Chapter IV. The Order and the Doctrine

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 p. 121 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.

p. 122 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 p. 123 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.

p. 124 [paragraph continues] 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 p. 125 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

p. 126 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, p. 127 they are convinced that heaven will be truer than earth.

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 p. 128 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 p. 129 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

p. 130 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 p. 131 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 p. 132 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. 1 In accordance with this law, the actions of one life p. 133 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 deformity 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

p. 134 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 p. 135 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.

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 awakenings, 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 p. 136 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 tie had finished p. 137 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. p. 138 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, 1 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 p. 139 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,

p. 140 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. 1 He acts at a distance p. 141 by the concentration of thought and will on such persons as are attached to him by bonds of personal p. 142 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 p. 143 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 p. 144 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

p. 145 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 p. 146 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. 1 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 p. 147 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

p. 148 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 p. 149 degree and quality. Lysis expresses this truth, beneath a veil, in the Golden Verses—

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, p. 150 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!

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 p. 151 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.

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 p. 152 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. 1

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 p. 153 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

p. 154 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. p. 155 [paragraph continues] 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

p. 156 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. 1 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 p. 157 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. p. 158 [paragraph continues] 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

p. 159 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 p. 160 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 f 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

p. 161 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. 71:1 Origen states that Pythagoras was the inventor of physiognomy. 83:1 Katharsis in Greek. 89:1 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. 93:1 Doctrine identical with that of the initiate St. Paul, who speaks of the spiritual body. 95:1 In the first rank of these must be placed Fabre d’Olivert (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. 99:1 In Greek: Teleiôtes. 103:1 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.

132:1 The law called Karma by Brahmans and Buddhists. 138:1 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. 140:1 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 p. 141 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 p. 142 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.

146:1 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'Olivert, in his Commentary on the Golden Verses of Pythagoras. 152:1 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’Olivert, les Vers dorés de Pythagore. 156:1 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. Next: Chapter V. Marriage of Pythagoras—Revolution at Croton—The Master's End—The School and its Destiny