student of the old book, "about 'milk for babes and meat for strong men? Well, there's a cue for us in that-and in many another of the old Bible sayings. When people come to a Theosophical meeting, or ask directly for information about Theosophy, as such, it is our best method-in fact, our duty-to make the proclamation' of the Source, with all confidence and boldness. When we ourselves are trying to introduce the subject in order to interest and help a friend or acquaintance, we should utilize that discrimination we are trying to cultivate and develop to find the best method of approach."

"I can see that, Mentor," agreed Spinster, emphatically. "Why, I have known students who talked about Masters to all and sundry, in season and out and in a very personal and familiar sort of way. It always made me feel sort of-well, funny," she added, unable to find her exact word.

"Yes, I know what you mean," said Mentor, looking as nearly disgusted as benignity ever can look. "It's the 'abuse of Sacred Names' of which H. P. B. herself wrote. Why, to hear some credulous and undiscriminating students talk, you would think that they and their 'teachers' heaven save the mark-were the familiars of those great beings we call 'Masters' that Their relation was a personal one with these talkers. To a really earnest and well-informed student such talk uncovers at once the delusion or rank pretence of the one who makes it; for he knows well the truth of that old saying of Mr. Judge: '. the true chela does not talk much of his Master and often does not refer to that Master's existence.""

"Well, what did that man really get who asked the questions about Masters at the meeting, Mentor?" asked Doctor, looking up at the clock significantly.

"He got a copy of the Ocean, I know that!" said Spinster quickly, before Mentor could answer. "I loaned it to him myself after the meeting."

There was a general laugh, as Mentor remarked, "There's your answer, Doctor!" And he added seriously, "You see, he got enough to make him want to do some reading and thinking for himself; and if I am not mistaken, he is sensible enough, judging by his attitude and questions, to get the logic of the situation-to see the necessity of the existence of Masters, if Theosophy is the philosophy of life itself, as the teaching clearly purports to be-a synthetic philosophy."

*

*

*

*

*

"Come, children, it's almost twelve o'clock-you'll all be tired tomorrow, if you don't turn in now," said Mother in her practical and decisive way.

Doctor yawned guiltily, and there was a quiet smile of appreciation all around-which is a good way to end an evening.

"We seem to get about as much from these little talks after the meetings as we do from the meetings themselves," said Spinster, her voice trailing off into the distance as she went down the corridor toward her room.

"Do you remember that old passage in the Gita?" remarked Mentor to Doctor, as they were separating for the night:

66 6

the wise gifted with spiritual wisdom worship me; their very hearts and minds are in me; enlightening one another and constantly speaking of me, they are full of enjoyment and satisfaction. To them thus always devoted to me, who worship me with love, I give that mental devotion by which they come to me.'

EXTRACTS FROM BRIHADARANYAKA

UPANISHAD*

After having subdued by sleep all that belongs to the body, he, not asleep himself, looks down upon the sleeping (senses). Having assumed light, he goes again to his place, the golden person, the lonely bird.

Guarding with the breath (prâna, life) the lower nest, the immortal moves away from the nest; that immortal one goes wherever he likes, the golden person, the lonely bird.

Going up and down in his dream, the god makes manifold. shapes for himself, either rejoicing together with women, laughing (with his friends) or seeing terrible sights.

or

People may see his playground, but himself no one ever sees. Therefore they say, "Let no one wake a man suddenly, for it is not easy to remedy, if he does not get back (rightly to his body)."

Now as a man is like this or like that, according as he acts and according as he behaves, so will he be a man of good acts will become good, a man of bad acts, bad. He becomes pure by pure deeds, bad by bad deeds.

And here they say that a person consists of desires. And as is his desire, so is his will: and as is his will, so is his deed; and whatsoever deed he does, that he will reap.

If a man understands the Self, saying "I am He", what could he wish or desire that he should pine after the body.

Whoever has found and understood the Self that has entered this patched-together hiding place, he indeed is the creator, for he is the maker of everything, his is the world, and he is the world itself. BRIHADARANYAKA UPANISHAD.

These Extracts were printed by H. P. Blavatsky in Lucifer for April, 1891. The title used is our own.- ED. THEOSOPHY.

P

ANCIENT MAGIC IN MODERN

SCIENCE*

AULTHIER, the French Indianist, may, or may not, be

taxed with too much enthusiasm when saying that India appears before him as the grand and primitive focus of human thought, whose steady flame has ended by communicating itself to, and setting on fire the whole ancient world'-yet, he is right in his statement. It is Aryan metaphysics that have led the mind to occult knowledge-the oldest and the mother science of all, since it contains within itself all the other sciences. And it is occultism the synthesis of all the discoveries in nature and, chiefly, of the psychic potency within and beyond every physical atom of matter that has been the primitive bond that has cemented into one corner-stone the foundations of all the religions of antiquity.

The primitive spark has set on fire every nation, truly, and Magic underlies now every national faith, whether old or young. Egypt and Chaldea are foremost in the ranks of those countries that furnish us with the most evidence upon the subject, helpless as they are to do as India does—to protect their paleographic relics from desecration. The turbid waters of the canal of Suez carry along to those that wash the British shores, the magic of the earliest days of Pharaonic Egypt, to fill up with its crumbled dust the British, French, German and Russian museums. Ancient, historical Magic is thus reflecting itself upon the scientific records of our own all-denying century. It forces the hand and tires the brain of the scientist, laughing at his efforts to interpret its meaning in his own materialistic way, yet helps the occultist better to understand modern Magic, the rickety, weak grandchild of her powerful, archaic grandam. Hardly a hieratic papyrus exhumed along with the swathed mummy of King or Priest-Hierophant, or a weather-beaten, indecipherable inscription from the tormented sites of Babylonia or Ninevah, or an ancient tile-cylinder-that does not furnish new food for thought or some suggestive information to the student of Occultism. Withal, magic is denied and termed the "superstition" of the ignorant ancient philosopher.

Thus, magic in every papyrus; magic in all the religious formulæ; magic bottled up in hermetically-closed vials, many thousands of years old; magic in elegantly bound, modern works; magic in the most popular novels; magic in social gatherings : magic-worse than that, SORCERY-in the very air one breathes in Europe, America, Australia: the more civilized and cultured a nation, the more formidable and effective the effluvia of unconThis article was first printed in The Theosophist for October, 1886.

1 ESSAY. PREFACE by Colebrooke.

It is only through Mr. Barthelemy St. Hilaire that the world has learnt that "with regard to metaphysics, the Hindu genius has ever remained in a kind of infantile underdevelopment!!"

scious magic it emits and stores away in the surrounding atmosphere.

Tabooed, derided magic would, of course, never be accepted under her legitimate name; yet science has begun dealing with that ostracised science under modern masks, and very considerably. But what is in a name? Because a wolf is scientifically defined as an animal of the genus canis, does it make of him a dog? Men of science may prefer to call the magic inquired into by Porphyry and explained by Iamblichus hysterical hypnosis, but that does not make it the less magic. The result and outcome of primitive Revelation to the earlier races by their "Divine Dynasties" the kings-instructors, became innate knowledge in the Fourth race, that of the Atlantians; and that knowledge is now called in its rare cases of "abnormal" genuine manifestations, mediumship. The secret history of the world, preserved only in far-away, secure retreats, would alone, if told unreservedly, inform the present generations of the powers that lie latent, and to most unknown, in man and nature. It was the fearful misuse of magic by the Atlantians, that led their race to utter destruction, and-to oblivion. The tale of their sorcery and wicked enchantments has reached us, through classical writers, in fragmentary bits, as legends and childish fairy-tales, and as fathered on smaller nations. Thence the scorn for necromancy, goëtic magic, and theurgy. The "witches" of Thessaly are not less laughed at in our day than the modern medium or the credulous Theosophist. This is again due to sorcery, and one should never lack the moral courage to repeat the term; for it is the fatally abused magic that forced the adepts, "the Sons of Light," to bury it deep, after its sinful votaries had themselves found a watery grave at the bottom of the ocean; thus placing it beyond the reach of the profane of the race that succeeded to the Atlantians. It is, then, to sorcery that the world is indebted for its present ignorance about it. But who or what class in Europe or America, will believe the report? With one exception, none; and that exception is found in the Roman Catholics and their clergy; but even they, while bound by their religious dogmas to credit its existence, attribute to it a satanic origin. It is this theory which, no doubt. has to this day prevented magic from being dealt with scientifically.

Still, nolens volens, science has to take it in hand. Archæology in its most interesting department-Egyptology and Assyriology— is fatally wedded to it, do what it may. For magic is so mixed up with the world's history that, if the latter is ever to be written at all in its completeness, giving the truth and nothing but the truth, there seems to be no help for it. If Archæology counts still upon discoveries and reports upon hieratic writings that will be free from the hateful subject, then HISTORY will never be written, we fear.

One sympathises profoundly with, and can well imagine, the embarrassing position of the various savants and "F. R. S.'s" of

Academicians and Orientalists. Forced to decipher, translate and interpret old mouldy papyri, inscriptions on steles and Babylonian rhombs, they find themselves at every moment face to face with MAGIC! Votive offerings, carvings, hieroglyphics, incantationsthe whole paraphernalia of that hateful "superstition"-stare them in the eyes, demand their attention, fill them with the most disagreeable perplexity. Only think what must be their feelings in the following case in hand. An evidently precious papyrus is exhumed. It is the post-mortem passport furnished to the osirified. soul* of a just-translated Prince or even Pharaoh, written in red and black characters by a learned and famous scribe, say of the IVth Dynasty, under the supervision of an Egyptian Hierophanta class considered in all the ages and held by posterity as the most learned of the learned, among the ancient sages and philosophers. The statements therein were written at the solemn hours of the death and burial of a King-Hierophant, of a Pharaoh and ruler. The purpose of the paper is the introduction of the "soul" to the awful region of Amenti, before its judges, there where a lie is said to outweigh every other crime. The Orientalist carries away the papyrus and devotes to its interpretation days, perhaps weeks, of labour, only to find in it the following statement: "In the XIIIth year and the second month of Schomoo, in the 28th day of the same, we, the first High-priest of Ammon, the king of the gods, Penotman, the son of the delegate (or substitute)1 for the High-priest Pion-kimoan, and the scribe of the temple of Sossersoo-khons and of the Necropolis Bootegamonmoo, began to dress the late Prince Oozirmari Pionokha, etc., etc., preparing him for eternity. When ready, the mummy was pleased to arise and thank his servants, as also to accept a cover worked for him by the hand of the "lady singer," Nefrelit Nimutha, gone into eternity the year so and so "some hundred years before!" The whole in hieroglyphics.

This may be a mistaken reading. There are dozens of papyri, though, well authenticated and recording more curious readings and narratives than that corroborated in this, by Sanchoniaton and Manetho, by Herodotus and Plato, Syncellus and dozens of other writers and philosophers, who mention the subject. Those papyri note down very often, as seriously as any historical fact needing no special corroboration, whole dynasties of Kings'-manes, viz., of phantoms and ghosts. The same is found in the histories of other nations.

All claim for their first and earliest dynasties of rulers and kings, what the Greeks called Manes and the Egyptians Ourvagan,

The reader need not be told that every soul newly-born into its cycle of 8000 years after the death of the body it animated, became, in Egypt, an "Osiris," was osirified, viz., the personality became reduced to its higher principles, a spirit.

"Substitute" was the name given to the father of the "Son" adopted by the Highpriest Hierophant; a class of these remaining unmarried, and adopting "Sons" for purposes of transmission of power and succession.

2 The Secret Doctrine teaches that those dynasties were composed of divine beings, "the ethereal images of human creatures." in reality, "gods," in their luminous astral bodies; the Sishta of preceding manvantaras.