of Eleusis, where the hierophant had given up his place
to him. Everywhere had he been received as a master, and now he was
expected at Delphi. Here the art of divination was in a languishing
condition, and Pythagoras wished to restore its former prestige and
might. Accordingly he went there not so much to consult Apollo as to
enlighten his interpreters and revive their enthusiasm and energy.
Through them his influence would mould the soul of Greece and prepare a
future for the land.
Fortunately he found in the temple a marvellous instrument reserved for
him, to all appearance, by the hand of Providence.
Young Theoclea belonged to the college of the priestesses of Apollo.
She sprang from one of those families in which the priestly dignity
is hereditary. Her childhood had been fed on the mighty impressions
imparted by the sanctuary, the ceremonies, pæans, and _fêtes_ of
Pythian and Hyperborean Apollo. Evidently she was one of those maidens
born with an instinctive abhorrence for the things which attracted
others. They love not Ceres and fear Venus, for the heavy atmosphere
of earth troubles them, and the vague glimpse they have obtained of
physical love seems to them the rape of the soul, the pollution of
their undefiled, virginal being. On the other hand, they are strangely
sensitive to mysterious currents, to astral influences. When the moon
was shedding her soft beams on the sombre groves near the fountain
of Castalia, Theoclea would see white forms gliding by. She heard
voices in open daylight. On exposing herself to the rays of the rising
sun, their vibration threw her into a kind of ecstasy, during which
she heard the singing of invisible choirs. At the same time she was
quite indifferent to popular superstition and idolatry; a feeling of
horror overcame her at the sacrifices of animals. She spoke to no one
regarding the apparitions which disturbed her sleep, feeling with
clairvoyant instinct that the priests of Apollo were not in possession
of that supreme light she needed. The latter, however, had fixed on
her with the object of persuading her to become Pythoness. She felt
herself attracted by a higher world to which she had not the key. What
were these gods who manifested themselves to her in vibrations which
troubled her being, and to whom she owed her inspiration? This she
would know before giving herself up to them, for great souls need to
see clearly even in abandoning themselves to divine powers.
With what a deep thrill, with how mysterious a presentiment the soul
of Theoclea must have been stirred when she saw Pythagoras for the
first time, and heard his eloquent voice resound among the columns of
the sanctuary of Apollo! She felt the presence of the initiator for
whom she was waiting, she recognized her master. She wished to know;
knowledge would come by him; he would make this inner world speak, this
world she bore within herself!--He, on his side, must have recognized
in her, with sure and penetrating glance, the living, thrilling soul
he was seeking, to become the interpreter of his thoughts in the
temple and instil therein a new spirit. No sooner had their eyes met,
their lips spoken, than an invisible chain bound the sage of Samos to
the young priestess, who listened to him without a word, drinking in
his utterances with eager, attentive eyes. Some one has said that a
profound vibration enables poet and lyre to recognize one another as
they approach. Thus did Pythagoras and Theoclea recognize one another.
At sunrise, Pythagoras had long conversations with the priests of
Apollo, ordained saints and prophets. He requested that the young
priestess should be received by them, so that he might initiate her
into his secret teaching and prepare her for her mission. Accordingly
she was permitted to follow the lessons given daily in the sanctuary by
the master. Pythagoras was now in the prime of life. He wore a white
robe, girdled in Egyptian fashion; a purple band was wrapped round
his majestic brow. When he spoke, his grave, mild eyes were fastened
on his interlocutor, enveloping him in a warm, tender light. The very
atmosphere seemed to become lighter and electric with intelligence.
The conversations of the sage of Samos with the highest representatives
of the Greek religion were of the utmost importance. It was not merely
a question of divination and inspiration, the future of Greece and
the destiny of the whole world were at stake. The knowledge, titles,
and powers he had acquired in the temples of Memphis and Babylon
gave him the greatest authority and influence. To those who inspired
Greece he had the right to speak as a superior and a guide. This he
did with all the eloquence of his genius and the enthusiasm of his
mission. To enlighten their minds, he began by telling them of his
youthful days, his struggles and Egyptian initiation. He spoke to them
of Egypt, the mother of Greece, old as the world itself, immovable as
a mummy, covered with hieroglyphs in the recesses of its pyramids,
though possessing in its tombs the secrets of peoples, languages, and
religions. Before their eyes he unfolded the mysteries of great Isis,
goddess of earth and heaven, mother of gods and men; then, relating
his trials and ordeals, he plunged them, with himself, into the light
of Osiris. Afterwards came the turn of Babylon, of the Chaldaean magi,
their occult sciences, and those deep solid temples where they call
forth the living fire, the abode of demons and gods.
As she listened to Pythagoras, Theoclea passed through wonderful
sensations. All he said was branded in letters of fire in her mind.
These things appeared to her both marvellous and yet well known.
Instead of hearing something new she seemed to be recalling what she
had already learned. The master’s words set her turning over the pages
of the universe like those of a book. No longer did she see the gods in
their human image, but in their essence, forming things and spirits.
With them she flowed in space, rising and falling. At times there came
the illusion that she no longer felt the limits of her body, and was
fading away into infinity. Thus her imagination entered by degrees into
the invisible world, and the former traces she found of it in her own
soul told her that this was the true and only reality; the other was
only apparent. She felt that her inner eyes would soon open and read
the truth.
From these heights the master suddenly brought her back to earth by
relating the misfortunes of Egypt. After developing the greatness of
Egyptian science, he showed how it was dying away under the Persian
invasion. He depicted the horrible atrocities committed by Cambyses,
the pillaged temples, the sacred books committed to the flames, the
priests of Osiris killed or dispersed, the monster of Persian despotism
collecting beneath his iron hand all the old barbaric tribes of Asia,
the half-savage nomad races of India, and the centre of the continent,
awaiting only a favourable opportunity to fall upon Europe. Yes, this
ever-increasing cyclone must burst upon Greece as certainly as the
thunderbolt, collecting in the sky, must flash forth from the cloud.
Was divided Greece prepared to resist this terrible attack? She did not
even suspect it. Nations cannot avoid their destinies, which the gods
precipitate upon them, unless they are ever watchful. Had not Egypt,
that wise nation of Hermes, crumbled to ruin after six thousand years
of prosperity? Greece, alas! and beautiful Ionia will pass away even
sooner! A time will come when the solar god will abandon this temple,
when barbarian tribes will overthrow its very walls, and shepherds lead
their flocks to pasture on the ruins of Delphi.
Before such sinister prophecies the countenance of Theoclea became
transformed, assuming a terrified expression. She sank to the ground,
and, with arms clasped round a column and eyes fixed as though plunged
in thought, she resembled the genius of Grief weeping over the tomb of
Greece.
“Those are secrets,” continued Pythagoras, “which must be buried in the
depths of the temples. The initiate attracts death or repels it at his
pleasure. By forming the magic chain of wills, initiates in this way
prolong the life of nations. It is for you to postpone the fatal hour,
to cause Greece to shine in splendour and beam forth with the word of
Apollo. Nations and peoples are what their gods make them, but the
gods reveal themselves only to such as appeal to them. What is Apollo?
The word of the one God manifesting himself eternally in the world.
Truth is the soul of God, his body is the light. Only seers, sages,
and prophets behold it; men see only its shadow. Legions of glorified
spirits, whom we call heroes and demi-gods, inhabit this light in
spheres beyond number. This is the real body of Apollo, the sun of
initiates, without his rays nothing great is done on earth. As the
magnet attracts iron, so by our thoughts, our prayers, and actions do
we attract divine inspiration. It is for you to hand over to Greece the
word of Apollo, and Greece shall be resplendent with immortal light!”
With such language Pythagoras succeeded in restoring to the priests
of Delphi the consciousness of their mission. Theoclea drank in every
word with silent, concentrated passion. She was visibly becoming
transformed beneath the thought and will of the master as by a slow
incantation. Standing in the midst of the astonished elders, she untied
her raven-black locks and thrust them back from her head as though she
felt flames of fire playing in and about them. Her eyes, transfigured
and wide open, seemed to behold the solar and planetary gods in their
radiant, glowing orbs.
One day she fell into a deep, lucid sleep. The five prophets surrounded
her, but she remained insensible alike to their voice and touch.
Pythagoras drew near and said: “Rise and go where my thought sends
thee. For now thou art the Pythoness!”
On hearing the master’s voice, a long vibrating thrill ran through the
whole of her body and she rose to her feet. Her eyes were closed, but
she saw from within.
“Where art thou?” asked Pythagoras.
“I am ascending----ascending all the time.”
“And now?”
“I am bathing in the light of Orpheus.”
“What seest thou in the future?”
“Great wars----men of might----Apollo returns to dwell in his
sanctuary, and I shall be his voice----! But thou, his messenger, thou
art about to leave me, alas! thou wilt bear the torch of his light into
Italy.”
Long did the seer speak, with closed eyes, in musical, panting,
rhythmic voice; then suddenly, with a sob, she fell to the ground like
one dead.
Thus did Pythagoras pour a pure, undefiled stream of knowledge into
Theoclea’s breast, tuning her like a lyre for divine inspiration. Once
exalted to these heights she became his torch, thanks to which he was
able to sound his own destiny, see into the possible future, and direct
his path along the strandless zones of the invisible. Such a striking
counter-verification of the truths he taught filled the priests with
admiration, aroused their courage and revived their faith. The temple
now possessed an inspired Pythoness, and priests initiated into the
divine sciences and arts; Delphi could once again become a centre of
life and action.
Pythagoras remained there for a whole year. It was only after imparting
to the priests all the secrets of his doctrine, and preparing Theoclea
for his ministry, that he took his departure for Greater Greece.
CHAPTER IV
THE ORDER AND THE DOCTRINE
The town of Croton was situated at the extremity of the Gulf of
Tarentum, near the Lacinian promontory, in front of the open sea. Like
Sybaris, it was one of the most flourishing cities in Southern Italy.
It was famed for its Doric constitution, its victorious athletes at
the Olympian games, and its doctors, rivals of the Asclepiads. The
Sybarites owe their immortality to their luxury and effeminacy. The
inhabitants of Croton would perhaps be forgotten, spite of their
virtues, had theirs not been the glory of offering a home to the great
school of esoteric philosophy, known under the name of the Pythagorean
sect, which may be looked upon as the mother of the school of Plato and
the ancestor of all idealist schools. However noble the descendants,
their ancestors greatly surpassed them. The school of Plato issues from
an incomplete tradition, whereas the Stoic school has already lost the
true tradition. Other systems of ancient and modern philosophy are more
or less fortunate speculations, whilst the teaching of Pythagoras
was based on experimental science and accompanied by a complete
organization of life.
The secrets of the master’s order and thought are now, like the ruins
of the ancient town, buried deep underground. All the same we will try
to resurrect them, for thus we shall have an opportunity of penetrating
to the very heart of the theosophic doctrine, the arcanum of religions
and philosophies, and raising a corner of the veil of Isis to the light
of Greek genius.
Several reasons influenced Pythagoras in choosing this Dorian colony
as a centre of action. His aim was not merely to teach the esoteric
doctrine to a circle of chosen disciples, but also to apply its
principles to the education of youth and to the life of the state. This
plan comprised the foundation of an institution for laic initiation,
with the object of finally transforming the political organization of
the cities by degrees into the image of that philosophic and religious
ideal. Certainly none of the republics of Hellas or of Peloponnesus
would have tolerated this innovation. The philosopher would have been
accused of conspiring against the State. The Greek towns of the Gulf
of Tarentum, which were less preyed upon by demagogues, were more
liberal-minded. Pythagoras made no mistake in expecting to find a
favourable reception for his reforms at the hands of the Croton senate.
His designs went also beyond Greece. Foreseeing the evolution of ideas,
he was prepared for the fall of Hellenism, and was thinking of sowing
in the human mind the principles of a scientific religion. By founding
his school in the Gulf of Tarentum, he was spreading esoteric ideas
throughout Italy, and keeping in the precious vase of his doctrine the
purified essence of Oriental wisdom for the peoples of the West.
On coming to Croton, which was at the time inclined to adopt the
voluptuous life of its neighbour Sybaris, Pythagoras produced a
veritable revolution. Porphyry and Iamblichus have depicted the
commencement of his life there as being rather that of a magician
than of a philosopher. Assembling the youth in the Temple of Apollo,
he succeeded by his eloquence in tearing them away from a life of
debauchery. Summoning the women to the Temple of Juno, he persuaded
them to bring their golden robes and ornaments as trophies to celebrate
the defeat of vanity and luxury. He threw a veil of grace over the
austerity of his teachings, a communicating flame flashed forth from
his words of wisdom. His beautiful face and noble bearing, the charm
of his countenance and of his voice completely captivated them. The
women compared him to Jupiter, the young men to Hyperborean Apollo. He
captivated and seduced the crowds which, whilst listening to him, were
greatly astonished to find themselves enamoured of truth and virtue.
The senate of Croton, or _the Council of the Thousand_, grew uneasy at
the influence he was obtaining. They summoned Pythagoras to explain
his conduct, and to state the means he was making use of to master
the minds of the citizens. This gave him an opportunity to develop
his ideas on education, and demonstrate that, far from threatening
with ruin the Doric constitution of Croton, they only strengthened
it the more. When he had won over to his side the wealthiest of the
citizens and the majority of the senate, he proposed that they should
found an institute for himself and his disciples. This brotherhood
of laic initiates should live in common in a building constructed
for the purpose, though without separating themselves from civil
life. Those of them who already deserved the name of master, might
teach physical, psychic, and religious sciences. Young men should be
admitted to the lessons of the masters and to the different grades of
initiation according to their intelligence or earnestness in study,
under the control of the head of the order. At the beginning, they
must submit to the rules of the common life and spend the whole day in
the institute, under the supervision of the masters. Those who should
wish to enter the order formally were to give up their fortune to a
trustee, with permission to enter again into possession of it whenever
they pleased. In the institute there would be a section for women,
along with a parallel initiation, though different and more adapted to
the duties of their sex.
This plan was enthusiastically adopted by the senate of Croton, and,
after a few years, near the entrance to the town there rose a building
surrounded by vast porticoes and beautiful gardens. The inhabitants of
Croton called it the Temple of the Muses, and, to tell the truth, in
the centre of the buildings, near the humble dwelling of the master,
stood a temple dedicated to these divinities.
Thus sprang into being the Pythagorean institute, which became at
one and the same time a college of education, a science academy, and
a small model city under the control of a great initiate. It is by
theory and practice, by science and art combined that slow progress
was made to that science of sciences, that magical harmony of soul
and intellect with the universe which Pythagoreans looked upon as the
arcanum of philosophy and religion. The Pythagorean school is of
supreme interest for us, inasmuch as it was a most remarkable attempt
at laic initiation. Being an anticipated synthesis of Hellenism and
Christianity, it grafted the fruit of science on the tree of life,
it acquired the knowledge of that inner, that living realization, of
truth, which a profound faith alone can give. It was an ephemeral
realization, though one of the greatest importance, instinct with the
fruitfulness of example.
To form some idea of it, let us enter the Pythagorean institute along
with the novice and follow his initiation step by step.
THE TEST
The white dwelling of the brother initiates was situated on a hill,
surrounded by olive and cypress trees. On mounting from below, the
porticoes, gardens, and gymnasium could distinctly be seen. The Temple
of the Muses, with its circular colonnade of airy elegance, towered
above the two wings of the building. The terrace of the outer gardens
overlooked the town with its Prytaneum, its harbour and meeting-place.
Away in the distance stretched the gulf, between sharp rugged parts of
the coast as though in a cup of agate, whilst the Ionian sea shut in
the horizon with its line of azure blue. At times one might see women
clad in divers-coloured costumes issue on the left and make their way
in long files down to the sea, along the alley of cypresses. They were
going to worship at the Temple of Ceres. And on the right also, men
might often be seen mounting in white robes to the Temple of Apollo. It
was not the least attraction to the inquiring imagination of youth to
think that the school of the initiates was placed under the protection
of these two divinities, one of whom, the Mighty Goddess, held the
profound mysteries of Woman and of Earth, whilst the other, the Solar
God, revealed those of Man and of Heaven.
So we find this little city of the elect smiling down upon the populous
town beneath. The noble instincts of youth were attracted by its
peaceful serenity, though nothing was seen of what was taking place
within, and it was generally known that admittance was not easily
obtained. The gardens connected with the institute of Pythagoras were
separated from the outside by nothing but a simple green hedge, and
the entrance gate remained open all day long. A statue of Hermes,
however, might be seen there, and on its pedestal were the words:
_Eskato Bebeloi_; No entrance for the profane! This commandment of the
mysteries was universally respected.
Pythagoras was very stern in admitting novices, saying, “that not every
kind of wood was fit for making a Mercury.” The young men who wished
to enter the association were obliged to undergo a period of test and
trial. On being introduced by their parents or by one of the masters,
they were first of all permitted to enter the Pythagorean gymnasium in
which the novices played the games appropriate to their age. The young
man at once noticed that this gymnasium was unlike that in the town.
There were no violent cries or noisy groups, no ridiculous boasting
or vain display of strength by athletes in embryo, challenging one
another and exhibiting their muscles; but rather groups of courteous
and distinguished-looking young men, walking in couples beneath the
porticoes or playing in the arena. They invited him with graceful
simplicity to join in their conversation as though he were one of them,
without greeting him with a suspicious glance or jeering smile. In the
arena they were racing, throwing quoits and javelins, and engaging in
mock fights under the form of Doric dances. Pythagoras had, however,
strictly abolished wrestling, saying that it was superfluous and even
dangerous to develop pride and hatred by strength and agility; that
men intended to practise the virtues of friendship ought not to begin
by flinging one another on the ground and rolling in the sand like wild
beasts; that a real hero could fight with great courage though without
fury; that hatred makes us inferior to any opponent whoever he be. The
new-comer heard these maxims from the lips of the masters repeated by
the novices, who were quite proud to impart their precocious wisdom. At
the same time they encouraged him to state his own opinions and freely
contradict them. Emboldened by such advances, the ingenuous aspirant
quickly showed forth his real nature. Pleased at being listened to
and admired, he would speak and dilate at his ease. Meanwhile the
masters closely watched him without ever uttering the slightest word of
reprimand. Pythagoras would come up unexpectedly and study his gestures
and words. He paid special attention to the gait and the laugh of young
men. Laughter, he said, is an infallible index to character, no amount
of dissimulation can render agreeable the laugh of an evil-disposed
man. He had also made such a profound study of the human face that he
could read therein the very depths of the soul.[10]
Such minute observation enabled the master to form a precise idea
regarding his future disciples. A few months afterwards came decisive
tests in imitation of Egyptian initiation, though greatly modified and
adapted to the Greek nature, whose sensitiveness had not submitted
to the mortal terrors of the crypts of Memphis and Thebes. The
Pythagorean aspirant was made to spend the night in a cavern, in the
outskirts of the town, alleged to be haunted by various apparitions and
monsters. Those who had not sufficient strength to endure the terrible
impressions of solitude and night, who refused to enter or made their
escape before the morning, were deemed too weak for initiation and
rejected.
The moral test was a more serious one. Suddenly, without the least
preparation, the would-be disciple would one fine morning find himself
imprisoned in an empty, dismal-looking cell. A slate was given him and
he was coldly ordered to discover the meaning of one of the Pythagorean
symbols, as, for instance: What is the signification of the triangle
inscribed in a circle? or: Why is the dodecahedron, confined within the
sphere, the symbol of the universe? He spent a dozen hours in his cell
with his slate and the problem, and no other companion than a vase of
water and a piece of dry bread. Then he was taken into a room to face
the assembled novices. Under these circumstances the order had been
passed round that they should ridicule without pity the wretched youth,
who, hungry and sullen, stood before them like a culprit. “So this is
the new philosopher,” they would say. “How inspired he looks! He will
now tell us of his meditations. Do not conceal from us what you have
discovered. You will in the same way go through all the symbols in
turn. A month of this _régime_ and you will have become a great sage!”
At this point the master would attentively observe the young man’s
attitude and expression. Irritated by his fast, overwhelmed with
these sarcastic words, and humiliated at not being able to solve
an incomprehensible problem, no small effort was needed to control
himself. Some would weep with rage, others gave sarcastic replies,
whilst others again, unable to control themselves, dashed their slate
madly to the ground and burst out in imprecations against school,
master, and disciples alike. Then Pythagoras came forward and calmly
said that, as they had failed in the test of self-respect, they were
begged not to return to a school of which they had so bad an opinion,
in which friendship and respect for the masters should be the most
elementary of virtues. The rejected candidate would shamefacedly
retire and sometimes become a redoubtable enemy of the order, like
the well-known Cylon who, later on, excited the people against the
Pythagoreans and brought about their downfall. On the other hand, those
who bore everything with firmness, and gave just and witty replies
to the provoking words they listened to, declaring they were ready
to repeat the test a hundred times if only they could attain to the
least degree of wisdom, were solemnly welcomed into the novitiate and
received the enthusiastic congratulations of their new companions.
FIRST DEGREE--PREPARATION
_The novitiate and the Pythagorean life_
Then only began the novitiate called the _preparation_ (paraskeia),
which lasted at least two years, and might be prolonged to five. The
novices, or _listeners_ (akousikoi), during the lessons they received,
were subjected to the rule of absolute silence. They had no right
either to offer any objection to their masters or to discuss the
teaching they were absorbing. This latter they were to receive with
respect and to meditate upon at length. To impress this rule in the
mind of the new listener, he was shown the statue of a woman, enveloped
in a long veil, her finger raised to her mouth, _The Muse of Silence_.
Pythagoras did not regard youth as being capable of understanding the
origin and the end of things. He thought that exercising them in logic
and reasoning, before inculcating in them the meaning of truth, made
them ignorant and assuming sophists. His idea was to develop in his
pupils, before everything else, intuition, that primordial and superior
faculty of mankind. To do this, he did not teach anything mysterious or
difficult. Starting from natural sentiments, the first duties of man on
entering life, he showed their relations with the laws of the universe.
Whilst first of all inculcating in youth parental love, he magnified
this sentiment by assimilating the idea of father to that of God, the
mighty creator of the universe. “Nothing is more venerable,” he said,
“than the quality of fatherhood. Homer named Jupiter king of the gods,
but in order to show forth all his greatness, he called him the Father
of gods and men.” He compared the mother to generous and beneficent
Nature; as heavenly Cybele produces the stars and Demeter gives birth
to the fruits and flowers of the earth, so does the mother feed the
child with every joy. Accordingly the son ought to honour in his father
and mother the representatives, the earthly images, of these mighty
divinities. He also showed that the love of fatherland comes from the
affection one feels in childhood for one’s mother. Parents are given
to us, not by chance, as is commonly believed, but in accordance with
a previous, a superior order, called Fortune or Necessity. To honour
them is _an obligation_; but a friend _must be chosen_. The novices
were invited to form themselves into couples, according to their
several affinities. The younger should seek in the elder the virtues
he is himself aiming after, and the two companions should encourage
each other towards a better life. “A friend is another self; he must
be honoured as a god,” said the master. Though the Pythagorean rules
imposed on the “listener” novice absolute submission to his masters,
it gave him full liberty in enjoying the charms of friendship, it even
made of this latter the stimulus of every virtue, the poetry of life,
the path leading to the ideal.
Individual energy was thus roused, morality became poetical and
instinct with life, a rule lovingly accepted ceased to be a constraint,
it became the very affirmation of an individuality. It was the wish of
Pythagoras that obedience should be an assent and an approval. Besides
this, the moral prepared the way for the philosophical teaching. The
relations set up between social duties and the harmonies of the kosmos
gave one a glimpse into the law of universal agreement and analogy. In
this law dwells the principle of the Mysteries, of occult teaching and
of the whole of philosophy. The mind of the pupil thus grew accustomed
to find the impress of an invisible order on visible realities. General
maxims and concise prescriptions opened out perspectives of this
superior world. Morning and evening the _Golden Verses_ rang in the
pupil’s ear:
“First worship the immortal Gods, as they are
established and ordained by the Law.
Reverence the Oath, and next the Heroes, full
of goodness and light.”
In commenting on this maxim, it was shown that the gods, though
apparently different, were really the same among all people, since
they corresponded with the same intellectual and soul forces active
throughout the universe. The sage could consequently honour the gods of
his own country, whilst forming of their very essence a different idea
from that generally held. Tolerance for every cult; unity of people
in one humanity; unity of religions in esoteric science: these new
ideas became vaguely outlined in the mind of the novice like glorious
divinities one might catch a glimpse of in the splendour of the
setting sun. And the golden lyre continued its lofty teachings:
“Honour likewise the terrestrial Dæmons by rendering them
the worship lawfully due to them.”
Besides these lines the novice saw beaming as through a veil the divine
Psyche, the human soul. The heavenly pathway shone like a stream of
light, for in the worship of heroes and demi-gods, the initiate saw the
doctrine of the future life and the mystery of universal evolution.
This secret was not revealed to the novice, but he was made ready for
its understanding by being told of a hierarchy of beings superior to
humanity, its guides and protectors, called heroes and demi-gods. It
was also stated that they served as intermediaries between man and
divinity, that by their help he might step by step succeed in drawing
nearer to them if he practised heroic and divine virtues. “But how
could communication be obtained with these invisible spirits? Whence
comes the soul? Whither does it proceed? Wherefore the sombre mystery
of death?” The novice dared not formulate these questions in words, but
his looks revealed them, and the only reply his masters gave him was to
point to the strugglers on earth, the statues in the temple, and the
glorified souls in heaven, “in the fiery citadel of the god” to which
Hercules had attained.
At the foundation of the ancient mysteries, all the gods were
included in the only supreme God. This revelation, including all its
consequences, became the key of the Kosmos. This was the reason it
was entirely reserved for initiation, properly so called. The novice
knew nothing of this, he was only permitted to catch a faint glimpse
of this truth from what he was told of the powers of Music and Number.
“Numbers,” said the master, “contain the secret of things, and God is
universal harmony.” The seven sacred modes, built up on the seven notes
of the heptachord, correspond to the seven colours of light, to the
seven planets, and to the seven modes of existence reproduced in all
the spheres of material and spiritual life from the smallest to the
greatest. The melodies of these modes when skilfully fused should tune
the soul and make it sufficiently harmonious to vibrate in accord with
the accents of truth.
With this purification of the soul corresponded of necessity that of
the body, which was obtained by means of hygiene and strict moral
discipline. The first duty of initiation was to overcome one’s
passions. He who has not harmonized his own being cannot reflect
divine harmony. And yet the ideal of the Pythagorean life contained
nothing of asceticism in it, for marriage was looked upon as sacred.
Chastity, however, was recommended to the novices, and moderation to
the initiates, as being a source of strength and perfection: “Only
yield to voluptuousness when you consent to be less than yourself,”
said the master. He added that voluptuousness exists only in itself,
comparing it “to the song of the Sirens who disappear when one
approaches them, to find in their place nothing but broken bones and
bleeding flesh on a wave-beaten rock, whilst true joy is like the
concert of the Muses, leaving celestial harmony behind in the soul.”
Pythagoras believed in the virtues of the woman initiate, he greatly
mistrusted the untrained woman. On a disciple asking him when he might
be permitted to approach a woman he replied in ironical accents: “When
you are tired of your peace of mind.”
The Pythagorean day was spent in the following manner. As soon as
the sun’s glorious orb rose above the blue waves of the Ionian sea,
gilding the columns of the Temple of the Muses, above the abode of
the initiates, the young Pythagoreans chanted a hymn to Apollo, the
while performing a sacred, dignified dance. After the obligatory
ablutions, they proceeded in silence to the temple. Each awakening is a
resurrection possessed of its flower of innocence. The soul must retire
within itself at the beginning of the day and remain unsullied for the
morning lesson. In the sacred wood, groups were formed round the master
or his interpreters and the lesson was given beneath the fragrance
of the mighty trees or the shade of the porticoes. At noon, prayer
was offered to the heroes and benevolent spirits. Esoteric tradition
affirmed that good spirits preferred to approach the earth with the
radiance of the sun, whilst evil spirits haunted the shades and filled
the air when night came on. The frugal midday meal generally consisted
of bread, honey, and olives. The afternoon was devoted to gymnastic
exercises, then to study and meditation, afterwards to some mental work
on the morning’s lesson. After the sun had set, prayer was offered in
common, a hymn sung to the gods of the Kosmos, to heavenly Jupiter,
to Minerva, Providence, and to Diana, guardian of the dead. Meanwhile
storax, manna, or incense were burning on the altar in the open air,
and the hymn, mingling with the perfume, rose gently in the twilight,
whilst the early stars pierced the pale azure sky. The day ended with
the evening meal, after which the youngest member read aloud, comments
being made thereon by the eldest.
Thus the day passed like a limpid spring, clear as a cloudless morn.
The year was divided according to the great astronomical events. Thus
the return of hyperborean Apollo and the celebration of the Mysteries
of Ceres saw novices and initiates of every degree, both men and women,
assembled together. Young girls played on ivory lyres, married women,
in purple and saffron-coloured cloaks, performed alternate choruses,
accompanied by songs, along with the harmonious movements of strophe
and antistrophe, imitated later on in tragedy. In the midst of these
great _fêtes_, at which a divine presence was manifested in grace of
form and movement and the penetrating melody of the choruses, the
novice was conscious of a kind of presentiment of occult forces, the
all-powerful laws of the animated universe, the deep, transparent
heavens. Marriages and funeral rites were of a more intimate, but none
the less solemn, character. There was one original ceremony, calculated
to strike the imagination. When a novice, of his own accord, left
the institute to take up once more the ordinary every-day life, or
when a disciple had betrayed a secret of the doctrine, an occurrence
which happened only once, the initiates raised a tomb for him in the
consecrated precincts, as though he were dead. The master said: “He is
more dead than the dead, for he has returned to an evil life; his body
appears among men, but his soul is dead; let us weep for it!” This tomb
erected to a living man, persecuted him like his own phantom, like an
evil omen.
SECOND DEGREE--PURIFICATION[11]
_Numbers--Theogony_
It was a happy day, “a day of gold,” as the ancients said, when
Pythagoras received the novice into his dwelling and solemnly welcomed
him into the rank of his disciples. First of all he entered into direct
and connected relations with the master; he came into the inner court
of his dwelling reserved for his faithful followers. Hence the name
of _esoteric_ (those from within) in opposition to that of _exoteric_
(those from without). The real initiation now began.
This revelation consisted of a complete, rational exposition of occult
doctrine, from its principles as contained in the mysterious science of
numbers to the final consequences of universal evolution, the destiny
and end of divine Psyche, the human soul. This science of numbers
was known under different names in the temples of Egypt and Asia. As
it afforded a key to the whole doctrine, it was carefully concealed
from the people. The figures and letters, the geometric forms and
human representations, which served as signs in this algebra of the
occult world, were understood by none but the initiate. He divulged
their meaning to the adepts only after receiving from them the oath of
silence. Pythagoras formulated this science in a book he wrote with
his own hand, called _hieros logos_ (the sacred word). This book has
not come down to us, but we are acquainted with its principles from
the subsequent writings of the Pythagoreans, Philolaus, Archytas, and
Hierocles, the dialogues of Plato, and the treatises of Porphyry and
Iamblichus. The reason they have remained a dead letter for modern
philosophers is that their meaning and bearing can only be understood
by comparison with all the esoteric doctrines of the East.
Pythagoras called his disciples mathematicians, because his higher
teaching began by the doctrine of numbers. These sacred mathematics,
however, or science of principles, were both more transcendent and more
living than profane mathematics, which alone are known to our savants
and philosophers. In them Number was not regarded as an abstract
quantity but as the intrinsic and active virtue of the supreme One,
of God the source of universal harmony. The science of _numbers_ was
that of the living forces, _of the divine faculties_ in action in the
universe and in man, in the macrocosm and in the microcosm.----In
examining them, distinguishing and explaining their working, Pythagoras
was evolving nothing less than a rational theogony or theology. In a
real theology we should look for the principles of every science; it
will be the science of God only if it shows the unity and concatenation
of the sciences of nature. It deserves its name only on condition it
constitutes the organ and the synthesis of all the rest. Now this is
exactly the part played in the Egyptian temples by the science of the
holy Word, formulated and made exact by Pythagoras under the name of
the science of numbers. It claimed to supply the key of being, of
science, and of life. The adept, under the guidance of his master,
had to begin by contemplating its principles in the light of his own
intelligence, before following its many applications in the concentric
immensity of the spheres of evolution.
A modern poet has had a presentiment of this truth in causing Faust to
descend to _the Mothers_ to restore life to the phantom of Helen. Faust
seizes the magic key, the earth melts away beneath him, he becomes
unconscious and plunges into the void of space. Finally he reaches the
Mothers who keep watch over the first forms of the mighty All, and
cause beings to issue from the mould of the archetypes. These Mothers
are the Numbers of Pythagoras, the divine forces of the world. The poet
has communicated to us the thrill of his own thought before this plunge
into the abyss of the Unfathomable. For the ancient initiate, in whom
the direct view of intelligence was gradually aroused as though it
were a new sense, this inner revelation seemed rather an ascent into
the incandescent sun of Truth, whence he contemplated in the fulness
of light the forms and beings thrown out in the whirl of lives by a
vertiginous irradiation.
He did not reach in a single day that inner possession of truth
in which man realizes universal life by the concentration of his
faculties. Years of training were needed, and that agreement, so
difficult to effect, of the intelligence and the will. Before using the
creative word--and how few succeed in this!--one must spell out the
sacred logos, letter by letter, syllable by syllable.
Pythagoras was in the habit of giving this teaching in the Temple of
the Muses. This temple had been built by the magistrates of Croton
at his express request and according to his plans, in an enclosed
garden near his abode. The disciples of the second degree came there
alone with the master. Inside this circular temple were the marble
statues of the nine Muses. Standing in the centre the solemn and
mysterious Hestia, covered with a veil, kept watch. Her left hand
afforded protection to the fire on the hearth, whilst with her right
she pointed to heaven. Both Greeks and Romans looked upon Hestia, or
Vesta, as the guardian of the divine principle present in all things.
The soul of sacred fire, she has her altar in the temple of Delphi,
at the Prytaneum of Athens, as well as on the humblest hearth. In the
sanctuary of Pythagoras she symbolized divine and central Science, or
Theogony. In a circle around her, the esoteric Muses bore, in addition
to their traditional and mythological names, that of the occult
sciences and sacred arts of which they had the guardianship. _Urania_
presided over astrology and astronomy; _Polyhymnia_ over the science of
souls in the other life and the art of divination; _Melpomene_, with
her tragic mask, over the science of life and death, of transformations
and re-births. These three superior Muses constituted together the
cosmogony, or heavenly physics. _Calliope_, _Clio_, and _Euterpe_
presided over the science of man, or psychology, with its corresponding
arts, medicine, magic, and moral philosophy. The last group,
_Terpsichore_, _Erato_, and _Thalia_, embraced terrestrial physics, the
science of elements, stones, plants, and animals.
Thus at a glance the organism of the sciences, following that of the
universe, appeared to the disciple in the living circle of the Muses,
illumined by the divine flame.
After leading his disciples into this small sanctuary, Pythagoras
opened the book of the Word, and began his esoteric teaching.
“These Muses,” he said, “are only the earthly images of the divine
powers whose immaterial and sublime beauty you will contemplate each
one in himself. Just as they have their eyes fixed upon the fire
of Hestia, from which they spring and which gives them movement,
rhythm, and melody--so you must plunge into the central fire of the
universe, into the divine spirit, to mingle with it in its visible
manifestations.” Then with bold, powerful hand, Pythagoras carried away
his disciples from the world of forms and realities; he effaced time
and space and took them with him down into _the great Monad_, into the
presence of the increate Being.
Pythagoras called it the first One in which existed harmony, the
masculine Fire traversing everything, the Spirit which moves by
itself, the Indivisible and mighty non-Manifested of which the
ephemeral worlds manifest the creative thought, the Only, the Eternal,
the Unchangeable, concealed beneath the many things which pass away
and change. “Essence in itself escapes man,” said Philolaus, the
Pythagorean. “He knows only the things of this world in which the
finite combines with the infinite. And how can he know them? for
between things and himself there is a harmony and relation, a common
principle; and this principle is given them by the One who gives to
them along with their very essence, measure and intelligibility. It is
the common measure between subject and object, the reason of things by
which the soul participates in the final reason of the One.”[12] But
how can one approach It, the inconceivable Being? Has any one ever seen
the Master of time, the Soul of the suns, the Spring of intelligences?
No; and it is only by mingling with it that one penetrates its
essence. It is like an invisible fire placed in the centre of the
universe, its nimble flame circulating throughout the worlds and moving
the circumference. He added that it was the work of initiation to draw
near the great Being, by resembling it, by making oneself as perfect
as possible, dominating things by intelligence, thus becoming active
like it, and not passive like them. “Is not your being, your soul, a
microcosm, a small universe? Still, it is full of storm and discord.
Well, the thing to do is to realize therein unity in harmony. Then
and then only will God descend into your consciousness, and you will
share in his power and make of your will the hearth-stone, the altar of
Hestia, the throne of Jupiter!”
God, the indivisible substance, has accordingly for number the Unity
which contains the Infinite, for name, that of Father, Creator, or
Eternal-Masculine, and for sign, the living Fire, symbol of the Spirit,
essence of the Whole. This is the first of the principles.
But the divine faculties are like the mystic lotus which the Egyptian
initiate, lying in his tomb, sees emerging from the blackness of the
night. At first it is only a shining spot, then it opens like a flower,
and the glowing centre expands like the thousand leaves of a rose of
light.
Pythagoras said that the great Monad acts as a creative _Dyad_.
Immediately God manifests himself, he is double; indivisible essence
and divisible substance; active, animating, masculine principle, and
passive, feminine principle, or animated plastic matter. Accordingly
the Dyad represented the union of the Eternal-Masculine and the
Eternal-Feminine in God, the two essential and corresponding divine
faculties. Orpheus had poetically expressed this idea in the line:
Jupiter is the divine Bridegroom and Spouse.
All polytheisms have intuitively been conscious of this idea,
representing the Divinity under the masculine, sometimes under the
feminine form.
This living, eternal Nature, this mighty Spouse of God, is not only the
terrestrial but also the celestial nature, invisible to our eyes of
flesh, the Soul of the world, the primordial Light, in turn Maia, Isis
or Cybele, who, first vibrating beneath the divine impulse, contains
the essences of all souls, the spiritual types of all beings. Then
it is Demeter, the living earth, and all earths with the bodies they
enfold in which these souls have come to be incarnated. Afterwards it
is Woman, the companion of Man. In humanity Woman represents Nature,
and the perfect image of God is not Man alone, but Man and Woman.
Hence their invincible and fascinating, their fatal attraction, the
intoxication of Love, in which the dream of infinite creations has
play, and the dim presentiment that the Eternal-Masculine and the
Eternal-Feminine enjoy perfect union in the bosom of God. “Honour be to
Woman, on earth as in heaven,” said Pythagoras and all the initiates
of old. “She enables us to understand that mighty Woman, Nature. May
she be the sanctified image of Nature and help us to mount gradually to
that great Soul of the World which gives birth, preserves and renews,
to divine Cybele who bears along the people of souls in her mantle of
light.”
The Monad represents the essence of God, the Dyad, his generative
and reproductive faculty. The latter brings the world into being,
the visible unfolding of God in time and space. Now the real world
is triple. For just as man is composed of three elements, which are
distinct though blended in one another, body, soul, and spirit; so
the universe is divided into three concentric spheres: the natural,
the human, and the divine world. The _Triad_ or _ternary law_ is
accordingly the constitutive life of things and the real key to
life. It is met with at every step on the ladder of life, from the
constitution of the organic cell through the physiological constitution
of the animal body, the working of the blood and the cerebro-spinal
systems, right on to the super-physical constitution of man, to that of
the universe and of God. Thus, as by enchantment, it opens up to the
amazed spirit the inner structure of the universe, shows the infinite
correspondences of the microcosm and the macrocosm. It acts like a
light, passing into things to make them transparent, lighting up small
and great worlds like so many magic lanterns.
Let us explain this law by the essential correspondence of man with the
universe.
Pythagoras affirmed that the mind of man, or the intellect, takes
from God its immortal and invisible, its absolutely active, nature.
For the mind is that which moves itself. He defined the body as being
its mortal, divisible, and passive part, and thought that what we
call _soul_ is closely united to the mind, though formed of a third
intermediate element, coming from the _cosmic fluid_. The soul,
therefore, resembles an ethereal body which the spirit weaves and
builds for itself. Without this ethereal body, the material body could
not be purified, it would be only an inert and lifeless mass.[13] The
soul possesses a form like that of the body it vivifies, and which it
survives after dissolution or death. Then, as Pythagoras expresses
it, in terms repeated by Plato, the _subtile chariot_ either carries
off the spirit to divine spheres or allows it to fall back into the
dusky regions of matter, according as it is more or less good or bad.
The constitution and evolution of man is repeated in ever-increasing
circles over the whole scale of beings and in every sphere. Just as the
human Psyche struggles between the spirit which attracts and the body
which holds it back, so also humanity evolves between the natural and
animal world into which it plunges by reason of its earthly roots, and
the divine world of pure spirits, its heavenly source, towards which
it aspires to rise. And what happens in humanity happens in all lands
and solar systems in ever differing proportions, ever new modes. Extend
the circle to infinity, and, if you can, form one single concept of the
limitless worlds. What will you find there? The creative thought, the
astral fluid, and worlds in evolution: the spirit, soul, and body of
divinity. Raising veil after veil and fathoming the faculties of this
divinity itself, you will there see Tryad and Dyad clothing themselves
in the dull depths of the Monad, like an efflorescence of stars in the
abyss of immensity.
From this rapid outline some estimate may be formed of the great
importance Pythagoras attached to the ternary law, which may be said
to form the corner-stone of esoteric science. All the mighty religious
initiators have been conscious of it, every theosophist has had a
presentiment of the same. An oracle of Zoroaster says as follows:
The number three reigns everywhere in the universe,
The Monad is its principle.
The incomparable merit of Pythagoras consists in having formulated it
with all the clearness of Greek genius. He made of it the centre of
his theogony and the foundation of the sciences. Already veiled in
the exoteric writings of Plato, though altogether misunderstood by
subsequent philosophers, this conception, in modern times, has been
comprehended by only a few rare initiates of the occult sciences.[14]
Henceforth may be seen what a broad and solid basis the law of the
universal ternary offered to the classification of sciences, and to the
building up of cosmogony and psychology.
Just as the universal ternary is concentrated in the unity of God or in
the Monad, so the human ternary is concentrated in the conscience of
the ego and in the will which gathers together in its living unity all
the faculties of body, soul, and spirit. The human and divine ternary,
summed up in the Monad, constitutes the _sacred Tetrad_. But it is only
relatively that man realizes his own unity. His will which acts over
the whole of his being cannot, however, act fully and simultaneously
in its three organs, _i. e._ in instinct, soul, and intellect. The
universe and God himself appear to him only in turns, successively
reflected by these three mirrors:--1. Seen through instinct and the
kaleidoscope of the senses, God is multiple and as infinite as his
manifestations. Hence polytheism where the number of the gods is
unlimited.--2. Seen through the reasonable soul, God is double, _i. e._
matter and spirit. Hence the dualism of Zoroaster, the Manichaeans,
and several other religions.--3. Seen through pure intellect, he is
threefold, _i.e._ spirit, soul and body in all the manifestations of
the universe. Hence the trinitarian cults of India (Brahma, Vishnu and
Siva) and the trinity of Christianity (Father, Son and Holy Ghost).--4.
Conceived of by the will which sums up the whole, God is one, and we
have the Hermetic monotheism of Moses in all its rigour. Here there is
no longer personification or incarnation, we leave the visible universe
and return to the Absolute. The Eternal alone rules over the world, now
reduced to dust. The diversity of religions, accordingly, comes from
the fact that man realizes divinity only through his own being which is
relative and finite, whilst God is continually realizing the unity of
the three worlds in the harmony of the universe.
This final application would alone demonstrate the--in some way--magic
virtue of the _Tetragram_ in the order of ideas. In it was found not
only the principles of the sciences, the law of beings and their mode
of evolution, but also the very reason of the different religions and
their superior unity. This was in reality the universal key. Hence the
enthusiasm with which Lysis speaks of it in the _Golden Verses_; one
can now understand why the Pythagoreans swore by this great symbol:
“I swear it by him who has transmitted into our souls the
Sacred Quaternion, the source of nature, whose cause is
eternal.”
Pythagoras carried a great deal farther the teaching of numbers. In
each of them he defined a principle, a law, an active force of the
universe. He said, however, that the essential principles are contained
in the first four numbers, since all the others are formed by adding
or multiplying them. In the same way the infinite variety of beings
composing the universe is produced by the combinations of the three
primordial forces: matter, soul, spirit, under the creating impulse of
the divine unity which mingles and differentiates, concentrates and
separates. Along with the chief masters of esoteric science Pythagoras
attached great importance to the numbers seven and ten. _Seven_, the
compound of three and four, signifies the union of man and divinity.
It is the figure of the adepts, of the great initiates, and, since it
expresses the complete realization in all things through seven degrees,
it represents the law of evolution. The _number ten_ formed by the
addition of the first four numbers, and containing the former number,
is the perfect number, _par excellence_, for it represents all the
principles of divinity, evolved and re-united in a new unity.
On finishing the teaching of his theogony, Pythagoras showed his
disciples the nine Muses, personifying the sciences, grouped three
by three, presiding over the triple ternary evolved in nine worlds,
and forming, along with Hestia, the divine science, guardian of the
primordial Fire--_the sacred Decad_.
THIRD DEGREE--PERFECTION[15]
_Cosmogony and psychology.--The evolution
of the soul._
The disciple had received the principles of science from his master.
This first initiation had dispelled the dense scales of matter
which covered the eyes of his spirit. Tearing away the shining veil
of mythology, it had removed him from the visible world to cast
him blindly into boundless space and plunge him into the sun of
Intelligence, whence Truth beams forth over the three worlds. The
science of numbers, however, was nothing but the beginning of the
great initiation. Armed with these principles, he had now to descend
the heights of the Absolute and plunge into the depths of nature,
there to lay hold of the divine thought in the formation of things and
the evolution of the soul through the worlds. Esoteric cosmogony and
psychology touched the greatest mysteries of life as well as dangerous
and jealously-guarded secrets of the occult arts and sciences.
For this reason Pythagoras loved to give these lessons, when the
profane light of day had disappeared, at night by the sea-side, on
the terraces of the Temple of Ceres, before the gentle murmur of
the Ionian sea with its melodious cadence, and beneath the distant
phosphorescence of the starry kosmos; or else in the crypts of the
sanctuary where a gentle steady light was given by Egyptian lamps of
naphtha. Female initiates were present at these night meetings. At
times, priests or priestesses from Delphi or Eleusis came to confirm
the master’s teachings by relating their experiences or through the
lucid words of clairvoyant sleep.
The material and the spiritual evolution of the world are two inverse
movements, though parallel and concordant along the whole scale of
being. The one can be explained only by the other, and, considered
together, they explain the world. Material evolution represents the
manifestation of God in matter by the soul of the world which works out
matter. Spiritual evolution represents the working out of consciousness
in the individual monads and their attempts, through the cycle of
lives, to rejoin the divine spirit from which they emanate. To see the
universe from the physical or from the Spiritual point of view is not
considering something different, it is looking at the world by the
two opposite ends. From the terrestrial point of view, the rational
explanation of the world ought to begin by material evolution, for it
is this side of it which appears to us, but by enabling us to see the
work of the universal spirit in matter and to follow up the development
of the individual monads, it insensibly leads on to the spiritual point
of view and causes us to pass from the without to the within of things,
from the reverse of the world to its face side.
This, at any rate, was the procedure of Pythagoras, who regarded the
universe as a living being, animated by a great soul and filled with
a mighty intelligence. The second part of his teaching began with the
cosmogony.
If we relied on the divisions of the heavens we find in the exoteric
fragments of the Pythagoreans, this astronomy would be similar to that
of Ptolemy; the earth motionless and the sun with the planets and the
whole of the firmament turning round it. The very principle of this
astronomy, however, warns us that it is purely symbolical. In the
centre of his universe Pythagoras places Fire (of which the sun is
only a reflection). Now in the whole of Eastern esoterism, Fire is the
representative sign of Spirit, of divine, universal Consciousness. What
our philosophers generally take as the natural philosophy of Pythagoras
and Plato is accordingly nothing else than an imaged description of
their secret philosophy, clear and light-giving to initiates, but all
the more impenetrable by the mass of people as it was considered to
be simple natural philosophy. We must consequently seek therein a kind
of cosmography of the life of souls and nothing else. The sublunary
region designates the sphere in which terrestrial attraction operates
and is called the circle of generation. Initiates mean by this that for
us the earth is the region of corporeal life. Here take place all the
operations accompanying the incarnation and disincarnation of souls.
The sphere of the six planets and of the sun responds to ascending
categories of spirits. Olympus, conceived as a rolling sphere, is
called the heaven of the stationary, because it is assimilated to the
sphere of perfect souls. This infantile astronomy accordingly masks a
conception of the spiritual universe.
Everything, nevertheless, inclines us to believe that the initiates of
old, and especially Pythagoras, had far more correct notions of the
physical universe. Aristotle positively affirms that the Pythagoreans
believed in the movement of the earth around the sun. Copernicus
asserts that the idea of the rotation of the earth on its axis came to
him whilst reading, in Cicero, that a certain Hycetas of Syracuse had
spoken of the daily motion of the earth. Pythagoras taught the double
movement of the earth to his disciples of the third degree. Without
having the exact measurements of modern science, he knew, as did the
priests of Memphis, that the planets which come from the sun turn
around it; that the stars are so many solar systems governed by the
same laws as ours, and that each has its place in the immense universe.
He also knew that each solar world forms a small universe which has its
correspondence in the spiritual world and its own heaven. The planets
served to mark the scale thereof. Still, these notions which would
have overthrown popular mythology, and would have been set down by the
people as sacrilegious, were never entrusted to popular writing. They
were taught only under the seal of profound secrecy.[16]
The visible universe, said Pythagoras, the heavens with all their
stars, are only a passing form of the soul of the world, of the great
Maia who concentrates the scattered matter in the infinitudes of space
and then dissolves it and scatters it in an imponderable cosmic fluid.
Each solar vortex possesses a fragment of this universal soul, which
evolves in its bosom for millions of centuries with a special force of
impulse and measure. As regards the powers and kingdoms, the species
and the living souls which appear successively in the constellations of
this little world, they come from God, descending from the Father; that
is to say, they emanate from an immutable and superior spiritual order,
as well as from a former material evolution, I mean an extinct solar
system. Of these invisible powers, some, which are altogether immortal,
direct the formation of this world, the others await its unfolding in
cosmic sleep or in divine dream, to return into visible generations,
according to their rank and in obedience to eternal law. All the same,
the solar soul and its central fire, moved directly by the great Monad,
works the matter into a state of fusion. The planets are daughters
of the sun. Each of them, elaborated by the forces of attraction and
rotation inherent in matter, is endowed with a semi-conscious soul
issuing from the solar soul; it has its distinct character, its special
_rôle_ in evolution. As each planet is a different expression of the
thought of God, as it exercises a special function in the planetary
chain, the ancient sages have identified the names of the planets with
those of the great gods who represent the divine faculties in action in
the universe.
The _four elements_, of which the constellations and all beings are
formed, designate four graduated states of matter. The first, being the
densest, is the one most refractory to spirit; the last, being the most
refined, shows great affinity for spirit. _Earth_ represents the solid
state; _water_, the liquid state; _air_, the gaseous state, and _fire_,
the imponderable state. The fifth, the _etheric_ element, represents
a state of matter so fine and vivid that it is no longer atomic, and
possesses the property of universal penetration. It is the original,
cosmic fluid, the astral light or soul of the world.
Afterwards Pythagoras spoke to his disciples of the earth’s
revolutions, according to the traditions of Egypt and Asia. He knew
that the earth, in a state of fusion, was first surrounded by a gaseous
atmosphere which, becoming liquefied by successive coolings, had formed
the seas. As was his wont, he summed up this idea metaphorically by
saying that the seas were produced _by the tears of Saturn_ (cosmic
time).
And now the kingdoms appear, and invisible germs, floating in the
ethereal _aura_ of the earth, whirl about in its gaseous robe and
are then attracted to the deep bosom of the ocean and over the first
continents that pierce their way to the surface. The vegetable and
animal worlds, still in confusion, appear almost at the same time.
Esoteric teachings admit of the transformation of animal species, not
only in accordance with the secondary law of selection, but also by
the primary law of the percussion of the earth by celestial powers,
and of all living beings by intelligible principles and invisible
forces. When a new species appears on the globe, the reason is that a
race of souls of a superior type is being incarnated at a given epoch
in the descendants of the former species, to cause it to mount a step
in the ladder of evolution by moulding it afresh and transforming it
into its image. Thus the esoteric doctrine explains the appearance of
man on earth. From the point of view of terrestrial evolution, man
is the latest branch, the crown of all the former species. But this
point of view is no more sufficient to explain his entrance on to
the stage of life, than it would be to explain the appearance of the
first sea-weed or the first crustacean in the depths of the sea. All
these successive creations infer, as does each birth, the percussion
of the earth by the invisible powers which create life. That of man
infers the previous reign of a celestial humanity presiding over the
unfolding of terrestrial humanity, and sends it, like the waves of a
formidable tide, fresh torrents of souls which become incarnate in its
womb and cause to shine forth the first beams of a divine light in that
bold, impulsive, terrified being who, though only just freed from the
darkness of animality, is forced, in order to live, to struggle with
all the powers of nature.
Pythagoras had obtained in Egyptian temples clear notions as to the
mighty revolutions of the globe. The Indian and Egyptian teachings
spoke of the existence of the ancient austral continent which had
produced the red race and a powerful civilization, called by the
Greeks, the Atlantides. They attributed the alternate emergence
and immersion of continents to the oscillation of the poles and
acknowledged that humanity had thus passed through six deluges. Each
interdiluvian cycle brings about the predominance of a great human
race. In the midst of the partial eclipses of civilization and human
faculties, there is a general ascending movement.
Here we have humanity constituted and the races launched in their
career through the cataclysms of the globe. But on this globe which,
at birth, we take as being the immutable base of the world and which
itself is carried along floating in space, on these continents which
emerge from the seas to disappear afresh, amid these passing peoples,
these crumbling civilizations, what is the mighty and poignant, the
eternal mystery? This is the great inner problem, that of each and all,
the problem of the soul which discovers in itself an abyss of darkness
and light, regarding itself with a mixture of delight and terror and
saying to itself: “I am not of this world, for it is not sufficient to
explain me. I do not come from earth and I am going elsewhere. Where?”
That is the mystery of Psyche, the mystery containing all the rest.
The cosmogony of the visible world, said Pythagoras, has led us to
the history of the earth, and the latter to the mystery of the human
soul. With it we touch the sanctuary of sanctuaries, the holy of
holies. Once its consciousness aroused, the soul becomes for itself
the most astonishing of sights. But even this consciousness is only
the enlightened surface of its being, in which it suspects there to
be dark and unfathomable abysses. In its unknown depths, the divine
Psyche contemplates with fascinated look all lives and worlds, past
and present, and the future joined to them by Eternity. “Know thyself,
and thou shalt know the universe of the gods.” Such was the secret of
the sages and initiates. To penetrate through this narrow door into
the immensity of the invisible universe, let us awake in ourselves
direct vision of the purified soul, and arm ourselves with the torch of
intelligence, with the science of the sacred principles and numbers.
Pythagoras thus passed from physical cosmogony to spiritual cosmogony.
After the evolution of the earth, he told of that of the soul through
the different worlds. Outside of initiation, this doctrine is known
under the name of _transmigration of souls_. Regarding no part of
secret doctrine has there been more false reasoning than here, to such
an extent indeed that ancient and modern literature are acquainted with
it only through puerile travesties. Plato himself, who more than any
other philosopher contributed to the popularizing of the doctrine, has
only given fantastic and at times extravagant glimpses of it, either
because prudence or his oath of secrecy prevented him from telling all
he knew. Few now doubt the fact that it must have had for initiates
a scientific aspect, opening up endless perspectives and affording
divine consolation to the soul. The doctrine of the ascensional life
of the soul through series of existences is the common feature of
esoteric traditions and the crown of theosophy. I will add that it is
of the utmost importance to us. For the man of the present day rejects
with equal scorn the abstract and vague immortality of philosophy
and the childish heaven of an infant religion. And yet he abhors the
dryness and nothingness of materialism. Unconsciously he aspires to
the consciousness of an _organic immortality_ responding at once to
the demands of his reason and the indestructible needs of his soul.
Besides, it can well be understood why the initiates of the ancient
religions, though they were acquainted with these truths, kept them
so secret. They are of a nature to turn the minds of those untrained
to receive them. They are closely allied to the profound mysteries of
spiritual generation, of sex and generation by flesh, on which hang the
destinies of future humanity.
It was therefore with a kind of dread that the supreme hour for this
esoteric teaching was awaited. Through the words of Pythagoras, as by
some slow incantation, heavy matter seemed to lose its weight, the
things of earth became transparent, those of heaven visible to the
spirit. Golden and azure spheres, furrowed with luminous essence,
unfolded their orbs right into the infinitudes of space.
The disciples, both men and women, grouped round the master in
a subterranean part of the Temple of Ceres called the crypt of
Proserpine, listened with throbbing emotions to _the celestial history
of Psyche_.
What is the human soul? A portion of the mighty soul of the world,
a spark of the divine spirit, an immortal monad. Still, though its
possible future opens out into the unfathomable splendours of divine
consciousness, its mysterious dawn dates back to the origin of
organized matter. To become what it is in present-day humanity, it
must have passed through all the reigns of nature, the whole scale of
beings gradually developing through a series of innumerable existences.
The spirit which fashions the worlds and condenses cosmic matter into
enormous masses manifests itself with varying intensity and an ever
greater concentration in the successive reigns of nature. A blind and
confused force in the mineral, individualized in the plant, polarized
in the sensations and instincts of animals, it stretches towards
the conscious monad in this slow elaboration; and the elementary
monad is visible in the most inferior of animals. The animal and
spiritual element accordingly exists in every kingdom, though only in
infinitesimal quantities in the lower kingdoms. The souls which exist
in the state of germs in the lower kingdoms stay there without moving
away for immense periods of time, and it is only after great cosmic
revolutions that, in changing planets, they pass to a higher reign.
All they can do during a planet’s period of life is to mount a few
degrees. Where does the monad begin? As well ask at what hour a nebula
was formed or a sun shone for the first time. Anyhow, what constitutes
the essence of any man must have evolved for millions of years through
a chain of lower planets and kingdoms, keeping through all these
existences an individual principle which follows it everywhere. This
obscure but indestructible individuality constitutes the divine seal of
the monad in which God wills to manifest himself through consciousness.
The higher one ascends in the series of organisms, the more the
monad develops the principles latent in it. Polarized force becomes
capable of sensation, capacity of sensation becomes instinct, and
instinct becomes intelligence. In proportion as the flickering flame
of consciousness is lit, this soul becomes more independent of the
body, more capable of existing freely. The fluid, nonpolarized soul
of minerals and vegetables is bound to the elements of earth. That
of animals, strongly attracted by terrestrial fire, stays there for
some time after leaving its body, and then returns to the surface
of the globe to re-incarnate in its species without ever having the
possibility of leaving the lower layers of the air. These are peopled
with elementals or animal souls which play their part in atmospheric
life and have a great occult influence over man. The human soul alone
comes from the sky, and returns there after death. At what period of
its long cosmic existence has the elementary become the human soul?
Through what incandescent crucible, what ethereal flame has it passed?
The transformation has been possible in an interplanetary period only
by the meeting of human souls already fully formed which have developed
in the elementary soul its spiritual principle and have impressed their
divine prototype like a seal of fire in its plastic substance.
But what journeys and incarnations, what planetary cycles must still
be traversed for the human soul thus formed to become the man we are
acquainted with! According to the esoteric traditions of India and
Egypt, the individuals of whom mankind at present consists, began their
human existence on other planets, in which matter is far less dense
than our own. Man’s body was then almost vaporous, his incarnations
light and easy. His faculties of direct spiritual perception were
evidently very powerful and subtile in this first human phase; reason
and intelligence on the other hand were in an embryonic condition. In
this half-corporeal, half-spiritual state, man saw spirits, everything
was full of splendour and charm to his eyes, full of music to his
ears. He could hear the harmony of the spheres. He neither thought nor
reflected, scarcely even willed, but simply lived, drinking in sounds,
forms and light, floating like a dream from life to death and from
death to life. It was this that the Orphic poems called _the heaven
of Saturn_. It is only by becoming incarnate on planets ever denser
and denser that man became materialized, according to the doctrine
of Hermes. By becoming incarnate in denser matter, humanity has lost
its spiritual sense, but by an ever-increasing struggle with the
outside world, it has powerfully developed its reason, intelligence
and will. The earth is the last rung of this descent into matter which
Moses calls the exit from paradise, and Orpheus, the fall into the
sublunary circle. From these depths man can, with difficulty, reascend
the circles in a series of new existences and regain his spiritual
faculties by the free exercise of his intellect and will-power. Then
only, say the disciples of Hermes and Orpheus, does man acquire by his
_action_ the consciousness and the possession of the divine; then only
does he become the _son of God_. Those who have borne this name on
earth must, before appearing among us, have descended and remounted the
dreadful spiral.
Then what is the humble Psyche at its origin? A passing breath, a
floating germ, a wind-swept bird, migrating from life to life. And yet,
after innumerable lapses, and millions of years, it has become the
daughter of God and no longer recognizes any other home than heaven!
This is why Greek poetry, so profound and luminous in its symbolism,
compared the soul sometimes to the winged insect, sometimes to the
earth-worm, and again to the heavenly butterfly. How often has it been
a chrysalis, and how often a winged creature of light? Though it will
never know this, it still feels that it has wings!
Such is the vertiginous past of the human soul. It affords us an
explanation of its present condition and enables us to glimpse into its
future.
What is the position of divine Psyche in earth life? The slightest
reflection suffices to show us that we could not imagine a stranger or
more tragic one, since being painfully roused to consciousness in the
dense atmosphere of earth, the soul has entwined itself in the folds
of the body. Only through it does the soul live, breathe, and think,
and yet it is not the body. In proportion as it develops, it feels
increasing within itself a quivering light, something invisible and
immaterial which it calls its spirit, its conscience. Yes, man has an
innate sentiment of his triple nature, for, even in his instinctive
language, he distinguishes his body from his soul, and his soul from
his spirit. The soul, however, captive and troubled, struggles between
its two companions as between the thousand twining folds of a serpent
and an invisible genius calling it, whose presence, however, can only
be felt by passing gleams and the beating of his wings. At times this
body absorbs it to such an extent that it is only through its passions
and sensations that the soul lives; with the body it rolls in the
blood-stained orgies of anger or the dense mist of carnal pleasures,
until, of its own accord, it becomes terrified by reason of the
profound silence of its invisible companion. Then again, attracted by
the latter, it rises to such lofty heights of thought, that it forgets
the existence of the body until a peremptory call reminds it of its
presence. And yet an inner voice tells it that between itself and the
invisible guest the bond cannot be broken, whilst death will break its
connection with the body.
Tossed to and fro between the two in an eternal struggle, the soul
seeks in vain for happiness and truth. In vain does it seek to find
itself in passing sensations, in fugitive thoughts, in the world which
changes like a mirage. Finding that nothing is lasting, troubled and
driven about like a leaf in the wind, it has doubts of itself and of
a divine world which is only revealed to it by its own pain and the
impossibility it feels of reaching this world. Human ignorance is
written in the contradictions of pretended sages, and human sadness
in the unfathomable hunger of the human glance. Finally, whatever the
range of his knowledge, birth and death shut in man between two fatal
bounds. These are two gates of darkness, beyond which he sees nothing.
The flame of his life is lit as he enters the one and extinguished as
he leaves the other. Can it be so with the soul? If not, then what
becomes of it?
Many have been the replies which philosophers have given to this
poignant problem. In its essence that given by theosophical initiates
of all times is the same. It is in accord with universal feeling and
the inner spirit of religions. The latter has expressed the truth only
under superstitious or symbolical forms. The esoteric doctrine opens
up far wider perspectives; its affirmations are strictly related to
the laws of universal evolution. This is what initiates, instructed
by tradition and by the many experiences of psychic life, have said
to man: That which is restless in thyself, which thou callest thy
soul, is an ethereal double of the body which contains in itself an
immortal spirit. The spirit builds and forms for itself, by its own
activity, its spiritual body. Pythagoras calls it _the subtile chariot
of the soul_, because it is destined to remove it from earth after
death. _This spiritual body is the organ of the spirit_, its sensitive
envelope and instrument of volition; it serves to animate the body,
which would otherwise remain inert. In apparitions of the dying or the
dead, _this double_ becomes visible, under circumstances, however,
which always presuppose a special nervous condition of the seer. The
degree of fineness, power and perfection of the spiritual body varies
according to the quality of the spirit which it contains, and between
the substance of souls woven in the astral light, though impregnated
with the imponderable fluids of earth and heaven, there are more
numerous distinctions, greater differences than between all earthly
bodies and all states of ponderable matter. This astral body, though
far finer and more perfect than the earthly one, is not immortal as is
the monad which it contains. It changes and becomes purified according
to its different environments. The spirit is perpetually moulding and
transforming it into its own image; it never leaves it however, though
it unrobes itself of it by degrees; it is continually clothing itself
with more ethereal substances. This was the teaching of Pythagoras, who
could not conceive of abstract spiritual entity, the formless monad.
Spirit in itself, whether in the far-away sky or on earth, must have
an organ; that organ is the living soul, whether bestial or sublime,
obscure or radiant, retaining, however, the human form, the image of
God.
What happens at death? When the final hour approaches, the soul
generally has a presentiment of its coming separation from the body.
It sees over again its earthly existence in abridged scenes rapidly
succeeding one another and of startling clearness. When the exhausted
life stops in the brain, the soul becomes perplexed and altogether
loses consciousness. If it is holy and pure, its spiritual senses
have already been aroused by gradual detachment from matter. Before
dying, in some way or other, if only by the introspection of its own
state, it has already felt the presence of another world. Beneath the
silent, distant appeals, the vague beams of the Invisible, earth has
already lost its consistence, and when the soul finally leaves the
cold corpse, rejoicing in its deliverance, it feels itself carried
away into a glorious light, towards the spiritual family to which it
belongs. It is not so, however, with the ordinary man, whose life has
been divided between material instincts and higher aspirations. He
awakes in a state of semi-consciousness, as though in the torpor of a
nightmare. No longer has he an arm to stretch forth or a voice to cry
out with; still, he remembers and suffers, existing, as he does, in a
limbus of darkness and terror. All that he sees is the body from which
he is detached, but for which he still feels an invincible attraction.
It is for it that he lived; and now, what is it? In terror he looks
for himself in the icy fibres of his brain, in the stagnant blood of
his veins, and no longer finds himself. Is he dead or living? He would
like to see, to hold on to something, but he cannot see, he can take
hold of nothing. Darkness is all around, chaos within. He sees only one
thing, and this thing attracts and terrifies him at the same time--the
sinister phosphorescence of his own earthly tenement; and the nightmare
recommences.
This state may be prolonged for months or years. Its duration depends
on the strength of the material instincts of the soul. Still, good or
evil, infernal or celestial, this soul will gradually become conscious
of itself and of its new condition. Once free from its body, it will
escape into the abysses of the terrestrial atmosphere, whose electric
streams carry it here and there, and whose many-shaped inhabitants,
wandering about, more or less like itself, it is beginning to perceive,
like fugitive flashes in a thick mist. Then there begins a desperate,
vertiginous struggle on the part of the soul, which is still dull and
heavy, to rise into the upper strata of the air, to free itself from
earthly attraction and reach, in the heaven of our planetary system,
the region proper to it and which friendly guides alone can show it.
But before this can take place, a long period must often intervene.
This phase of the life of the soul has borne different names in
religions and mythologies. Moses called it Horeb; Orpheus, Erebus;
Christianity, Purgatory, or _the Valley of the Shadow of Death_. The
Greek initiates identified it with the cone of shadow which the earth
is always trailing behind it, which shadow reaches as far as the moon;
for this reason they called it the _abyss of Hecate_. In these mirky
depths, say the disciples of Orpheus and of Pythagoras, are tossed to
and fro the souls which make desperate efforts to reach the circle of
the moon, though the violence of the winds beats them back to earth
by thousands. Homer and Virgil compare them with whirling leaves, or
swarms of birds maddened by the tempest.
The moon played an important part in ancient esoterism. On its surface,
facing the heavens, the souls were regarded as purifying their astral
body before continuing their celestial ascent. It was also supposed
that heroes and great spirits took up their abode for a time on the
portion of its surface turned towards the earth, in order to clothe
themselves in bodies appropriate to our world before reincarnation.
There was attributed to the moon, in a certain measure, the power to
magnetize the soul for earthly incarnation, and to demagnetize it
for its heavenly abode. In a general way, these assertions, to which
initiates attached a meaning that was at once real and symbolical,
signified that the soul must pass through an intermediary stage of
purification and free itself from the impurities of earth before
continuing its journey.
In what terms can one describe the arrival of the pure soul into its
own world? The earth has disappeared like a dream. A fresh sleep, a
delightful swoon now envelops it as in a caressing embrace. All that it
now sees is its winged guide carrying it away with lightning rapidity
into the depths of space. What can we say of its awakening in the
vales of some ethereal star, devoid of elemental atmosphere, where
everything--mountains, flowers and vegetation--is of an exquisite,
sensitive and eloquent nature? Above all else, what can one say of
those luminous forms, men and women, surrounding it like a sacred
procession, to initiate it into the sacred mystery of its new life?
Are they gods or goddesses? No; they are souls like itself; the wonder
consists in the fact that their inmost thoughts beam forth in their
countenance, that tenderness and love, desire or fear radiate through
those diaphanous bodies in a scale of luminous colorations. Here, body
and countenance are no longer the mask of the soul; the transparent
soul appears in its real form, shining forth in the clear light of
unpolluted truth. Psyche has returned to her divine home. The secret
light in which she laves herself, which emanates from her and returns
in the smile of beloved ones; this light of great felicity is the soul
of the world wherein she is conscious of the presence of God! No more
obstacles now! She will love and know; she will live with no other
limit than her own desire to soar. Strange and marvellous happiness!
She feels that strong, profound affinities unite her to all her
companions. For in the life beyond, those who do not love flee from one
another; those alone meet together who understand one another. With
them she will celebrate the divine mysteries in more beautiful temples,
in a more perfect communion. These will be living poems, ever new,
each soul of which will be a strophe, and each one will live again
its life in that of others. Then, quivering with delight, she will
spring forth into the radiance on high, to the call of the Messengers,
the winged Spirits, those who are called Gods, for they have escaped
the circle of generations. Led on by these sublime intelligences, she
will try to decipher the great poem of the Secret Word, to understand
what she can grasp of the symphony of the universe. She will receive
hierarchical information from the circles of Divine Love; she will
endeavour to see the Essences which the animating Spirits scatter
throughout the worlds; she will contemplate the glorified Spirits,
living rays of the God of Gods, but without being able to bear their
blinding glory which makes suns look pale as smoky lamps! Then, when
she returns terrified from these dazzling flights--for she shudders
in presence of such immensities--she will hear from afar the call of
beloved voices, and will fall back on the golden strands of her star,
beneath the rose-coloured veil of a billowy sleep, peopled with forms
clothed in white, and filled with sweet perfumes and melodious strains.
Such is the heavenly life of the soul, scarcely conceived of by our
earth-clouded minds, but divined by initiates, lived by seers and
demonstrated by the law of analogy and universal concordance. In vain
do our rude imagery and imperfect language attempt to translate it;
each living soul, however, feels the germ of this life in its hidden
depths. Though in our present condition it is impossible for us to
realize it, the philosophy of occultism has formulated its psychical
conditions. The idea of ethereal constellations, invisible to us,
though forming part of our solar system and serving as an abode for
happy souls, is often found in the secrets of esoteric tradition.
Pythagoras calls it a counterpart of the earth: the _antichthone_,
lit up by the central Fire, _i.e._, by the divine light. At the end
of the _Phaedo_, Plato describes this spiritual land at some length,
though in disguised fashion. He says that it is as light as air, and is
surrounded by an ethereal atmosphere. In the other life, we see that
the soul preserves the whole of its individuality. Of its terrestrial
existence it retains none but noble memories, leaving the others to
fall into that forgetfulness which the poets called the waves of Lethe.
Freed from all defilement, the human soul feels its consciousness
restored, so to speak. From without the universe, it has come back to
within it; Cybele-Maïa, the soul of the world, has, with deep yearning,
drawn it back to her bosom. Here, Psyche will work out her dream,
that dream continually broken and ever being recommenced on earth. She
will work it out in accordance with her earthly effort and acquired
intelligence, but she will magnify it an hundredfold. Crushed hopes
will again revive beneath the dawn of her divine life; the gloomy
sunsets of earth will kindle into the dazzling light of day. Though man
had lived only one hour of enthusiasm or self-denial, that single pure
note, torn away from the discordant scale of his earthly life, will
be repeated in his after-life in marvellous progressions and æolian
harmonies. The fugitive delights that we obtain from the enchantment
of music, the ecstasy of love or the raptures of charity are only
the stray notes of a harmony to which we shall then be listening. Is
this simply saying that such life will be only one long dream, one
magnificent hallucination? What is there truer than that which the soul
feels within itself and which it realizes by its divine communion with
other souls? Initiates, being consistent and transcendent idealists,
have always thought that the only real and lasting things on earth are
manifestations of spiritual Beauty, Love and Truth. As the after-life
can have no other object than this Truth, this Beauty and this Love for
those who make them the object of their lives, they are convinced that
heaven will be truer than earth.
The heavenly life of the soul may last hundreds or thousands of years,
according to its degree or strength of impulse. It belongs, however,
only to the perfect, to the most sublime souls, to those which have
passed beyond the circle of generations, to prolong it indefinitely.
The latter have not only attained to temporary rest, but to immortal
action in truth; they have created wings for themselves. Being light
itself, they are inviolable; seeing across the worlds, they rule them.
The rest are carried along by an inflexible law to re-incarnation, in
order to undergo a fresh trial, and to rise to a higher rung or to fall
lower if they fail.
The spiritual, like the terrestrial life, has its beginning, its apogee
and its decline. When this life is exhausted, the soul feels itself
overcome with heaviness, giddiness and melancholy. An invincible force
once again attracts it to the struggles and sufferings of earth. This
desire is mingled with terrible dread and a mighty grief at leaving
divine life. But the time has come; the law must be obeyed. The
heaviness increases, a sensation of dimness is felt. The soul no longer
sees its companions of light except through a veil, and this veil, ever
denser and denser, gives a presentiment of the coming separation. It
hears their sad farewells; the tears of the blest, the loved ones whom
it is leaving, fall over it like heavenly dew which will leave in its
heart the burning thirst of an unknown happiness. Then--with solemn
oaths--_it promises_ to remember--to remember the light when in the
world of darkness, to remember truth when in the world of falsehood,
and love when in the world of hatred. The return, the immortal crown,
can only be acquired at this cost. It awakens in a dense atmosphere;
ethereal constellation, diaphanous souls, oceans of light--all have
disappeared. And now it is back on earth, in the abyss of birth and
death. Nevertheless, it has not yet lost its celestial memory; the
winged guide still visible to its eyes points out the woman who is to
be its mother. The latter bears within her womb the germ of a child,
but this germ will only live if the spirit comes in to animate it.
Then for nine months is accomplished the most impenetrable mystery of
earthly life, that of incarnation and maternity.
The mysterious fusion operates slowly but with perfect wisdom--organ
by organ, fibre by fibre. Accordingly as the soul plunges into that
warm cavern, which roars and swarms with life, in proportion as it
feels itself caught up in the meanderings of the viscera with their
thousand recesses and folds, the consciousness of its divine life
becomes effaced and dies out. For between it and the light above are
interposed waves of blood and tissues of flesh, crushing it and filling
it with darkness. This distant light is already nothing more than a
dying flicker. Finally, a terrible pang compresses it in a vice; a
bloody convulsion tears it from the mother soul and fastens it down
into a throbbing, palpitating body. The child is born, a pitiful image
of earth, and he cries aloud with fright. The memory of the celestial
regions however has returned to the occult depths of the Unconscious;
it will only be revived either by Knowledge or by Pain, by Love or by
Death!
Accordingly, the law of incarnation and disincarnation unfolds to us
the real meaning of life and death. It constitutes the principal phase
in the evolution of the soul, enabling us to follow it backwards and
forwards right into the depths of nature and divinity. For this law
reveals to us the rhythm and measure, the reason and object of the
soul’s immortality. From being abstract or fantastic, it makes it
living and logical by showing the correspondences of life and death.
Terrestrial birth is death from the spiritual point of view, and
death is a celestial resurrection. The alternation of both lives is
necessary for the development of the soul, and each of them is at once
the consequence and the explanation of the other. Whosoever is imbued
with these truths is at the very heart of the mysteries, at the centre
of initiation.
But, we shall be asked, what is there to prove for us the continuity
of the soul, of the monad, the spiritual entity through all these
existences, since it loses the memory of them in succession? What is
there to prove, we shall reply, the identity of your person during
waking existence and during sleep? You wake up every morning from
a state as strange, as inexplicable as death; you rise from this
condition of nothingness to return to it again at night. Was it
nothingness? No, for you have been dreaming, and your dreams have
been as real to you as the reality of the waking state. A change in
the physiological conditions of the brain has modified the relations
of soul and body and displaced your psychical point of view. You were
the same individual but you found yourself in another environment, and
living another existence. In magnetized subjects, somnambulists and
clairvoyants, sleep develops new faculties which to us seem miraculous,
though they are the natural faculties of the soul when detached from
the body. Once aroused, these clairvoyants no longer remember what
they have seen, said or done during their lucid sleep, but they
remember perfectly well in one sleep what happened in the previous
one, and at times predict with mathematical certainty what will happen
in the next. They have, then, two consciousnesses as it were, two
alternate lives entirely distinct from one another, but each of which
has its own rational continuity. They roll themselves round the same
individuality like cords of different colours round an invisible thread.
Consequently, it is in a very deep sense that the initiate poets of old
called sleep _the brother of death_. A veil of forgetfulness separates
the sleeping from the waking state, like birth and death, and, just
as our earthly life is divided into two parts always alternating, so
also the soul, in the immensity of its cosmic evolution, alternates
between incarnation and spiritual life, between earth and heaven.
This alternate passage from one plane of the universe to another,
this reversing of the poles of its being, is no less necessary for
the development of the soul than alternate waking and sleeping is
necessary for the bodily life of man. When passing from one existence
to the other, we need the waters of Lethe. In this present existence,
a salutary veil conceals from us past and future alike. But oblivion
is not complete, since light passes through the veil. Innate ideas
alone prove a former existence. There is more, however; we are born
with a world of vague remembrances, mysterious impulses, divine
presentiments. In children born of gentle quiet parents we find
outbursts of wild passions which atavism does not sufficiently explain,
and which come from a former existence. Sometimes in the humblest life
we find fidelity to a sentiment or an idea, altogether sublime and
inexplicable. Is not this a result of the promises and oaths of the
celestial life? The occult memory the soul has kept of them is stronger
than all earthly reasoning. According as it attaches itself to this
memory or abandons it, is it seen to overcome or to succumb. True faith
consists in this mute fidelity of the soul to itself. For this reason,
one may conceive that Pythagoras like all theosophists considered
bodily life as a necessary elaboration of the will, and heavenly life
as a spiritual growth, an accomplishment.
Lives follow without resembling one another, but a pitiless logic
links them together. Though each of them has its own law and special
destiny, the succession is controlled by a general law, which might
be called _the repercussion of lives_.[17] In accordance with this
law, the actions of one life have, fatally, their repercussion in
the following one. Not only will man be born again with the instincts
and faculties he has developed in his preceding incarnation, but the
very manner of his existence will be largely determined by the good
or bad use he has made of his liberty in the preceding life. There is
no word or action which has not its echo in eternity, says a proverb.
According to esoteric doctrine, this proverb is literally applied
from one life to another. Pythagoras considered that the apparent
injustice of destiny, the difformity and wretchedness of one’s lot,
misfortunes of every kind, find their explanation in the fact that each
existence is the reward or the punishment of the former one. A criminal
life engenders one of expiation, an imperfect life, one of trial. A
good life determines a mission, a superior life, a perfected mission
by the re-establishment of initiation and the spiritual selection
of marriages. In this way races follow one another and humanity
progresses. The initiates of old saw much further into the future than
those of our days. They acknowledged that a time would come when the
great mass of people constituting present-day humanity would pass on
to another planet, there to begin a new cycle. In the series of cycles
of which the planetary chain consists, the whole of humanity will
develop the intellectual, spiritual and transcendent principles which
great initiates have developed in themselves in this life, and will
thus bring them to general fruition. It goes without saying that such a
development embraces not merely thousands, but millions of years, and
that it will bring about changes in human conditions such as we cannot
at present form any imagination of. In expressing them, Plato says that
in those times the gods will really inhabit the temples of men. It is
logical to admit that in the planetary chain, _i.e._ in the successive
evolutions of our humanity on other planets, its incarnations should
become more and more ethereal in their nature, insensibly approaching
the purely spiritual state of that eighth sphere which is outside the
circle of generation, and by which the divine state was denoted by
theosophists of old. It is also natural that, as all do not start from
the same point, and many loiter on the way or fall back, the number of
the elect should continually diminish in this marvellous ascent. Our
earth-limited intelligences are dazed by this conception, but heavenly
intelligences contemplate it without the least fear, just as we regard
a single life. Is not the evolution of souls, thus understood, in
conformity with the unity of the Spirit, the principle of principles;
with the homogeneity of Nature, the law of laws; and with the
continuity of movement, the force of forces? Seen through the prism of
spiritual life, a solar system does not constitute a material mechanism
only, but a living organism, a celestial kingdom in which souls travel
from world to world like the very breath of God animating it.
What then is the final end of man and humanity, according to esoteric
doctrine? After so many lives, deaths, re-births, periods of calm and
poignant awakings, is there any limit to the labours of Psyche? Yes,
say the initiates, when the soul has definitely conquered matter,
when, developing all its spiritual faculties, it has found in itself
the principle and end of all things, then, incarnation being no longer
necessary, it will enter the divine state by a complete union with the
divine intelligence. Since we have scarcely any presentiment of the
spiritual life of the soul after each earthly life, how shall we form
any idea of this perfect life which must follow the whole series of
its spiritual existences? This heaven of heavens will be to all former
happiness as the ocean is to a river. In the mind of Pythagoras, the
apotheosis of man was not a plunge into unconsciousness, but rather
creative activity in supreme consciousness. The soul which has become
pure spirit does not lose its individuality, but rather perfects
it as it rejoins its archetype in God. It remembers all its former
existences, which it regards as so many ladders to reach the point at
which it embraces and penetrates the universe. In this state, man is no
longer man, as Pythagoras said, but demi-god. For in his entire being
he reflects the ineffable light with which God fills immensity. For
him, knowledge is power; love is creation; being is radiating truth and
beauty.
Is this a definite limit? Spiritual eternity has other measures than
solar time, though it, too, has its stages, norms, and cycles. They
entirely transcend human conception, however. Still, the law of
progressive analogy in the ascending scale of nature allows of our
affirming that the spirit, once it has reached this sublime state,
can no longer return, that though the visible worlds change and pass
away, the invisible world, which is its _raison d’être_, its source and
basis, and of which the divine Psyche forms a part, is immortal.
It was in such a brilliant perspective that Pythagoras ended the
history of the _divine Psyche_. The last word had died away on the
lips of the sage, but the meaning of that incommunicable truth
remained suspended in the motionless air of the crypt. Each listener
believed that he had finished the dream of lives, and was awaking
to life in the mighty peace and boundless ocean of the one life. The
naphtha lamps quietly lit up the statue of Persephone, standing there
in the character of a heavenly reaper; they revived her symbolical
history in the sacred frescoes of the sanctuary. At times, a priestess
who had entered a state of ecstasy under the harmonious voice of
Pythagoras seemed to incarnate in her attitude and the radiance of her
countenance the unspeakable beauty of the vision she saw. Then, the
disciples--seized with a thrill of religious emotion--looked on in
silence. Soon, however, the master, with a slow commanding gesture,
brought back to earth the inspired prophetess. By degrees the tension
of her features was relieved, she sank back into the arms of her
companions and fell into a profound lethargy, from which she awoke
troubled and sorrowful, and apparently exhausted after her heavenly
flight.
Then, leaving the crypt they mounted to the gardens of Ceres just as
morning was beginning to dawn over the sea, and the stars to disappear
from mortal sight.
FOURTH DEGREE--EPIPHANY
_The adept.--The woman initiate.--Love
and marriage._
With Pythagoras we have now reached the summit of initiation in ancient
times. From these heights the earth appears drowned in shadow, like
a dying star. Sidereal perspectives open out--and the vision from
on high, the epiphany of the universe,[18] is unfolded before one’s
wondering gaze in its entirety. The object of his instruction, however,
was not the absorption of man in contemplation or ecstasy. The master
had brought his disciples into the unmeasurable regions of the Kosmos,
plunging them into the abyss of the invisible. After this terrifying
journey, the true initiates were to return to earth better, stronger
and more prepared for the trials of life.
The initiation of the intelligence was to be followed by that of the
will, the most difficult of all. The disciple had now to become imbued
with truth in the very depths of his being, to put it into practice
in everyday life. To attain to this ideal, one must, according to
Pythagoras, unite three kinds of perfection: the realization of truth
in intelligence, of virtue in soul and of purity in body. This latter
was to be maintained by a prudent system of hygiene and a well-balanced
chastity. This was demanded not as an end but as a means to an end. All
bodily excesses leave marks, impurities, so to speak, in the astral
body, the living organism of the soul, and consequently in the mind.
For the astral body participates in all the acts of the physical body;
indeed, it is the former which gives effect to them, the material body
being, without it, nothing but an inert mass. Accordingly the body
must be pure for the soul to be pure also. Then the soul, continually
enlightened by the intelligence, must acquire courage, self-denial,
devotion and faith, in a word, virtue, by which a second nature must
be made to replace the first. Finally, the intellect must reach wisdom
through knowledge, so that in everything it may be able to distinguish
good from evil and see God in the smallest of beings as well as in the
immensity of worlds. On reaching these heights, man becomes an adept;
and, if he possesses sufficient energy, he enters into possession of
new faculties and powers. The inner senses of the soul expand, and
the senses of the body are dominated by the radiant will. His bodily
magnetism, penetrated by the potency of his astral soul, electrified
by his will, acquires an apparently miraculous power. At times he
cures the sick by the laying on of hands or simply by his presence.
His look alone often penetrates the thoughts of men. Sometimes, in the
waking state, he sees events taking place afar off.[19] He acts at a
distance by the concentration of thought and will on such persons as
are attached to him by bonds of personal sympathy, causing his image
to appear to them as though his astral body could be transported out
of his material body. The appearance of the dying or the dead to their
friends affords exactly the same phenomenon. The apparition however
which the dying man or the soul of the dead man generally produces
through an unconscious desire, in the last few moments of life or in
the second death, is generally produced by the adept when in perfect
health and consciousness. Still, he can only do this during sleep, and
a sleep which is almost always of a lethargic nature. Finally, the
adept feels himself as it were surrounded and protected by invisible
beings, superior spirits of light, who lend him their strength and aid
him in his mission.
Adepts are rare, but even more rare are those who attain to this
power. Greece knew but three: Orpheus at the dawn of Hellenism,
Pythagoras at its apogee, and Apollonius of Tyana in its final decline.
Orpheus was the mighty and inspired initiator of Greek religion;
Pythagoras, the organizer of esoteric science and the philosophy of
the schools; Apollonius, the moralizing stoic and popular magician
of the decadence. In all three, however, in spite of differences and
degrees, there beams the divine ray, the mind passionately inflamed for
the salvation of souls, indomitable energy clothed in gentleness and
serenity. But do not draw too near these mighty, calm brows; a silent
fire is beneath, the furnace of an ardent but ever restrained will.
Pythagoras accordingly represents to us an adept of the highest type,
possessed of the scientific mind and cast in philosophic mould to which
the spirit of modern times most nearly approaches. But he himself
neither could, nor pretended to make perfect adepts of his disciples.
A great inspirer is always at the beginning of every great epoch.
His disciples and their pupils form the magnetic chain which carries
his thought out into the world. In the fourth degree of initiation,
Pythagoras therefore contented himself with teaching his followers how
to apply his doctrine to life. The _Epiphany_, the vision from above,
set forth an ensemble of profound, regenerating views on things of
earth.
_The origin of good and evil_ remains an incomprehensible mystery for
whomsoever has not taken into account the origin and the end of things.
A morality which does not consider the final destiny of man will be
merely utilitarian and very imperfect. Besides, human liberty does not
really exist for such as always feel themselves the slaves of their
passions, nor does it by right exist for such as believe neither in the
soul nor in God, for whom life is a lightning flash between two states
of darkness. The first live in the servitude of the soul, enchained by
the passions; the latter in the slavery of intelligence limited to the
physical world. It is not so for the religious man, or for the true
philosopher, nor with much greater reason for the theosophist initiate
who realizes truth in the trinity of his being and the unity of his
will. To understand the origin of good and evil, the initiate regards
_the three worlds_ with the spiritual eye. He sees the murky world
of matter and animalism in which inevitable _Destiny_ holds sway. He
sees the luminous world of the Spirit which, for us, is the invisible
world, the immense hierarchy of liberated souls who are themselves
_Providence_ in action, the world where divine law reigns. Between
the two he catches a dim glimpse of humanity, the lower elements of
which plunge into the natural world whilst the higher ones touch the
divine spheres. The genius and spirit of humanity is _Liberty_; for
the moment man perceives truth and error, he is free to choose, to
associate with Providence in accomplishing truth, or, by following
error, to fall beneath the law of destiny. The act of will joined to
that of intelligence is nothing but a mathematical point, but from this
point springs forth the spiritual universe. Every spirit partially
feels by instinct what the theosophist totally understands by his
intellect: that Evil is what causes man to descend to the fatality of
matter, and that Good is what makes him rise towards the divine law of
the Spirit. His true destiny is to be ever rising higher, and that from
his own efforts. But to do this he must also be free to descend again
to the very lowest. The circle of liberty widens out to the infinitely
great in proportion as one ascends, it shrinks to the infinitely small
in proportion as one descends. The higher one rises, the freer he
becomes; for the more one enters into light, the more power for good
he acquires. And the more one descends, the more enslaved does he
become; for each fall into evil diminishes the intelligence of the
true and the capacity for good. Destiny accordingly reigns over the
past, Liberty over the future, and Providence over both, _i.e._ over
the ever-existing present, which may be called Eternity.[20] From
the combined action of Destiny, Liberty and Providence spring the
innumerable destinies, the hells and the paradises of souls. Evil,
being discord with divine law, is not the work of God but that of
man, and has only a relative, an apparent and transitory existence.
Good, being accord with divine law, alone really and eternally
exists. Neither the priests of Delphi and Eleusis, nor the initiate
philosophers would ever reveal these profound thoughts to the people,
who might have misunderstood and misused them. In the Mysteries this
doctrine was symbolically represented by the mutilation of Dionysos,
though what was called _the sufferings of God_ was hidden from the
profane by an impenetrable veil.
The greatest of all religious and philosophical discussions deal with
the question of the origin of good and evil. We have just seen that
esoteric teachings hold the key to this question. There is another
important question on which the social and political problem depends:
_the inequality of human conditions_. In the very spectacle of evil
and pain there is something terrifying. Their apparently arbitrary and
unjust distribution may be said to be the origin of all hatred, revolt
and denial. Here again the profound esoteric teaching brings into our
earthly darkness its sovereign light of peace and hope. The diversity
of souls, conditions and destinies can indeed only be justified by
plurality of existences and the doctrine of reincarnation. If man is
born for the first time into this life, what explanation can be given
of the innumerable evils which seem to fall on him as the effect of
chance? How can it be admitted that there is such a thing as eternal
justice, when some are born under conditions which fatally bring about
misery and humiliation, whilst others are born fortunate and live the
happiest of lives? If, however, it is true that we have lived other
lives, and shall do so again after death, that through all these
existences there reigns the law of recurrence and repercussion--then
the differences of soul, of condition and destiny, will be nothing but
the results of previous lives and the manifold applications of this
law. Differences of condition spring from an unequal employment of
liberty in past lives, and intellectual differences from the fact that
men belong to extremely different degrees of evolution, which range
from the semi-animal condition of retrogressing races to the angelic
states of saints and the divine kingship of genius. In reality earth
resembles a vessel, and all we who inhabit it are travellers coming
from far-away lands, dispersing, by degrees, in every direction of
the compass. The doctrine of reincarnation gives a _raison d’être_,
in accordance with eternal justice and logic, for the most terrible
suffering as well as for the most envied happiness. The idiot will now
be understood by us if we think that his dull, stupid condition, of
which he is half conscious and from which he suffers, is the punishment
for a criminal use of his intelligence in another life. All the
degrees of physical and moral suffering, of happiness and misfortune
in their innumerable varieties, will appear to us as the natural and
wisely-graduated blossomings of the instincts and actions, the faults
and virtues of a long past, for in its occult depths the soul retains
everything it accumulates in its divers existences. According to hour
and influence, the former births reappear and disappear, and destiny,
or rather the spirits who control it, proportion the soul’s kind of
reincarnation to its degree and quality. Lysis expresses this truth,
beneath a veil, in the _Golden Verses_--
“Thou wilt likewise know, that men draw upon themselves
their own misfortunes voluntarily, and of their own free
choice. Unhappy that they are! They neither see nor
understand that their good is near them.”
Far from weakening the sentiment of brotherhood and of the solidarity
of all men, such teaching is bound to strengthen it. We owe help,
sympathy and charity to all; for we are all of the same race, though
we have reached different stages. All suffering is sacred, for pain
is the test of the soul. All sympathy is divine, for it enables us to
feel, as by a magnetic thrill, the invisible chain binding together
all the worlds. The virtue of grief is the reason of genius. Sages and
saints, prophets and divine creators shine with more resplendent beauty
in the eyes of those who know that they too come forth from universal
evolution. How many lives, what innumerable victories have been needed
to acquire this might which fills us with wonder? What heavens have
already been traversed to bring to us this innate light of genius? We
know not; but these lives have been lived, these heavens do exist.
The conscience of nations is not mistaken; the prophets have not lied
in calling these men the sons of God, messengers from heavenly places.
Their mission is demanded by eternal Truth, they are protected by
invisible legions and the living Word speaks in them!
There is one difference in men springing from the primitive essence
of individuals, and another, as we have just said, coming from the
degree of spiritual evolution to which they have attained. From this
latter point of view, we see that men may be placed in four classes,
comprising every subdivision and degree.
1. In the great majority of men, the will acts especially in the body.
These may be designated as _instinctive_ persons. Their sphere includes
not only physical work, but also the exercise and development of the
intelligence in the physical world, consequently commerce and industry.
2. In the second degree of human development the will, and consequently
the consciousness, has its abode in the soul, _i. e._ in sensitiveness,
reacted on by intelligence, which constitutes understanding. These are
_animic, or passionate persons_. According to temperament, they are
fitted to become warriors, artists or poets. The great majority of
savants and literary men belong to this class. They live in relative
ideas, modified by passions or limited by a fixed horizon, without
rising to the height of pure Idea or Universality.
3. In a third class of men, a far rarer one, the will has acquired
the habit of acting principally in pure intellect, of setting free
the intelligence, in its special function, from the tyranny of the
passions and of the limits of matter, thus giving all their conceptions
a character of universality. These are the _intellectual_ persons.
They include such heroes as perish in martyrdom for their country, the
highest type of poets, and especially true philosophers and sages,
those whose mission it is, according to Pythagoras and Plato, to govern
humanity. In these men, passion is not extinct; for without it nothing
could be effected; it constitutes fire and electricity in the moral
world. The passions have here become the servants of intelligence,
whilst in the former category intelligence is, oftener than not, the
slave of the passions.
4. The loftiest human ideal is realized by a fourth class of men,
those who have added to the dominion of the intelligence over soul
and instinct, that of the will over their whole being. They exercise
supreme mastery through the control and possession of all their
faculties. In the human trinity they have realized unity. Owing to
this marvellous concentration, which collects together all the powers
of life, their will, by projecting itself into others, acquires an
almost limitless strength, a radiating and creative magic. These
men have borne different names in history. They are primordial men,
_adepts_, _great initiates_, sublime geniuses who transform and
metamorphose humanity. So rare are they that they may be counted in
history; Providence scatters them here and there at long intervals of
time, like stars in the heavens.[21]
Evidently this last category is outside of all rule or classification,
still, such a constitution of human society as takes no account of
the first three categories, without granting each its normal function
and the means needed for self-development, is merely external, it is
anything but _organic_. It is clear that, in primitive times, probably
dating back to the Vedic epoch, the Brahmans of India founded the
division of society into castes on the ternary principle. In time,
however, this division, so just and fruitful a one, became changed into
an aristocratic and sacerdotal privilege. The principle of vocation
and initiation was replaced by that of heredity. The closed castes
finally became petrified and the irretrievable decadence of India
followed. Egypt, which maintained, during the rule of the Pharaohs, the
ternary constitution with the movable and open castes, the principle
of initiation as applied to the priesthood and that of examination
and control of all military and civil functions, existed for a
period ranging between five and six thousand years without a change
of constitution. As for Greece, her lively, versatile temperament
caused her to pass rapidly from aristocracy to democracy, and from
the latter to tyranny. She turned round in this vicious circle like
a sick man passing from fever to lethargy and back again to fever.
Perhaps she needed this excitement to produce her unparalleled work:
the translation of the profound though obscure wisdom of the East
into clear, universal language; the creation of the Beautiful by Art;
and the foundation of an open and reasonable science following on a
secret, intuitive initiation. And none the less was she indebted to
the principle of initiation for her religious organization and her
loftiest inspirations. Speaking from a social and political standpoint,
it may be said that she always lived in whatever was provisional
and excessive. Pythagoras, in his capacity as an adept, had well
understood, from the heights of initiation, the eternal principles
which control society, and was following out the plan of a mighty
reform in accordance with these truths. Soon we shall see how his
school and himself suffered shipwreck in the storms of democracy.
From the pure, undefiled summits of his teachings the life of the
worlds rolls on, in accordance with the rhythm of Eternity. Glorious
epiphany! Beneath the magic rays, however, of the unveiled firmament,
earth, humanity and life also unfold to us their secret depths. To feel
the presence of God, the infinitely great must be recognized in the
infinitely small. This is what the disciples of Pythagoras experienced
when, to crown his teaching, the master demonstrated to them how
eternal Truth is manifested in the union of man and woman in marriage.
The beauty of the sacred numbers they had heard and contemplated in the
Infinite they were about to recognize at the very heart of life, for
them God was reflected in the great mystery of Sex and Love.
Antiquity had grasped an important truth which succeeding ages have too
long misunderstood. Woman, effectively to fulfil her duties as wife
and mother, needs special instruction and initiation. Hence a purely
feminine initiation; that is to say, one reserved altogether for women.
This existed in India, where in Vedic times the woman was a priestess
at the domestic altar. In Egypt it dates back to the mysteries of Isis.
Orpheus organized this initiation in Greece. Right on to the decay
of paganism we see it flourishing in the Dionysiac mysteries as well
as in the temples of Juno, Diana, Minerva and Ceres. It consisted of
symbolic rites and ceremonies, in festivals by night as well as in
special instruction given by aged priestesses or by the high priest,
and dealing with the most private concerns of married life. Advice and
regulations were given regarding the relations between the sexes, the
times of the year and month favourable for healthy conception. The
highest importance was attached to the physical and moral hygiene of
woman during pregnancy, so that the sacred work, the creation of the
child, might be accomplished in accordance with divine law. In a word,
the science of conjugal life and the art of maternity were taught. The
latter extended to some years after the birth of the child. Up to the
age of seven, the children remained in the gynæceum--which the husband
never entered--under the mother’s exclusive control. The wisdom of
antiquity looked upon the child as being a delicate plant, which, if
it is to be kept from wasting away, needs the warm, cheering atmosphere
of a mother’s love. The father would stunt its growth, a mother’s kiss
and embrace are needed to enable it to blossom forth; a woman’s mighty
encircling love to protect from outside attack this soul which a new
life fills with terror and dismay. It is because woman consciously
fulfilled these lofty functions which antiquity regarded as divine,
that she was in very truth the priestess of the family, the guardian of
the sacred fire of life, the Vesta of the hearth. Feminine initiation
may accordingly be regarded as the veritable reason of the beauty of
the race, its robust descendants and the length of duration of the
family in Greek and Roman antiquity.[22]
In establishing a section for women in his Institute, Pythagoras merely
deepened and refined what already existed. The women he initiated
received from him, along with rites and precepts, the final principles
of their functions. In this way he bestowed the consciousness of
their _rôle_ on such as were deserving of it. He revealed to them the
transfiguration of love in perfect marriage, which is the blending
of two souls at the very centre of life and truth. Is not man in his
strength the representative of the creative spirit and principle? And
does not woman in the totality of her power personify nature in its
plastic force, its wonderful realizations, at once terrestrial and
divine? Then if these two beings succeed in a complete mingling of
body, soul and spirit, they will form between them an epitome of the
universe. To believe in God, however, woman needs to see him living in
man; and to effect this, man must be an initiate. He alone, by reason
of his profound knowledge of life and creative will-power, is capable
of fecundating the feminine soul, of transforming it by means of his
divine ideal. This ideal the loved one gives him back manifold in her
vibrating thoughts, her keen sensations and profound divinations. She
sends him back his image transfigured by enthusiasm, she _becomes_
his ideal, for she realizes it by the power of love in her own soul.
Through her he becomes living and visible, he is made flesh and blood.
For if man creates through desire and will, woman, both physically and
spiritually, brings into being through love.
In her _rôle_ as lover or wife or mother or being inspired, she
is no less great and is even more divine than man. For love is
self-forgetfulness. The woman who forgets self and loses herself in
her love must ever be sublime. In such self-abasement she finds her
celestial re-birth, her crown of light and the immortal radiance of her
entire being.
In modern literature love has been reigning as a master for the past
two centuries. This is not the purely sensual love, born of bodily
beauty, as in the poetry of old, nor is it the insipid worship of an
abstract and conventional ideal as in the middle ages; it is rather a
love both sensual and psychic which gives full scope to its liberty and
individual fancy. Oftener than not both sexes wage war in love itself.
There is the revolt of the woman against man’s egoism and brutality;
the scorn of the man at woman’s deceit and vanity, carnal exclamations
and the ineffectual wrath of the victims to voluptuousness, the slaves
to debauchery. With all this we find deep-rooted passions and terrible
attractions, all the more powerful from being trammeled and fettered
by worldly conventions and social institutions. Hence a love full of
passion and storm, of moral ruin and tragic catastrophe, on which the
modern novel and drama are almost exclusively based. One might say that
tired man, finding God neither in religion nor in science, in despair
seeks for him in woman. And he does well, but it is only through the
initiation of the great truths that he will find Him in Her and Her in
Him. In these souls, which know neither themselves nor one another,
which sometimes leave one another with mutual maledictions, there
is, as it were, a mighty desire for self-penetration, for finding in
such intermingling a happiness that is impossible. In spite of the
aberrations, the outbursts of debauchery resulting therefrom, this
desperate search is necessary; it springs from an unconscious divinity.
It will be a vital element in the reconstruction of the future. For
when man and woman have found themselves and one another through the
channels of profound love and initiation, the fusion of the two will be
the radiating and creative force _par excellence_.
It is only quite recently, then, that psychic love, the soul’s
love-passion, has entered into literature and through it into universal
consciousness. It has its origin, however, in the initiation of the
past. The reason Greek literature scarcely mentions it, is that it was
a most rare exception. Another reason may be found in the profound
secrecy of the mysteries. And yet religious and philosophic tradition
have handed down traces of the woman initiate. Away behind official
poetry and philosophy appear a few half-veiled though luminous woman
forms. We have already mentioned Theoclea who inspired Pythagoras;
later on will come Corinna, the priestess, ofttimes the fortunate
rival of Pindar, who himself was the greatest initiate among the Greek
lyric poets; finally, the mysterious Diotima appeared at the banquet
of Plato to give the supreme revelation of Love. By the side of these
exceptional _rôles_ the Greek woman exercised her veritable priesthood
at the fireside and in the gynæceum. Indeed, she created those heroes,
artists and poets whose sublime deeds, sculptures and songs we so
greatly admire. It was she who conceived them in the mystery of love,
who formed them in her womb with the desire and love of beauty, who
brought them to birth after protecting them beneath her motherly wings.
It must be added that for the man and woman who are real initiates
the creation of the child has an infinitely finer signification and
greater importance than for us. When father and mother know that the
soul of the child existed previous to its birth on earth, conception
becomes a sacred act, the summons of a soul to submit to incarnation.
Between the incarnate soul and the mother there is almost always
considerable similarity. Just as evil-minded and wicked women attract
spirits possessed of demons, divine spirits are attracted to gentle
tender-hearted mothers. Is not this invisible soul, long waited for,
which is to come and finally appears--so wonderfully and yet so
surely--something divine in its nature? Painful will be its birth and
imprisonment in flesh. For though a dense veil gathers between itself
and the heaven it has left, though it no longer remembers--alas! it
suffers none the less on that account! Sacred and divine is the task of
the mother who is to create for it a fresh dwelling, to mitigate the
harshness of its prison and render the trial easier to bear.
Thus we see that the teaching of Pythagoras, which had begun by the
divine trinity in the profound recesses of the Absolute, ended in the
human trinity at the centre of life. In Father, Mother and Child, the
initiate could now recognize the Spirit, Soul and Heart of the living
universe. For him this final initiation constituted the foundation
of the social work, conceived of in all the height and beauty of the
ideal, a building to whose construction each initiate had to bring his
stone.
CHAPTER V
MARRIAGE OF PYTHAGORAS--REVOLUTION AT
CROTON--THE MASTER’S END--THE SCHOOL AND
ITS DESTINY
Among the women who followed the master’s teaching was a maiden of
great beauty. Her father, an inhabitant of Croton, was named Brontinos.
His daughter’s name was Theano. Pythagoras was now sixty years of
age, but mastery over passion and a pure life wholly consecrated to
his mission, had kept him in perfect health and strength. The youth
of the soul, that immortal flame the great initiate draws from his
spiritual life and nourishes on the hidden forces of nature, shone
forth in him, throwing into subjection all around. The Grecian mage was
not at the decline, but rather at the height of his might. Theano was
attracted to Pythagoras by the almost supernatural radiance emanating
from his person. Grave and reserved, she had sought from the master an
explanation of the mysteries she loved though without understanding
them. When, however, beneath the light of truth and the tender glow
which gradually enveloped her, she felt her inmost soul expand like
the mystic rose with its thousand petals, when she felt that this
blossoming forth came from him and his words--she silently conceived
for the master a boundless enthusiasm and a passionate love.
Pythagoras had made no effort to attract her. His love and affection
were bestowed on all his disciples; he thought only of his school, of
Greece and the future of the world. Like many great adepts, he had
denied himself the pleasures of earthly love to devote himself to
his work. The magic of his will, the spiritual possession of so many
souls he had formed and who remained devoted to him as to a well-loved
father, the mystic incense of all those unexpressed affections which
came to him, and that exquisite fragrance of human sympathy which
bound together the Pythagorean brethren--all this took the place of
voluptuousness, of human happiness and love. One day, as he was alone,
meditating on the future of his school in the crypt of Proserpine, he
saw coming to him, with grave, resolute steps, this beautiful virgin
to whom he had never spoken in private. She sank on her knees at his
feet, and with downcast eyes begged the master--the one who could do
everything!--to set her free from an impossible, an unhappy love which
was consuming her, body and soul. Pythagoras wished to know the name
of the one she loved. After much hesitation, Theano confessed that it
was himself, but that, ready for any sacrifice, she would submit to his
will. Pythagoras made no reply. Encouraged by his silence, she raised
her head with suppliant look. Her eyes seemed to contain the very
essence of a life and soul offered as a sacrifice to the master.
The sage was greatly disturbed; he could overcome his senses and
imagination, but the electric flash from that soul had pierced his own.
In this virgin, matured by passion, her countenance transfigured by a
sentiment of utter devotion, he had found his companion, and caught a
faint glimpse of a more complete realization of his work. With troubled
look, Pythagoras raised the maiden to her feet, and Theano saw from the
master’s eyes that their destinies were for ever united.
By his marriage with Theano, Pythagoras affixed _the seal of
realization_ to his work. The union and fusion of the two lives was
complete. One day when the master’s wife was asked what length of time
elapsed before a woman could become pure after intercourse with a man,
she replied: “If it is with her husband, she is pure all the time; if
with another man, she is never pure.” Many women would smilingly remark
that to give such a reply one must be the wife of Pythagoras, and love
him as Theano did.
And they would be in the right, for it is not marriage which sanctifies
love, it is love which justifies marriage. Theano entered so thoroughly
into the thought and life of her husband, that after his death she
became a centre for the Pythagorean order, and a Greek author quotes
her opinion as that of an authority on the doctrine of Numbers. She
bore Pythagoras two sons, Arimnestes and Telauges, and a daughter Damo.
At a later date Telauges became the master of Empedocles, to whom he
handed down the secrets of the doctrine.
The family of Pythagoras offered the order a real model to follow. His
house was called the Temple of Ceres, and his court the Temple of the
Muses. In domestic and religious festivals, the mother led the women’s
chorus, and Damo that of the maidens. In all respects Damo was worthy
of her parents. Pythagoras entrusted to her certain writings expressly
forbidding her to communicate them to any one outside the family. After
the dispersion of the Pythagoreans, Damo fell into great poverty. She
was offered a large sum for the precious manuscript, but, faithful to
her father’s will, she always refused to part with it.
Pythagoras lived in Croton for thirty years. Within twenty years this
extraordinary man had acquired such power that those who called him a
demi-god were not looked upon as exaggerating. This power seemed to
have something miraculous about it, no like influence had ever been
exercised by a philosopher. It extended not merely to the school of
Croton and its ramifications in other towns on the coast of Italy,
but even to the politics of all these small states. Pythagoras was
a reformer in the whole acceptation of the term. Croton, a colony
of Achaïa, had an aristocratic constitution. The _Council of the
Thousand_, drawn from the noblest families, carried on the legislative
and kept watch over the executive power. Popular assemblies existed,
though their power was restricted. Pythagoras, who wished the State
to be all order and harmony, was no more enamoured of oligarchical
compression than of the chaos of demagogy. Accepting the Doric
constitution as it was, he simply tried to introduce a fresh mechanism
into it. The idea was a bold one, for it consisted in the creation,
over and above the political power, of a scientific one with a
deliberative and consultative voice in questions of vital interest,
and becoming the key-stone, the supreme regulator of the State. Above
the Council of the Thousand, he organized the _Council of the Three
Hundred_, chosen by the former, but recruited from among the initiates
alone. The number was sufficient for the task. Porphyrus relates
that two thousand of the citizens of Croton gave up their wonted
mode of living and united in order to live together with their wives
and children after placing their possessions in one common stock. It
was thus the wish of Pythagoras that at the head of the State there
should be a scientific government, not so mysterious though quite as
important as the Egyptian priesthood. What he realized for a short time
remained the dream of all such initiates as dealt with politics, viz.
the introduction of the principle of initiation and examination into
the government of the State, and the reconciliation in this superior
synthesis of the elective or democratic principle with a government
constituted of a select number of intelligent and virtuous citizens.
The result was that the Council of the Three Hundred formed a kind
of political, scientific and religious order, of which Pythagoras
himself was the recognized head. The members were bound to him by a
solemn and an awful oath of absolute secrecy, as was the case in the
Mysteries. These societies or ἑταιρεῖαι spread from Croton, the seat
of the original society, throughout almost the whole of the towns in
Greater Greece, where they exercised a powerful political influence.
The Pythagorean order also tended to become the head of the State
throughout the whole of Southern Italy. Its ramifications extended to
Tarentum, Heracleium, Metapontum, Rhegium, Himera, Catana, Agrigentum,
Sybaris and, according to Aristoxenes, even among the Etruscans. As
regards the influence of Pythagoras on the government of these rich and
mighty cities, nothing loftier, nothing more liberal or pacific could
be imagined. Wherever he appeared, order, justice and concord were
restored. Once, when summoned into the presence of a tyrant of Sicily,
he persuaded him, by his eloquence alone, to restore the wealth he had
unjustly acquired and to abdicate a power he had usurped. Such towns as
were subject to one another he made independent and free. So beneficent
were his actions that when he went into a town the inhabitants would
say: “He has not come to teach but rather to heal.”
The sovereign influence of a great mind and character, that magic
of soul and intelligence, arouses jealousy and hatred which is only
the more terrible and violent because it is itself the less capable
of attack. His sway lasted a quarter of a century; the reaction came
when the indefatigable adept had reached the age of ninety. It began
in Sybaris, the rival of Croton, where a rising of the people took
place and the aristocratic party was overthrown. Five hundred exiles
asked the inhabitants of Croton to receive them, but the Sybarites
demanded their extradition. Dreading the anger of a hostile town, the
magistrates of Croton were on the point of complying with this demand
when Pythagoras intervened. At his entreaty, they refused to hand over
the unhappy suppliants to their implacable enemies, whereupon Sybaris
declared war upon Croton. The Croton army, however, commanded by the
famous athlete, Milon, a disciple of Pythagoras, completely defeated
the Sybarites. The downfall of Sybaris followed; the town was taken and
plundered, utterly destroyed and converted into a wilderness of ruins.
It is impossible to admit that Pythagoras could have approved of so
terrible a revenge, which was altogether opposed to his principles, as,
indeed, to those of all initiates. Neither he nor Milon, however, could
check the unbridled passions of a conquering army, when once inflamed
by long-standing jealousy and excited by an unjust attack.
Revenge, whether in individuals or in nations, always brings about a
recoil of the passions let loose. The Nemesis of this vengeance was
a terrible one; its consequences fell on Pythagoras and the whole of
his order. After taking Sybaris, the people demanded a division of the
land. Not content with obtaining this, the democratic party proposed a
change of constitution, depriving the Council of the Thousand of its
privileges, and suppressing the Council of the Three Hundred; they were
no longer willing to admit any other authority than universal suffrage.
Naturally the Pythagoreans, members of the Council of the Thousand,
were opposed to a reform which was contrary to their principles and was
undermining the patient work of their master. They had already become
the object of that dull hatred which mystery and superiority ever
arouse in the masses. Their political attitude excited the anger of the
demagogy, and personal hatred against the master proved the spark which
kindled the fire.
A certain Cylon had, some time before this, offered himself as a
candidate for the School. Pythagoras, who was very strict in accepting
disciples, refused him because of his violent and headstrong
disposition. This rejected candidate became a bitter enemy. When
public opinion began to turn against Pythagoras he organized a club,
a large popular society in opposition to that of the Pythagoreans.
He succeeded in attracting to himself the principal leaders of the
people, and at the meetings hatched a revolution which was to begin by
the expulsion of the Pythagoreans. Cylon rises to his feet in front
of a sea of upturned excited faces and reads extracts stolen from the
secret book of Pythagoras, entitled: The Sacred Word (_hiéros logos_).
These extracts are then travestied and wrongly interpreted. A few of
the speakers make an attempt to defend the brothers of silence, who
respect even dumb animals. Such are greeted with outbursts of laughter.
Cylon ascends the tribune again and again. He demonstrates that the
religious catechism of the Pythagoreans is a crime against liberty.
“And that is a slight charge,” he adds. “Is this master, this would-be
demi-god, whose least word is blindly obeyed, and who has merely a
command to give, to have all his brethren exclaiming: ‘The master has
said it!’--any other than the tyrant of Croton, and the worst of all
tyrants, an occult one? What else than scorn and disdain for the people
is this indissoluble friendship which unites all the members of the
Pythagorean ἑταιρεῖαι composed of? They are never tired of repeating
the words of Homer when he says that the prince should be the shepherd
of his people. In their eyes the people are evidently nothing better
than a worthless flock. The very existence of the order, I say, is a
permanent conspiracy against the rights of the people. Until it is
destroyed liberty will be a vain word in Croton!” One of the members
of the meeting, animated by a feeling of loyalty, exclaimed: “Let
Pythagoras and his followers be given an opportunity, at any rate, to
justify their conduct in our presence before we condemn them.” Cylon
replied haughtily: “Have not these Pythagoreans deprived you of the
right to judge and decide upon public matters? What right have they
to ask you to listen to them now? They did not consult you when they
deprived you of the right to exercise justice, now it is your turn to
strike without listening to them!” Such vehement opinions were greeted
with rounds of applause, and popular frenzy and passion rose higher
than ever.
One evening, when forty of the principal members of the order had met
at the abode of Milon, the tribune collected his followers and the
house was surrounded. The Pythagoreans, who had the master with them,
barricaded the doors. The enraged crowd set fire to the building,
which speedily became enveloped in flames. Thirty-eight Pythagoreans,
the very first of the master’s disciples and constituting the flower
of the order, along with Pythagoras himself, perished either in the
flames or at the hands of the people. Archippus and Lysis alone escaped
massacre.[23]
Thus died this mighty sage, this divine man whose effort it had been
to instil his own wisdom into human rule and government. The murder
of the Pythagoreans was the signal for a democratic revolution in
Croton and about the Gulf of Tarentum. The towns of Italy expelled
from their walls the unfortunate disciples of the master. The order
was dispersed; fragments of it, however, spread throughout Sicily
and Greece, propagating everywhere the master’s words and teachings.
Lysis became the teacher of Epaminondas. After fresh revolutions, the
Pythagoreans were permitted to return to Italy on condition they no
longer formed a political body. They were still united in a touching
fraternity, and looked upon themselves as one family. One of them
who had fallen upon sickness and poverty was kindly taken in by an
inn-keeper. Before dying he traced a few mysterious signs on the door
of the inn and said to the host: “Do not be uneasy, one of my brothers
will pay my debt.” A year afterwards, as a stranger was passing by this
inn he saw the signs and said to the host: “I am a Pythagorean; one
of my brothers died here; tell me what I owe you on his account.” The
order existed for two hundred and fifty years; the ideas and traditions
of the master have come down to the present times.
The regenerating influence of Pythagoras over Greece was immense.
This influence was exercised in mysterious though certain fashion,
by means of the temples he had visited. At Delphi we have seen that
he gave new might to the science of divination, strengthened the
priestly influence, and by his art formed a model Pythoness. Thanks to
this inner reform, which aroused enthusiasm in the very heart of the
sanctuaries and in the soul of the initiates, Delphi became more than
ever the moral centre of Greece. This was especially evident during
the Median wars. Scarcely had thirty years elapsed since the death of
Pythagoras when the Asiatic cyclone, predicted by the Samian sage,
burst out upon the coasts of Hellas. In this epic struggle of Europe
against a barbaric Asia, Greece, representing liberty and civilization,
has behind her the science and genius of Apollo. He it is whose
patriotic and religious inspiration stirs up and silences the springing
rivalry between Sparta and Athens. It is he, too, who is the inspirer
of men like Miltiades and Themistocles. At Marathon, enthusiasm is so
great that the Athenians believe they see two warriors, clad in light,
fighting in their ranks. Some recognize in them Theseus and Echetos;
others, Castor and Pollux. When the invasion of Xerxes, tenfold more
formidable than that of Darius, breaks over Thermopylæ and submerges
Hellas, it is the Pythoness who, on her tripod, points out the way
of safety to the envoys from Athens, and helps Themistocles to gain
the victory at Salamis. The pages of Herodotus thrill with her broken
phrases: “Abandon the homesteads and lofty hills if the city is built
in a circle ... fire and dreadful Mars mounted on a Syrian chariot will
bring your towers to ruins ... temples are tottering in their fall,
their walls are dripping with cold sweat, whilst black blood is falling
from their pinnacles ... depart from my sanctuary. Let a wooden wall be
your impregnable bulwark. Flee! turn your backs on numberless enemies
on foot and on horseback! O divine Salamis! How deadly wilt thou be to
those born of woman!”[24] In the account given by Eschylus the battle
begins with a cry resembling the pæan, Apollo’s hymn: “Soon the day,
led on white coursers, spreads throughout the world its resplendent
light. Immediately a mighty shout, resembling a sacred chant, rises
from the ranks of the Greeks and the echoes of the island respond in a
thousand loud-sounding voices.” What wonder that, intoxicated with the
wine of victory, the Greeks at the battle of Mycale, in the presence
of stricken Asia, chose as a rallying cry: “Hebe, Eternal Youth!” Yes,
it is the breath of Apollo that moves through these wonderful Median
wars. Religious enthusiasm, which works miracles, carries off both
living and dead, throws a dazzling light on victory, and gives a golden
glory to the tomb. All the temples were plundered and destroyed, that
of Delphi alone remained intact. The Persian hosts advanced to spoil
the holy town. A quiver of dread came over all. The solar god, however,
said through the voice of the pontiff: “I will defend myself!” Orders
were given from the temple that the city be deserted, the inhabitants
take refuge in the grottoes of Parnassus, and the priests alone keep
sacred guard on the threshold of the sanctuary. The Persian army enters
the town, all still as death; the statues alone look down as the hosts
march along. A black cloud gathers at the foot of the gorge, the
thunders roll and the lightning flashes on the invaders. Two enormous
rocks roll down from the summit of Parnassus, crushing to death great
numbers of Persians.[25] At the same time noises and shouts issue from
the Temple of Minerva, flames leap from the ground beneath the very
feet of the invaders. Before such wonders the barbarians fall back in
terror and the dismayed army takes to flight. The god has undertaken
his own defence.
Would these wonders have happened, would these victories humanity looks
upon as its own have taken place, had not Pythagoras, thirty years
earlier, appeared in the Delphic sanctuary to kindle there the sacred
fire? This may, indeed, be questioned.
One word more regarding the master’s influence on philosophy. Before
his time, there had been natural philosophers on the one hand, and
moral philosophers on the other; Pythagoras included in a vast
synthesis, morality, science and religion. This synthesis is nothing
else than the esoteric doctrine, whose full glory I have endeavoured
to reveal in the very basis of Pythagorean initiation. The philosopher
of Croton was not the inventor but the light-bearing arranger of these
fundamental truths, in the scientific order of things. Consequently I
have chosen his system as offering the most favourable framework to a
complete account of the doctrine of the Mysteries as well as of true
theosophy.
Those who have followed the master up to this point will have seen that
at the basis of the doctrine there shines the sun of the one Truth.
Scattered rays may be discovered in philosophies and religions, but
here is their centre. What must be done to attain thereto? Observation
and reasoning are not sufficient. In addition to and above all else
is intuition. Pythagoras was an adept and an initiate of the highest
order. His was the direct vision of the spirit, his the key to the
occult sciences and the spiritual world. It was from the primal
fount of Truth that he drew his supplies. And as he joined to these
transcendent faculties of an intellectual and spiritualized soul,
a careful and minute observation of physical nature and a masterly
classification of ideas by the aid of his lofty reason, no one could
have been better equipped than himself to build up the edifice of the
knowledge of the Kosmos.
In truth this edifice was never destroyed. Plato, who took from
Pythagoras the whole of his metaphysics, had a complete idea
thereof, though he unfolded it with less clearness and precision.
The Alexandrine school occupied the upper storeys of the edifice,
whilst modern science has taken the ground-floor and strengthened its
foundations. Numerous philosophical schools and mystical or religious
sects have inhabited its many chambers. No philosophy, however, has yet
embraced the whole of it. It is this whole I have endeavoured to reveal
here in all its harmony and unity.
THE END
_Richard Clay & Sons, Limited, London and Bungay._
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The _Amphictyonic oath_ of the allied peoples gives
some idea of the greatness and social might of this
institution: “We swear that we will never overthrow
Amphictyonic towns, never, during either peace
or war, prevent them from obtaining whatever is
necessary for their needs. Should any power dare to
attempt this, we will march against it and destroy
its towns. Should impious hands remove the offerings
of the temple of Apollo, we swear that we will use
our feet, our arms, our voice, and all our strength
against them and their accomplices.”
[2] _The Golden Verses of Pythagoras._
[3] Iamblichus relates this fact in his _Life of
Pythagoras_.
[4] _The Oracles of Zoroaster_, taken from the theurgy
of Proclus.
[5] Reichenbach called this fluid _odyle_. His work
has been translated into English by Gregory:
_Researches on Magnetism, Electricity, Heat, Light,
Crystalization and Chemical Attraction_.--London,
1850.
[6] See the Bulletin of the Société de Pyschologie
Physiologique. M. Charcot, president, 1885. See more
especially the fine book by M. Ochorowicz, _De la
Suggestion Mentale_, Paris, 1887.
[7] There is a great deal of literature on this subject,
very unequal in value, in France, Germany and
England. I will here mention two books in which the
subject is treated scientifically by men of real
worth.
(1) _Letters on Animal Magnetism_, by William Gregory,
London, 1850. Gregory was a professor of chemistry
at the University of Edinburgh. His book is a
profound study of the phenomena of animal magnetism,
from suggestion to vision at a distance and lucid
clairvoyance, on subjects observed by himself, in
accordance with scientific method, and with minute
exactness.
(2) _Die mystischen Erscheinungen der menschlichen
Natur_, von Maximilian Perty, Leipzig, 1872.
Perty is a professor of philosophy and medicine
at the University of Berne. His book presents an
immense repertory of all such occult phenomena as
have historical value. The extremely remarkable
chapter on clairvoyance (Schlafwachen), Volume I.,
contains twenty accounts of female and five of male
clairvoyants, related by the doctors who treated the
cases. That of Weiner, treated by the author, is
most curious. See also the treatises on magnetism by
Dupotet and Deleuze, and the very strange book, _Die
Seherin von Prévorst_, by Justinus Kerner.
[8] Numerous examples in Gregory’s work: Letters XVI,
XVII, and XVIII.
[9] The German philosopher, Schelling, has acknowledged
the great importance of somnambulism in the question
of the immortality of the soul. He remarks that, in
lucid sleep, there is produced an elevation of the
soul, and its relative liberation with regard to
the body, which does not take place in the normal
state. In somnambulists, everything indicates the
loftiest consciousness, as though their whole being
were met in one luminous focus, uniting together
past, present and future. Far from losing all memory
of the past, it lies open before them, and even
the veil of the future is at times cast aside in
a glorious ray of light. If this is possible in
earthly life, Schelling inquires, is it not certain
that our spiritual personality, which follows us in
death, is at this very moment present in us, that
it is not born then but simply set free, and shows
itself when it is no longer bound by the senses to
the outside world? The post-mortem condition is
accordingly more real than the earthly one. For in
this life, that which is accidental, mingling with
the whole, paralyzes in us that which is essential.
Schelling calls the future state quite simply,
clairvoyance. The spirit liberated from everything
accidental in earthly life becomes stronger and more
alive; the wicked man becomes worse, the good better.
Quite recently Charles du Prel has advanced the same
opinion, supporting it with numerous facts and
details in a well-written volume, _Philosophie
der Mystik_ (1886). He starts from this fact: the
consciousness of the ego does not exhaust its
object. “Soul and consciousness are not two adequate
terms; they do not cover one another as they have
not an equal scope. The sphere of the soul far
surpasses that of the consciousness.” Consequently
there is _a latent ego_ in us. This latent ego,
which manifests itself in sleep and in dreams, is
the real ego, supra-terrestrial and transcendent,
whose existence precedes our terrestrial ego which
is bound to the body. The terrestrial ego is
perishable, the transcendent ego is immortal. This
is what St. Paul meant when he said--“----the Lord
Jesus Christ, who shall change our vile body, so
that it be fashioned like unto His glorious body.”
[10] Origen states that Pythagoras was the inventor of
physiognomy.
[11] _Katharsis_ in Greek.
[12] In transcendent mathematics it is demonstrated
algebraically that zero multiplied by infinity is
equal to One. Zero, in the order of absolute things,
signifies the indeterminate Being. The Infinite,
the Eternal in the language of the temples, was
marked by a circle of a serpent biting its tail,
signifying the Infinite moving itself. Now, once the
Infinite is determined it produces all the numbers
it contains in its great unity, and which it governs
in perfect harmony.
Such is the transcendent meaning of the first problem
of the Pythagorean theogony, the reason which brings it
to pass that the great Monad contains all the small
ones, and that all the numbers spring from the great
Unity in movement.
[13] Doctrine identical with that of the initiate St.
Paul, who speaks of the _spiritual body_.
[14] In the first rank of these must be placed Fabre
d’Olivet (_Vers dorés de Pythagore_). This living
conception of the forces of the universe, traversing
it from top to bottom, has nothing to do with the
_thesis_, the _antithesis_ and the _synthesis_ of
Hegel, which are simply _jeux d’esprit_.
[15] In Greek: _Teleiôtes_.
[16] Certain strange definitions, in metaphorical form,
which have been handed down to us and come from the
secret teaching of the master, give us some idea,
in their occult signification, of the magnificent
conception Pythagoras had of the Kosmos. Speaking
of the constellations, he called the Great and
the Little Bear the hands of Rhea-Kybele. Now
Rhea-Kybele means, esoterically, the rolling astral
light, the divine spouse of universal fire, or of
the creative Spirit, which, becoming concentrated in
the solar systems, attracts the immaterial essences
of beings, seizes them, and forces them into the
whirl of lives. He called the planets the dogs
of Proserpine. This strange expression has only
an esoteric meaning. Proserpine, the goddess of
souls, presided over their incarnation in matter.
Pythagoras accordingly called the planets the dogs
of Proserpine because they keep and retain the
incarnated souls, just as the mythological Cerberus
guards the souls in the infernal regions.
[17] The law called _Karma_ by Brahmans and Buddhists.
[18] The _epiphany_, or vision from above; the _autopsy_,
or direct vision; the _theophany_, or manifestation
of God, are so many correlative ideas and divers
expressions to indicate the state of perfection in
which the initiate, having united his soul to God,
contemplates truth in its entirety.
[19] I will here mention two well-known facts of
this kind, which are quite authentic. The first
belongs to antiquity, its hero being the famous
philosopher-magician, Apollonius of Tyana.
1. _Second sight of Apollonius of Tyana._--“Whilst
these things (the assassination of the Emperor
Domitian) were taking place at Rome, Apollonius saw
them at Ephesus. Domitian was assailed by Clement
about noon; on the very same day, at that moment,
Apollonius was discoursing in the gardens close to
the Xystes. Suddenly he lowered his voice as though
smitten with sudden terror. He continued his speech,
but his language was of a different character, as
is the case often with those who are speaking or
thinking of something else. Then, he stopped, as
though he had lost the thread of his argument, gave
a terrified look on the ground, took three or four
steps forward and exclaimed: ‘Strike the tyrant!’
One would have said that he saw, not the image of
the deed in a mirror, but the deed itself in all its
reality. The Ephesians (for the whole of Ephesus was
present at the speech of Apollonius) were struck
with wonder. Apollonius stopped like a man waiting
to see the result of some doubtful event. Finally
he exclaimed: ‘Be of good courage, Ephesians, the
tyrant has been killed to-day. To-day? Yes, by
Minerva! He was being assassinated the very moment
I interrupted my speech.’ The Ephesians thought that
Apollonius had lost his senses; it was their keen
desire that he should have said what was true,
but they were afraid that some danger might come
to them as the result of this speech.... Soon,
however, messengers came bringing the good news and
testifying in favour of the knowledge of Apollonius,
for every detail: the murder of the tyrant, the
day of its consummation, the hour of noon, the
instigator of the murder whom Apollonius had
encouraged, were found to be in perfect conformity
with those the Gods had shown him on the day of his
discourse to the Ephesians.”--_Life of Apollonius_,
by Philostratus.
2. _Second sight of Swedenborg._--The second fact
refers to the greatest seer of modern times. The
objective reality of Swedenborg’s visions may be
discussed, but there can be no doubt regarding his
second sight, which has been attested by a multitude
of facts. Swedenborg’s vision of the burning of
Stockholm, a distance of ninety miles away, caused
much wonderment in the second half of the eighteenth
century. Kant, the well-known German philosopher,
caused an inquiry to be made by a friend living at
Gothenburg, in Sweden; the following is his account
as related to a lady friend--
“In my opinion the following fact is of the greatest
demonstrative importance, and ought to do away
with any kind of doubt. In 1759, M. de Swedenborg,
one Saturday about four in the afternoon, about
the end of December, landed at Gothenburg, after a
journey to England. M. William Castel invited him
to his house, where a company of fifteen persons
was present. At six o’clock in the evening, M. de
Swedenborg, who had left the room, returned, with
a look of consternation on his pallid face, and
said that ‘at that very moment a fire had burst out
in Stockholm, at the Sudermalm, and was rapidly
spreading its ravages in the direction of his own
home....’ He said that the house of one of his
friends, whom he named, was in ashes, and that
his own was in danger. At eight o’clock, again
leaving the room, he returned and said joyfully:
‘Thank God! The fire has been extinguished at the
third door from my own house.’ That very evening
the governor was informed of the fact. On Sunday
morning, Swedenborg was summoned before this
functionary, who questioned him on the matter.
Swedenborg gave an exact description of the fire,
its beginning and end, and the time it had lasted.
The same day, the news spread throughout the town,
which was all the more excited as the governor had
manifested interest in it, and many people were
anxious about their property and friends. On Monday
evening there arrived in Gothenburg a courier whom
the business men of Stockholm had despatched during
the conflagration. Among the letters the fire was
described in exactly the manner above mentioned.
What can be alleged against the authenticity of
this event? The friend who wrote to me has examined
the whole affair, not only in Stockholm, but, about
two months ago, at Gothenburg also; he is well
acquainted with the best-known families, and has
been able to obtain complete information in a town
where there are still living the majority of the
eye-witnesses, considering the short lapse of time
(nine years) since 1859.”--Letter to Mademoiselle
Charlotte de Knoblich, quoted by Matter, in his
_Life of Swedenborg_.
[20] This idea springs logically from the human and
divine ternary, from the trinity of the microcosm
and the macrocosm we have spoken of in the previous
chapters. The metaphysical correlation of Destiny,
Liberty and Providence has been admirably drawn by
Fabre d’Olivet, in his commentary on the _Golden
Verses of Pythagoras_.
[21] This classing of men corresponds to the four stages
of Pythagorean initiation, and forms the basis
of all initiations, even that of the primitive
freemasons, who were not without a smattering of
esoteric teaching.--See Fabre d’Olivet, _les Vers
dorés de Pythagore_.
[22] Montesquieu and Michelet are almost the only writers
who have made mention of the virtue of Greek wives.
Neither of them states its cause, which I point out
in these few lines.
[23] This is the version of Diogenes of Laërte regarding
the death of Pythagoras--according to Dicearchus,
quoted by Porphyry, the master escaped massacre,
along with Archippus and Lysis. He wandered from
town to town until he reached Metapontum, where
he died of hunger in the Temple of the Muses. The
inhabitants of Metapontum, on the other hand,
affirmed that the sage they had taken in, died
peacefully in their city. They pointed out to
Cicero his house, seat and tomb. It is noteworthy
that, long after the master’s death, those cities
which had persecuted Pythagoras most, at the time
of the democratic change of opinion, claimed for
themselves the honour of having offered him refuge
and protection. The towns around the Gulf of
Tarentum claimed that they each contained the ashes
of the philosopher with as much desperation as the
towns of Ionia disputed among one another the honour
of having given birth to Homer.--See this question
discussed in M. Chaignet’s conscientious work:
_Pythagore et la philosophie pythagoricienne_.
[24] In temple language the term _son of woman_ indicated
the lower degree of initiation, woman here
signifying nature. Above these were _the sons of
man_ or initiates of the Spirit and the Soul, _the
sons of the Gods_ or initiates of the cosmogonic
sciences, and _the sons of God_ or initiates in the
supreme science. The Pythoness calls the Persians
_sons of woman_, giving them this name from the
character of their religion. Interpreted literally,
her words would be devoid of meaning.
[25] “These may still be seen in the enclosure of
Minerva,” said Herodotus, VIII. 39. The invasion of
the Gauls, which took place two centuries later,
was repelled in like manner. Here, too, a storm
gathers, thunderbolts fall time after time on the
Gauls; the earth quakes beneath their feet, they see
supernatural visions; and the temple of Apollo is
saved. These facts seem to prove that the priests of
Delphi were acquainted with the science of cosmic
fire and knew how to handle electricity by occult
power as did the Chaldæan magi.--See Amédée Thierry,
_Histoire des Gaulois_, I. 246.
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