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    THE STORY

    OF

    ANNA KINGSFORD AND
    EDWARD MAITLAND

    AND OF

    THE NEW GOSPEL OF
    INTERPRETATION

    BY

    EDWARD MAITLAND.
    EDITED BY SAMUEL HOPGOOD HART.


    "The days of the Covenant of Manifestation are passing away;
    The Gospel of Interpretation cometh."

    "There shall nothing new be told; but that which is ancient
    shall be interpreted."

           *       *       *       *       *

    "Now is the Gospel of Interpretation come, and the kingdom
    of the Mother of God."--_C.W.S._, Part I. No. ii. (part 2) 10. 11.
    and Part II. No. xiii. 31.

    THIRD AND ENLARGED EDITION.

    PRICE THREE SHILLINGS AND SIXPENCE.

    BIRMINGHAM:
    THE RUSKIN PRESS, STAFFORD STREET.
    1905.




    _1st Edition ... Christmas, 1893._
    _2nd Edition ... Christmas, 1894._
    _3rd Edition ... Christmas, 1905._




PREFACE

TO THE FIRST AND SECOND EDITIONS.


This book is designed (1) in satisfaction of the widely-expressed desire
for a more particular account than has yet been rendered concerning the
genesis of the writings claiming to constitute a "New Gospel of
Interpretation"; and (2) in fulfilment of the duty incumbent on me as
the survivor of the two recipients of such Gospel to spare no means
which may minister to its recognition and acceptance by the world, for
whose benefit it has been vouchsafed.

Although largely biographical in character, this book is not a history
of individuals, but of a Work, and involves only such personal
references as are necessary to such history. It is not, however, a full
or a final account that is contained in it. Such an account can be given
only in the form of the regular biography which is in course of
preparation. This book is an instalment only of that biography, being
put forth in advance of it, partly, as said above, to meet a present
need, and partly, to prevent a total loss of the record in the event of
my failure to complete it--a contingency of which, in view of the
magnitude of the task and my advanced age, I am bound to take account.

    E.M.




PREFACE

TO THE THIRD EDITION.


Since the publication in 1893 of this book which, as stated in Chapter
VII., was "intended but as an epitome and instalment" of a far larger
book then in course of preparation, the full and final account of the
"New Gospel of Interpretation" has been given to the world. In 1896
Edward Maitland published his _magnum opus_, "The Life of Anna
Kingsford," in two large volumes of 420 pages, "illustrated with
portraits, views, and facsimiles." This is, and will always be, the
biography _par excellence_ of Anna Kingsford and Edward Maitland, and it
is absolutely indispensable for those who would know all that there is
to be known of them and their work and of the "New Gospel of
Interpretation." As that book, however, on account of its great length,
must always be a costly book, and therefore beyond the means of many who
would like to have some reliable information concerning Anna Kingsford
and Edward Maitland and their work, and as there are many who, on
account of their time for reading being limited or their inclination to
read being little, require information within the compass of a small
book or go without it altogether, there will, notwithstanding the
publication of the "Life of Anna Kingsford," be a demand for this
shorter "Story," which is so admirably suited to meet the needs or
requirements of these classes of persons; for, be it noted, the
publication of "The Life of Anna Kingsford" has not in any way
depreciated the value of this book in this sense that, having been
written by one of the two recipients of the "New Gospel of
Interpretation," it is a first authority second to none for the
statements therein contained.

The change in the title of the book from "The Story of the New Gospel of
Interpretation" to the present title calls for some explanation and
justification, because the former title was an excellent one in many
respects, and the book has become known to many by that title. The
"Gospel of Interpretation" is the name or description which was given by
its Divine Inspirers, the Hierarchy of the Spheres Celestial, to the
work of which this book tells the story, in token of its relation to the
previous "Gospel of Manifestation." The former title implied, as the
Author pointed out in his preface, that that which this book propounded
was "not really a new Gospel, but one of Interpretation only"; and this
is not really new, but, as the Author has also pointed out, "so old as
to have become forgotten and lost, being the purely spiritual sense, as
discerned from the purely spiritual standpoint originally intended and
insisted on by Scripture itself as its true sense and standpoint, and
those which alone render Scripture intelligible"[1]. But notwithstanding
this, and notwithstanding that on the front page it was expressly stated
that "There shall nothing new be told; but that which is ancient shall
be interpreted," the former title failed to convey to the minds of some
the meaning that it was intended to convey, and it gave no indication of
the biographical nature of the work. Many who otherwise would have read
the book refrained from doing so because they thought that a new Gospel,
inconsistent with and perhaps opposed to if not intended to supersede
the old Gospel, was propounded. It is necessary, therefore, for me to
state, if possible more explicitly than it was stated in the previous
editions of this book, that this is not an attempt to create a new
Gospel differing from that of Jesus Christ[2]. Anna Kingsford's and
Edward Maitland's mission and aim was to interpret the Christ, not to
rival or supersede Him. The "New Gospel" is, first and foremost,
_interpretative_, and is destructive only in the sense of
reconstructive. "It tells nothing new; it simply restores and reinforces
the old, even the Gnosis, which, as the doctrine of the Church unfallen,
is that also of the Church fallen, though the latter has lost the key to
its interpretation"[3]. Nor is the teaching represented by this book
opposed to the existence of an objective Church. Anna Kingsford and
Edward Maitland fully recognised the necessity of such an organisation
for the formulation, propagation, and exposition of religion. Their
opposition was "only to the recognition by the Church of the objective,
historical, and materialistic aspect of religion, _to the exclusion_ of
that which really constitutes religion, namely, its subjective,
spiritual, and substantial aspect, wherein alone it appeals to the mind
and soul, and is efficacious for redemption." The aim of the New Gospel
"is defined exactly," said Edward Maitland, "in the following citation
from St. Dionysius the Areopagite 'not to destroy, but to construct; or,
rather, to destroy by construction; to conquer error by the full
presentment of truth.' As will be obvious, such a design does not
necessarily involve the destruction of anything that exists whether of
symbol or ritual, or ecclesiastical organisation, but only their
regeneration by means of their translation into their spiritual and
divinely intended sense. And it is precisely because that sense has been
lost--as declared in Scripture it had long been, and would yet long be,
lost--that a new 'Gospel of Interpretation' has been vouchsafed in
fulfilment of the promises in Scripture to that effect; and this from
the source of the original Divine revelation, namely, the Church
Celestial, and by the method which always was that of such revelation,
namely, the intuition operating under special illumination.... Even the
priest, though hitherto deservedly regarded as the 'enemy of man,' will
not be destroyed under the new _régime_ whose inauguration we are
witnessing. For in becoming interpreter as well as administrator, he
will be prophet as well as priest, and speak out the things of God and
the soul instead of concealing them under a veil. So will the 'veil be
taken away,' and Cain, the priest, instead of killing Abel, the prophet,
as hitherto, will unite with him, becoming prophet and priest in one.
And instead of any longer corrupting the 'woman' Intuition, and
suppressing the 'man' Intellect, he will purify and exalt her, and
enable her to fulfil her proper function as 'the Mother of God' in man,
and will recognise the intellect, when duly conjoined with her, as the
heir of all things. Thus, becoming interpreter as well as administrator,
prophet as well as priest, and recognising interpretation as the
corollary of the understanding, the prophet-priest of the regeneration
will give to men freely of the waters of life, that only true bread of
Heaven, which is the food of the understanding, instead of the
indigestible 'stones' and poisonous 'serpents' of doctrines, the
profession of which, by divorcing assent from conviction, involves that
moral and intellectual suicide, to induce others to join him in
committing which Cardinal Newman wrote his 'Grammar of Assent,' True it
is 'faith that saves,' but the faith that is without understanding is
not faith, but credulity"[4]. It is for the above-mentioned reasons that
the title of this book has been changed. The title must be subservient
to the book, and it is hoped that, the change having been made, there
will not be any further misunderstanding--even on the part of those who
are most superficial--as to the nature and object of "The Story of the
New Gospel of Interpretation."

Edward Maitland did not long survive the completion of the great task
that he undertook when he set himself to write a full account of his
life and that of his colleague. He retained his full mental vigour until
the publication of "The Life of Anna Kingsford"; but after that he
rapidly declined, and on the 2nd October, 1897, at the close of his
seventy-third year, a little over nine years after the death of Anna
Kingsford[5], he passed away peacefully at "The Warders" at Tonbridge,
the home (at that time) of his friends Colonel and Mrs. Currie, with
whom, and under whose loving care, he spent the last few months of his
life--a life concerning which, as also that of Anna Kingsford, I will
not say anything here, for this book will testify. Blessed are the souls
whom the just commemorate before God.

       *       *       *       *       *

Many who read these pages will not rest until they know more of those
great prophets the story of whose lives is here told, and of the Divine
Gnosis that it was their high mission to proclaim. I have indicated
whence they can obtain this information. This "Story," interesting as it
is and much as there is in it, is little more than an indication of some
of the facts that are fully stated and dealt with in "The Life of Anna
Kingsford," and there is much of importance that (as it could not
possibly receive proper treatment in a book of this size) was passed
over here to be related in the larger biography. I have not thought it
expedient to alter the character of or to add much to this book, but I
have enlarged it by incorporating therein, from "The Life of Anna
Kingsford," some additional matter which is of interest, and which
should add to the value of the book. The most important additions are
the account of Anna Kingsford's vision of "The Doomed Train," on p.p.
43-47; the account of Anna Kingsford's vision of Adonai, on pp. 64-68;
the "Exhortation of Hermes to his Neophytes," on pp. 110-112; the verses
"Concerning the Passage of the Soul," on pp. 169-170; and the
illumination of Anna Kingsford concerning the "Work of Power," on
pp. 180-181. I have also amplified the text in some places when, on
comparing it with corresponding passages in "The Life of Anna
Kingsford," I found that I could do so with advantage. These
amplifications are not otherwise noted. Finally, I have added some notes
where I thought that further explanation was desirable or would prove
acceptable.

    SAML. HOPGOOD HART.

    Croydon, December, 1905.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] E.M. Letter in "Light" of 29th August, 1891.

[2] See further as to this, an article by A.K. and E.M. in "Light" of
23rd September, 1882, reprinted in Life A.K. Vol. II. p. 77.

[3] E.M. Letter in "Light" of 22nd July, 1893.

[4] E.M. Letter in "Light" of 17th December, 1892.

[5] A.K. died on the 22nd February, 1888




INTRODUCTION.


There are certain introductory remarks which, in view of the prevailing
tendency to reject prior to examination whatever conflicts with strongly
cherished preconceptions--as anything purporting to be a "new Gospel" is
undoubtedly calculated to do--may be made with advantage. Those remarks
are as follows:--

(1) As its title implies[6], that which is propounded is not really a
new Gospel, but one of Interpretation only, which is precisely what is
admitted by all serious and thoughtful persons to be the supreme need of
the times. It was said, for instance, by the late Matthew Arnold, "At
the present moment there are two things about the Christian religion
which must be obvious to every percipient person: one, that men cannot
do without it; the other, that they cannot do with it as it is."

(2) As also its title implies[6] nothing new is told in it, but that
only which is old is interpreted; and the appeal on its behalf is not to
authority, whether of Book, Tradition, or Institution, but to the
Understanding--a quality which accords not only with the spirit of the
times, but also--as shewn herein--with that of religion itself, properly
so called.

(3) Scripture manifestly comprises two conflicting systems of doctrine
and practice, having for their representatives respectively the priest
and the prophet, one only of which systems, and this the system
reprobated in Scripture itself, has hitherto obtained recognition from
Christendom. It is the purpose of the New Gospel of Interpretation to
expound the system represented by the prophet and approved in Scripture,
with a view to replacing the other.

(4) For those who attach value to the prophecies contained in the Bible,
so far from there being an _a priori_ improbability against the delivery
of a new revelation in interpretation, confirmation, or completion of
the former revelation, and in correction of the false presentment of it,
the probability ought to be all in favour of such an event. This is
because Scripture abounds in predictions of a restoration both of
faculty and of knowledge, as to take place at the present time and under
the existing conditions of Church and World; and this of such kind as
shall constitute a second and spiritual manifestation of the Christ in
rectification of the perversion of the import of His first and personal
manifestation, and in arrest of the great Apostacy, not only from the
true faith of Christ but from religion itself, of which that perversion
has been the cause.

(5) So far from the idea of a new revelation which shall have for its
end the disclosure, as the true sense of Scripture and Dogma, of a
sense differing so widely from that hitherto accepted as to be virtually
destructive of it,--so far from this idea being universally repugnant to
orthodox ecclesiastics, it has found warm recognition from one of the
foremost of modern churchmen. This is the late Cardinal Newman.

Said Dr Newman in his _Apologia pro vitâ suâ_, speaking of his earlier
days, "The broad philosophy of Clement and Origen carried me away; the
philosophy, not the theological doctrine.... Some portions of their
teaching, magnificent in themselves, came like music to my inward ear,
as if the response to ideas, which, with little external to encourage
them, I had cherished so long. These were based on the mystical or
sacramental principle, and spoke of the various Economies or
Dispensations of the Eternal. I understood these passages to mean that
the exterior world, physical and historical, was but the manifestation
to our senses of realities greater than itself. Nature was a parable:
Scripture was an allegory:.... The process of change had been slow; it
had been done not rashly, but by rule and measure, 'at sundry times and
in divers manners,' first one disclosure and then another, till the
whole evangelical doctrine was brought into full manifestation. And thus
room was made for the anticipation of further and deeper disclosures of
truths still under the veil of the letter, and in their season to be
revealed. The visible world still remains without its divine
interpretation: Holy Church in her sacraments and her hierarchical
appointments, will remain, even to the end of the world, after all but a
symbol of those heavenly facts which fill eternity. Her mysteries are
but the expressions, in human language, of truths to which the human
mind is unequal"[7].

Dr Newman is credited also with the remark, made on visiting Rome for
his investiture, that he saw no hope for religion save in a new
revelation.

These are utterances the value of which is in no way diminished by the
fact that their utterer failed to bring his own life into accordance
with them. He could write, indeed, the hymn "Lead, kindly light"; but
when the "kindly light" was vouchsafed him of those suggestions of a
system of thought concealed within the Christian Symbology, "magnificent
in themselves" and making "music to his inward ear," which he found in
the patristic writings; instead of following that lead, and striving to
exhume the treasures of divine truth thus buried and hidden from sight,
for the salvation of a world perishing for want of them,--he turned his
back upon it, and--entering the Church of Rome--wrote his "Grammar of
Assent," calling upon others to follow him in committing the suicide,
intellectual and moral, of renouncing the understanding and divorcing
profession from conviction.

This was a catastrophe the explanation of which is not far to seek. Dr
Newman had in him the elements which go to make both priest and prophet.
But the former proved the stronger; and the Cain, the priest in him,
suppressed the Abel, the prophet in him. Thus was he a type of the
Church as hitherto she has been. But, happily, not as henceforth she
will be. For "now is the Gospel of Interpretation come, and the kingdom
of the Mother of God," even the "Woman," Intuition,--the mind's feminine
mode, wherein it represents the perceptions and recollections of the
Soul--who is ever "Mother of God" in man, and whose sons the prophets
ever are, the greatest of them being called emphatically, for the
fulness and purity of his intuition, the "Son of the Woman" and she a
"virgin."

    E.M.

FOOTNOTES:

[6] The original title of this book was "The Story of the New Gospel of
Interpretation." See preface to the present edition. S.H.H.

[7] Apologia pro vitâ suâ, by J. H. Newman. New edition of 1893, pp. 26,
27.




FRONTISPIECES.


     I.--PORTRAIT OF DR. ANNA KINGSFORD.
    _Born, Sep. 16th, 1846; Died, Feb. 22nd, 1888._

    II.--PORTRAIT OF EDWARD MAITLAND (_B.A., Cantab_).
    _Born, Oct. 27th, 1824; Died, Oct, 2nd, 1897._

TABLE OF CONTENTS.


                                                                 PAGE

    PREFACE TO THE FIRST AND SECOND EDITIONS                          v.

    PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION                              vii.-xiii.

    INTRODUCTION                                                xv.-xix.

    TABLE OF CONTENTS                                          xx.-xxii.

    ABBREVIATIONS                                                 xxiii.


    CHAPTER I.

    THE VOCATION.

    The Instruments--Their early lives--Their consciousness of a special
      mission, and intimations of a call--Their training in respect of
      circumstance, character, and faculty, until brought together
      for their Joint work.                                         1-36


    CHAPTER II.

    THE INITIATION.

    A baptism of the Spirit--"At last I have found a man through whom
      I can speak!"--Intimation of the nature and aim of their work--The
      Doomed train, "No one on the engine!"--Instantaneous
      transfer of inspiration--"Woman, what have I to do with
      thee?"--The recovery of a Gospel scene, and its import--"The
      woman taken in adultery"--Vision of Adonai--Source of the
      opening sentences in St. John's Gospel--Chapter from the recovered
      Gnosis--The Generation of the Word.                          37-70


    CHAPTER III.

    THE COMMUNICATION.

    The perfect love that casts out fear." In the presence of celestial
      visitants--A parable of the Intuition--"The Wonderful
      Spectacles"--The Greek element in the work--Hermes and John the
      Baptist--The "heresy of Prometheus"--The Fig-tree, a symbol of the
      inward understanding; the time come for it to bear fruit--The
      Seeress's faculty--Her relations with Hermes--"Thou art the
      Rock" addressed to Hermes--The parable of the Fig-tree--The
      Mystic Woman of Holy Writ--"Go thy way, Daniel....
      Thou shalt rest, and stand in thy lot at the end of the days"--The
      prophecy of the book of Esther--The Angel Genius, his account
      of himself and his office--Divine revelation the supreme common
      sense--The source and method of the New Revelation--Its chief
      recipient "not a medium or a seer, but a prophet"--An instruction
      and a caution concerning the survival of tendencies encouraged
      in past lives--Communion with souls of the departed--The
      conditions of such intercourse--An instruction concerning
      Inspiration and Prophesying--The prophecy of "the kingdom of
      the Mother of God."                                         71-108


    CHAPTER IV.

    THE ANTAGONISATION.

    "Ye are not yet perfected"--Our respective _Auras_--An
      exhortation--The Seven Spirits of God, their co-operation
      necessary for a perfect work--"You belong to us now, to do our
      work and not your own"--Enforced silence--"The Powers of the Air;"
      their mode of attack--A strange visitant and his communication--A
      strained situation--Visions of guidance--The "refractory team,"
      and the "Two Stars"--The promised land reached only through
      the wilderness--"The Word a Word of mystery, and they who
      guard it Seven"--"One Neophyte could not save himself"--A
      Horoscope--A descent into hell--Counsels of Perfection--A
      "Merry Christmas"--A timely arrival--Neoplatonic recognition
      of Hermes--The one Truth, never without a witness in the
      world--The key of knowledge restored--Problems solved--The mystic
      "Woman" of Holy Writ.                                      109-141


    CHAPTER V.

    THE RECAPITULATION.

    The key to the mystery of the Bible; the "Veil of Moses"
      withdrawn--The secret laid bare of the world's sacrificial system,
      and the feud between priest and prophet--The Memory of the
      Soul--The Standpoint of the Bible--All that is true is
      Spiritual--The revelation of "that wicked one"--The seals broken
      and the books opened--The New Gospel of
      Interpretation--Sacerdotalism the "Jerusalem which killed the
      prophets"--The suppressed doctrines--Reincarnation the corollary
      and condition of Regeneration and implicit in the
      Bible--"Ye _must_ be born again of Virgin Mary and Holy
      Ghost"--The doctrines of the Trinity and Divine Incarnation as now
      interpreted, necessary and self-evident truths--Evolution the
      manifestation of a divine inherency; accomplished only by the
      realisation of Divinity--The process of regeneration, and therein
      of salvation, interior to the individual--Adam and Christ the
      initial and final stages in the spiritual evolution of every
      man--The "Christ within" of St Paul--The _Credo_ an epitome of the
      spiritual history of the Sons of God.                      142-162


    CHAPTER VI.

    THE EXEMPLIFICATION.

    Spontaneity of the Seeress's faculty--Specific illuminations, in
      illustration, chiefly, of the process of Regeneration; concerning
      (1) Holy Writ; (2) Redemption; (3) Sin and death; (4) The Twelve
      Gates of Regeneration; (5) The Passage of the Soul; (6) The
      Mystic Exodus; (7) The Spiritual Phoibos and the order of the
      Christs; (8) The Previous Lives of Jesus, and Reincarnation;
      (9) The Work of Power; the land and tongue of the New
      Revelation, why ours.                                      163-183


    CHAPTER VII.

    THE PROMULGATION AND RECOGNITION.

    Accordance of all the dates with those prophesied--Other
      coincidences--Why our work has remained so long unknown to the
      generality--Notable recognitions, by representative Kabalists,
      Mystics, Occultists and Divines, Catholic, Anglican, and
      others--Spiritualism, Theosophy, and the New Gospel of
      Interpretation as fellow-agents in the unfoldment of the world's
      spiritual consciousness, and the unsealing of the world's Bibles,
      prophesied to take place at this epoch--"Abraham, Isaac, and
      Jacob," the Hebrew equivalents for Brahma, Isis, and Iacchos, to
      denote the mysteries of India, Egypt, and Greece, the Spirit, the
      Soul, and the Body, and therein the Gnosis of which the Christ is
      the fulfilment and personal demonstration, and the restoration of
      which was prophesied by Jesus as to mean the Regeneration of the
      Church and the establishment of the divine kingdom on
      earth--Mysticism and Occultism, the distinction between them, and
      the necessity of both physical and spiritual science to a perfect
      system of thought and rule of life--Conclusion.            184-204




ABBREVIATIONS.


     A.K., for Anna Kingsford.

     B.O.A.I., for "The Bible's Own Account of Itself," by E.M.; second
     edition, 1905.

     C.W.S., for "Clothed With The Sun," being the book of the
     Illuminations of A.K.; edited by E.M., 1889.

     D. and D.-S., for "Dreams and Dream-Stones," by A.K., edited by
     E.M.; second edition, 1888.

     E.C.U., for "The Esoteric Christian Union," founded by E.M. in
     1891.

     E. and I., for "England and Islam; or, The Counsel of Caiaphas," by
     E.M., 1877.

     E.M., for Edward Maitland.

     Life A.K., for "The Life of Anna Kingsford," by E.M., 1896.

     P.W., for "The Perfect Way; or, The Finding of Christ," by A.K. and
     E.M.; third edition, revised, 1890.

     Statement, E.C.U., for "The New Gospel of Interpretation; being an
     Abstract of the Doctrine and Statement of the Objects of the
     Esoteric Christian Union," by E.M.; revised and enlarged edition,
     1892.




    BIRMINGHAM:
    THE RUSKIN PRESS, RUSKIN HOUSE,
    STAFFORD STREET.
    1905.

[Illustration: Edward Maitland]

[Illustration: Anna Kingsford]




THE

STORY OF ANNA KINGSFORD AND

EDWARD MAITLAND

AND

OF THE NEW GOSPEL OF

INTERPRETATION.




CHAPTER I.

THE VOCATION.


My colleague in the work, the history of which I am about to render some
account, was the late Anna Kingsford, _née_ Bonus, M.D. of the
University of Paris.

There was a link between her husband's family and mine, but we were not
personally acquainted until, in the summer of 1873, she was led by
reading one of my books[8] to open a correspondence with me, which
disclosed so striking a community between us of ideas, aims, and
methods, that I accepted an invitation to visit her at her husband's
rectory at Pontesbury, Salop, in Shropshire, for the sake of a fuller
discussion of them. This visit which lasted nearly a fortnight, took
place in February, 1874[9].

The account I received of her history was in this wise. Born at
Stratford, in Essex, on the 16th September, 1846, long after the last of
her many brothers and sisters, and endowed with the most fragile of
constitutions and liabilities the most distressing of bodily weakness
and suffering, and differing widely, moreover, in temperament from all
with whom she was associated, her young life had enjoyed but a scanty
share of human sympathy, and was largely one of solitude and meditation,
and such as to foster the highly artistic, idealistic, and mystic
tendencies with which she was born. Singularly energetic of will, and
conscious of powers both transcending in degree and differing in kind
from any that she recognised in others, she assiduously exercised her
faculties in many and various directions in the hope of discovering the
special direction in which her mission lay. For, from her earliest
childhood she had been conscious of a mission, for the accomplishment of
which she had expressly come into the earth-life. And she claimed even
to have distinct recollection of having been strongly dissuaded from
coming, on account of the terrible suffering which awaited her in the
event of her assuming a body of flesh. Indeed, so little conscious was
she of the reality of her human parentage that she was wont to look upon
herself as a suppositious child of fairy origin; and on her first visit
to the pantomime, when the fairies made their appearance on the stage,
she declared that they were her proper people, and cried and struggled
to get to them with such vehemence that it was necessary to remove her
from the theatre. Among her amusements, her chief delight was in the
ample gardens around her homes at Stratford and Blackheath, where she
would hold familiar converse with the flowers, putting into their petals
tiny notes for her lost relatives, the fairies, who in return would
visit her in her dreams and assure her of their continued affection, and
counsel her to have patience and courage.

The chief occupation of her girlhood was the writing of poems and
tales[10] which were tinged with an exquisite mysticism, and showed a
ripeness of soul and maturity of feeling and knowledge wholly
unaccountable for by her years, her experiences, or her physical
heredity. At school she always obtained the first prizes for
composition, and her faculty of improvisation was the delight of her
companions; the subjects of these her earlier romances being lovely
princesses, gallant knights, castles, dragons, and the like, when--as
may readily be supposed--her tall and slender frame, long golden hair,
delicacy of complexion, deep-set hazel eyes, beauty of feature, the brow
and the mouth being especially notable, the brightness of her looks,
vivacity of her manner, her musical voice, and the easy eloquence of her
diction,--all combined to make her an ideal heroine for her own
romances. She could hardly, however, be said to be a _persona grata_
with her pastors and masters. For while her independence of character
and strength of will were apt to bring her into conflict with rules and
regulations of which she failed to recognise the need, her thirst for
knowledge, especially on religious subjects, prompted her to the
proposition of questions which were highly embarrassing to her teachers;
and nothing that they could say succeeded in convincing her that her
duty lay in believing what she was told, and not in understanding it.
She very early learnt to resent the disabilities of her sex, and to
insist that they were not real but artificial, the result of masculine
selfishness and injustice. This hatred of injustice and its correlative
cruelty, especially towards animals, attained in her the force and
dignity of a passion, her sensitiveness on this score making the chief
mental misery of her life.

Of one gift possessed by her she early learnt to repress the
manifestation. This was the faculty for seeing apparitions and divining
the characters and fortunes of people. For she was a born seer. But the
inability of her elders to comprehend the faculty, and their consequent
ascription of it to pathological causes, were wont to lead to references
to the family doctor with results so eminently disagreeable and even
injurious to her, as soon to suggest the wisdom of keeping silence
respecting her experiences.

Her first published compositions were written at the age of
thirteen[11], the editors who accepted her contributions to their
magazines being under the impression that they came from a grown-up
person and not from the mere child that she was. They cost her, she
assured me, little labour, especially the poems, but seemed to come to
her ready-made, and to flow through her spontaneously. And whatever the
country in which their scene lay, the local colouring and descriptions
were always faithful and vivid, as if the places and their inhabitants
were familiar and even actually visible to her.

It was not, however, to any encouragement of her peculiar gifts that
such excellency as she exhibited was due. Rather were they severely
repressed, especially in respect of drawing, singing and music, lest she
should be tempted to follow them as a profession; a fear which had been
excited by the suggestions of her masters that she would be certain of
success in any of those lines.

Her innate consciousness of a mission seemed to her to indicate her as
destined for some redemptive work, not only for others, but also for
herself. For, while the instincts of the Champion and the Saviour were
potent in her, she was dimly conscious of its possessing also an
expiatory element, in virtue of which her own salvation would largely
depend upon her endeavours to save others. She had as yet no theory
whereby to explain this or any other of the problems she was to herself.
All that she knew was that she possessed, or rather was possessed of,
these feelings and impulses. It was easy to see by her account of
herself that she was as one driven of the Spirit long before the Spirit
definitely revealed itself to her. The two departments of humanity which
she felt especially impelled to succour and save were her own sex and
the animals. For she would recognise no hard and fast line between
masculine and feminine, human and animal, or even between animal and
plant. In her eyes everything that lived was humanity, only in different
stages of its unfoldment. Even the flowers were persons for her.

As she approached womanhood she found herself looking forward to
marriage far less for its own sake than as a means of emancipation from
restrictions on her choice of a career. Her father died while she was
yet wanting two or three years of her majority, leaving her mistress of
an income ample for a single woman. And when at length she became
engaged to Algernon Godfrey Kingsford, a cousin to whom she had some
time been attached, it was on the understanding that she should remain
unfettered in this respect. He held at the time a post in the Civil
Service; but soon after their marriage, which took place on the last day
of 1867, determined to read for holy orders. This gave her an
opportunity for making herself acquainted with Anglican theology, of
which--thirsting for knowledge of all kinds--she eagerly availed
herself, accompanying him in all his studies, and greatly facilitating
them by her admirable scholarly methods. This proved to be the first
great step in her religious and intellectual training for her destined
mission.

One of the occupations of her early married life was the editing of a
lady's magazine, which she purchased with a view of making it an
instrument for the dissemination of her ideas especially in regard to
her sex. And she accordingly took an active part in the movement then
recently originated for the enfranchisement of women, achieving an
extraordinary success as a public speaker. But, becoming convinced that
their cause would be best advanced by the practical demonstration of
their fitness for the promotion they sought, and also feeling her own
need for the discipline of a severe intellectual training to balance the
emotional side of her nature, she soon withdrew from active
participation in the movement. She moreover recognised as a grave
mistake the disposition evinced by her fellow-workers to suppress their
womanliness in favour of a factitious masculinity, under the impression
that they would thereby exalt their sex; her idea being, that their true
policy lay in magnifying rather than in depreciating their womanhood.
Meanwhile she had given birth to a daughter, her only child.

Her magazine was given up after a couple of years, the results failing
to justify the expenditure of time, labour and money, requisite for its
continuance. Not that it lacked adequate support; but the principles on
which she insisted on conducting it proved to be incompatible with
commercial success. She resolutely refused all advertisements of
articles, whether of food or of clothing, of which she disapproved; and
she had adopted the pythagorean regimen and discarded as unhygienic
sundry articles of attire ordinarily deemed indispensable by her sex. It
was in her magazine that she first struck the note which proved the
initiation of the holy warfare since waged against the horrors of the
physiological laboratory, a warfare in which she bore a foremost part
and developed the malady of which she died.

In 1870, a long and severe illness, which compelled her return to her
mother's house at Hastings to be nursed, led to her entry upon another
phase in her inner life, and a further stage in the process of her
education for her mission. She had early recoiled from the faith in
which she had been reared. This was Protestantism in its most unlovely
form, cold, harsh, narrow, dogmatic. Her closer acquaintance with it as
a clergyman's wife had done nothing to mitigate her judgment of it.
Explaining nothing and lacking fervour and poetry, it left head and
heart alike unsatisfied. Her residence as an invalid at Hastings brought
her into intimacy with some devout Catholics, the effect of which was to
intensify the repugnance already set up. She attended the Catholic
services, and visited the sisters in the convent, reading their books of
devotion and even making an extended study of Catholic doctrine, for she
would do nothing by halves. She found what satisfied her heart and
artistic tastes. But the chief determining cause of the change upon
which she at length resolved, was her reception by night of sundry
visitations, purporting to be of angelic nature, and enjoining on her,
for the sake of the mission to which she was called--the knowledge of
which, she was told, would in due time be revealed to her--that she join
the Roman communion. Well aware that the confession of such experiences,
whether to her relations or to a minister of her own Church, would
elicit only a smile of pity or contempt, with a recommendation to seek
medical advice, and involve other contingencies equally distasteful, she
resolved to see how the same confession would be treated by a Catholic
priest. The result of the essay was that she was listened to with
respect and sympathy, and informed that the Church fully recognised such
visitations as coming within the divine order, and as being a token of
high spiritual favour and grace; and while it refrained from pronouncing
positively on them, considered that they ought not to be lightly
disregarded. She was soon afterwards received into the Roman Church,
being baptised on September 14, 1870. On June 9, 1872, she was confirmed
by Archbishop Manning, who admonished her to utilise her attractions in
making converts. And on each occasion she received additional names, in
virtue of which she now bore the names of all the five women who were by
the Cross and at the Sepulchre.

None the less, however, did she retain her independence of mind and
conduct. She accepted no direction, and professed no tenet that she did
not understand. And it was soon made clear to her that the Spirit, of
whom she was being impelled, did not intend her to regard her adoption
of Catholicism as more than a step in her education for the work
required of her. For the following year saw her bent on seeking a
medical degree, under the impression that such a step was in some way
related to the mission of which she had received such and so many
mysterious intimations. And she had scarcely commenced her study of
medicine when this impression was reinforced by the following incident,
the scene of which was her home in Shropshire, in the parish of which
her husband had then recently become incumbent, and where I first
visited them.

This was the receipt of a letter from a lady who was a stranger to her,
written from a distant part of the country, and saying that she, the
writer, had read with profound interest and admiration a story[12] of
Mrs Kingsford which, after appearing in her magazine, had been published
as a book, and that after reading it she had received from the Holy
Spirit a message for her which was to be delivered in person. After some
hesitation as to what reply to make, Mrs Kingsford--whose account I am
following exactly--agreed to receive her; an appointment was made, and
the stranger duly presented herself. She was tall, erect, distinguished
looking, with hair of iron-grey and strangely brilliant eyes, and was
perfectly calm and collected of demeanour. The message was to the effect
that Mrs Kingsford was to remain in retirement for five years,
continuing the studies and mode of life on which she had entered,
whatever they might be--for that the messenger did not know--and to
suffer nothing and no one to draw her aside from them. That when these
probationary five years were past, the Holy Spirit would bring her
forth from her seclusion, and a great work would be given her to do. All
this was uttered with a rapt and inspired expression, as though she had
been a Sibyl pronouncing an oracle. After delivering her message, the
messenger kissed her on both cheeks and departed, first asking only
whether she thought her mad; a question to which for a moment Mrs
Kingsford found it somewhat difficult to make reply. But only for a
moment. For then there rushed on her the conviction that it was all
genuine and true, and was but a fresh unfoldment of the mystery of her
life and destiny, and in full accordance with her own foreshadowings
from the beginning.

Some four years later, at a time when Mrs Kingsford was in great straits
for want of a suitable home in London in which to carry on her studies,
the same lady was similarly commissioned on her behalf, while totally
ignorant both of her whereabouts and her need, and with results entirely
satisfactory. On which occasion I had the privilege of making her
acquaintance, and the satisfaction of finding her not merely perfectly
sane, but a person entitled to the highest consideration, noted for her
pious devotion to works of beneficence involving complete
self-abnegation; and in short a veritable "Mother in Israel."

The event above related occurred in the spring of 1873, the summer of
which year saw Mrs Kingsford impelled to do what led to the most crucial
of the events upon which her destined mission hinged, namely, to write
to me the letter which led to my visit to her home. In the autumn of the
same year she passed her matriculation examination at the Apothecaries'
Hall with success so great as to fill her with high hopes of a
triumphant passage through the course of her student-life. But
immediately afterwards her hopes were dashed, for the English medical
authorities saw fit to close their schools to women, and the way to her
anticipated career was shut against her.

Such was the position when, in February, 1874, I visited the Shropshire
rectory, and such in brief the history which was gradually unfolded to
me as my evident sympathy and appreciation gained the confidence of the
still young couple, whose senior I was by some twenty years. Both
husband and wife were at their wits' end, the situation being aggravated
by a circumstance which was first brought to my knowledge on my
suggestion of the postponement of her design until such time as the
medical authorities should come to their right minds and re-open their
schools to women. The circumstance in question was her terrible
liability on the ground of ill-health, and especially of asthma, to
which she was a martyr, life in the country being impossible to her for
the greater part of the year, when it was only in some large city that
she was able to breathe. With the schools closed against her in England,
her thoughts turned towards France, the University of Paris being open
to women. But for obvious reasons her husband, who could not absent
himself from his duties to accompany her, would not consent to her going
thither unless under suitable protection. For himself he had but one
wish, that she should follow her bent and fashion her life as seemed
best to her; for he recognised her as entitled by her endowments and
aspirations, as well as by the terms of their engagement, to full
liberty of action, while the conditions of her health claimed all
consideration from him. If, indeed, the Gods had destined her for a
mission requiring freedom of action combined with the shelter and
support of a husband's name, it seemed to me that in him they had
created a man expressly for the office. For some time, however, the
difficulty seemed insuperable, and one that would yield to no amount of
deliberation, even with the best will of all concerned.

Meanwhile her self-revelations continued, being evidently prompted, at
least as much by the desire to obtain some explanation of herself for
herself, to whom she was, she avowed, a complete puzzle, as by the
desire to elicit answering confidences from me. And they became with
each disclosure more and more striking, until I could hardly resist the
conviction that she was possessed of some faculty in virtue of which she
was able to have direct perception of conclusions to which I had won my
way by dint of long and arduous thinking, and in some instances in
advance of me. She had read my mental history between the lines of my
books, and was fully prepared to learn that I too had a consciousness,
analogous to her own, of a mission in life perhaps also analogous to her
own.

This, I was able to assure her, was indeed the case, and that all my
books had been written in the idea of finding my way to it by dint of
free, unfettered thinking. For, brought up in the strictest of
evangelical sects, I had even as a lad begun to be revolted by the creed
in which I was reared, and had very early come to regard its tenets,
especially of total depravity and vicarious atonement, as a libel
nothing short of blasphemous against both God and man, and to feel that
no greater boon could be bestowed on the world than its emancipation
from the bondage of a belief so degrading and so destructive of any
lofty ideal. I had felt strongly that only in such measure as I might be
the means of its abolition would my life be a success and a satisfaction
to myself. It even seemed to me that my own credit was involved in the
matter; and that in disproving such beliefs I should be vindicating my
own character. For if God were evil, as those doctrines made Him, I
could by no possibility be good, since I must have my derivation from
Him. And I knew that, however weak and unwise I might be, I was not
evil.

Then, too, my life, like hers, had been one of much isolation and
meditation. I had felt myself a stranger even with my closest intimates.
For I was always conscious of a difference which separated me from them,
and of a side to which they could not have access. I had graduated at
Cambridge with the design of taking orders; but only to find that I
could not do so conscientiously, and to feel that to commit myself to
any conditions incompatible with absolute freedom of thought and
expression would be a treachery against both myself and my kind;--for it
was for no merely personal end that I wanted to discover the truth. I
longed to get away from all my surroundings in order, first, to think
myself out of all that I had been taught, and so to make my mind as a
clean sheet whereon to receive true impressions and at first hand; and,
next, to think myself into a condition and to a level wherein I could
see all things--myself, nature, and God--face to face, with vision
undimmed and undistorted by beliefs which, being inherited only and
traditional, instead of the result of conviction honestly arrived at,
were factitious and unreal; no living outcome of my own growth and
observation, but a veritable straitwaistcoat, stifling life and
restraining development. And so it had come that--as related in my first
novel, "The Pilgrim and the Shrine"[13], which was essentially
autobiographical--I had eagerly fallen in with a proposal to join an
expedition to the then newly-discovered placers of California, an
enterprise which, besides promising to gratify the love for adventure,
physical as well as mental, which was strong in me, would postpone if
not solve the difficulty of my position. It possessed, moreover, the
high recommendation of taking me to the world of the fresh,
unsophisticated West, instead of to that East which had been made almost
hateful to me by its association with the tenets by which existence had
been poisoned for me.

So, setting my face towards the sunset, I became one of the band of
"Forty-niners" in California, and remained abroad in the continents and
isles of the Pacific, from America passing to Australia, until the
intended year of my absence had grown into nearly ten years, and I had
experienced well-nigh every vicissitude and extreme which might serve to
heighten the consciousness, toughen the fibre, and try the soul of man.
But throughout all, the idea of a mission remained with me, gathering
force and consistency, until it was made clear to me that not
destruction merely, but construction, not the exposure of error but the
demonstration of truth, was comprised in it. For I saw that it was
possible to reduce religion to a series of first principles, necessary
truths and self-evident propositions, and that only in such measure as
it was thus reduced and discerned, was it really true and really
believed;--in short, that faith and knowledge are identical. To accept a
religion on the ground that one had been born in it, and apart from its
appeal to the mind and moral conscience, and thus to make it dependent
upon the accident of birth and parentage, was to resemble the African
savage who for the same reason worships Mumbo Jumbo. How, moreover,--I
asked myself--could a religion which was not in accord with first
principles, represent a God, Who, to be God, must Himself be the first
of, and must comprise all principles; must account logically for all the
facts of consciousness, be it unfolded as far as it may? Granting that,
as the poet says, "an honest man's the noblest work of God," it was for
me no less true that "an honest God's the noblest work of man." And it
was precisely such a being that I longed to elaborate out of, or
discover in, my own consciousness, confident that the achievement meant
the solution of all problems, the rectification of all difficulties, the
satisfaction of all aspirations, intellectual, moral, and spiritual.
Following such trains of thought, I arrived at the assurance that I had
within my own consciousness both the truth itself and the verification
of the truth, and that it remained only to find these.

Returning to England in 1857, and, after an interval, devoting myself to
literature, all that I wrote, whether essay or fiction, represented the
endeavour by probing the consciousness to the utmost in every direction
to discover a central, radiant, and indefeasible point from which all
things could be deduced, and on which, as a pivot they must depend and
revolve. I read largely, and went much among people, always in search of
aid in my quest; but only with the result of finding that neither from
books nor from persons could I even begin to get what I sought, but only
from thought.

Meanwhile everything seemed ordered with a view to the end ultimately
attained. For, so far from having left behind me for ever the
vicissitudes, and struggles, and trials, and ordeals, in which the
wildernesses of the western and southern worlds had been so fruitful, I
was found of them in the old world to which I had returned; and this in
number, kind, and degree, such as to make it appear as if what I had
borne before had been inflicted expressly for the purpose of enabling me
to bear what was put upon me now. And it was only when I had learnt by
experience that the very capacity for thought is enhanced by feeling no
less than by thinking, that the "ministry of pain" found its
explanation. For the feeling required of me proved to be that of the
inner, not merely of the outer man, of the soul, not merely of the body;
and the faculty, to be the intuition, and not merely the intellect.
Hence I was made to learn by experience, long before the fact was
formulated for me in words, that only "by the bruising of the outer, the
inner is set free," and "man is alive only so far as he has felt."

Everything seemed contrived expressly in order to force me in this
inward direction. Even in my literary work, nothing of the "trade"
element was permitted to intrude. I could not write except when writing
to or from my own centre. Faculty itself was shut off, if turned to any
other purpose. Everything I wrote must minister to and represent a step
in my own unfoldment.

I can confidently affirm that the only books which really helped me
were, with scarcely an exception, those which I wrote myself. Of the
exceptions the chief was Emerson. His essays had been my _vade mecum_ in
all my world-wide wanderings. And there were three sentences of his
which, to use his own phrase, "found" me as no others had done. They
were these: "The talent is the call"; "I the imperfect adore my own
perfect"; and, "Beware when God lets loose a thinker on the earth." Like
Emerson himself, I had yet to learn that man's own perfect is God, and
self-culture is God-culture, provided the self be the inmost self. The
two other books which most helped me were Bailey's "Festus," and
Carlyle's "Hero-Worship." And I owed something to Tucker's "Light of
Nature." By which it will be seen that my affinity was always for the
prophets rather than the priests of literature; for the intuitionalists
rather than the externalists.

Gradually two leading ideas took definite form in my mind, which,
however, proved to be but two aspects or applications of one and the
same idea. And that idea proved to be the keynote of all that I was
seeking after. For it finally solved the problems of existence, of
religion, of the Bible, of Being itself. Hence the necessity of this
reference to it.

This idea was that of a duality subsisting in every unity, such as I had
nowhere read or heard of. I was, of course, aware that the theological
doctrine of the Trinity involved a Duality. But not of a kind to find a
response in my mind. And being unable to assimilate it as it stood, I
ignored it; putting it aside until it should present itself to me in an
aspect in which it was intelligible. I felt, however vaguely, that the
Duality I sought was in the Bible, though it had been missed by the
official expositors of that book. And the conviction that it was in some
way connected with my life-work was so strong that I constructed for the
covers of my two first books a monogram symbolical of Genesis i. 27. And
I looked to the unfoldment of what I felt to be the secret significance
of that utterance for the explication of all the mysteries the solution
of which engrossed me. The thought did not seem to originate in any of
my experiences, but rather to be part of my original stock of innate
ideas, supposing that there are such ideas, and to derive confirmation
and explanation from my experiences.

Those experiences were in this wise. It had been my privilege to have
the friendship of several women of a type so noble that to know them was
at once an education and a religion; women whose perfection of character
had served more than anything else to make me believe in God, when all
other grounds had failed. I could in no wise account for them on the
hypothesis of a fortuitous concourse of unintelligent atoms. And not
only did I find that the higher the type the more richly they were
endowed with precisely the faculty of which I myself was conscious as
distinguishing me from my fellows; I found also that I was unable to
recognise any woman as of a high type as woman save in so far as she was
possessed of it. I had failed to find any who possessed the knowledge I
craved, and who were thereby able to help me in my thought. They helped
me nevertheless, but it was by _being_ what they were, rather than by
_knowing_ and _doing_, be they admirable as they might in these
respects. I recognised in them that which supplemented and complemented
my mental self in such wise as to suggest unbounded possibilities of
results to accrue from the intimate association of two minds thus
attuned to each other, and duly unfolded by thought and study. It
needed, it seemed to me, but the reverberation and intensification of
thought, induced by the apposition of two minds thus related, for the
production of the divine child Truth in the very highest spheres of
thought. So that the results would by no means be restricted to the mere
sum of the associated capacities of the two minds themselves. And in
view of such high possibilities I found myself appropriating and
applying the ejaculation which Virgil puts into the mouth of Anna when
urging the union of her sister Dido with Æneas--

                  "Quæ surgere regna
    Conjugio tali!"

and I felt with Tennyson that

    "They two together well might move the world."

So boundless seemed to me the kingdoms of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty
which would spring from such conjunction.

It goes without saying that such relationship was contemplated by me
only as the accompaniment of a happy re-marriage. [For I had married in
Australia only to be widowered after a year's wedlock.] But such a
prospect was so long withheld as to make me dubious of its
realisation[14]. Nevertheless, some inner voice was ever saying: "Wait;
wait. Everything comes to him who waits, provided only he do so in faith
and patience, looking to the highest." But that I did wait, and
accordingly kept myself free for what ultimately was assigned to me, was
due far less to the expectation of finding that for which I waited, than
to the vivid consciousness which I had of the bitterness that would come
of finding it, only to be withheld from it through a previous disposal
of myself in some other and incompatible quarter. This was an impression
which served largely to keep my life as free as I desired my thought to
be. But that the as yet undisclosed arbiters of my destiny deemed it
insufficient as a deterrent, appeared from their reinforcement of it in
a manner which effectually debarred me from marriage save on the
condition, impossible to me, of a mercenary alliance. This was a
reversal of fortune through a succession of losses so serious as to be
the cause of reducing my means to the minimum compatible with existence
at all in my own station, which soon afterwards happened. That there
were yet further reasons for this imposition on me of the rule of
poverty, arising out of the nature of the work required of me, was in
due time made manifest, and also what those reasons were. They need not
be specified here, excepting only this one. It made impossible the
ascription to my destined colleague of mercenary motives for her
association with me. In this I came to recognise a delicate providence
for which I felt I could not be too thankful. In the meantime, even
while smarting severely from this dispensation, and others yet more
bitter which were heaped on me for no apparent cause or fault of my own
that I could discern, the thought that most of all served to sustain me
under what I felt would have utterly broken down in heart or head, or in
both of these organs, any other person whatever of whom I had
knowledge,--that thought was the surmise or suspicion that all these
things, hard to bear as they were, and undeserved as they seemed, might
prove to be blessings in disguise, in ministering to the realisation of
the controlling ambition of my life by educating me for it; and that
according to the manner in which I bore them might be the result.

There is yet one more personal disclosure essential to this part of my
relation. It concerns my own mental standpoint at the time at which my
narrative has arrived. Bent as I was on penetrating the secret of things
at first hand, and by means of a thought absolutely free, I was never
for a moment disposed to turn, as my so-called free-thinking
contemporaries one and all had turned, a scornful back upon whatever
related to or savoured of the current religion. Scripture and dogma were
not for me necessarily either false or inscrutable because their
official exponents had presented them in an aspect which outraged my
reason and revolted my conscience. I felt bound--if only in justice to
them and myself--at least to find out what they did mean before finally
discarding them. And in this act of justice I was strangely sustained
by a sense of the possibility that the truth, if any, contained in them,
was no other than that of which I was in search. This is to say, that in
all my investigations I kept before me the idea that, if I could discern
the actual nature of existence and the intended sense of the Bible and
Christianity, independently of each other, they might prove on
comparison to be identical; in which case the latter would really
represent a true revelation. Meanwhile, I found myself constrained to
believe, as an axiomatic proposition, that the higher and nobler the
conception I framed in my imagination of the nature of existence, and
the more in accordance with my ideas of what, to be perfect, the
constitution of the universe ought to be, the nearer I should come to
the actual truth.

Similarly with religion. For a religion to be true, it must, I felt
absolutely assured, be ideally perfect after the most perfect ideal that
we can frame. This is to say, that not only must it be in itself such as
to satisfy both head and heart, mind and moral conscience, spirit and
soul; it must also be perfectly simple, obviously reasonable, coherent,
self-evident, founded in the nature of things, incapable--when once
comprehended--of being conceived of as otherwise, absolutely equitable,
eternally true, and recognisable as being all these, invariable in
operation, independent of all accidents of time, place, persons and
events, and comparable to the demonstration of a mathematical problem in
that it needs no testimony or authority beyond those of the mind; and
requiring for its efficacious observance, nothing that is extraneous or
inaccessible to the subject-individual, but within his ability to
recognise and fulfil, provided only that he so will. It must also be
such as to enable him by the observance of it to turn his existence to
the highest possible account imaginable by him, be his imagination as
developed as it may: and all this as independently of any being other
than himself, as if he were the sole personal entity in the universe,
and were himself the universe. That is to say, the means of a man's
perfectionment must inhere in his own system, and he must be competent
of himself effectually to apply them. It is further necessary, because
equitable, that he be allowed sufficient time and opportunity for the
discovery, understanding and application of such means.

Such are the terms and conditions of an ideally perfect religion, as I
conceived of them. It is a definition which excludes well-nigh, if not
quite, all the characteristics ordinarily regarded as appertaining to
religion, and notably to that of Christendom. For in excluding
everything extraneous to the actual subject-individual, and requiring
religion to be self-evident and necessarily true, it excludes as
superfluous and irrelevant, history, tradition, authority, revelation,
as ordinarily conceived of, ecclesiastical ordinance, priestly
ministration, mediatorial function, vicarious satisfaction, and even the
operation of Deity as subsisting without and apart from the man, all of
which are essential elements in the accepted conception of religion.
Nevertheless, profound as was my distrust of the faithfulness of the
orthodox presentation, I could not reconcile myself to a renunciation of
the originals on which that presentation was founded, until I had
satisfied myself that I had fathomed their intended and real meaning.

I had, moreover, very early conceived a personal affection for Jesus as
a man, so strong as to serve as a deterrent both from abandoning the
faith founded on Him, and from accepting it as it is as worthy of Him.

Such was my standpoint, intellectual and religious, at the period in
question. The time came when it found full justification; our results
being such as to verify it in everyone of its manifold aspects. And not
this only. The doctrine which had so mysteriously evolved itself out of
my consciousness to attain by slow degrees the position of a controlling
influence in my life, the doctrine, namely of a Duality subsisting in
the Original Unity of Underived Being, and as inhering therefore in
every unit of derived being, this doctrine proved to be the key to the
mysteries both of Creation and of Redemption, as propounded in the Bible
and manifested in the Christ; the key also to the nature of man,
disclosing the facts both of his possession of divine potentialities as
his birthright, and his endowment with the faculty whereby to discern
and to realise them. And while it proved constructive in respect of
Divine Truth, it proved destructive in respect of the falsification of
that truth which had passed for orthodoxy, by disclosing the source, the
motive, the method and the agents of that falsification.

But these things were still in the future. At the time with which we are
now concerned, I had commenced a book to represent the standpoint just
described, "The Keys of the Creeds." The first and initial draft of
that book was written under the sympathetic eye of one of the order of
noble women to which reference has been made, and owed much to the
enhancement of faculty derived by me from such conjunction of minds. The
second and final draft was written under like relationship with another
member of the self-same order, even she who proved to be my destined
collaborator in the work of which this book recounts the story. It was
published in 1875. It is necessary only to say further of the book thus
produced, that notwithstanding certain defects of expression, due
chiefly to an insufficient acquaintance with the terminology of
metaphysics, it proved an invaluable help to very many, as was amply
shown by the letters of grateful appreciation received from them by me.
The keynote was that which afterwards found expression in the
utterance,--

"There is no enlightenment from without: the secret of things is
revealed from within.

"From without cometh no Divine Revelation: but the Spirit within beareth
witness"[15].

For the lesson it contained was the lesson that the phenomenal world
cannot disclose its own secret. To find this, man must seek in that
substantial world which lies within himself, since all that is real is
within the man. From which it followed that if there is no within, or if
that within be inaccessible, either there is no reality, or man has no
organon of knowledge, and is by constitution agnostic. Meanwhile, the
very fact of my possession of an ideal exempt from the limitations of
the apparent, constituted for me a strong presumption in favour of the
reality of the ideal.

The moment of contact between my destined colleague and myself, was as
critical for one as for the other, only that in my case the crisis was
intellectual. I could see to the end of the argument I was then
elaborating; and that it landed me close to the dividing barrier between
the two worlds of sense and spirit, supposing the latter to have any
being[16]. But I neither saw beyond, nor knew how to ascertain whether
or not there is a beyond. We were discussing the question of there being
an inner sense in Scripture, such as my book suggested; and whether,
supposing it to have such a sense, it required for its discernment any
faculty more recondite than a subtle imagination; and if it did, is
there such a faculty? and what is its nature? By which it will be seen
that I was still in ignorance of the nature of the faculty I found in
myself and recognised as especially subsisting in women, and which, for
me, really made the woman.

The reply rendered by her to these questionings constituted the proof
positive that I had at length discovered the mind which my own had so
long craved as its sorely needed complement. In response to them she
gave me a manuscript in her own writing, asking me to read it and tell
her frankly what I thought of it. Having read and re-read it, I
enquired how and where she had got it. She replied by asking what I
thought of it. I answered, "If there is such a thing as divine
revelation, I know of nothing that comes nearer to my ideal of what it
ought to be. It is exactly what the world is perishing for want of--a
reasonable faith." She then told me that it had come to her in her
sleep, but whence or how she did not know; nor could she say whether she
had seen it or heard it, but only that it came suddenly into her mind,
without her having ever heard or thought of such teaching before. It was
an exposition of the Story of the Fall, exhibiting it as a parable
having a significance purely spiritual, wholly reasonable, and of
universal application, physical persons, things, and events described in
it disappearing in favour of principles, processes, and states
appertaining to the soul; no mere local history, therefore, but an
eternal verity. The experience, she went on to tell me, was far from
exceptional; she had received many things which had greatly struck and
pleased her in the same way, and sometimes while in the waking state in
a sort of day-dream. It was subsequently incorporated into our book,
"The Perfect Way."

Her account of her faculty, of which she related several instances,
produced a profound impression on me. It differed altogether from any
that I had heard of as claimed by the votaries of "Spiritualism," a
creed to which neither of us had assented; such little experience as we
had of it having failed to convince us of the genuineness of its
phenomena; though she, on her part, confessed to having been somewhat at
a loss to account for some things she had seen. But though not
spiritualists, we were not materialists. Rather were we idealists, who
had yet to learn and, as the event proved, were destined shortly to
learn, that the Ideal _is_ the Real, and is Spiritual.

The event also proved that in order to learn it and to know it
positively by experience, there were two conditions to be fulfilled, on
both of which she had already entered, but I had yet to enter. One of
these conditions was physical, the other was emotional. The former
consisted in the renunciation of flesh-food in favour of a diet derived
from the vegetable kingdom. The latter condition consisted in the
kindling of our enthusiasm for the ideal into a flame of such ardour and
intensity as to make it the dominant passion of our lives, and one in
which all others would be swallowed up. It was to be an enthusiasm at
once for Humanity, for Perfection, for God.

Had we been in any degree instructed in spiritual or occult science, we
should have known that the renunciation of flesh-food, though in itself
a physical act, has ever been recognised by initiates as the prime
essential in the unfoldment of the spiritual faculties; since only when
man is purely nourished can he attain clearness and fulness of spiritual
perception. As it was, neither of us had ever heard of occult science,
or of the necessity of such a regimen to the perfectionment of faculty.
She had adopted it on grounds physiological, chemical, hygienic,
æsthetic, and moral; not on grounds mental or spiritual. I now undertook
to adopt it partly on the same grounds which had influenced her, and
partly with a view to enhance and consolidate the sympathy subsisting
between us. The mental and spiritual advantages of the regimen made
themselves known to us by experience.

The other condition found its fulfilment through the knowledge I derived
from her of the methods of the physiologists. That savages, sorcerers,
brigands, religious fanatics, and corrupt priesthoods had always been
wont to make torture their gain or their pastime, I was well aware, and
believed that evolution would sweep them and their practices away in its
course. But the discovery now first made to me that identical
barbarities are systematically perpetrated by the leaders of modern
science on the pretext of benefiting humanity, in an age which claims to
represent the summit of such evolution as has yet been accomplished; and
that after all its boasts, the best that science can do for the world is
to convert it into a hell and its population into fiends, by the
deliberate renunciation of the distinctive sentiments of humanity,--this
was a discovery which filled me with unspeakable horror and amazement,
at once raising to a white heat the enthusiasm of love for the ideal
already kindled within me, and adding to it a like enthusiasm of
detestation for its opposite. From which it came that I found myself
under the impulsion simultaneously of two mighty influences, the one
attracting, the other repelling, but both operating in the same
direction. For while by the former I was drawn upwards by the beauty of
an ideal indefinitely enhanced by its contrast with the foul actual
below, by the latter I was impelled upwards by the hideousness of that
actual. The sight of the moral abyss disclosed to me in Vivisection, as
I perused volume after volume of the annals of the practice written by
the perpetrators themselves, and now first made accessible to me,
effectually purged out of my system any particle of dilettanteism that
might have still lurked in it, compelling me to regard as of the utmost
urgency all and more than all that I had hitherto contemplated doing
deliberately.

This was the construction of a system of thought which by force of its
appeal to both those two indispensable constituents of humanity, the
head and the heart, shall compel acceptance from all persons really
human, and in presence of which the whole system of which Vivisection
was the typical outcome and symbol should vanish from off the earth.
This system was Materialism of which only now did I discern the full
significance. The systematic organisation of wholesale, protracted,
uncompensatable torture, for ends purely selfish, was--I saw with
absolute distinctness--not an accidental and avoidable outcome of
Materialism, but its logical and inevitable outcome. And it was to the
eradication of Materialism that, from that moment, I dedicated myself.
It was a rescue work for both man and beast, seeing that humanity itself
was menaced with extinction. For the materialist, of course, that which
makes the man is the form. For me it was the character, and it was this,
the character of mankind present and to come, that was at stake. For man
demonised is no longer man. In the overthrow of Materialism, I saw
absolutely, was salvation alone to be found, whether for man or beast.
The consideration that only as an abstainer from flesh-food I could with
entire consistency contend against vivisection, was a potent factor in
determining my change of diet. True, the distinction between death and
torture was a broad one. But the statistics I now for the first time
perused, of the slaughter-house and the cattle-traffic, showed beyond
question, that torture, and this prolonged and severe, is involved in
the use of animals for food as well as for science. And over and above
this was the instinctive perception of the probability that neither
would they who had them killed, whether for food, for sport, or for
clothing, be allowed the privilege of rescuing them from the hands of
the physiologist; nor would the animals be allowed to accept their
deliverance at the hands of those who thus used them. They who would
save others, we felt, must first make sacrifice in themselves. And in
the presence of the joy of working to effect such salvation, sacrifice
would cease to be sacrifice.

This, too, we noted, and with no small satisfaction--that to make the
rescue of the animals an immediate and urgent motive, was in no way to
abandon the original motive of hatred to the tenet of vicarious
atonement. For we recognised vivisection itself as but the extension to
the domain of science, of the very principle by which we had been
inexpressibly revolted in the domain of religion;--the principle of
seeking one's own salvation by the sacrifice of another, and that the
innocent. And so we learnt that "New Scientist is but Old Priest writ
differently,"--to vary Milton's expression; and that in both domains the
tenet had its root in Materialism. When the time came for our mission to
be more particularly defined, our satisfaction was unbounded on
receiving the charge, "We mean you to lay bare the secrets of the
world's sacrificial system." It expressed with absolute conciseness and
exactitude all that we had in our minds, far better than we could have
expressed it.

The importance of this question of vivisection in vitalising us for the
work before us, will be seen by the following fact. The time came when
we knew that the work committed to us was that revelation anew of the
Christ which was to constitute His Second Advent, inasmuch as it was the
interpretation of the truth of which He was the manifestation. It was to
be a spiritual coming; in the "clouds of heaven," the heaven of the
"kingdom within" of man's restored understanding. And, as at His first
advent so at His second, He was to have His birth among the animals.

And so it verily was. For--as I have elsewhere stated[17]--"Their
terrible wrongs, culminating at the hands of their scientific
tormentors, were the last drops which filled to overflowing with
anguish, indignation and wrath, hearts already brimming with the sense
of the world's degradation and misery, wringing from them the cry which
rent the heavens for His descent, and in direct and immediate response
to which He came.

"For the New Gospel of Interpretation was vouchsafed in express
recognition of the determined endeavour, by means of a thought
absolutely fearless and free, to scale the topmost heights, fathom the
lowest depths, and penetrate to the inmost recesses of Consciousness, in
search of the solution of the problem of Existence, under the assured
conviction that, when found, it would prove to be one that would make
above all things Vivisection impossible, if only by demonstrating the
constitution of things to be such that, terrible as is the lot of the
victims of the practice here, they are not without compensation
hereafter, while the lot of their tormentors will be unspeakably worse
than even that of their victims here. And so it proved, with absolute
certainty to be the case, to the full vindication at the same time of
the Divine Justice and the Divine Love;" no experience being withheld
which would qualify us to bear positive testimony thereto. For, although
at the outset we were, as I have said, in no wise believers in the
possibility of such experiences, the time came, and came quickly, when
the veil was withdrawn, and the secrets of the Beyond were disclosed to
us in plenitude, in its every sphere, from the abyss of hell to the
heights of heaven. And we learnt that this had become possible through
the passionate energy with which, in our search for the highest truth,
for the highest ends, and in purest love to redeem, we had directed our
thought inwards and upwards, living at the same time the life requisite
to qualify us for such perceptions. Thus did we obtain practical
realisation of the promise that they who do the divine will, by living
the divine life, shall know of the divine doctrine. Our whole mental
attitude had been one of prayer in its essential sense; which is not
that of _saying_ prayers, but as it came to be defined for us--"the
intense direction of the will and desire towards the Highest; an
unchanging intent to know nothing but the Highest." Because "to think
inwardly, to pray intensely, and to imagine centrally, is to hold
converse with God." And we had done this without knowing it was prayer,
or calling it by that name. For, knowing only the conventional
conception of prayer, we had recoiled from it as from other conventional
conceptions of things religious.

Now, however, we found that we had done instinctively and spontaneously
precisely what was necessary to bring us into relations at once with our
spiritual selves and with the world of those who consist only of the
spiritual self. For, by thus becoming vitalised and sensitive in that
part of man's system which endures and passes on, we had come into open
conditions with the world of those who have thus endured and passed on,
and are no longer of the terrestrial, but of the celestial, having
surmounted all lower and intermediate planes. All this came to us
without anticipation on our part, or any conscious seeking for it; but
yet without causing dismay or surprise when it came. For it came so
gradually as to seem to be but the natural and orderly result of the
unfoldment of our own spiritual consciousness, and excited only feelings
of joy and thankfulness at finding our method and aspirations crowned
with so high a success. Thus was it made absolutely clear to us that, so
far from divine revelation involving miracle, or requiring for its
instruments persons other in kind than the ordinary, it is a prerogative
of man, belonging to him as man; and requiring for its reception only
that he be fully man, alive and sensitive in his own innermost and
highest, in his centre as in his circumference. Thus living on the quick
and finding no others who did so, it seemed to us as if we alone were
the quick, and all others were dead.

We noted yet another way in which we supplemented and complemented each
other. It was in this wise. As I was bent on the construction of a
system of thought which should be at once a science, a philosophy, a
morality, and a religion, and recognisable by the understanding as
indubitably true; she was bent on the construction of a rule of life
equally obvious and binding, and recognisable by the sentiments as alone
according with them, its basis being that sense of perfect justice which
springs from perfect sympathy.

By which it will be seen that while it was her aim to establish a
perfect practice, which might or might not consist with a perfect
doctrine, it was my aim to establish a perfect doctrine which would
inevitably issue in a perfect practice, by at once defining it and
supplying an all-compelling motive for its observance.

These, as we at once recognised, were the two indispensable halves of
one perfect whole. But we had yet to learn the nature and source of the
compelling motive for its enforcement.

The deficiency was made good by the discovery of the fact of man's
permanence as an individual. The revelation of this truth was the
demonstration to us of the inanity--not to use a stronger term--of the
system called "Positivism." In ignoring the soul, that system lacks the
motive and repudiates the source of the sentiments on which it insists,
and to the experiences of which those sentiments are due.

FOOTNOTES:

[8] The book was "By and By: An Historical Romance of the Future," its
object being to show a state of society in which the intuition is
supreme, and individuals follow their own ideals. It represents a step
in E.M.'s unfoldment, but not his final conclusions. In 1873 A.K.,
having read a review of this book in the _Examiner_ (which also
contained a notice of one of her tales), communicated with E.M. (Life
A.K. Vol. I. p. 27.)

[9] This was not the first time that E.M. met A.K. He had met her once
before, in January, 1874, in a picture gallery in London. "It was but
for a short time, and during a single afternoon"; but it was "sufficient
to convince" him of "the unusual character of the personality" with
which he had come into contact. (Life A.K. Vol. I. p. 32.)

[10] Her "very first published production" was a poem in a religious
magazine, when she was "but nine years old." (Life A.K. Vol. I. p. 29.)

[11] "Beatrice: A Tale of the Early Christians," was written by A.K. in
1859, for the _Churchman's Companion_, "but the publisher thought it
worthy to make a separate volume, and offered to bring it out in that
form, and to give her a present for it," which offer was accepted. (Life
A.K. Vol. I. p. 4.)

[12] The Story was "In my Lady's Chamber," and purported to be a
"speculative romance touching a few questions of the day." It was
afterwards published separately as by "Colossa." (Life A.K. Vol. I. pp.
21, 22.)

[13] The first edition of "The Pilgrim and the Shrine" was published in
1867.

[14] E.M. did not marry again. He had one child, Charles Bradley
Maitland, and he died on the 16th February, 1901.

[15] See p. 100

[16] E.M. says that "The Keys of the Creeds" brought his thought up to
the extreme limits of a thought merely intellectual, to transcend which
it would be necessary to penetrate the barrier between the worlds of
sense and of spirit. (Life A.K. Vol. I. p. 54.)

[17] Statement E.C.U. p. 80.




CHAPTER II.

THE INITIATION.


My visit to the rectory resulted in an intimacy which made me to such
extent a member of the family as to remove all obstacles to the
collaboration required of us. It was soon made evident that not only our
association, but her design of seeking a medical education was for both
of us an indispensable element in our preparation for our now recognised
joint-mission. In its general aspect that mission had for its purpose
the overthrow of Materialism, and in order to qualify us for it, it was
deemed necessary that we undergo a training in the most materialistic of
the world's schools. This was the University of Paris. She alone was to
seek a diploma. For me it was enough that I accompany her in her
studies, and that we submit the teachings received by her to rigid
analysis by our combined faculties. Doing this, we found ourselves
competent to declare positively the falsity of the materialistic system
on the strength both of logical processes and of practical
demonstration, by means of the experiences of which we found ourselves
the recipients. For although we had never heard of such things as
"psychic faculties,"--the very phrase was not yet invented--we found
ourselves possessed of them in such measure that no longer did the veil
which divides the world sensible from the world spiritual constitute an
impassable barrier, but both were open to view, and the latter was as
real and accessible as the former.

It was about the middle of 1876 that this remarkable accession of
faculty began to manifest itself in plenitude, I being the first to
experience it, notwithstanding my previous total lack of any faculty of
the kind, or of belief in the possibility of my having it. But the
purification which my physical system had undergone by means of my new
dietary regimen, and the constant and intense direction of my thought
inwards and upwards, the forcible concentration of my mind upon the
essential and substantial ideas of things, and this under impulsion of
an enthusiasm kindled to a white heat--an enthusiasm, as already said,
both of aspiration and of repulsion--and the enhancement of faculty
through sympathetic association,--these had so attenuated the veil that
it no longer impeded my vision of spiritual realities. And I found
myself--without seeking for or expecting it--spiritually sensitive in
respect of sight, hearing, and touch, and in open, palpable relations
with a world which I had no difficulty in recognising as of celestial
nature; so far did it transcend everything of which I had heard or read
in the annals of the contemporary spiritualism; so entirely did it
accord with my conceptions of the divine.

That I refrain from employing the terms "supernatural" and "superhuman,"
is because they assume the knowledge of the limits of the natural and
the human, and arbitrarily exclude from those categories regions of
being which may really belong to them. The celestial and the divine are
not necessarily either superhuman or supernatural; they may be but the
higher human and the higher natural. If they are at all, they are
according to natural order, and it is natural for them to be.

Nevertheless, vast as was the interval it represented between my past
and present states, it came so naturally and easily as to be clearly the
result, not of any abnormal or accidental cataclysm involving a breach
of continuity, but of a perfectly orderly unfoldment every step of which
was distinctly traceable. For though the process was akin to that of the
attainment of sight by one previously blind, and the final issue was
sudden, the issue had been led up to in such wise as to render it
legitimate and normal. For its earliest indication[18] was an opening of
the mind in such wise that subjects hitherto beyond my grasp, and
problems deemed insoluble, became comprehensible and clear; while whole
vistas of thought perfectly continuous and coherent, would disclose
themselves to my view, stretching far away towards their source in the
very principles of things, so that I found myself intellectually the
master of questions which previously had baffled me.

The experience I am about to relate was not only remarkable in itself,
it was remarkable also as striking what proved to be the keynote of all
our subsequent work, the doctrine, namely, of the _substantial_ identity
of God and man. It had suddenly flashed on my mind as a necessary and
self-evident truth, the contrary of which was absurd; and I had seated
myself at my writing-table to give it expression for a book I had lately
commenced[19]. I was alone and locked in my room in my chambers off
Pall Mall, Mrs Kingsford being at the time in Paris, accompanied by her
husband. It was past midnight, and all without was quiet; there was not
a sound to break my abstraction. This was so profound that I had written
some four pages without drawing breath, the matter seeming to flow not
merely from but through me without conscious mental effort of my own. I
_saw_ so clearly that there was no need to _think_. In the course of the
writing I became distinctly aware of a presence as of someone bending
over me from behind, and actively engaged in blending with and
reinforcing my mind. Being unwilling to risk an interruption to the flow
of my thought, I resisted the impulse to look up and ascertain who or
what it was. Of alarm at so unlooked-for a presence I had not a
particle. Be it whom it might, the accord between us was as perfect as
if it had been merely a projection of my own higher self. I had never
heard of higher selves in those days, or of the possibility of such a
phenomenon; but the idea of such an explanation occurred to me then and
there. But this solution of the problem of my visitant's personality was
presently dissipated by the event.

The passage I had been writing concluded with these words:--

     "The perfect man of any race is no other than the perfect
     expression in the flesh of all the essential characteristics of the
     soul of that race. Escaping the limitations of the individual man,
     such an one represents the soul of his people. Escaping the
     limitations of the individual people, he represents the soul of
     all peoples, or Humanity. Escaping the limitations of Humanity, but
     still preserving its essential characteristics, he represents the
     soul of the system of which the earth is but an individual member.
     And finally, after climbing many a further step of the infinite
     ladder of existence, and escaping the limitations of all systems
     whatever, he represents--nay, finds that he is--the soul of the
     universe, even God Himself, once 'manifested in the flesh,' and now
     'perfected through suffering,' 'purified, sanctified, redeemed,
     justified, glorified,' 'crowned with honour and glory,' and 'seated
     for ever at the right hand of the Father,' 'one with God,' even God
     Himself."

At this moment--my mind being so wholly preoccupied with the utterance
and all that I saw it involved, as to make me oblivious of all else--the
presence I had felt bending over me darted itself into me just below the
cerebral bulb at the back of my neck, the sensation being that of a
slight tap, as of a finger-touch; and then in a voice full, rich, firm,
measured, and so strong that it resounded through the room, exclaimed,
in a tone indicative of high satisfaction, "At last I have found a man
through whom I can speak!"

So powerful was the intonation that the tympana of my ears vibrated to
the sound, palpably bulging outwards, showing that they had been struck
on the inner side, and that the presence had actually projected itself
into my larynx and spoken from within me, but without using my organs of
speech, I was conscious of being in radiant health at the time, and was
unable to detect any symptom of being otherwise. My thought, too, and
observation were perfectly coherent and continuous, and I could discern
no smallest pretext for distrust of the reality of the experience. And
my delight and satisfaction, which were unbounded, found expression in
the single utterance, "Then the ancients were right, and the Gods ARE!"
so resistless was the conviction that only by a divinised being could
the wisdom and power be manifested of the presence of which I was
conscious. The words, "At last I have found a man" were incompatible
with the theory of its being an objectivation of my own particular ego,
and, moreover, they indicated the speaker as one high in authority over
the race.

Nothing more passed on that occasion; but a vivid impression was left
with me that my visitant belonged to the order of spirits called
"Planetaries." But as I had then no knowledge of such beings, I put
aside the question of his identity for the solution which I trusted
would come of further enlightenment. This came in due time, with the
result of confirming the impression given me at the time. The
explanation, however, does not come within the scope of this present
writing. Some time afterwards, when searching at the library of the
British Museum in the writings of the old occultists for experiences
analogous to our own, I came upon one account which described the
entrance into the man of an overshadowing spirit exactly as it had
occurred to me, so far as it concerned the nape of the neck as the point
of entry and the slightness of the sensation. The only further reference
to the incident necessary here is as follows.

A little later Mrs Kingsford had returned to England, being compelled to
quit Paris by a severe illness which she had contracted immediately on
her arrival there; and was pursuing her studies in London, making her
home with a relative in Chelsea. The event proved that she had been sent
back by the supervisors of our work expressly in order to be within
reach of me. Indeed, an intimation had been given me before she had gone
that she would not be allowed to stay abroad, as our near contiguity was
indispensable, and I had accordingly viewed her departure with
considerable disquietude, circumstances rendering it impossible for me
to leave home just then. Prior to coming back she had obtained from the
Minister of Education the exceptional privilege of a permit allowing her
attendance at a London hospital to count in her Paris course.

The first experience received by her in relation to our work, after her
return to London, was the terrific vision of "The Doomed Train"[20].

On bringing it to me on the morning of its occurrence, she exclaimed as
she entered the room, "Oh, I have had such a terrific dream! It has
quite shattered me. And I have brought it for you to try and find its
meaning, if it has one. I wrote it down the moment I was able." Her
appearance fully confirmed her statement. It alarmed me. This is the
account:--

"I was visited, last night, by a dream of so strange and vivid a kind
that I feel impelled to communicate it to you, not only to relieve my
own mind of the oppression which the recollection of it causes me, but
also to give you an opportunity of finding the meaning, which I am still
far too much shaken and terrified to seek for myself.

"It seemed to me that you and I were two of a vast company of men and
women, upon all of whom, with the exception of myself--for I was there
voluntarily--sentence of death had been passed. I was sensible of the
knowledge--how obtained I know not--that this terrible doom had been
pronounced by the official agents of some new reign of terror. Certain I
was that none of the party had really been guilty of any crime deserving
of death; but that the penalty had been incurred through their
connection with some regime, political, social, or religious, which was
doomed to utter destruction. It became known among us that the sentence
was about to be carried out on a colossal scale; but we remained in
absolute ignorance as to the place and method of the intended execution.
Thus far my dream gave me no intimation of the scene which next burst on
me,--a scene which strained to their utmost tension every sense of
sight, hearing, and touch in a manner unprecedented in any dream I have
previously had.

"It was night, dark and starless, and I found myself, together with the
whole company of doomed men and women who knew that they were soon to
die, but not how or where, in a railway train hurrying through the
darkness to some unknown destination. I sat in a carriage quite at the
rear end of the train, in a corner seat, and was leaning out of the open
window, peering into the darkness, when, suddenly, a voice, which seemed
to speak out of the air, said to me in a low, distinct, intense tone,
the mere recollection of which makes me shudder,--'The sentence is being
carried out even now. You are all of you lost. Ahead of the train is a
frightful precipice of monstrous height, and at its base beats a
fathomless sea. The railway ends only with the abyss. Over that will the
train hurl itself into annihilation. THERE IS NO ONE ON THE ENGINE!'

"At this I sprang from my seat in horror, and looked round at the faces
of the persons in the carriage with me. No one of them had spoken, or
had heard those awful words. The lamplight from the dome of the carriage
flickered on the forms about me. I looked from one to the other, but saw
no sign of alarm given by any of them. Then again the voice out of the
air spoke to me,--'There is but one way to be saved. You must leap out
of the train!'

"In frantic haste I pushed open the carriage-door and stepped out on the
footboard. The train was going at a terrific pace, swaying to and fro as
with the passion of its speed; and the mighty wind of its passage beat
my hair about my face and tore at my garments.

"Until this moment I had not thought of you, or even seemed conscious of
your presence in the train. Holding tightly on to the rail by the
carriage-door, I began to creep along the footboard towards the engine,
hoping to find a chance of dropping safely down on the line.
Hand-over-hand I passed along in this way from one carriage to another;
and as I did so I saw by the light within each carriage that the
passengers had no idea of the fate upon which they were being hurried.
At length, in one of the compartments, I saw _you_. 'Come out!' I
cried; 'come out! Save yourself! In another minute we shall be dashed to
pieces!'

"You rose instantly, wrenched open the door, and stood beside me outside
on the footboard. The rapidity at which we were going was now more
fearful than ever. The train rocked as it fled onwards. The wind
shrieked as we were carried through it. 'Leap down!' I cried to you.
'Save yourself! It is certain death to stay here. Before us is an abyss;
and there is no one on the engine!'

"At this you turned your face full upon me with a look of intense
earnestness, and said, 'No, we will not leap down; we will stop the
train.'

"With these words you left me, and crept along the footboard towards the
front of the train. Full of half-angry anxiety at what seemed to me a
Quixotic act, I followed. In one of the carriages we passed I saw my
mother and eldest brother, unconscious as the rest. Presently we reached
the last carriage, and saw by the lurid light of the furnace that the
voice had spoken truly, and that there was no one on the engine.

"You continued to move onwards. 'Impossible! Impossible!' I cried; 'it
cannot be done. Oh, pray, come away!'

"Then you knelt upon the footboard, and said, 'You are right. It cannot
be done in that way; but we can save the train. Help me to get these
irons asunder.'

"The engine was connected with the train by two great iron hooks and
staples. By a tremendous effort, in making which I almost lost my
balance, we unhooked the irons and detached the train; when, with a
mighty leap as of some mad supernatural monster, the engine sped on its
way alone, shooting back as it went a great flaming trail of sparks, and
was lost in the darkness. We stood together on the footboard, watching
in silence the gradual slackening of the speed. When at length the train
had come to a standstill, we cried to the passengers, 'Saved! Saved!'
And then, amid the confusion of opening the doors and descending and
eager talking, my dream ended, leaving me shattered and palpitating with
the horror of it."

This vision was intended to show us the destruction, moral,
intellectual, and spiritual, towards which the world was tending by
following materialistic modes of thought, and the part we were to bear
in arresting its progress towards the fatal precipice, at all hazards to
ourselves. The startling announcement made to her by the invisible voice
when the crowded train was rushing at full speed to its doom, "There is
no one on the engine!" exactly represented the philosophy which, denying
mind in the universe, recognises only blind force.

I had determined to include an account of this vision in the book on
which I was then engaged, "England and Islam." And I was alone in my
rooms, reading the proofs of it, my mind being occupied solely with the
letterpress, until I came to the remark ascribed to me in the vision, as
made in reply to her entreaty that I would jump out with her to save
ourselves, "No, we will not leap down, we will stop the train." At this
moment the voice which shortly before[21] had said to me, "At last I
have found a man through whom I can speak!" addressed me again, saying
in a pleased and encouraging tone, as if the speaker had been following
me in my reading, and desired to remove any doubts I might have of the
reality of our mission,--"Yes! Yes! I have trusted all to you!" This
time he spoke from without me, but apparently quite close by. And among
the impressions which at the same instant were flashed into my mind, was
the impression, amounting to a conviction, that whatever might be the
part assigned to others in the work of the new illumination in progress
and the restoration thereby to the world of one true doctrine of
existence, the exposition of its innermost and highest sphere, the head
corner-stone of the pyramid of the system which is to make the humanity
of the future, had been committed to us alone. And now, writing nearly
twenty years later, I can truly say that this conviction has never for a
moment been weakened, but on the contrary has gathered confirmation and
strength with every successive accession of experience and knowledge,
and while cognisant of and fully appreciating all that has taken place
in the unfoldment of the world's thought during the interval.

Ever since that memorable winter of 1876-7, the conviction, shared
equally by my colleague, has been with me that the controlling spirit of
the Hebrew prophets was that also of our work, the purpose of which was
the accomplishment of their prophecies, by the promotion of the world's
spiritual consciousness to a level surpassing any yet attained by it, to
the regeneration of the church and the establishment of the kingdom of
God with power. Having which conviction, there was for us but one object
in life:--to fulfil at whatever cost to ourselves the conditions
necessary to make us fitting instruments for the perfect accomplishment
of a work which we recognised as the loftiest that could be committed to
mortals.

My colleague's enforced return to London was promptly signalised by an
experience which served not only yet further to demonstrate the reality
and nature of our mission, and of her primacy in our work, but to
disclose its essentially Christian character, which hitherto had been an
open question for us. For that upon which we ourselves were bent was the
discovery of the nature of existence at first hand, and independently of
any existing system whatever. It was truth and truth alone that we
sought, and to this end we had laboured to make ourselves as those of
whom it is said, "Of such is the kingdom of heaven." For in divesting
ourselves of all prepossessions and prejudices, we had made ourselves as
"little children." We were neither believers nor disbelievers, but pure
sceptics in that best sense of the term in which it denotes the unbiased
seeker after God and truth. This is to say, we were, and we gloried in
being, absolutely free thinkers, a term which, in its true acceptation,
we regarded as man's noblest title. This is the sense in which it
denotes a thought able to exercise itself in all directions open to
thought, outwards and downwards to matter and negation, and inwards and
upwards to spirit and reality. And our work proved in the event to be
the supreme triumph of Free Thought.

The experience in question was as follows. It was night and I was alone
and locked in my chambers, and was writing at full speed, lest it
should escape me, an exposition of the place and office of woman under
the coming regeneration. And I was conscious of an exaltation of faculty
such as might conceivably be the result of an enhancement of my own mind
by junction with another and superior mind. I was even conscious, though
in a far less degree than before, of an invisible presence. But I was
too much engrossed with my idea to pay heed to persons, be they whom
they might, human or divine, as well as anxious to take advantage of
such assistance. I had clearly and vividly in my mind all that I desired
to say for several pages on. Then, suddenly and completely, like the
stoppage of a stream in its flow through a tube by the quick turning of
a tap, the current of my thought ceased, leaving my mind an utter blank
as to what I had meant to say, and totally unable to recall the least
idea of it. So palpable was its withdrawal, that it seemed to me as if
it must still be hovering somewhere near me, and I looked up and
impatiently exclaimed aloud to it, "Where are you?" At length, after
ransacking my mind in vain, I turned to other work, for I was perfectly
fresh, and the desertion had been in no way due to exhaustion, physical
or mental. On taking note of the time of the disappearance, I found it
was 11.30 precisely.

The next morning failed to bring my thought back to me as I had hoped it
would do; but it brought instead, an unusually early visit from Mrs.
Kingsford, who was--as I have said--staying in Chelsea. "Such a curious
thing happened to me last night," she began, on entering the room, "and
I want to tell you of it and see if you can explain it. I had finished
my day's work, but though it was late I was not inclined to rest, for I
was wakeful with a sense of irritation at the thought of what you are
doing, and at my exclusion from any share in it. And I was feeling
envious of your sex for the superior advantages you have over ours of
doing great and useful work. As I sat by the fire thinking this, I
suddenly found myself impelled to take a pencil and paper, and to write.
I did so, and wrote with extreme rapidity, in a half-dreamy state,
without any clear idea of what I was writing, but supposing it to be
something expressive of my discontent. I had soon covered a page and a
half of a large sheet with writing different from my own, and it was
quite unlike what was in my mind, as you will see."

On perusing the paper I found that it was a continuation of my missing
thought, taken up at the point where it had left me, but translated to a
higher plane, the expression also being similarly elevated in accordance
both with the theme and the writer, having the exquisiteness so
characteristic of her genius. To my enquiry as to the hour of the
occurrence, she at once replied, "Half-past eleven exactly; for I was so
struck by it that I took particular notice of the time."

What I had written was as follows:--

     "Those of us who, being men, refuse to accord to women the same
     freedom of evolution for their consciousness which we claim for
     ourselves, do so in consequence of a total misconception of the
     nature and functions both of Humanity and of Existence at large.
     The notion that men and women can by any possibility do each
     other's work, is utterly absurd. Whom God hath distinguished, none
     can confound. To do the same thing is not to do the same work;
     inasmuch as the spirit is more than the fact, and the spirit of man
     and of woman is different. While for the production of perfect
     results it is necessary that they work harmoniously together, it is
     necessary also that they fulfil separate functions in regard to
     that work"[22].

This was the point at which my thought had failed me, to be taken up by
her at the same instant two miles away, without her knowing even that I
contemplated treating that particular theme, as I had purposely reserved
it until I should have completed the expression, hoping to give her a
pleasant surprise; for it was one very near to her heart. This is her
continuation of it. It will be seen that, besides complementing my
thought, it responded remedially to her own mood:--

     "In a true mission of redemption, in the proclamation of a gospel
     to save, it is the man who must preach; it is the man who must
     stand forward among the people; it is the man who, if need be, must
     die. But he is not alone. If his be the glory of the full noontide,
     his day has been ushered in by a goddess. Aurora has preceded
     Phoibos Apollo; Mary has been before Christ. For, mark that He
     shall do His first and greatest work at her suggestion. To her
     shall ever belong the glory of the inauguration; of her shall the
     gospel be born; from her lips shall the Christ take the bidding for
     His first miracle; from her shall His earliest inspiration be
     drawn. The people are athirst for the living wine, which shall be
     better, sweeter, purer, stronger, than any they have yet tasted.
     The festival lags, the joy slackens, for need of it. The Christ is
     in their midst, but He opens not His lips; His heart is sealed, His
     hour is not yet come. Mark that the first inspiration falls on the
     woman by His side, on Mary the Mother of God; she saith unto Him,
     'They have no wine.' She has spoken, the impulse is given to
     Divinity. His soul awakens, His pulse quickens, He utters the word
     that works the miracle. Hail, Mary, full of grace; Christ is thy
     gift to the world! Without thee He could not have been; but for
     thine impulse He could have worked no mighty work. This shall be
     the history of all time; it shall be the sign of the Christ. Mary
     shall feel; Christ shall speak. Hers the glory of setting His heart
     in action; hers the thrill of emotion to which His power shall
     respond. But for her He shall be powerless; but for her He shall be
     dumb; but for her He shall have no strength to smite, no hand to
     help. It is the seed of the woman who shall bruise the serpent's
     head. The Christ, the true prophet, is her child, her gift to the
     world. 'Woman, behold thy Son!'"

Such was the first intimation and the manner thereof, given us of the
truth subsequently revealed in plenitude,--the presence in Scripture of
a mystical sense concealed within the apparent sense, as a kernel in its
shell, which, and not the literal sense, is the intended sense[23]. As
was later shown us in regard to the story of the cursing of the
fig-tree, that of the marriage in Cana was a parable having a spiritual
import; and the character of Jesus was cleared from the reproaches based
on the literal sense. Striving for fuller unfoldment and enlightenment,
we were at length enabled to discern the tremendous mistake which
orthodoxy has made; the mistake of confounding, first, Jesus with
Christ, and, next, Mary the mother of Jesus, with the Virgin Mary, the
mother of Christ, and the conversion thereby of a perfect philosophy
into a gross idolatry. Meanwhile, the experience was a further
demonstration to us of the reality and accessibility not merely of the
world spiritual, but of the world celestial also, and of the high source
of the commission under which we had become associated together. It was
also an indication that as concerned ourselves our work appertained to
the spiritual, rather than to the social plane. Such application of it
would follow in due time. No other hypothesis that we could devise would
account for the facts. Nor could we imagine any source other than the
Church invisible for an interpretation so noble of the Scriptures of the
Church visible.

Not that the hypothesis of an extraneous source accounted for all our
experiences. For besides receiving knowledge from such influences, there
were instances in which we actually saw and seemed to remember scenes,
events, and persons, long since vanished from earth, and felt at the
time that it needed only that the period of lucidity be sufficiently
prolonged to enable us to recover from personal recollection the whole
history concerned.

I was somewhat surprised by finding the first experiences of this
nature, as well as certain others of an equally high and rare order,
occurring to me rather than to my colleague, of the superiority of whose
faculty and of whose primacy in our work I had no manner of doubt. The
explanation at length vouchsafed was in this wise. It was in order to
qualify me for recognising by my own experiences the reality and value
of hers when they should come. Not otherwise should I know enough to be
able to believe. It proved, moreover, to be part of the plan ordained
to withdraw from me, in a great measure, the faculty requisite for them,
when I had become familiar with them. The reason for according her such
preference over and above the superiority of her gifts will presently
appear. It was another and an exquisite illustration of the depth and
tenderness of the mystical element underlying Christianity as divinely
conceived and intended.

       *       *       *       *       *

The partial withdrawal from me of faculty just alluded to took place
early in 1877, but not until I had undergone a thorough experiential
training in its varied manifestations. Among these were two which call
for relation here, by reason of their serving to show that nothing was
withheld which might minister to the completeness of the work set us.
The first was as follows:--

Being seated at my writing-table, and meditating on the gospel
narrative, with a strange sense of being separated by only a narrow
interval from a full knowledge of all that it implied, I found myself
impelled to seek the precise idea intended to be conveyed by the story
of the woman taken in adultery. No account that I had read of it had
satisfied me, least of all that which was proposed in the "Ecce Homo" of
Professor Seeley, a book then recent and enjoying a repute which filled
me with a strong feeling of personal resentment. For his account,
especially of the feelings excited in Jesus by the sight of the accused
woman, revolted me by its inscription to Him of a sense of impropriety
at once monkish and conventional, and of a limitation of charity
altogether incompatible with the abounding sympathy which was the
essence of His nature. It made Him that most odious of characters, a
_prude_.

As I meditated, and in following my idea I passed into a state which,
though highly interior, was not sufficiently interior for my
purpose--for I wanted, so to speak, to _see_ my idea--a voice audible
only to the inner hearing, yet quite distinct, said to me, "You have it
within you. Seek for it." Thus encouraged, I made a further effort at
concentration, when--to my utter surprise, for I had no expectation or
conception of such a thing--the whole scene of the incident appeared
palpably before me, like a living picture in a _camera obscura_, so
natural, minute and distinct as to leave nothing to be desired, and, at
the same time, utterly unlike any pictorial representation I had ever
seen of it. Close before me, on my right hand, stood the Temple, with
Jesus seated on a stone ledge in the porch, while ranged before Him was
a crowd of persons in the costumes of the country and the time; each
costume showing the grade or calling of its wearer. Standing together in
a group in front of Him were the disciples, and immediately beside them
were the accusers, who were readily recognisable by their ample robes
and sanctimonious demeanour; and quite close to Him, between Him and
them, stood the accused woman. As I approached the scene, moving
meteor-like through the air, He was in the act of lifting Himself up
from stooping to write on the ground, and I had a perfect view of His
face. He was of middle age, but, to my surprise, the type was that of a
Murillo, rather than a Raffaelle, and the lower portion of the face was
covered with a short, dark beard. The expression was worn and anxious,
and somewhat weary. The skin was rough as from exposure to the weather.
The eyes were deep-set and lustrous, and remarkable for the tenderness
of their gaze. One of the apostles, whom I at once recognised by his
comparative youthfulness as John, though his back was towards me as I
approached, was in the act of bending forwards to read the words just
traced in the dust on the pavement; and, as if drawn to him by some
potent attraction, I at once passed unhesitatingly into him as he bent
forward, and tried to read the words through his eyes. Their exact
purport escaped me; but the impression I obtained was that they were
unimportant in themselves, having been written merely to enable Jesus to
collect and calm Himself. For He was filled with a mighty indignation,
which was directed, not against the accused woman, but against the
by-standing representatives of the conventional orthodoxies, the chief
priests and Pharisees, her sanctimonious and hypocritical
accusers,--those moral vivisectors through whose pitilessness the
shrinking woman stood there exposed to the public gaze, while her fault
was so brutally blurted out in her presence for all to hear; for her
attitude showed her ready to sink with shame into the ground, and afraid
to look either her accusers or her Judge in the face. He, her Judge,
also has heard it, and knows that they who utter it are themselves a
thousand-fold greater sinners than she, inasmuch as that which she has
yielded through exigency either of passion or of compassion, has with
them been a cold-blooded habit engendered of ingrained impurity.

In contrast with them she stands out in His eyes an angel of innocence;
and an overwhelming indignation takes possession of Him, so that He will
not at once trust Himself to speak. His impulse is to drive them forth
with blows and reproaches from His presence, as once already He has
driven the barterers from the Temple. And so, to keep His wrath from
exploding, He stoops down and scribbles on the ground,--no matter what,
anything to keep Himself within bounds. In the exercise His spirit
calms. Indignation, He reflects, is too noble a thing to be expended
upon insensates such as they, and exhortation would be vain. He will try
sarcasm. So He raises himself up, and looks at them, very quietly, and
even assentingly. Yes, they are quite right; the law must be vindicated,
and so flagrant a sin severely punished. But, of course, only the
guiltless is entitled to inflict punishment on the guilty. Therefore He
says, "He of you who is blameless in respect of this sin, let him first
cast a stone at her." And having said this, He stoops down again to
write, this time to hide His smiles at their confusion, the sight of
which would but have incensed and hardened them. What! no rush for
ammunition wherewith to pound to death this only too human specimen of
humanity[24]! What can be the meaning of the general move among these
self-appointed censors of morals? "They which heard Him, being convicted
of their own consciences, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest
even unto the last." No wonder they crucified Him when they got their
chance. And no wonder that most of the ancient authorities omit all
mention of the incident. Even of His immediate biographers only he
records it who is styled "the Beloved," and whose name, office, and
character indicate him as the representative especially of the
love-principle in humanity.

Such were the impressions made on me by this vision while it lasted, and
written down at the time. And so strong in me was the feeling that I
could similarly recall the whole history of Jesus, that I mentally
addressed to the presences which I felt, though I could not see, around
me an inquiry whether I should then and there begin the attempt. The
reply, similarly given, was a decided negative so far as that present
time was concerned, but accompanied by an intimation that our future
work would comprise something of the kind; a prediction which was duly
fulfilled.

I found myself perplexed beyond measure to comprehend the _modus
operandi_ of this experience. No explanation was forthcoming, whether
from my own mind or from my illuminators, until long afterwards; and
when it came it was in reference immediately to similar experiences
received by my colleague, some of which likewise involved corresponding
personal recollections coinciding with but surpassing mine. In the
meantime the teaching given us comprised the doctrine of reincarnation,
stated so positively, systematically, and scientifically that, when
taken in conjunction with our experiences, we found that it, and it
alone, afforded a satisfactory explanation of them. And then it was
shown us that the method of the new Gospel of Interpretation, of which
we were the appointed recipients, was so ordered as to be itself a
demonstration of the truth of that doctrine, and that among the lives we
had lived, which qualified us for our mission, were those in which we
had been in association with Jesus and with each other[25]. Concerning
this doctrine, the motive for its suppression, and the fatal
consequences thereof to the religion of Christ, it will be time to speak
when describing the results attained by us. It is with our initial
experiences--those which constituted our initiation--that the present
concern lies.

There is one supreme experience in the spiritual life, known to mystics
as "the vision of Adonai," or God as the Lord. The reception of this
vision by us was, we were assured, a conclusive proof that nothing would
be withheld that was necessary to our full equipment for a complete
work. Although described several times in the Bible as an actual
occurrence, it had failed to find any response in our own consciousness,
more than if it had no existence. Nor had it ever been the subject of
intelligent comment by any Bible-expositors known to us. Rather did it
seem to have been entirely passed over as a matter wholly apart from
human cognition. Hence, when it was vouchsafed to us, it was entirely
without anticipation of its occurrence or previous knowledge even of its
possibility.

It was received first by myself, the manner of it being as follows. I
had observed that when I was following an idea inwards in search of its
primary meaning, and to that end concentrated my mind upon a point lying
within and beyond the apparent concept, I saw a whole vista of related
ideas stretching far away as if towards their source, in what I could
only suppose to be the Divine Mind; and I seemed at the same time to
reach a more interior region of my own consciousness; so that, supposing
man's system to consist of a series of concentric spheres, each fresh
effort to focus my mind upon a more recondite aspect of the idea under
analysis was accompanied and marked by a corresponding advance of the
perceptive point of the mind itself towards my own central sphere and
radiant point. And I was prompted to try to ascertain the extent to
which it was possible thus to concentrate myself interiorly, and what
would be the effect of reaching the mind's ultimate focus. I was
absolutely without knowledge or expectation when I yielded to the
impulse to make the attempt. I simply experimented on a faculty of
which I found myself newly possessed, with the view of discovering the
range of its capacity, being seated at my writing-table the while in
order to record the results as they came, and resolved to retain my hold
on my outer and circumferential consciousness no matter how far towards
my inner and central consciousness I might go. For I knew not whether I
should be able to regain the former if I once quitted my hold of it, or
to recollect the facts of the experience. At length I achieved my
object, though only by a strong effort, the tension occasioned by the
endeavour to keep both extremes of the consciousness in view at once
being very great.

Once well started on my quest, I found myself traversing a succession of
spheres or belts of a medium, the tenuity and luminance of which
increased at every stage of my progress; the impression produced being
that of mounting a vast ladder stretching from the circumference towards
the centre of a system, which was at once my own system, the solar
system, and the universal system, the three systems being at once
diverse and identical. My progress in this ascent was clearly dependent
upon my ability to concentrate the rays of my consciousness into a
focus. For, while to relax the effort was to recede outwards, to
intensify it was to advance inwards. The process was like that of
travelling by will power from the orbit of Saturn to the Sun--taking
Saturn as representing the seventh and outermost sphere of the spiritual
kosmos, and the Sun its central and radiant point--with the intermediate
orbits for stepping-stones and stages, I trying the while to keep both
extremes in view. Presently, by a supreme, and what I felt must be a
final, effort--for the tension was becoming too much for me, unless I
let go my hold of the outer--I succeeded in polarising the whole of the
convergent rays of my consciousness into the desired focus. And at the
same instant, as if through the sudden ignition of the rays thus fused
into a unity, I found myself confronted with a glory of unspeakable
whiteness and brightness, and of a lustre so intense as well-nigh to
beat me back. At the same instant, too, there came to me, as by a sudden
recollection, the sense of being already familiar with the phenomenon,
as also with its whole import, as if in virtue of having experienced it
in some former and forgotten state of being. I knew it to be the "Great
White Throne" of the seer of the Apocalypse. But though feeling that I
had no need to explore further, I resolved to make assurance doubly sure
by piercing, if I could, the almost blinding lustre, and seeing what it
enshrined. With a great effort I succeeded, and the glance revealed to
me that which I had felt must be there. This was the dual form of the
Son, the Word, the Logos, the Adonai, the "Sitter on the Throne," the
first formulation of Divinity, the unmanifest made manifest, the
unformulate formulate, the unindividuate individuate, God as the Lord,
proving by His Duality that God is Substance as well as Force, Love as
well as Will, feminine as well as masculine, Mother as well as Father.

Overjoyed at having this supreme problem solved in accordance with my
highest aspirations, my one thought was to return and proclaim the glad
news. But I had no sooner set myself to write down the things thus seen
and remembered, than I found myself constrained to maintain regarding
them the strictest silence, and this even as regarded my fellow-worker;
and all that I was permitted to say at that time was, that under a
sudden burst of illumination I had become absolutely aware of the truth
of the doctrine of the Duality in Unity of Deity to which that in
Humanity corresponds, both alike being twain in one. On seeking the
reason for the reticence thus imposed on me, I learned that the stage in
our work had not yet come when it could be given to the world, either
with safety to myself or with advantage to others; and it was necessary
that my colleague receive no intimation in advance of any experiences
which were to be given to her--of which this experience was one--in
order that her mind might be wholly free from bias or expectation. Only
so would our testimony have its due value as that of two independent
witnesses.

In the following summer the same vision was vouchsafed to her in a
measure and with a fulness far transcending mine[26].

On the occasion she had been forewarned of something of unusual
solemnity as about to occur, and prompted to make certain ceremonial
preparations obviously calculated to impress the imagination. The access
came upon her while standing by the open window, gazing at the moon,
then close upon the full. The first effect of the _afflatus_ was to
cause her to kneel and pray in a rapt attitude, with her arms extended
towards the sky. It appeared afterwards, that under an access of
spiritual exaltation, she had yielded to a sudden and uncontrollable
impulse to pray that she might be taken to the stars, and shown all the
glory of the universe. Presently she rose, and after gazing upwards in
ecstasy for a few moments, lowered her eyes, and, clasping her arms
around her head as if to shut out the view, uttered in tones of wonder,
mingled with moans and cries of anguish, the following tokens of the
intolerable splendour of the vision she had unwittingly invited:--

"Oh, I see masses, masses of stars! It makes me giddy to look at them. O
my God, what masses! Millions and millions! WHEELS of planets! O my God,
my God, why didst Thou create? It was by Will, all Will, that Thou didst
it. Oh! what might, what might of Will! Oh, what gulfs! what gulfs!
Millions and millions of miles broad and deep! Hold me! hold me up! I
shall sink--I shall sink into the gulfs. I am sick and giddy, as on a
billowy sea. I am on a sea, an ocean--the ocean of infinite space. Oh,
what depths! what depths! I sink--I fail! I cannot, cannot bear it!"

"I shall never come back. I have left my body for ever. I am dying; I
believe I am dead. Impossible to return from such a distance! Oh, what
colossal forms! They are the angels of the planets. Every planet has its
angel standing erect above it. And what beauty!--what marvellous beauty!
I see Raphael. I see the Angel of the Earth. He has six wings. He is a
God--the God of our planet. I see my genius, who called himself A.Z.;
but his name is Salathiel. Oh, how surpassingly beautiful he is! My
genius is a male, and his colour is ruby. Yours, Caro, is a female, and
sapphire. They are friends--they are the same--not two, but one; and for
that reason they have associated us together, and speak of themselves
sometimes as _I_, sometimes as _We_. It is the Angel of the Earth
himself that is your genius and mine, Caro. He it was who inspired you,
who spoke to you. And they call me 'Bitterness.' And I see sorrow--oh,
what unending sorrow do I behold! Sorrow, always sorrow, but never
without love. I shall always have love. How dim is this sphere!... I am
entering a brighter region now... Oh, the dazzling, dazzling brightness!
Hide me, hide me from it! I cannot, cannot bear it! It is agony supreme
to look upon. O God! O God! Thou art slaying me with Thy light. It is
the Throne itself, the Great White Throne of God that I behold! Oh, what
light! what light! It is like an emerald? a sapphire? No; a diamond! In
its midst stands Deity erect, His right hand raised aloft, and from Him
pours the light of light. Forth from His right hand streams the
universe, projected by the omnipotent repulsion of His will. Back to His
left, which is depressed and set backwards, returns the universe, drawn
by the attraction of His love. Repulsion and attraction, will and love,
right and left, these are the forces, centrifugal and centripetal, male
and female, whereby God creates and redeems. Adonai! O Adonai! Lord God
of life, made of the substance of light, how beautiful art Thou in Thine
everlasting youth! with Thy glowing golden locks, how adorable! And I
had thought of God as elderly and venerable! As if the Eternal could
grow old! And now not as Man only do I behold Thee! For now Thou art to
me as Woman. Lo, Thou art both. One, and Two also. And thereby dost Thou
produce creation. O God, O God! why didst Thou create this stupendous
existence? Surely, surely, it had been better in love to have restrained
Thy will. It was by will that Thou createdst, by will alone, not by
love, was it not?--was it not? I cannot see clearly. A cloud has come
between.

"I see Thee now as Woman. Maria is next beside Thee. Thou art Maria.
Maria is God. Oh Maria! God as Woman! Thee, thee I adore!
Maria-Aphrodite! Mother! Mother-God!

"They are returning with me now, I think. But I shall never get back.
What strange forms! how huge they are! All angels and archangels. Human
in form, yet some with eagles' heads. All the planets are inhabited! how
innumerable is the variety of forms! Oh! universe of existence, how
stupendous is existence! Oh! take me not near the sun; I cannot bear its
heat. Already do I feel myself burning. Here is Jupiter! It has nine
moons! Yes; nine. Some are exceedingly small. And, oh, how red it is! It
has so much iron. And what enormous men and women! There is evil there,
too. For evil is wherever are matter and limitation. But the people of
Jupiter are far better than we on earth. They know much more; they are
much wiser. There is less evil in their planet. Ah! and they have
another sense, too. What is it? No; I cannot describe it. I cannot tell
what it is. It differs from any of the others. We have nothing like it.
I cannot get back yet. I shall never get back. I believe I am dead. It
is only my body you are holding. It has grown cold for want of me. Yet
I must be approaching; it is growing shallower. We are passing out of
the depths. Yet I can never wholly return--never--never!"[27]

The account given of the vision of Adonai in Lecture IX. of "The Perfect
Way," was written solely from our joint experiences. It was with an
interest altogether novel in kind and degree that I now turned to the
Bible narratives of the same vision, and found that in the record of its
reception by the Elders of Israel, it is stated, as if in token of the
power of the spiritual battery with which Moses had surrounded himself,
that no less than seventy of his initiates were able to receive the
vision without magnetic reinforcement by the imposition of their
master's hands. But, as we learnt from our own manifold experiences, it
does not follow that because there is no imposition of visible hands, no
extraneous aid is rendered. The seeker after God cannot, even if he
would, accomplish his quest alone; but always are there attracted to him
those angelic beings whose office it is, as ministers of God, to sustain
and illuminate souls by the imposition of hands invisible to the outer
senses. In her case such aid was palpable. There was no effort on her
part. And she held converse with those by whom she was upborne in her
stupendous flight.

When in due course the time came for us to receive the ancient and
long-lost Gnosis which underlay the sacred religions and scriptures of
antiquity, the following was given us, and we recognised in it the
original Scripture from which the opening sentences in St John's Gospel
are drawn.

After defining the Elohim as comprising the two original principles of
all Being, "the Spirit and the Water," or Force and Substance, and
bringing up the process whereby Deity proceeds into manifestation to the
point described in Genesis in the words, "And the Spirit of God moved
upon the face of the Waters. And God _said_,"--the utterance thus
continues,--

     Then from the midst of the Divine Duality, the Only Begotten of God
     came forth:

     Adonai, the Word, the Voice invisible.

     He was in the beginning, and by Him were all things discovered.

     Without Him was not anything made which is visible.

     For He is the Manifestor, and in Him was the life of the world.

     God the nameless hath not revealed God, but Adonai hath revealed
     God from the beginning.

     He is the presentation of Elohim, and by Him the Gods are made
     manifest.

     He is the third aspect of the Divine Triad:

     Co-equal with the Spirit and the heavenly deep.

     For except by three in one, the Spirits of the Invisible Light
     could not have been made manifest.

     But now is the prism perfect, and the generation of the Gods
     discovered in their order.

     Adonai dissolves and resumes; in His two hands are the dual powers
     of all things.

     He is of His Father the Spirit, and of His Mother the great deep.

     Having the potency of both in Himself, and the power of things
     material.

     Yet being Himself invisible, for He is the cause, and not the
     effect.

     He is the Manifestor, and not that which is manifest.

     That which is manifest is the Divine Substance[28].

The reason for the suppression by the translators of the Bible of its
numerous affirmations of the Divine Duality, saving only those of
Genesis i. 26, 27, was in due time disclosed to us; as also was the
extent of the loss to man through the elimination of the feminine
principle from his conception of Original Being, and the consequent
perversion of the doctrine of the Trinity, and therein of the true
nature of Existence, in both its aspects, Creation and Redemption.

FOOTNOTES:

[18] In 1875. (Life A.K. Vol. I. p. 73.)

[19] The book was "England and Islam: or The Counsel of Caiaphas," which
was published in 1877.

[20] This vision occurred in London in November, 1876. It was merely
referred to in the previous editions of this book, but I have inserted
it here in full from "The Life of A.K." Vol. I. pp. 115-117. It is also
given in "England and Islam," pp. 438-442. S.H.H.

[21] p. 41.

[22] E. and I. p. 299.

[23] It is probable that E.M. intended this statement to apply only to
the N.T., or to the Gospels, because, before February, 1874, when he
first visited A.K. at her house (p. 2), she had received in sleep "an
exposition of the Story of the Fall, exhibiting it as a parable having a
significance purely spiritual" and E.M. certainty regarded the Biblical
Story of the Fall as "Scripture." S.H.H.

[24] The expression of which the above is an adaptation, had recently
been applied by Mr Gladstone to the Turkish power. For the period was
the eve of the Turco-Russian War; and Mr Gladstone had found vent for
his strong sacerdotal proclivities by siding fiercely against the
priest-hating and prophet-venerating Turks, and demanding their
expulsion from Europe, very much on the plea that "it was good for
Europe that one nation die for the rest." It was in recognition of the
part thus played by him that I took for the sub-title of my book
("England and Islam") "The Counsel of Caiaphas." The book--which was
written under a high degree of illumination--contained an earnest appeal
to Mr Gladstone, which, if heeded, would have saved the country from its
subsequent humiliations. Among other things I was clearly shown that the
policy which sought to detach England from the East, was of infernal
instigation, being intended to thwart the rapprochement between
Christianity and Buddhism from which the new humanity was to spring. But
the circumstances of the book's production--it was poured through me at
great speed and printed off as it came--precluded due revision and
elimination of redundant matter; and for these and other reasons, I have
suffered it to go out of print. E.M.

[25] There is another fact, referred to in "The Life of A.K.," that must
be taken into consideration in connection with experiences of this
nature, that is, "the survival for an indefinite period of the images of
events occurring on the earth, in the astral light, or memory of the
planet, called the anima mundi, which images can be evoked and beheld."
(Life A.K. Vol I. p. 125.) S.H.H.

[26] This "Vision of Adonai" by A.K. was merely referred to in the
previous editions of this book. I have extracted the following account
of the most interesting part of it from "The Life of A.K." (Vol. I. pp.
193-196.) S.H.H.

[27] Speaking of this vision, E.M. says:--"Her apprehension was not
without justification; for her body was completely torpid, and several
hours passed before consciousness was fully restored to it." (C.W.S. p.
283.)

[28] This is one of the illuminations that were received by A.K., during
the latter part of 1878, "directly from the hierarchy of the Church
Invisible and Celestial." Speaking of these illuminations, which "dealt
with the profoundest subjects of cognition," E.M. says that he and A.K.
found in them "a synthesis and an analysis combined of the sacred
mysteries of all the great religions of antiquity, and the true
_origines_ of Christianity as originally and divinely intended, together
with the secret and method of its corruption and perversion into that
which now bears its name"; and they "were at no loss to recognise in
them the destined Scriptures of the future, so long promised and at
length vouchsafed in interpretation of the Scriptures of the past."
(Life A.K. Vol. I. pp. 293, 294.) S.H.H.




CHAPTER III.

THE COMMUNICATION.


A striking feature for us was the exquisite tenderness and poetic
delicacy, both in matter and manner, which characterised all that we
received. Nor was there the intrusion of anything to suggest feelings
such as are described by Daniel when he says, "I saw this great vision,
and there remained no strength in me, neither was there breath left in
me." And not only was the element of terror so completely absent as to
make us feel as if we had entered on the dispensation of that "perfect
love which casteth out fear," but there was occasionally an element of
playfulness, and this on the part of our chiefest illuminators, the Gods
themselves. While their instructions were replete with every graceful
and delicate adornment such as could not but delight the poet and the
artist, and this without abatement of profundity or solemnity. By these
things it was intimated to us that the religion of the future was indeed
to be one of sweetness and light, and for the severe and gloomy spirit
of the Semite would be substituted the bright and joyous spirit of the
Greek. All this, we learnt, was because the new dispensation was to be
that of the "Woman," and in accord therefore with woman's nature and
sentiments. It was moreover to be introduced by means of the Woman's
faculty, the Intuition, and this as subsisting in _a_ woman.

The following exquisite little apologue, which was given us in the early
days of our novitiate, is an instance in point:--

     A blind man once lost himself in a forest. An angel took pity on
     him, and led him into an open place. As he went he received his
     sight. Then he saw the angel, and said to him, "Brother, what doest
     thou here? Suffer me to go before thee, for I am thine elder." So
     the man went first, taking the lead. But the angel spread his wings
     and returned to heaven. And darkness fell again upon him to whom
     sight had been given.

Here was a parable which, slight as it seemed, was truly Biblical for
the depth and manifoldness of its signification. For while it applied to
ourselves both separately and jointly, and to our work, it was also an
eternal verity applicable alike to the individual, the collective, and
the universal. For as the angel was to the man, so is the intuition to
the intellect, which of itself cannot transcend the sense-nature, but
remains blind and dark and lost in the wilderness of illusion. And as
she, my colleague, had supplemented me, so were we each to supplement in
ourselves intellect by intuition, in order to become capable of
knowledge and understanding. It was, moreover, a parable of the Fall and
of the Redemption, an epitome in short of man's spiritual history. And
it had been spelt out for us by the tilting of a table in one of our
earliest essays in spiritualism! So carefully guarded and daintily
taught were we from the outset.

The charming allegory of "The Wonderful Spectacles" which was given in
London on the 31st January, 1877, to my colleague in sleep, was not only
an instruction concerning the nature of her faculty and its
indispensableness as an adjunct to mine for the work assigned to us; it
was also a prophetic intimation of the character of that work, and of
the nature of the influences controlling it, which at the time was
altogether unsuspected by us. This is the account which she sent to me
by letter, for we were not then together:--

     I dreamt that I was walking alone on the sea-shore. The day was
     singularly clear and sunny. Inland lay the most beautiful landscape
     ever seen; and far off were ranges of tall hills, the highest peaks
     of which were white with glistening snow. Along the sands by the
     sea towards me came a man accoutred as a postman. He gave me a
     letter. It was from you. It ran thus:--

     "I have got hold of the rarest and most precious book extant. It
     was written before the world began. The text is easy enough to
     read; but the notes, which are very copious and numerous, are in
     such very minute and obscure characters that I cannot make them
     out. I want you to get for me the spectacles which Swedenborg used
     to wear; not the smaller pair--those he gave to Hans Christian
     Andersen--but the large pair, and these seem to have got mislaid. I
     think they are Spinoza's make. You know he was an optical-glass
     maker by profession, and the best we have ever had. See if you can
     get them for me"[29].

     When I looked up after reading this letter, I saw the postman
     hastening away across the sands, and I called out to him, "Stop!
     how am I to send the answer? Won't you wait for me?"

     He looked round, stopped, and came back to me.

     "I have the answer here," he said, tapping his letter bag, "and I
     shall deliver it immediately."

     "How can you have the answer before I have written it?" said I.
     "You are making a mistake."

     "No," said he, "In the city from which I come, the replies are all
     written at the office and sent out with the letters themselves.
     Your reply is in my bag."

     "Let me see it," I said. He took another letter from his wallet and
     gave it to me. I opened it, and read, in my own handwriting, this
     answer, addressed to you:--

     "The spectacles you want can be bought in London. But you will not
     be able to use them at once, for they have not been worn for many
     years, and they want cleaning sadly. This you will not be able to
     do yourself in London, because it is too dark there to see, and
     because your fingers are not small enough to clean them properly.
     Bring them here to me, and I will do it for you."

     I gave this letter back to the postman. He smiled and nodded at me;
     and I saw then to my astonishment that he wore a camel's-hair tunic
     round his waist. I had been on the point of addressing him--I know
     not why--as _Hermes_. But I now saw that it was John the Baptist;
     and in my fright at having spoken with so great a saint, I awoke.

This was the second suggestion of a Greek element in our work, the first
having been the slight allusion to Phoibos Apollo in the illumination
concerning the Marriage in Cana of Galilee[30]. The signification of the
connection between Hermes and John the Baptist remained unintelligible
to us until the key to it was given us in a revelation of the method of
the Bible-writers explaining their practice of representing principles
as persons. We then found that by the baptism or purification, physical
and mental, practised by John, was meant the course of life and thought
whereby alone man develops the faculty of the understanding of spiritual
things. And Hermes is the Greco-Egyptian name for the "second of the
Gods," called by Isaiah the Spirit of Understanding. Hence the adoption
of this name by the formulators of the Hermetic, or sacred books of
Egypt; and the favourite motto of the Hermetists:--

     "Est in Mercurio quicquid quoerunt sapientes,"

All is in the understanding that the wise seek,--Mercury being the Latin
equivalent for Hermes.

The mention of Swedenborg and Andersen implied their possession of the
faculty indispensable to our work, that of mystical insight, of which
they were the most notable recent representatives.

A larger part was played by Hermes in another instruction received a few
months later[31]. This was also given in sleep, the vision taking the
form of a "Banquet of the Gods" in which the seeress received the
following exhortation from him, in enforcement of the necessity of pure
and natural habits of life for the perfectionment of the faculties
requisite for full spiritual perception, when, having put into her hands
a branch of a fig-tree bearing upon it ripe fruit, he said:--

     "If you would be perfect, and able to know and to do all things,
     quit the heresy of Prometheus. Let fire warm and comfort you
     externally: it is heaven's gift. But do not wrest it from its
     rightful purpose, as did that betrayer of your race, to fill the
     veins of humanity with its contagion, and to consume your interior
     being with its breath. All of you are men of clay, as was the
     image which Prometheus made. Ye are nourished with stolen fire, and
     it consumes you. Of all the evil uses of heaven's good gifts, none
     is so evil as the internal use of fire. For your hot foods and
     drinks have consumed and dried up the magnetic power of your
     nerves, sealed your senses, and cut short your lives. Now, you
     neither see nor hear; for the fire in your organs consumes your
     senses. Ye are all blind and deaf, creatures of clay. We have sent
     you a book to read. Practise its precepts, and your senses shall be
     opened."

     Then, not recognising him, I said, "Tell me your name, Lord." At
     this he laughed and answered, "I have been about you from the
     beginning. I am the white cloud on the noon-day sky." "Do you,
     then," I asked, "desire the whole world to abandon the use of fire
     in preparing food and drink?"

     Instead of answering my question, he said, "We show you the
     excellent way. Two places only are vacant at our table. We have
     told you all that can be shown you on the level on which you stand.
     But our perfect gifts, the fruits of the Tree of Life, are beyond
     your reach now. We cannot give them to you until you are purified
     and have come up higher. The conditions are GOD'S; the will is with
     you"[32].

The allusion to Prometheus, and the fact that Hermes had been
represented in the Greek tragedy of that name as the executor of the
vengeance of the Gods upon Prometheus, as well also as the significance
of the fig-branch and the fact of its being the symbol of Hermes as the
Spirit of Understanding,--all these things were beyond her knowledge at
the time, some of them indeed having been long lost. But all were made
clear as our education for our work proceeded, and we learnt the
intention and recognised the necessity of restoring the Greek
presentment of the Sacred Mysteries in explanation of the Hebrew, and in
correction of the ecclesiastical presentment of Christianity. The
restoration was to be twofold, of faculty and of knowledge, the
knowledge to be recovered through the faculty by which it was originally
obtained. Hence the insistance on our adoption of the pure regimen of
the Seers of all time. Hence, too, the presentation to her by Hermes of
the fig-branch bearing ripe fruit. The parable of the cursing of the
barren fig-tree was explained to us as denoting the loss by the church
of the inward understanding, the Intuition. In the Seeress it was
restored; she was the appointed representative of it. The "time of the
end" was at hand, of the approach of which the budding of the fig-tree
was to be the sign. And here it was not merely budding and blossoming,
but bearing mature fruit to signify that in her the faculty was restored
in its perfection.

In an instruction subsequently given to me by her Genius, he said of
her, "I have fashioned a perfect instrument," implying that the process
of her preparation under his tuition had extended over numerous lives.
And again, "The Gods have given to their own a perfect ear."

Being desirous once to test the powers of a medium to whom she was
totally unknown even by name, she asked his controlling spirit about
herself and her faculty. "You are not a trance-medium at all!" the
spirit exclaimed in reply. "My medium is a trance-medium. You are far
beyond that. You are a spiritual lens. You are a mirror in which the
highest spirits--the Gods--can reflect their faces. You take the light
of the whole universe and divide it so that it can be understood, as it
has never been understood yet. Your gift is very extraordinary. You are
a glass to reflect the highest and the greatest to the world." This was
in 1877, before she was known in connection with the spiritual movement
of the age.

The description given of himself by Hermes as "the white cloud in the
noon-day sky," proved to be a quotation from an ancient ritual,
subsequently recovered by her, in which the "Hymn to Hermes"[33] opens
thus:--

     As a moving light between heaven and earth: as a white cloud
     assuming many shapes;

     He descends and rises: he guides and illumines; he transmutes
     himself from small to great, from bright to shadowy, from the
     opaque image to the diaphanous mist.

     Star of the East, conducting the Magi; cloud from whose midst the
     holy voice speaketh; by day a pillar of vapour, by night a shining
     flame.

All these are symbolic expressions for the Understanding, especially in
respect of divine things, so that Hermes is no individual soul or
spirit, but the divine spirit Itself operating as the second of the
Creative Elohim, and as a function therefore of man's own spirit when
duly unfolded and purified, in token whereof it is said in the recovered
hymn[34] to the Planet-God Iacchos--

     Within thee, O Man, is the Universe; the thrones of all the Gods
     are in thy temple....

     And the Spirits which speak unto thee are of thine own kingdom.

In the hymn of invocation summoning the Seeress to her mission in the
name of the two first of the "Holy Seven," the Spirits of Wisdom and
Understanding, both of whom were wont to manifest themselves to her,
Hermes is referred to as "the God who knows"; the other being
personified as Pallas Athena. "In the Celestial," we were informed, "all
things are Persons."

    "Wake, prophet-soul, the time draws near,
      'The God who knows' within thee stirs
      And speaks, for His thou art, and Hers
    Who bears the mystic shield and spear.

    A touch divine shall thrill thy brain,
      Thy soul shall leap to life, and lo!
      What she has known, again shall know,
    What she has seen, shall see again.

    The ancient past through which she came...."[35]

As the Spirit of Understanding, the name of Hermes signifies both Rock
and Interpreter. Hence the significance of the saying of Jesus, "Thou
art the Rock, and upon this Rock I will build My Church," which He
addressed not to the man Peter, but to the Spirit of Understanding whom
He discerned as the prompter of Peter's confession of faith. By this
Jesus implied that the only true and infallible church is that which is
founded on the Understanding, and not on authority whether of book,
tradition or institution. The utterance of Jesus was a citation from the
proem to the hymn to Hermes[36] recovered by us:--

     "He is as a rock between earth and heaven, and the Lord God shall
     build His Church thereon.

     As a city upon a mountain of stone, whose windows look forth on
     either side."

As our education proceeded we found indubitably that in excluding from
its curriculum the whole range of the knowledges represented by the term
"Hermetic," Ecclesiasticism has ignored the chief source of information
concerning the Christian _origines_. Doing which it has incurred the
reproach uttered by Jesus against those who took away the key of
knowledge, neither entering in themselves, nor suffering others to enter
in. And it was to restore this Gnosis, suppressed by the priests, that
the new revelation was promised, with the reception of which we found
ourselves charged, the prophecies pointing to a restoration both of
faculty and of knowledge.

Besides the Fig-branch of Hermes, there is another symbol of the
intuitional understanding which was disclosed to us as having special
and peculiar relation to the work set us. This symbol is Woman herself.
She had already, in the instruction concerning the marriage in Cana[37],
been shown to us as the inspirer and prompter. She was now shown to us
as the interpreter. The reason why the fig-tree was the emblem of the
inward understanding will be found in the citation presently to be
given; which is a portion of an instruction received in interpretation
of the prophecy of Daniel, re-enunciated by Jesus, concerning the
recognition of the "abomination of desolation standing in the holy
place"[38], as making and marking the time of the end of that generation
which, for its materialisation of spiritual things, was called by Him an
"adulterous," meaning an idolatrous, generation. It will be seen that in
the Scripture symbology, as the soul is the feminine principle in man's
spiritual system, and is called therefore the "Woman," the spirit being
the masculine principle; so in man's mental system the intuition as the
feminine mode of the mind is called the "Woman," and the intellect, as
the masculine mode, the "Man." The following is the citation in
question:--

     Behold the FIG-TREE, and learn her parable. When the branch thereof
     shall become tender, and her buds appear, know that the day of God
     is upon you."

     Wherefore, then, saith the Lord that the budding of the Fig-Tree
     shall foretell the end?

     Because the Fig-Tree is the symbol of the Divine Woman, as the Vine
     of the Divine Man.

     The Fig is the similitude of the Matrix, containing inward buds,
     bearing blossoms on its placenta, and bringing forth fruit in
     darkness. It is the Cup of Life, and its flesh is the seed-ground
     of new births.

     The stems of the Fig-Tree run with milk: her leaves are as human
     hands, like the leaves of her brother the Vine.

     And when the Fig-Tree shall bear figs, then shall be the Second
     Advent, the new sign of the Man bearing Water, and the
     manifestation of the Virgin-Mother crowned.

     For when the Lord would enter the holy city, to celebrate His Last
     Supper with His disciples, He sent before Him the Fisherman Peter
     to meet the Man of the Coming Sign.

     "There shall meet you a Man bearing a pitcher of Water."

     Because, as the Lord was first manifest at a wine-feast in the
     morning, so must He consummate His work at a wine-feast in the
     evening.

     It is His Pass-Over; for thereafter the Sun must pass into a new
     Sign.

     After the Fish, the Water-Carrier; but the Lamb of God remains
     always in the place of victory, being slain from the foundation of
     the world.

     For His place is the place of the Sun's triumph.

     After the Vine the Fig; for Adam is first formed, then Eve.

     And because our Lady is not yet manifest, our Lord is crucified.

     Therefore came He vainly seeking fruit upon the Fig-Tree, "for the
     time of figs was not yet."

     And from that day forth, because of the curse of Eve, no man has
     eaten fruit of the Fig-Tree.

     For the inward understanding has withered away, there is no
     discernment any more in men. They have crucified the Lord because
     of their ignorance, not knowing what they did.

     Wherefore, indeed, said our Lord to our Lady:--"Woman, what is
     between me and thee? For even _my_ hour is not yet come."

     Because until the hour of the Man is accomplished and fulfilled,
     the hour of the Woman must be deferred.

     Jesus is the Vine; Mary is the Fig-Tree. And the vintage must be
     completed and the wine trodden out, or ever the harvest of the Figs
     be gathered.

     But when the hour of our Lord is achieved; hanging on His Cross, He
     gives our Lady to the faithful.

     The chalice is drained, the lees are wrung out: then says He to His
     Elect:--"Behold thy Mother!"

     But so long as the grapes remain unplucked, the Vine has nought to
     do with the Fig-Tree, nor Jesus with Mary.

     He is first revealed, for He is the Word; afterwards shall come the
     hour of its Interpretation.

     And in that day every man shall sit under the VINE and the
     FIG-TREE; the Dayspring shall arise in the Orient, and the Fig-Tree
     shall bear her fruit.

     For, from the beginning, the Fig-leaf covered the shame of
     Incarnation, because the riddle of existence can be expounded only
     by him who has the Woman's secret. It is the riddle of the Sphinx.

     Look for that Tree which alone of all Trees bears a fruit
     blossoming interiorly, in concealment, and thou shalt discover the
     Fig.

     Look for the sufficient meaning of the manifest universe and of the
     written Word, and thou shalt find only their mystical sense.

     Cover the nakedness of Matter and of Nature with the Fig-leaf, and
     thou hast hidden all their shame. For the Fig is the Interpreter.

     So when the hour of Interpretation comes, and the Fig-Tree puts
     forth her buds, know that the time of the End and the dawning of
     the new Day are at hand,--"even at the doors."

On handing me the first portion of the instruction of which the
foregoing is the conclusion, "Mary"--to use the name which meanwhile had
been bestowed on her by our Illuminators in token of her office as
representative of the Soul and Intuition--confessed to some perplexity.
Her usual Illuminator for revelations of this order was Hermes, whose
Hebrew equivalent is Raphael. But on this occasion it had been a Hebrew
one, Gabriel. Her surprise and delight were great on being reminded that
Gabriel was Daniel's own inspirer in respect of the prophecy in
question, and that he had prophesied his return, saying, "Go thy way,
Daniel, for the words are closed up and sealed till the time of the
end.... Thou shalt rest and stand in thy lot at the end of the days."
The explanation given us was that both Daniel's own spirit and his
illuminating angel had come to her, the former serving as the vehicle of
the latter. As with all our other results similarly obtained, we judged
it entirely by its own intrinsic merits, and not by its alleged
derivation. We knew too well the propensity of low influences to
appropriate to themselves great and even divine names, and the liability
of the recipients to be deceived and to make the names the criterion
instead of the communication itself. But in no instance did it happen to
us that we had any cause to distrust the genuineness either of messenger
or of message, even when both claimed to be divine.

       *       *       *       *       *

The difference between the two interpretations or applications given us
of the incident at the "Marriage in Cana of Galilee," was explained to
us as an instance of the manifoldness of the sense of Scripture. The
parables have a separate meaning for each of the four planes of
existence[39].

We wondered much whether there were any parallels in history to our work
and to the manner of it; and especially as to how far an association
such as ours coincided with the ideas of the Hebrews. It was true that
they had both prophets and prophetesses, but did they work like us in
supplement and complement of each other? As regarded the recovery of
knowledge acquired in a previous life, Ezra also had ascribed his
recovery of the long lost Law to intuitional recollection occurring
under special illumination, saying, "The Spirit strengthened my memory."
But no mention is made of a female coadjutor. Nor does it appear that
the Vestal Virgins were similarly supplemented, except to be thrown into
the magnetic trance-state. In her zeal for her sex and her corresponding
distrust of men--sentiments which seemed to be inborn in her--"Mary" was
disposed to think that most of the prophesying of old had been done by
women, but that the credit had been appropriated by men. The answer to
these questionings was of a kind altogether unexpected by us, both as
regarded its manner and its matter. For neither of us had the smallest
suspicion that the book referred to was capable of the interpretation
given us of it. This was the book of Esther. The incident was as
follows:--

The occasion was an Easter Sunday[40], and we were at Paris. Electing
to remain indoors rather than encounter the crowds of holiday makers,
"Mary" was moved during the afternoon to sit for some communication by
joint writing. But we were no sooner seated than it was written,--

     "Do you, Caro[41], take a pencil and write, and let her look
     inwards, and we will dictate slowly."

"Mary" then became entranced, and delivered orally, repeating it slowly,
without break or pause, after a voice heard interiorly, the following
exposition of the book of Esther, an exposition entirely novel, as I
have said, to us, and, we believed, to the world. Some divines have
called the book a romance, but none have discovered that it is a
prophecy in the form of a parable. Luther, indeed, pronounced both it
and the Apocalypse to be so worthless that their destruction would be no
loss.

The most important book in the Bible for you to study now, and that most
nearly about to be fulfilled, is one of the most mystic books in the Old
Testament, the book of Esther.

This book is a mystic prophecy, written in the form of an actual
history. If I give you the key, the clue of the thread of it, it will be
the easiest thing in the world to unravel the whole.

     The great King Assuerus, who had all the world under his dominion,
     and possessed the wealth of all the nations, is the genius of the
     age.

     Queen Vasthi, who for her disobedience to the king was deposed from
     her royal seat, is the orthodox Catholic Church.

     The Jews, scattered among the nations under the dominion of the
     king, are the true Israel of God.

     Mardochi the Jew represents the spirit of intuitive reason and
     understanding.

     His enemy Aman is the spirit of materialism, taken into the favour
     and protection of the genius of the age, and exalted to the highest
     place in the world's councils after the deposition of the orthodox
     religion.

     Now Aman has a wife and ten sons.

     Esther--who, under the care and tuition of Mardochi, is brought up
     pure and virgin--is that spirit of love and sympathetic
     interpretation which shall redeem the world.

     I have told you that it shall be redeemed by a "woman."

     Now the several philosophical systems by which the councillors of
     the age propose to replace the dethroned Church, are one by one
     submitted to the judgment of the age; and Esther, coming last,
     shall find favour.

     Six years shall she be anointed with oil of myrrh, that is, with
     study and training severe and bitter, that she may be proficient in
     intellectual knowledge, as must all systems which seek the favour
     of the age.

     And six years with sweet perfumes, that is with the gracious
     loveliness of the imagery and poetry of the faiths of the past,
     that religion may not be lacking in sweetness and beauty.

     But she shall not seek to put on any of those adornments of dogma,
     or of mere sense, which, by trick of priestcraft, former systems
     have used to gain power or favour with the world and the age, and
     for which they have been found wanting.

     Now there come out of the darkness and the storm which shall arise
     upon the earth, two dragons[42].

     And they fight and tear each other, until there arises a star, a
     fountain of light, a queen, who is Esther[43].

     I have given you the key. Unlock the meaning of all that is
     written.

     I do not tell you if in the history of the past these voices had
     part in the world of men.

     If they had, guess now who were Mardochi and Esther.

     But I tell you that which shall be in the days about to come[44].

On consulting the Bible-dictionary, we found this relation between
Esther and Easter. The feast of Purim, which was instituted in token of
the deliverance wrought through Esther, coincides in date with Easter.
And it was on Easter day that this was given us, by way of enhancing the
correspondence between the parts assigned to us and those of Mordecai
and Esther. Later it was shown us that the parts assigned to Joseph and
Mary were, in one aspect, also identical with those of Mordecai and
Esther. This is the aspect in which Joseph represents the mind, and Mary
the soul in the regenerated human system.

Besides "Hermes," "Mary" received much of her illumination from her
"Genius," her relations with whom far surpassed not only my relations
with mine, but any that are recorded in history, the experiences of
Socrates, the chief instance on record, being insignificant both in
quantity and in quality as compared with hers. It is important,
therefore, to give an account of the nature and office of this order of
angels, which shall be rendered in his own words.

     Every man is a planet, having sun, moon, and stars. The Genius of a
     man is his satellite; God--the God of the man--is his sun, and the
     moon of this planet is Isis, its initiator or Genius. The Genius is
     made to minister to the man, and to give him light. But the light
     he gives is from God, and not of himself. He is not a planet but a
     moon, and his function is to light up the dark places of his
     planet.

     The day and night of the microcosm, man, are its positive and
     passive, or protective and reflective states. In the projective
     state we seek actively outwards; we aspire and will forcibly; we
     hold active communion with the God without. In the reflective state
     we look inwards; we commune with our own heart; we indraw and
     concentrate ourselves secretly and interiorly. During this
     condition the "Moon" enlightens our hidden chamber with her torch,
     and shows us ourselves in our interior recess.

     Who or what, then, is this moon? It is part of ourselves and
     revolves with us. It is our celestial affinity,--of whose order it
     is said--as by Jesus--"Their angels do always behold the face of My
     Father."

     Every human soul has a celestial affinity, which is part of his
     system and a type of his spiritual nature. This angelic counterpart
     is the bond of union between the man and God; and it is in virtue
     of his spiritual nature that this angel is attached to him....

     It is in virtue of man's being a planet that he has a moon. If he
     were not fourfold, as is the planet, he could not have one.
     Rudimentary men are not fourfold, they have not the Spirit.

     The Genius is the moon to the planet man, reflecting to him the
     Sun, or God, within him. For the Divine Spirit which animates and
     eternises the man, is the God of the man, the Sun that enlightens
     him.... And because the Genius reflects, not the planet, but the
     Sun, not the man (as do the astrals), but the God, his light is
     always to be trusted....

     The memory of the soul is recovered by a threefold operation--that
     of the Soul herself, of the Moon, and of the Sun. The Genius is not
     an informing spirit. He can tell nothing to the soul. All that she
     receives is already within herself. But in the darkness of the
     night, it would remain there undiscovered, but for the torch of the
     angel who enlightens. "Yea," says the angel Genius to his client,
     "I illuminate thee, but I instruct thee not. I warn thee, but I
     fight not. I attend, but I lead not. Thy treasure is within
     thyself. My light showeth where it lieth."...

     The voice of the Genius is the voice of God; for God speaks through
     him as a man through the horn of a trumpet. Thou mayest not adore
     him, for he is the instrument of God, and thy minister. But thou
     must obey him, for he hath no voice of his own, but sheweth thee
     the will of the Spirit.

We noted that the inspiring angel of the Apocalypse had twice similarly
spoken when the seer was about to worship him;--"See thou do it not; for
I am thy fellow-servant, and of thy brethren the prophets, and of them
which keep the sayings of this book: Worship God."

The like positive injunctions were given us also against according
divine honours to Jesus.

Besides Socrates, there is another notable historical "Spiritualist" of
whom our experiences vividly reminded us. This was Joan of Arc. The
correspondence between her and "Mary," in gifts, experiences, and
personal characteristics, was of the closest. We had no difficulty in
believing her history. Each of them, moreover, had a mission of
deliverance, the one political and national, the other spiritual and
universal.

Although we had learned to trust our Illuminators implicitly long before
the receipt of the above instruction, we were still without assurance as
to the source and method of the revelation. Be the knowledges received
by us as new as they might to our external selves, they never failed to
be familiar as recovered memories, excepting in such cases as they were
couched in terms of which the sense, being mystical, was not at once
recognised. But such difficulties were soon overcome, and the doctrine,
when fully apprehended, was always to us as necessary and self-evident
truth, and such as to excite wonder at the potency of the glamour which
had hitherto withheld it from the world's recognition. In every detail,
the revelation represented for us Common-Sense in its loftiest mode. For
the agreement it represented was not that of all men merely, but that of
all parts of Man: of mind, soul and spirit, intellect and intuition, and
these purified and unfolded to the utmost, and perfectly equilibrated.
Whatever the manner of its communication, whether heard by the interior
ear, seen by the interior eye, flashed on the mind as vivid ideas,
whether acquired waking or sleeping, or in the intermediate state of
trance-lucidity, or given in writing, it always seemed that we knew it
before, and did not require to be told it, but only to be reminded of
it.

The problem specially exercised myself. "Mary" had other work than the
analysis of our spiritual experiences. That was my special function. I
learnt to see in her a soul of surpassing luminousness and variousness,
who had been entrusted to my charge expressly in order that by my study
of her I might recover for the world's benefit the long-lost knowledge
of the soul's being, nature, and history. And so many and various were
her spiritual states, that she seemed to me to represent in turn every
stage of the soul's evolution, and to be "not one, but all mankind's
epitome."

This also used to occur so frequently as to be observed by both of us
and discussed between us. When in the process of my endeavour to find
the solution of some problem, such as the meaning of a parabolic or
otherwise obscure passage in Scripture, I had exhausted my stock of
tentative hypotheses, but, through consideration for her other and
engrossing work, refrained from imparting my need to her, she would
receive in sleep the desired solution, which she wrote down on waking,
and which invariably proved satisfactory beyond my highest imaginings.
And besides showing intimate acquaintance with the course of my thought,
it was couched in language which, for simplicity, dignity, purity, and
lucidity, was without an equal in literature; the English being that of
the best period of our literature, and better than the best even of that
period. She herself had a remarkable mastery of English, but these
compositions reduced her to despair, causing her to exclaim, "Why cannot
I write as well when I am awake as I do in my sleep!" Of course the
explanation lay in the limiting influence of the physical organism.

The frequency of this occurrence led me, in the absence of authoritative
explanation, to try the following, as an hypothesis purely tentative.
The revelations generally came to her when, through my inability to
find the interpretations which satisfied me, my work required them, and
they came independently of any desire or knowledge on her part. Might it
not be, then, that it was my own spirit who knew them and gave them to
her, finding her more sensitive to impression than myself? The
explanation was not one that either pleased or satisfied me, one reason
being that I took a delight in recognising the primacy accorded to her.
The idea occurred to me one night, and I pondered it the next day, but
did not divulge it. What happened on the evening of that day led me to
suspect that our Genii had suggested it to me in order to make it the
occasion of imparting to me the knowledge in question, namely, that of
the real source and method of the revelation.

For the experience to be properly appreciated it must be remembered that
"Mary" had no knowledge of the explanation suggested to me, and neither
of us had as yet entertained the idea of past lives as the key to our
present work. The question of Reincarnation itself had not come before
us, and far less the possibility of recovering the memory of the things
learnt in previous existences, much as we had been puzzled to account
for our experiences in the absence of some such explanation.

The proposal to sit for a written communication came from her, having
evidently been prompted by our illuminators. The method was one which
both they and we disliked, and it was adopted only when they desired to
address us both at once. So we sat for writing.

The result confirmed my surmise. We had scarcely seated ourselves when
the writing began, as if we were being waited for. And this is what was
written:--

     "We are instructed to say several things to-night. We are your
     Genii.

     "(To CARO.) In the first place, you entirely misconceive the
     process by which the Revelation comes to Mary. The method of this
     revelation is entirely interior. Mary is not a Medium; nor is she
     even a Seer as you understand the word. She is a Prophet. By this
     we mean that all she has ever written or will write, is from
     within, and not from without. She knows. She is not told. Hers is
     an old, old spirit. She is older than you are, Caro, older by many
     thousand years. Do not think that spirits other than her own are to
     be credited with the authorship of the new Gospel. As a proof of
     this, and to correct the false impression you have on the subject,
     the holy and inner truth, of which she is the depositary, will not
     in future be given to her by the former method. All she writes
     henceforth, she will write consciously. Yes, she must finish the
     new Evangel by conscious effort of brain and will."

Coming from a source which we had learnt to trust implicitly, and
according with our own highest conceptions, this message was supremely
satisfactory, and was welcomed accordingly. But it was followed
forthwith by another which excited feelings of a very different
character. For, as if expressly in order to prevent her from being made
vain-glorious and uplifted by it, they added--

     "(To MARY.) It may serve to exhibit the path by which you have
     come, and to suggest the nature of some ancient tendencies which
     may yet tarnish the mirror of a soul destined to attain perfection,
     to learn that you dwelt within the body of ----."

Here were given the name and character of a certain Roman dame of some
seventeen centuries ago, one of high station, but of a repute so evil as
to cause an immense shock to both of us. It does not come within the
design of this book to disclose the particular personalities with whom
we had been identified in the past[45]. Concerning this one it must
suffice to state here that, omitting from account one whole side of
"Mary's" character, we both recognised in the other side traits strongly
resembling those which had been indicated. And she subsequently
recovered distinct recollections of scenes in the life in question which
served to assure her on the point. Our discussions on the matter tended
to conclusions of which fuller knowledge brought the verification. It
was not one of those lives in virtue of which she was directly qualified
for her present work; but it was one of those lives of which the sin and
the suffering may well be conceived of as indispensable elements in the
education of a soul called to a lofty work and destiny in the future, in
accordance with the principle which finds expression in the sayings,
"The greater the sinner the greater the saint," and "_Pecca Fortiter_."
This also we discerned clearly, that, supposing it to be indeed a truth
that man is "made perfect through suffering," the experiences in the
course of which the suffering is undergone must imply sin as well as
pain and sorrow; since otherwise there would be a whole region of his
nature, namely the moral, in which he would remain unvitalised. The
lesson of which is that a man is alive only so far as he has lived.
There was yet another reflection that was prompted by the occasion in
question, and one which crowned and glorified the rest. This was the
assurance implied that none need despair. If the soul which had dwelt in
the body of the person named, could nevertheless become within
measureable time what "Mary" was now, and be "destined to attain
perfection," there is hope for all, and the doctrine of Reincarnation is
indeed a gospel of salvation. And herein we discerned a lesson hitherto
unsuspected so far as we were aware, in the parable of the Prodigal Son.
It is not the "elder brother" who stays at home that can best appreciate
the divine order; but the prodigal who has gone forth into the world of
experience to acquire knowledge for himself at first hand. They who have
been the most fully satiated with the husks of materiality, can--when
their time arrives for coming to their true selves--best estimate the
fare provided in the "Father's House." "He loveth most to whom most has
been forgiven.

While sitting alone one day and pondering these things, and particularly
the difficulty which people often find in correcting in themselves even
the faults which they deplore, this pregnant sentence was spoken audibly
to my inner hearing by a voice which I recognised as that of my
Genius:--"Tendencies encouraged for ages cannot be cured in a single
lifetime, but may require ages."

This further reflection also was suggested to me: that souls of
exceptional strength are reincarnated in bodies of exceptionally strong
passional natures, expressly in order to obtain the discipline which
comes of the effort to subdue them. All of which reflections tended to
exhibit the rashness of judging outward judgment in respect of others.
In order to judge righteous judgment it is necessary to know the
strength of their temptations, and of their efforts to resist them. And
these can be known only to God. The attainment of perfection, and
therein of salvation by conquest and not by flight,--this is the
principle of reincarnation. It is the _condition_ of Regeneration, which
is _from out of_ the body.

In due time we were able to recognise the whole plan of our work as so
ordered as to make the work itself a demonstration of the doctrine of
reincarnation. When once this doctrine had become a practical question
for us, it assumed a prominent place both in our teachings and in our
experiences. One instruction given us was no less striking in itself
than in the circumstances of its communication. The messenger was one
with whom we had never anticipated coming into relations, for, besides
not courting intercourse with the souls of the departed, we had not paid
to the writings of the person concerned the heed that would entitle us
to count him among our cordial sympathisers; and still less as among our
possible visitants. This was the famous Swedish Seer, Emmanuel
Swedenborg. In the course of what we afterwards found to be a strikingly
characteristic communication from him, he informed us that owing to the
difficulty our angels had in approaching us just then, through the
condition of the spiritual atmosphere, they had charged him with a
message to us, in which "Mary's" Genius had spoken to him of her as "A
soul of vast experience, who under his tuition had so painfully
acquired the evangel of which she was the depositary"; adding that he,
her Genius, "had been promised help to recover for her, in this
incarnation, the memory of all that was in the past"; and--which was the
point of the message--that it was to be put forward, not as we were then
contemplating putting it forward, but "as fragmentary specimens of such
recollection occurring to one now a woman, but formerly an initiate, who
is beginning to recover this power."

It will be interesting to remark on this experience, that to this day
the followers of Swedenborg set their faces against the doctrine of
reincarnation, expressly on the ground that their master denied it in
his lifetime. Whether Swedenborg really denied it is uncertain. There is
grave cause to doubt whether his writings on the subject have been
rightly understood or fairly represented. It has been maintained with
much show of reason that Swedenborg denied only the reincarnation of the
astral soul, not of the true soul; in which case he would be right.
Having once obtained access to us, his visits were for a time frequent,
the manner of them being various. For he came to us jointly and
separately, in waking and in sleeping--the latter to "Mary" only--and
audibly and visibly--the latter also to "Mary" only. He alluded to a
recent incarnation of mine, of which I have since had full and
independent proof. And he recognised our work as not only a confirmation
and continuation of his own, but also as a correction. For, as he gave
us to understand, he had been too much under the influence of the
current orthodoxy to be able to transmit the revelation given to him in
its proper purity, and unbiased by his own preconceptions. The doctrine
in respect of which he was chiefly desirous of being set right was that
of the Incarnation, the orthodox presentment of which he now saw to be
wrong, by reason of its deification of Jesus. In referring to the
perversion of the truth by the formulators of the Christian orthodoxy,
he said to us, with much emphasis, "Do not be too kind to the
Christians."

This allusion to an experience which belongs to the category of
"spiritualism" rather than to that of our special work, may with
advantage be followed by some account of our other experiences of the
same order, partly for the sake of testifying to the genuineness of the
experiences relied on by spiritualists, and partly in order to show the
distinction between the two orders of experience, as discerned by
persons whose familiarity with both qualified them to institute
comparison between them. For, having once become sensitised in the inner
and higher regions of the consciousness, we had become sensitised also
in the intermediate regions, and were able therefore to hold palpable
converse with the denizens of these also. And the converse thus held was
of the most satisfactory character, on the ground both of the certainty
of its reality and its intrinsic nature. Father, mother, wife, brothers,
sundry dear friends, and others interested in our work, all came to me,
and some of them to my colleague, and this several times, and in a
manner impossible to be distrusted. For my mother more than once spoke
to me aloud in her own unmistakeable voice, and in tones that anyone
might have heard, as I sat alone in my study. My wife came repeatedly to
both of us, jointly and separately, audibly, visibly, and tangibly;
giving us timely warnings of dangers unsuspected by us but proving to be
real. And one of my brothers cleared up a mystery which had hung over
his death. No mere attenuated wraiths or soulless phantoms were they who
thus visited us from "beyond the veil," they were strong, distinct,
intelligent individualities, veritable souls, palpitating with vitality,
and eager to render loving service. But they came spontaneously and
unevoked, for we never sought to compel their presence. Our quest was
purely and simply for truth, not for persons. But we considered that,
when these also came, as they did come, to ourselves directly and
without intervention of any third party, to refuse to receive them on
the ground that they had put off their bodies, would be equivalent to
repulsing our friends in the flesh on the ground that they had put off
their overcoats.

The spirit in which alone such intercourse is permissible will be seen
by the following citations from the instructions received by us. Terms
from the Hebrew, Greek, and Oriental Scriptures were used indifferently
by our illuminators. The word _Ruach_ in the following--which is Hebrew
for Spirit--is here used in a kabalistic sense to denote the astral soul
or ghost, as distinguished from the divine soul, the _Psyche_ or
_Neshamah_, and from the _Nephesh_ or mere phantom. The following is
from an instruction given to "Mary" in sleep, in direct solution of
certain perplexities.

     "Thou knowest that in the end, when Nirvâna is attained, the soul
     shall gather up all that it hath left within the astral of holy
     memories and worthy experience, and to this end the Ruach rises in
     the astral sphere, by the gradual decay and loss of its more
     material affinities, until these have so disintegrated and
     perished that its substance is thereby lightened and purified. But
     continual commerce and intercourse with earth add, as it were,
     fresh fuel to its earthly affinities, keeping these alive, and
     hindering its recall to its spiritual ego. Thus, therefore, the
     spiritual ego itself is detained from perfect absorption into the
     divine, and union therewith. For the Ruach shall not all die, if
     there be in it anything worthy of recall. The astral sphere is its
     purging chamber. For Saturn, who is Time, is the trier of all
     things; he devoureth all the dross; only that escapeth which in its
     nature is ethereal and destined to reign. And this death of the
     Ruach is gradual and natural. It is a process of elimination and
     disintegration, often--as men measure time--extending over many
     decades, or even centuries. And those Ruachs which appertain to
     wicked and evil persons, having strong wills inclined
     earthwards,--these persist longest and manifest most frequently and
     vividly, because they _rise not_, but, being destined to perish
     utterly, are not withdrawn from immediate contact with the earth.
     They are all dross; there is in them no redeemable element. But the
     Ruach of the righteous complaineth if thou disturb his evolution.
     'Why callest thou me? disturb me not. The memories of my earth-life
     are chains about my neck; the desire of the past detaineth me.
     Suffer me to rise towards my rest, and hinder me not with
     evocations. But let thy love go after me and encompass me; so shalt
     thou rise with me through sphere after sphere.'

     "For the good man upon earth can love nothing less than the divine.
     Wherefore that which he loveth in his friend is the divine, that
     is, the true and radiant self. And if he love it as differentiated
     from God, it is only on account of its separate tincture. For in
     the perfect light there are innumerable tinctures. And according to
     its celestial affinity, one soul loveth this or that splendour more
     than the rest. And when the righteous friend of the good man dieth,
     the love of the living man goeth after the true soul of the dead;
     and the strength and divinity of this love helpeth the purgation
     of the astral soul, the psychic ghost. It is to this astral soul,
     which ever remaineth near the living friend, an indication of the
     way it must also go,--a light shining upon the upward path that
     leads from the astral to the celestial and everlasting. For love,
     being divine, is _towards_ the divine. 'Love exalteth, love
     purifieth, love uplifteth.'"

And this also, which was similarly obtained, represents a further
restoration of the original, pure, undistorted and unmutilated doctrine
of Christianity concerning the communion of souls.

       *       *       *       *       *

     So weepest thou and lamentest, because the Soul thou lovest is
     taken from thy sight.

     And life seemeth to thee a bitter thing: yea, thou cursest the
     destiny of all living creatures.

     And thou deemest thy love of no avail, and thy tears as idle drops.

     Behold, Love is a ransom, and the tears thereof are prayers.

     And if thou have lived purely, thy fervent desire shall be counted
     grace to the soul of thy dead.

     For the burning and continual prayer of the just availeth much.

     Yea, thy love shall enfold the soul which thou lovest: it shall be
     unto him a wedding garment and a vesture of blessing.

     The baptism of thy sorrow shall baptize thy dead, and he shall rise
     because of it.

     Thy prayers shall lift him up, and thy tears shall encompass his
     steps: thy love shall be to him a light shining upon the upward
     way.

     And the angels of God shall say unto him, "O happy Soul, that art
     so well-beloved; that art made so strong with all these tears and
     sighs.

     "Praise the Father of Spirits therefor: for this great love shall
     save thee many incarnations.

     "Thou art advanced thereby; thou art drawn aloft and carried upward
     by cords of grace."

     For in such wise do souls profit one another and have communion,
     and receive and give blessing, the departed of the living, and the
     living of the departed.

     And so much the more as the heart within them is clean, and the way
     of their intention is innocent in the sight of God....

     Count not as lost thy suffering on behalf of other souls; for every
     cry is a prayer, and all prayer is power.

     That thou willest to do is done; thine intention is united to the
     Will of Divine Love.

     Nothing is lost of that which thou layest out for God and for thy
     brother.

     And it is love alone who redeemeth, and love hath nothing of her
     own[46].

But precious as is the communion of souls when thus conditioned, it was
not to them that we looked for light and guidance in our work. Nor,
indeed, to any persons at all in the sense in which the term is
ordinarily used. We looked steadfastly and directly to the Highest,
confidently leaving to the Highest the appointment both of the Messenger
and of the Message, but never failing to submit both manner and matter
to the keenest scrutiny of faculties which we had striven to the utmost
to attune to divine things. We were, moreover, emphatically warned from
the outset against allowing any intrusion into our work of the
influences accessible to the ordinary sensitive, the two planes being
absolutely distinct. Herein lay the significance of the saying of
"Mary's" Genius, that he had been "promised help to enable her to
recover in this incarnation the memory of all that is in the past." The
Genii themselves, although of the celestial, belong to its
circumferential and lowest sphere. They touch the astral, but do not
enter it. The help spoken of was to come from the innermost and highest
spheres. And the charge was accordingly given us, "Do not, then, seek
after 'controls.' Keep your temple for the Lord God of Hosts; and turn
out of it the money-changers, the dove-sellers, and the dealers in
curious arts, yea, with a scourge of cords if need be."

The manner in which we received the first full and particular account
respecting the method of revelation, was as follows. I was pondering to
myself with much intentness the nature and source of inspiration, and
desiring a test whereby to distinguish between true and false
inspiration. But I refrained for various reasons from consulting my
colleague, at least until I should have exhausted my own resources. And
she was still without any intimation of my need when she received the
instruction concerning inspiration and prophesying of which the
following is a portion. It was received in sleep, and the date was
shortly before we were told that her knowledges were due to experiences
undergone in previous lives[47]. When I had read it she said, referring
to the first verse, "But I did not ask." In reply to which I told her
that I had asked. It was addressed equally to both of us, as making
together one system.

     "I heard last night in my sleep a voice speaking to me, and
     saying--

     "You ask the method and nature of Inspiration, and the means
     whereby God revealeth the Truth.

     "Know that there is no enlightenment from without: the secret of
     things is revealed from within.

     "From without cometh no Divine Revelation: but the Spirit within
     beareth witness.

     "Think not that I tell you that which you know not: for except you
     know it, it cannot be given to you.

     "To him that hath it is given, and he hath the more abundantly.

     "None is a prophet save he who knoweth: the instructor of the
     people is a man of many lives.

     "Inborn knowledge and the perception of things, these are the
     sources of revelation: the Soul of the man instructeth him, having
     already learned by experience.

     "Intuition is inborn experience; that which the soul knoweth of old
     and of former years.

     "And Illumination is the Light of Wisdom, whereby a man perceiveth
     heavenly secrets.

     "Which Light is the Spirit of God within the man, showing unto him
     the things of God.

     "Do not think that I tell you anything you know not; all cometh
     from within: the Spirit that informeth is the Spirit of God in the
     prophet.

       *       *       *       *       *

     "Inspiration may indeed be mediumship, but it is conscious; and the
     knowledge of the prophet instructeth him.

     "Even though he speak in an ecstasy, he uttereth nothing that he
     knoweth not."

Then followed this apostrophe to the Prophet:--

     "Thou who art a prophet hast had many lives: yea, thou hast taught
     many nations, and hast stood before kings.

     And God hath instructed thee in the years that are past, and in the
     former times of the earth.

     By prayer, by fasting, by meditation, by painful seeking, hast thou
     attained that thou knowest.

     There is no knowledge but by labour: there is no intuition but by
     experience.

     I have seen thee on the hills of the East: I have followed thy
     steps in the wilderness: I have seen thee adore at sunrise: I have
     marked thy night watches in the caves of the mountains.

     Thou hast attained with patience, O prophet! God hath revealed the
     truth to thee from within."

     Thus, for the first time known to history, was given a definition
     of the nature and method of inspiration and prophecy, at once
     luminous, reasonable, and inexpugnable, to the full and final
     solution of this stupendous problem; and comporting with and
     explaining, as it did, all our own experiences, we felt that we
     could bear unreserved testimony to its truth. But, vast as was the
     addition thus made to the New Gospel of Interpretation, it did not
     exhaust the treasures revealed and communicated on that wondrous
     night; for it was followed immediately by a prophecy of the meaning
     of the new dispensation on which the world is entering, and of
     which our work is the introduction. At once Biblical in diction and
     character, it reached in loftiness the highest level of Biblical
     prophecy and inspiration, demonstrating the same world celestial
     and divine as the source of both. For which reason, and the
     crushing blow administered by it to the superstitions which have
     made of Christianity a by-word and a reproach by their gross
     materialisations of mysteries purely spiritual, it is reproduced in
     full here. The heading is of our own devising:--

A Prophecy of the Kingdom of the Soul, mystically called the Day of the
Woman.

     "And now I show you a mystery and a new thing, which is part of the
     mystery of the fourth day of creation.

     The word which shall come to save the world, shall be uttered by a
     woman.

     A woman shall conceive, and shall bring forth the tidings of
     salvation.

     For the reign of Adam is at its last hour; and God shall crown all
     things by the creation of Eve.

     Hitherto the man hath been alone, and hath had dominion over the
     earth.

     But when the woman shall be created, God shall give unto her the
     kingdom; and she shall be first in rule and highest in dignity.

     Yea, the last shall be first, and the elder shall serve the
     younger.

     So that women shall no more lament for their womanhood; but men
     shall rather say, "O that we had been born women!"

     For the strong shall be put down from their seat, and the meek
     shall be exalted to their place.

     The days of the Covenant of Manifestation are passing away: the
     Gospel of Interpretation cometh.

     There shall nothing new be told; but that which is ancient shall be
     interpreted.

     So that man the manifesto shall resign his office: and woman the
     interpreter shall give light to the world.

     Hers is the fourth office: she revealeth that which the Lord hath
     manifested.

     Hers is the light of the heavens, and the brightest of the planets
     of the holy seven.

     She is the fourth dimension; the eyes which enlighten; the power
     which draweth inward to God.

     And her kingdom cometh; the day of the exaltation of woman.

     And her reign shall be greater than the reign of the man: for Adam
     shall be put down from his place; and she shall have dominion for
     ever.

     And she who is alone shall bring forth more children to God, then
     she who hath an husband.

     There shall no more be a reproach against women: but against men
     shall be the reproach.

     For the woman is the crown of man, and the final manifestation of
     humanity.

     She is the nearest to the throne of God, when she shall be
     revealed.

     But the creation of woman is not yet complete: but it shall be
     complete in the time which is at hand.

     All things are thine, O Mother of God: all things are thine, O Thou
     who risest from the sea; and Thou shalt have dominion over all the
     worlds[48].

FOOTNOTES:

[29] A.K. knew nothing of Spinoza at this time, and was unaware that he
was an optician. Subsequent experience made it clear that the spectacles
in question were intended to represent her own remarkable faculty of
intuitional and interpretative perception. (See Life A.K. Vol. I. pp.
150-1.) S.H.H.

[30] Page 525

[31] The 22nd September, 1877.

[32] The book referred to was a treatise entitled "Fruit and Bread,"
which had been sent to her anonymously the previous day. E.M.

[33] The "Hymn to Hermes" was received by A.K. in 1878, "under
illumination occurring in sleep." She remembered it so perfectly that on
waking she wrote it without hesitation or error. Representing knowledges
long lost, by no amount of mere scholarship could it have been
reproduced. It is given at length in the P.W. pp. 357-358, and in "The
Life of A.K." Vol. I. p. 287. S.H.H.

[34] As to the recovery by A.K. of the Hymn to the Planet-God, see p.
122-3.

[35] These dream-verses are from "Through the Ages," a poem received by
A.K., "in sleep," in 1880. In this poem, "some of her earliest
incarnations" are referred to. (D. and D-S. p. 77.) S.H.H.

[36] See p. 122 note.

[37] See pp. 51-52-53 ante.

[38] That is, in the place of God and the Soul.

[39] The four planes being, from without inwards, those of the body,
mind, soul, and spirit. S.H.H.

[40] The 28th March, 1880. S.H.H.

[41] The name by which I was thus addressed had been given me by our
illuminators as an initiation name, as that of "Mary" to her. It denoted
love as the dominant note of our work, and was an equivalent for "John
the Beloved," who--we were given to understand--is one of the two
controlling "angels" of the new illumination--Daniel being the other--in
accordance with the intimations given by Jesus, one to His disciples and
the other to the Seer of the Apocalypse himself, that John should tarry
within reach of the earth-plane to bear part in the event which was to
constitute the second advent of Christ. These names had a further
correspondence in the Greek parable of Eros and Psyche, which denotes
love as the vivifying principle of the soul. E.M.

[42] Materialism and Superstition.

[43] The name Esther denotes a star or fountain of light, a dawn or
rising.

[44] The spelling of the names is that of the Douay Version, the
Protestants having relegated the second part of the book of Esther, in
which the latter part of this narrative occurs, to the Apocrypha. As
also that of Ezra above cited. E.M.

[45] These are disclosed in "The Life of A.K." The personality referred
to on this occasion was "Faustine, the Roman," the Empress of Marcus
Aurelius. (Life A.K. Vol. I. pp. 353-354.) S.H.H.

[46] The "Hymn of Aphrodite," including the "Discourse of the Communion
of Souls, and of the Uses of Love between Creature and Creature; being
part of the Golden Book of Venus," from which latter the above is taken,
is given in full in the P.W. pp. 350-356.

[47] The instruction concerning inspiration and prophesying was received
by A.K. in Paris on the 7th February, 1880. S.H.H.

[48] P.W. pp. 311-314. Life A.K. Vol. I. pp. 344-345.




CHAPTER IV.

THE ANTAGONISATION.


Even had we been disposed, which happily we were not, to exalt ourselves
on the strength of the loftiness of our mission, the constant proofs
afforded us of the paucity of our knowledge in comparison with what
remained to be known, would have effectually restrained us. But as it
was, we were from the first penetrated by the conviction that only in so
far as we succeeded in subordinating the individual to the universal,
the personal to the divine, could the work be successfully accomplished.
The man must make himself nothing that the God may be all. This was the
burden of the injunctions enforced on us throughout; the failures of
others through self-exaltation being adduced in illustration. For, as we
were plainly given to understand, "many are called but few are chosen";
the weak point in their system, the "Judas" by whom they are betrayed
and fail, being generally vanity. They are as instruments which mistake
themselves for the mind and hand which wield them.

Humility and Love, the violet and the red, these are the two extremes of
the prism which comprise between them all the Seven Spirits of God.
Blended, they make the royal purple; but the hue of that purple depends
on the spiritual states of the individuals themselves whose tinctures
they are. They were, we were told, the tinctures of our own souls as
indicated by the colours of our respective _auras_. "Mary's" was the
"blood-red ray of the innermost sphere," the sphere of the "first of the
Gods," wherein "love and wisdom are one." "For the Hebrews Uriel, for
the Greeks Phoibos, the Bright One of God." Mine was the violet of the
outermost sphere, that of the "last of the Gods," the "Spirit of the
Fear of the Lord," and therein of Reverence and Humility; for the Greeks
Saturn, and for the Hebrews Satan, the "Angel unfallen of the outermost
sphere." Only when man is built up of all the Gods, and bears upon him
the seal of each God, having climbed the ladder of his regeneration from
circumference to centre, from "Saturn" to the "Sun," is the "week" of
his new and spiritual creation accomplished. Similarly the co-operation
of all these divine potencies was indispensable to our work. And we were
emphatically warned of the dangers both to it and to ourselves, that
would come of the lack of the divine presence in respect of any of them.
Hence the necessity of maintaining the necessary conditions in
ourselves, and the caution addressed to us by "Hermes," in view of the
liability of mortals to appropriate to themselves the importance
appertaining to their mission when this transcends the ordinary. To this
end, in the following Exhortation, he disclosed to us the heights yet to
be ascended, saying--

     He whose adversaries fight with weapons of steel, must himself be
     armed in like manner, if he would not be ignominiously slain or
     save himself by flight.

     And not only so, but forasmuch as his adversaries may be many,
     while he is only one; it is even necessary that the steel he
     carries be of purer temper and of more subtle point and contrivance
     than theirs.

     I, Hermes, would arm you with such, that bearing a blade with a
     double edge, ye may be able to withstand in the evil hour.

     For it is written that the tree of life is guarded by a sword which
     turneth every way.

     Therefore I would have you armed both with a perfect philosophy and
     with the power of the divine life.

     And first the knowledge; that you and they who hear you may know
     the reason of the faith which is in you.

     But knowledge cannot prevail alone, and ye are not yet perfected.

     When the fulness of the time shall come, I will add unto you the
     power of the divine life.

     It is the life of contemplation, of fasting, of obedience, and of
     resistance.

     And afterwards the chrism, the power, and the glory. But these are
     not yet.

     Meanwhile remain together and perfect your philosophy.

     Boast not, and be not lifted up; for all things are God's, and ye
     are in God, and God in you.

     But when the word shall come to you, be ready to obey.

     There is but one way to power, and it is the way of obedience.

     Call no man your master or king upon the earth, lest ye forsake the
     spirit for the form and become idolaters.

     He who is indeed spiritual, and transformed into the divine image,
     desires a spiritual king.

     Purify your bodies, and eat no dead thing that has looked with
     living eyes upon the light of Heaven.

     For the eye is the symbol of brotherhood among you. Sight is the
     mystical sense.

     Let no man take the life of his brother to feed withal his own.

     But slay only such as are evil; in the name of the Lord.

     They are miserably deceived who expect eternal life, and restrain
     not their hands from blood and death.

     They are miserably deceived who look for wives from on high, and
     have not yet attained their manhood.

     Despise not the gift of knowledge; and make not spiritual eunuchs
     of yourselves.

     For Adam was first formed, then Eve.

     Ye are twain, the man with the woman, and she with him, neither man
     nor woman, but one creature.

     And the kingdom of God is within you[49].

The knowledge of the "Seven Spirits" whereby Deity operates in the
universe, has been completely dropped out of sight by the Christian
world. It is necessary, therefore, if only in vindication of the
importance attached to them by our illuminators, to recite the
instruction received by us concerning them, which is as follows. It is a
chapter from the recovered Gnosis[50]:--

     "In the bosom of the Eternal were all the Gods comprehended, as the
     seven spirits of the prism, contained in the Invisible Light.

       *       *       *       *       *

     By the Word of Elohim were the Seven Elohim manifest: even the
     Seven Spirits of God in the order of their precedence:

     The Spirit of Wisdom, the Spirit of Understanding, the Spirit of
     Counsel, the Spirit of Power, the Spirit of Knowledge, the Spirit
     of Righteousness, and the Spirit of Divine Awfulness.

     All these are coequal and coeternal.

     Each has the nature of the whole in itself: and each is a perfect
     entity.

     And the brightness of their manifestation shineth forth from the
     midst of each, as wheel within wheel, encircling the White Throne
     of the Invisible Trinity in Unity.

     These are the Divine fires which burn before the presence of God:
     which proceed from the Spirit, and are one with the Spirit.

     He is divided, yet not diminished: He is All, and He is One.

     For the Spirit of God is a flame of fire which the Word of God
     divideth into many: yet the original flame is not decreased, nor
     the power thereof nor the brightness thereof lessened.

     Thou mayest light many lamps from the flame of one; yet thou dost
     in nothing diminish that first flame.

     Now the Spirit of God is expressed by the Word of God, which is
     Adonai.

     For without the Word the Will could have had no utterance.

     Thus the Divine Will divided the Spirit of God, and the seven fires
     went forth from the bosom of God and became seven spiritual
     entities.

     They went forth into the Divine Substance, which is the substance
     of all that is."

As already stated, Hermes is the Greek name for the Second of the
creative Elohim above enumerated. Hence his special relation to the New
Gospel of Interpretation, the appeal of which is to the Understanding.

Being shown one day in vision the path we had to traverse for the
accomplishment of our work, "Mary" exclaimed:--

     "What a dreadfully difficult thing it is to steer one's way amidst
     such numbers of influences! I see a fine, bright-shining thread. It
     is our own path, and it is a pathway of light. But, oh! so narrow,
     so narrow, and all around are spirits trying to lure us from it.
     Here is Hermes, shining like a silver light. My Genius says that
     the way to get the utmost vitality on the spiritual plane is to
     abandon the plane of the body, and keep it quite low, by not
     indulging it. The time for bodily indulgence is passed with us.
     Abstinence, we have been told, and watchfulness and fasting are
     needful. And the time for the first of these has come. Nothing is
     gained without labour or won without suffering. Fasting and
     Watching and Abstinence, these are Beads and Rosary. It is a hard
     way and a long way, and it makes one wishful to turn back. We are
     not to be misled by the story, so much dwelt on to you by the
     Astrals, of Moses and Aaron[51]. They both were failures, who
     entered not into the land of Canaan. We must be patient and trust.
     We have to be cultivated on both planes, the intellectual and the
     spiritual, and not on the physical, for this draws from and saps
     the others."

So far as I was concerned, there was yet another rule that was made
absolute: this was the rule of Poverty. Desiring at one time to mitigate
the rigour of my enforced economies by working with a commercial intent,
and to that end endeavouring to finish a tale some time before
commenced, I found myself baffled by a complete withdrawal of power. I
was well aware that no romance I could devise would compare with the
romance I was living, and that any incidents I could invent would be
tame before those of my actual life; but it was not this that withheld
me. It was made clear to me that there was now only one direction and
one plane in which I was accessible to ideas and in which therefore I
could work, and this a direction and plane altogether incompatible with
mundane ends. But I had not fully reconciled myself to the loss of my
earning power, or resolved to refrain from further efforts in that
behalf, when I received the following experience.

I had gone to bed, but not to sleep, for thinking over the matter, when
I became aware of the presence of a group of spiritual influences, one
of whom, speaking for them all, said to me, in tones audible only to the
inner hearing, but distinct, measured and authoritative--

     "We whom you know as the Gods--Zeus, Phoibos, Hermes, and the
     rest--are actual celestial personalities, who are appointed to
     represent to mortals the principles and potencies called the Seven
     Spirits of God. We have chosen you for our instrument, and have
     tried you and proved you and instructed you; and you belong to us
     to do our work and not your own, save in so far as you make it your
     own. Only in such measure as you do this will you have any success.
     For you can do nothing without us now: and it is useless for you to
     attempt to do anything without our help."

By this and manifold other experiences, we had practical demonstration
of the existence of a celestial hierarchy consisting of souls perfected
and divinised, divided into orders corresponding to the "Seven Spirits
of God," and having for their function the illumination of those souls
of men still on earth who are accessible by them; and to whom they
manifest themselves in the forms recognised in the mysteries in which
such persons have formerly been initiated.

We had also manifold proofs of their power to arrest utterance before
persons unfit to be entrusted with the mysteries. The first instance
occurred to myself, and was in this wise. I was reading some passages in
illustration of our work to an old clerical friend who came to see me in
Paris, when I inadvertently turned to a part of the book which we had
been charged to keep secret. But before I had read a line, the air round
me became so dense with invisible presences that I was unable to see,
and my heart was clutched, as if by an invisible hand, and lifted up
towards my throat with such force as almost to choke me; while, at the
same instant, an overwhelming sense of my fault was impressed on my
mind, causing me for some hours to feel as one utterly God-forsaken and
cast off.

Not thinking that "Mary" was liable to err in the same way, or caring to
tell her of my trespass, I kept silence respecting this experience. But
a few weeks later it was repeated for her. She was speaking of our work
to a spiritualist friend with whom we were spending the evening, and, in
her eagerness, got upon topics which I recognised as forbidden. But
before I had time to remind her, she suddenly stopped short and rose
from her seat, gasping and dazed, and insisted on returning home
forthwith, to our hostess's great amazement and disappointment. Divining
what had occurred, I refrained from questioning her until we were
outside and alone, when in reply to me she described exactly what had
happened to me, using the words, "I did not want to be choked!" There
were other occasions on which I was cut short under like circumstances,
by having all that I meant to say suddenly and completely obliterated
from my mind.

Being desirous to know more of the adverse influences against which we
had been warned, and from which we suffered, "Mary" consulted her
illuminator respecting their origin and nature, when the following
colloquy ensued:--

     "They are," he said, "the powers which affect and influence
     Sensitives. They do not control, for they have no force.... They
     are Reflects. They have no real entity in themselves. They resemble
     mists which arise from the damp earth of low-lying lands, and which
     the heat of the sun disperses. Again, they are like vapours in high
     altitudes, upon which, if a man's shadow falls, he beholds himself
     as a giant. For these spirits invariably flatter and magnify a man
     to himself. And this is a sign whereby you may know them. They tell
     one that he is a king; another, that he is a Christ; another, that
     he is the wisest of mortals, and the like. For, being born of the
     fluids of the body, they are unspiritual and live _of_ the body."

     "Do they, then," I asked, "come from within the man?"

     "All things," he replied "come from within. A man's foes are they
     of his own household."

     "And how," I asked, "may we discern the Astrals from the higher
     spirits?"

     "I have told you of one sign;--they are flattering spirits. Now I
     will tell you of another. They always depreciate Woman. And they do
     this because their deadliest foe is the Intuition. And these, too,
     are signs. Is there anything strong? they will make it weak. Is
     there anything wise? they will make it foolish. Is there anything
     sublime? they will distort and travesty it. And this they do
     because they are exhalations of matter, and have no spiritual
     nature. Hence they pursue and persecute the Woman continually,
     sending after her a flood of vituperation like a torrent to sweep
     her away. But it shall be in vain. For God shall carry her to His
     throne, and she shall tread on the necks of them.

     "Therefore the High Gods will give through a woman the
     Interpretation which alone can save the world. A woman shall open
     the gates of the Kingdom to mankind, because Intuition only can
     redeem. Between the Woman and the Astrals there is always enmity;
     for they seek to destroy her and her office, and to put themselves
     in her place. They are the delusive shapes who tempted the saints
     of old with exceeding beauty and wiles of love, and great show of
     affection and flattery. Oh! beware of them when they flatter, for
     they spread a net for thy soul."

     "Am I, then, in danger from them?" I asked. "Am I, too, a
     Sensitive?" And he said,--

     "No, you are a Poet. And in that is your strength and your
     salvation. Poets are the children of the Sun, and the Sun illumines
     them. No poet can be vain or self-exalted; for he knows that he
     speaks only the words of God. 'I sing,' he says, 'because I must.'
     Learn a truth which is known only to the sons of God. The Spirit
     within you is divine. It is God. When you prophesy and when you
     sing, it is the Spirit within you which gives you utterance. It is
     the 'New Wine of Dionysos.' By this Spirit your body is
     enlightened, as is a lamp by the flame within it. Now, the flame is
     not the oil, for the oil may be there without the light. Yet the
     flame cannot be there without the oil. Your body, then, is the
     lamp-case into which the oil is poured. And this--the oil--is your
     soul, a fine and combustible fluid. And the flame is the Divine
     Spirit, which is not born of the oil, but is conveyed to it by the
     hand of God. You may quench this Spirit utterly, and thenceforward
     you will have no immortality; but when the lamp-case breaks, the
     oil will be spilt on the earth, and a few fumes will for a time
     arise from it, and then it will expend itself and leave at last no
     trace. Some oils are finer and more spontaneous than others. The
     finest is that of the soul of the poet. And in such a medium the
     flame of God's Spirit burns more clearly and powerfully, and
     brightly, so that sometimes mortal eyes can hardly endure its
     brightness. Of such an one the soul is filled with holy raptures.
     He sees as no other man sees, and the atmosphere about him is
     enkindled. His soul becomes transmuted into flame; and when the
     lamp of his body is shattered, his flame mounts and soars, and is
     united to the Divine Fire. Can such an one, think you, be
     vain-glorious or self-exalted, and lifted up? Oh no; he is one with
     God, and knows that without God he is nothing. I tell no man that
     he is a reincarnation of Moses, of Elias, or of Christ. But I tell
     him that he may have the Spirit of these if, like them, he be
     humble and self-abased, and obedient to the Divine Word."

So far from our being sufficiently advanced to escape molestation from
the sources thus indicated, there were times when we suffered much from
their incursions, even to the hindrance, for the time being, of the work
on which our whole hearts were set. Knowing that everything depended on
our unanimity, they sought to make division between us, and what they
lacked in force was more than made up for by subtlety[52]. Despite all
our vigilance, they would insinuate themselves like barbed and poisoned
arrows between the joints of our armour, there to rankle and envenom, so
insidious were their suggestions. They did not flatter, but attacked
us. So that it was a satisfaction to be assured that they attack those
only who are worth attacking. The very nature of our work was such as to
invite attack from them, being what they were.

Meanwhile, no experience was withheld that would serve to qualify us for
what proved to be an essential part of our work, the "discerning of
spirits" in the sense, not merely of perceiving them, but of
distinguishing their nature and character. And always was the lesson
given in a form which combined with its other features that of total
unexpectedness. Especially important was it for us to be able to
distinguish between the spirits _of_ the astral, against which we were
warned, and spirits _in_ the astral, namely, souls which had not yet
accomplished their emancipation, but were in course of doing so. But
while as regarded the former we were left to fight the battle for
ourselves, as regarded the latter there was a control exercised, and
none were permitted to approach us save such as had a message of service
which would minister to the solution of a present problem. Of this the
following experience was an instance. It helped us to a yet fuller
comprehension, both of the reasons which had dictated our association,
and of the liabilities to be guarded against.

It was evening[53], and we were occupied in our respective tasks, and so
entirely engrossed by them as to be disposed to resent any interruption,
when "Mary" bent across the table, and speaking in a low tone, said to
me, "There is a spirit in the room who wants to speak to us. Shall I let
him?" I assented on the condition that he had something to tell us
really worth hearing. She then became entranced, being magnetised by his
presence; and after telling me that he spoke with a strong American
accent and professed to be a "meta-physical doctor"--meaning, she
supposed, a doctor in metaphysics--repeated the following after him; for
I could neither see nor hear him:--

     "You two have been put together for a work which you could not do
     separately. I have been shown a chart of your past histories,
     containing your characters and your past incarnations. She is of a
     highly active, wilful disposition, and represents the centrifugal
     force. You, Caro, are her opposite, and, being contemplative and
     concentrated, represent the centripetal force. Without her
     expansive energy you would become altogether indrawn and inactive
     in deed; and without your restraining influence she would go forth
     and become dissipated in expansiveness. So extraordinary is her
     outward tendency that nothing but such an organism as she now has
     could repress it and keep it within bounds. It is for the work she
     has to do that she has been placed in a body of weakness and
     suffering. She is the man--and you the woman--element in your joint
     system. I can see only her female incarnations, but she has been a
     man much oftener than a woman; while you have generally been a
     woman, and would be one now but for the work you have to do. Even
     as a woman she has always been much more man than woman, for her
     wilfulness and recklessness have led her into enterprises of
     incredible daring. Nothing restrained her when her will prompted
     her. She would wreck any work to follow that, and only by
     combination with your centripetal tendency can she do the present
     work. As a man she has been initiated, once, a long time ago, in
     Thebes, afterwards in India. The things she has done in her past
     lives! Well, _I_ do not say they were wrong, for I
     do not hold the existence of moral evil. All things are allowed for
     good ends; but this is a difficult truth to express."

Here she spoke in her own person, having under his magnetism recovered
her own vision and recollection, saying--

     "O Caro! I can see your past. You have been--no, it is all wiped
     out. I cannot see it now. I am not allowed to see it. Why is this?
     I see my own past. I see India:--a magnificent glittering white
     marble temple, and elephants. How tame they are! They are all out,
     and feeding in a field or enclosure. And there are such a number of
     splendid red flowers, they are cactuses, and all prickly. The trees
     have all their foliage on the top, and such long stems. They are
     palms. The soil is of a white dust. And the sky is so clear and
     blue! But the heat is terrible. I see you again. Your colour is
     blue, inclining to indigo, owing to your want of expansiveness. But
     I cannot see your past, except that you are mostly a woman. And now
     I am by the Nile,--such a fine broad river!"

Here she returned to her normal consciousness, our visitor having taken
his departure.

Subsequently, in March, 1881, under the influence of a higher
illuminative power, she found herself as one of a group of initiates
making solemn procession through the aisles of a vast Egyptian temple,
and chanting in chorus the rituals which compose the marvellous "Hymn to
the Planet-God, Iacchos"[54]. For, long as it is, she was able to
reproduce it afterwards. It was thus, by her recovery of the memory of
knowledges acquired in past existences, that the divine originals were
recovered from which the Bible-writers largely derived at once their
doctrine and their diction. This is not to say that these were mere
borrowers and unilluminate. It is to say only that they recognised the
divinity of a prior revelation, and regarded it as a common heritage.
The truth is one.

Among the uses of the painful experience we were now undergoing[55] was
this one. It put me on a track of thought of high value in enabling me
to determine our respective positions in regard to our work. It was
clearly the endeavour of the astral influences by which we were being
assailed--the "haters of the mysteries" as our Genii called them[56]--to
break down our work by destroying that perfect harmony between us which
was the first condition of it. And all my endeavours failing to discover
in myself the weak point which rendered us accessible to them, carefully
as I sought there for it, I was forced to look for it in her, and was
disposed to ascribe it to the survival from the far past of some defect
of the affectional nature. For, as we were now learning, man has a dual
heredity, that of his physical parentage and that of his spiritual
selfhood. From the former of which he derives his outward
characteristics; and from the latter his inward character. The
experience just recited served to confirm the surmise, but it did
something else besides. It suggested to me the following explanation of
the situation as growing out of the exigencies of our work. That work
had for its purpose the accomplishment of the prophesied downfall of the
"world's sacrificial system." It meant war to the knife against all the
orthodoxies at once, religious, social, scientific. It meant a
death-"wrestle, not against flesh and blood, but against principalities,
against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world,
against spiritual wickedness in high places." It meant, in short, the
destruction foretold by the prophets of "that great city," the world's
materialistic system in Church, State, and Society, wherein the "Lord,"
the divinity in man, is ever systematically crucified, and its
replacement by the "Holy City" or system which comes down from the
heaven of a perfect ideal.

What, then, I asked myself, was the foremost moral need for the
instruments of such a work? Surely it was Courage. But courage subsists
under two modes. There is the courage which manifests itself in action
and aggression, and there is the courage which manifests itself in
endurance and resistance. The former is its masculine mode, the latter
its feminine mode. The former connotes Will, the latter connotes Love.
And these were the parts assigned respectively to us in our joint
system. Will and Love united had made the world; disunited, they had
ruined the world; reunited, they would redeem the world. As He and She,
King and Queen, positive and negative, centrifugal and centripetal, they
are the dual powers of all things, the constituent principles at once of
God and of Man. The whole Universe is Humanity, for it is the
manifestation of God, and they are the divine man and woman of all
being; in their conjunction omnipotent for good, in their disjunction
omnipotent for evil. And whereas it is the function of Will to inflict,
it is the function of Love to bear. It is not, then, to the lack of
these qualities that our troubles are due, but to the defect of them,
the defect of our respective qualities.

The tension of feeling induced by the situation had for me reached a
pitch at which I had cause for serious apprehension lest my organism
prove unequal to the strain. For, resolute though I myself was to endure
to the end, come what might, the effort involved had so greatly affected
my organic system as nearly to double the number of the heart's
pulsations, to the imminent risk of a rupture fatal to life or reason.
Such was the emergency when, longing for light and aid, I received at
night[57] the following experience, which I reproduce as recorded at the
time:--

     It seemed to me that I was sole spectator in some circus or
     hippodrome. And in the arena were some horses, seven in number,
     harnessed to a common centre, but all facing in different
     directions like the spokes of a wheel, and pulling frantically, so
     that the vehicle to which they were attached remained stationary
     between them, through their counterbalancing each other; while at
     the same time it seemed as if it must presently be dragged asunder
     into pieces. On looking at it more closely, the vehicle seemed to
     become a person who was attempting to drive the horses, but was
     unable to get them into a line; and, strange to say, the driver was
     one and identical both with the horses and the vehicle, so that it
     was a living person who was in danger of being torn asunder by
     creatures who were in reality himself. While wondering what this
     meant, some one addressed me and said that if I would do any good,
     I must help to control and direct the animals which were thus
     pulling their owner asunder. And that the only way to do this was
     by so disposing myself that I should be at one and the same time in
     the centre with the driver, to help him to curb and direct his
     steeds, and outside at their heads in order to compel their
     submission. And not only must I be indifferent to their ramping and
     chafing, I must even suffer myself to be struck and wounded and
     trampled upon to any extent without flinching; for only when I was
     so unconscious of self as to be indifferent as to what might happen
     to me, would they cease to have power against me. And the reason
     why I must be also in the centre was that only there could I
     effectually co-operate with the driver to enable him to do his part
     in directing what in reality were the forces, as yet unbroken in,
     of his own system, into the road it was necessary for us both to
     follow. We were destined to be fellow-travellers, and our journey
     was to be made together and with that team. It could not be made by
     one of us without the other, and the failure to effect a complete
     conjunction and co-operation would bring certain ruin to the hopes
     of both of us and of all who looked to us. The owner of the horses,
     I was assured, could not of himself control them, and I could only
     enable him to do so by an absolute surrender of myself.

Applying this vision to the situation, the moral was obvious so far as I
was concerned, and I wondered whether "Mary" would receive anything
equally suggestive for herself. In the morning, after remaining
unusually late in her room, she silently handed me the following account
of an experience which had similarly and simultaneously been received by
her:--

     "I was shown two stars near each other, both of them shining with a
     clear bright light, only that of one the light had a purple tinge,
     and of the other a blood colour; and a great Angel stood beside me
     and bade me look at them attentively. I did so, and saw that the
     stars were not round, but seemed to have a piece cut out of the
     globe of each of them. And I said to the Angel, 'The stars are not
     perfect; but instead of being round, they are uneven.' He told me
     to look again; and I did so, and saw that each globe was really
     perfect, but that in each a small portion remained dark so as to
     present the appearance of having a piece out; and I noticed that
     these dark portions of the two stars were turned towards each
     other. Upon this I looked to the Angel for the explanation.

     And the Angel said to me, 'These stars derive their light not only
     from the sun but from each other. If there be darkness in one of
     them, the corresponding face of the other will likewise be
     darkened; and how shall either reflect perfectly the image of the
     sun if it be dark to its companion star? For how shall it respond
     to that which is above all, if it respond not to that which is
     nearest?'

     And I said, 'Lord, if the darkness in one of these stars be caused
     by the darkness in its fellow, which of them was first darkened?'

     Then he answered me and said, 'These stars are of different
     tinctures; one is of the sapphire, the other of the sardonyx. Of
     the first the atmosphere is cool and equable; of the other it is
     burning and irregular. The spirit of the first is as God towards
     man; the spirit of the second is as the soul towards God. The first
     loves; the second aspires. And the office of the spirit which loves
     is outwards; while the office of the spirit which aspires is
     upwards. The light of the first, which is blue, enfolds, and
     contains, and embraces, and sustains. The light of the second,
     which is red, is as a flame which scorches, and burns, and
     troubles, and seeks God only, and his duty is not to the outward,
     for it is not given to him to love. God, whom he seeks, _is_ love;
     and therefore is he drawn upward to God only. But the spirit of his
     fellow descends. She indraws, and blesses, and confers; and hers is
     the office which redeems. Wherefore if she fail in her love, her
     failure is greater than his who hath no love; and to be perfect she
     must forgive until the seventy times seven, and be great in
     humility. For the violet, which is the colour of humility, is of
     the blue. And if she seek her own, or yield not in outward things,
     her nature is not perfected, and her light is darkened. Let Love,
     therefore, think not of herself, for she hath no self, but all that
     she hath is towards others, and only in giving and forgiving is she
     rich. If, on the contrary, she make a self withinwards, her light
     is withdrawn and troubled, and she is not perfect, and if she
     demand of another that which he hath not, then she seeketh her own,
     and her light is darkened. And if she be darkened towards him, he
     also will darken towards her, in respect, that is, of
     enlightenment. And thus her failure of love will break the
     communion with the Divine, which is through him. He cannot darken
     outwardly first; for love is not of him. If he darken of himself,
     it must be within towards God. But that which he receives of God,
     he gives not forth himself. But he burns centrally and enlightens
     his fellow, and she gives it forth according to her office. And if
     she darken in any way outwardly, she cannot receive enlightenment,
     but darkens the burning star likewise, and so hinders their
     inter-communion.'

Having thus spoken, the Angel looked upon me and said, 'Ye are the two
stars, and to one is given the office of the Prophet, and to the other
the office of the Redeemer. But to be Prophet and Redeemer in one, this
is the glory of the Christ.'"

Here again was an intimation that on one plane at least of our
respective systems she was of masculine and I of feminine potency, with
functions to correspond. That these functions were capable of being
described in the terms employed was, we felt, no reason for arrogating
high places to ourselves. Rather did we consider that everything is
according to its degree; and that, as for persons, if the Gods were to
wait until they found perfect instruments, or at least perfect persons
for their instruments, they would never begin. And this also, that if
the world were in a condition to produce such persons, it would have no
need of redemption. Had not even Jesus Himself been "crucified through
weakness"?

In view of the intensity of the distress undergone in this connection, I
found myself recalling the remark of Plato, "Many begin the mysteries,
but few complete them." My only wonder was that any should survive the
ordeals, if they approached ours in severity. Meanwhile it was said to
us by way of encouragement, "Be sure there is trouble in store. No man
ever got to the Promised Land without first going through the
wilderness."

The instruction to "Mary" had not only justified my surmise, it also met
and corrected her in respect of the chief cause of our trouble. This was
her disposition, at astral instigation, to withhold from me the products
of her illuminations, and even to refrain from writing them down[58], on
the specious pretext that they were meant for her own exclusive
benefit, and were too sacred to be given to the world, or even to me;
and she had failed to discern the source and motive of these
suggestions. So effectually had what were really spirits of darkness
disguised themselves as angels of light.

The importance attached to the occult significance of our "tinctures"
received illustration in this wise. Permission had been given us to make
an exception to the rule of secrecy imposed with regard to certain of
the Scriptures received by us, in favour of a friend[59] who took so
warm an interest in our work as to be eager to render it material aid in
the future should occasion arise. It was her mission, she declared, to
do so. But when the day appointed for the reading came, "Mary" was so
ill that her going seemed to be impossible, and the question accordingly
arose as to whether I might go alone and read them without her. We had
no sooner begun to consider the point than she became entranced, and was
shown a large open volume, the book of the Greater Mysteries to which
our Scriptures belonged, surrounded by an Iris composed of all the
colours of the rainbow. She was then shown the following lines, which I
wrote down as she repeated them:--

     "The one in Red guards his privileges, and claims to be present
     whatever is read.

     For the air is filled with the haters of the Mysteries.

     Therefore for your sake the chain must be complete;

     And the Light must be refracted round you seven times.

     He who is Red stands within the holy circle.

     And the Violet guards the outermost.

     For the Word is a Word of Mystery, and they who guard it are Seven.

     Beware that nothing you hear be told unless the circle be perfect.

     And this charge we lay upon you until the work be accomplished.

     Fire and sword and war are against you; you walk in the midst of
     commotion.

     And your life is in peril every hour until the words be completed."

Up to the latest moment of the interval before the appointment it seemed
impossible for her to go. She then suddenly recovered as by miracle, and
was able to attend the reading.

The liabilities of our position subsequently[60] received this further
illustration. "Mary" was introduced in sleep, by her Genius, into an
apartment in the spiritual world which purported to be the laboratory of
William Lilly, the famous astrologer who had foretold the great plague
and fire of London in 1666, in order to have her horoscope told by him,
he still pursuing his favourite studies. On quitting him she caught
sight of a pile of books, one of which contained the Gnosis we were in
course of recovering. The following colloquy then ensued:--

"You also have these Scriptures!" she exclaimed.

"Yes," said he, "but I keep them for myself alone."

"And why so," she asked, "since, if you have them, they are for the
learning of others likewise? Will you not rather communicate these
saving truths to thirsty souls?"

"I will communicate them," said he, fixing his eyes on her intently,
"when I can find Seven Men who for forty days have tasted no flesh,
whose hands have shed no blood, and whose tongues have tasted of none."

"But if you find not Seven?"

"Then, mayhap, I shall find Five."

"And if not Five?"

"Then, maybe, I shall meet with Three."

"But even this may be hard to find, and if you should not meet with
Three, what then will you do?"

"One Neophyte would not be able to protect himself."

In communicating to her the results of his calculations, he had said
that owing to the propensities indulged in certain of her former lives,
she had made for herself a destiny which ensured suffering and failure,
except when living in a similar manner; doing which she would have a
life of unbounded success. "But," he continued, "your horoscope has
nothing for you but misfortune so long as you persist in a virtuous
course of life, and, indeed, it is now too late to adopt another. I
speak herein according to your Fortune, not in regard to your Inner
life. With that I have no concern. I tell you what is forecast for you
on the material and actual planisphere of your Nativity.... I see
nothing but misfortune before you. Yea, if you persist in virtue, it is
not unlikely that you may be stript of all your worldly goods, and of
all you possess, and this evil fortune will follow your nearest
associates."

To her enquiry, "Can I never overcome this evil prognostic?" he replied
that she could do so only by outliving the time appointed for her
natural life in the career indicated, and added this advice, "Steel
yourself; learn to suffer; become a Stoic; care not. If Misfortune be
yours, make it your Fortune. Let Poverty become to you Riches. Let Loss
be Gain. Let Sickness be Health. Let Pain be Pleasure. Let Evil Report
be Good Report. Yea, let Death be Life. Fortune is in the Imagination.
If you believe you have all things, they are truly yours." He concluded
with an explanation reconciling destiny with free will, and vindicating
the divine justice, in a manner which removed all our difficulties on
those points, and, as we later came to learn, was entirely in accordance
with the Hindu doctrine of "Karma," of which at this time we had never
heard[61].

There was no exaggeration in the terms of the warning of danger. We were
constantly made aware of the presence of the malignant entities above
described focusing their influences on us to prevent the accomplishment
of our work, and requiring the utmost vigilance on our part, as well
also as on the part of our illuminators, to thwart their purpose. And we
had good reason to believe that our difficulties and dangers were
enhanced through "Mary's" attendances at the schools and hospitals,
owing to the evil nature of the influences there dominant under a
regimen grossly materialistic, and her liability to be fastened upon and
accompanied home by them. The outer walls of her spiritual system--it
was explained to us--were not yet completed, owing to the vastness of
the circuit of her selfhood; and hence her accessibility to the
incursion of noxious influences from without. The treatment of the
patients by men trained in the physiological laboratory, and bent upon
turning the hospital ward also into a laboratory with the patients
themselves for the victims of cruel and wanton experimentation, would
send her home boiling with indignation and wrath, to the destruction of
the serenity and self-control requisite for our spiritual work.

It was clear to us that no experience was to be wanting to exhibit the
contrast between the world's actual and the world's possible. The
overthrow of "the world's sacrificial system" meant salvation for man
and beast. The condition of all really redemptive work is a "descent
into hell." The following instruction to us is a typical one:--

     "Teach the doctrine of the Universal Soul and the Immortality of
     all creatures. Knowledge of this is what the world most needs, and
     this is the keynote of your joint mission. On this you must build;
     it is the key-stone of the arch. The perfect life is not attainable
     for man alone. The whole world must be redeemed under the new
     gospel you are to teach."

The following "Counsel of Perfection" which was received[62] by "Mary,"
is an exquisite expression of the same theme:--

     I dreamed that I was in a large room, and there were in it seven
     persons, all men, sitting at one long table; and each of them had
     before him a scroll, some having books also; and all were
     greyheaded and bent with age save one, and this was a youth of
     about twenty, without hair on his face. One of the aged men, who
     had his finger on a place in a book open before him, said:

     "This spirit, who is of our order, writes in this book,--'Be ye
     perfect, therefore, as your Father in heaven is perfect.' How shall
     we understand this word 'perfection'?" And another of the old men,
     looking up, answered, "It must mean Wisdom, for wisdom is the sum
     of perfection." And another old man said, "That cannot be; for no
     creature can be wise as God is wise. Where is he among us who could
     attain to such a state? That which is part only, cannot comprehend
     the whole. To bid a creature to be wise as God is wise would be
     mockery."

     Then a fourth old man said:--"It must be Truth that is intended;
     for truth only is perfection." But he who sat next the last speaker
     answered, "Truth also is partial; for where is he among us who
     shall be able to see as God sees?"

     And the sixth said, "It must surely be Justice; for this is the
     whole of righteousness." And the old man who had spoken first,
     answered him:--"Not so; for justice comprehends vengeance, and it
     is written that vengeance is the Lord's alone."

     Then the young man stood up with an open book in his hand and
     said:--"I have here another record of one who likewise heard these
     words. Let us see whether his rendering of them can help us to the
     knowledge we seek." And he found a place in the book and read
     aloud:--

     "Be ye merciful, even as your Father is merciful."

     And all of them closed their books and fixed their eyes upon me.

That it was possible at all for her to study medicine in a school in
which vivisection was an all prevailing practice, was only because she
set her face resolutely against it, by refusing to attend any place or
occasion where or on which it took place, and relying for her own
education chiefly on private tuition. It was an essential part of her
plan to prove that such experimentation was not necessary for a degree.
And this she effectually demonstrated by accomplishing her
student-course with rare expedition and distinction, despite her many
and severe illnesses and her frequent change of professors. For one
after another resigned the office on account of her refusal to allow
them to experiment on live animals at her lessons. Not until she had
secured her diploma did she enter a physiological laboratory. And then
only in order to qualify herself by personal experience to denounce the
practice. For herself it was not necessary, she declared, to see a
murder or a robbery committed to know that it is a crime.

The following incident shows how adverse the conditions of modern life
were to our spiritual work:--

Being in London one Christmas evening[63], and speaking to me under
illumination, "Mary" suddenly broke off and said--

"Do not ask me such deep questions just now, for I cannot see clearly,
and it hurts me to look. The atmosphere is thick with the blood shed for
the season's festivities. The Astral Belt is everywhere dense with
blood. My Genius says that if we were in some country where the
conditions of life are purer, we could live in constant communication
with the spiritual world. For the earth here whirls round as in a cloud
of blood like red fire. He says distinctly and emphatically that the
salvation of the world is impossible while people nourish themselves on
blood. The whole globe is like one vast charnel-house. The magnetism is
intercepted. The blood strengthens the bonds between the Astrals and the
Earth.... This time, which ought to be the best for spiritual communion,
is the worst, on account of the horrid mode of living. Pray wake me up:
I cannot bear looking; for I see the blood and hear the cries of the
poor slaughtered creatures." Here her distress was so extreme that she
wept bitterly, and some days passed before she fully recovered her
composure.

Our first acquaintance with any literature kindred to our special work
took place toward the close of our sojourn in Paris[64]. It was due to
the arrival of the friend in whose favour the exception had been made in
respect of the reading of our Mysteries, and who was the possessor of an
excellent library, which she placed at our disposal, of precisely the
books it had now become necessary for us to read. This was Marie,
Countess of Caithness and Duchesse de Pomár, who had for many years been
a spiritualist of zeal so ardent that--as I now came to learn--she had
been wont to make my conversion to that faith a matter of special
prayer, long before I had been able to contemplate such an event as
within the range of probability. Of wide culture, open mind, and large
sympathies, she had an enthusiastic and intelligent appreciation of our
work, and her arrival on the scene proved so timely as to point to
superior direction. We were now able to begin to make acquaintance with
many of the seers, mystics, and occultists of past ages, from the
Neoplatonists, Hermetists, Rosicrucians, and other orders of initiates,
to Boehme, Swedenborg and "Eliphas Levi," and to see what the various
spiritualistic schools of the present day had to say for themselves.

The following recognition of Hermes by one of the greatest of the
Neoplatonists, Proclus, who lived in the fifth century of our era, was
especially gratifying to us as proving the continuity of our experiences
with those of past ages. Proclus, it must be remembered, was so eminent
for his wisdom and powers as to be regarded by his contemporaries with a
veneration approaching to adoration. Says Proclus, "Hermes, as the
messenger of God, reveals to us His paternal Will, and--developing in us
the Intuition--imparts to us knowledge. The knowledge which descends
into the soul from above, excels any that can be attained by the mere
exercise of the intellect. Intuition is the operation of the soul. The
knowledge received through it from above, descending into the soul,
fills it with the perception of the interior causes of things. The Gods
announce it by their presence, and by illumination, and enable us to
discern the universal order." Here was exactly the doctrine received by
us, and the manner of it, only that the Intuition was further disclosed
to us as due to interior recollection, as declared by Plato, as well as
to perception.

The results of the investigations thus begun, and afterwards continued
in the library of the British Museum, proved satisfactory and gratifying
beyond all that we could have anticipated. For while it was made clear
to us that there had never been a time when there were not some in the
world who had the witness to the truth in themselves, and this one and
the same truth, it was also made clear that whereas others had received
it in limitation, and beheld it as "through a glass darkly," we were
receiving it in plenitude and "face to face," to the realisation of the
high anticipations of the sages, saints, seers, prophets, redeemers, and
Christs of all time; and this, too, at the period, in the manner, and
under the conditions declared by them as to mark and make the "time of
the end."

For in the illuminations vouchsafed to us the key had been restored
which unlocked the meaning of the symbols in which the doctrines of all
the churches, pre-Christian as well as Christian, had been at once
concealed and revealed, to the elucidation of all the problems which
have so sorely perplexed the world, and the verification, by actual
experience, of the truth contained in them. No longer now was there for
us any doubt as to the meaning of allegories such as the Fall, the
Deluge, the Exodus, and others were now shown us to be; or of prophecies
such as those of the crushing of the serpent's head by the Woman and her
seed; the return of Astræa with her progeny of divine sons; the fall
from heaven of Lucifer and Satan; the Return of the Gods; the reign of
Michael, "that great prince who standeth for the children of God's
people"; the breaking of the seals, and opening of the books; the
recognition of the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place;
the budding of the fig-tree, and the end of that "adulterous
generation"; the revelation of "that wicked one, the mystery of iniquity
and son of perdition, whom the Lord, at His coming in the clouds of
heaven with power and great glory, shall consume with the spirit of His
mouth, and destroy with the brightness of His coming"; the two
Witnesses, their resurrection from the dead, and their ascent into
heaven; the drying up of the great river Euphrates, and the coming of
the kings of the East by the way thus prepared; the binding of Satan,
and the acceptable year of the Lord to follow; the exaltation to heaven,
and clothing with the sun, of the mystic "Woman" of the Apocalypse; the
advent of the angel flying in mid-heaven, having an eternal gospel to
proclaim unto every nation, and tribe, and tongue, and people; the
coming of many from the East, and the West, and the North, and the
South, to sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of
heaven; and the battle of Armageddon, and the end of the world. To all
these, and other sacred enigmas of like nature, the key had been given
us. And they one and all proved to be prophecies of one and the same
event, the restoration of the faculty of inward understanding, and of
the divine knowledges which only through it are possible. And whereas
this was the faculty, the corruption and loss of which had made the
Fall, which was that of the original Church, so was it the faculty, the
purification and restoration of which was to reverse the Fall,
accomplishing the Redemption. For by it man will regain his mental
balance, in virtue of which he was "made upright," and become again
sound, whole, and sane, and be by _condition_ that which he has been
divinely declared from the first to be by _constitution_,--an instrument
of understanding, competent for the comprehension of all truth. For only
thus is he really man, and made in the divine image; seeing that he is
not really man, but infant only, until he attains his spiritual majority
and is able to understand. And that which thus makes him man on the
plane mental and spiritual, is that which makes him man on the plane
physical. It is his recognition and appropriation of the "Woman" of that
plane, the mystic "Woman" of Holy Writ, the mind's feminine mode, the
Intuition. It is of her first identification by us, as the key to the
whole mystery of the Bible, that the manner will now be recounted.

FOOTNOTES:

[49] The occasion of the receipt by A.K. and E.M. of the above was one
of peculiar interest. It was given in reference to a visit from the late
Laurence Oliphant, an account of which will be found in "The Life of
A.K." It will suffice to say here that, having heard of their work,
Oliphant came to them as an emissary from his chief in America, Thomas
Lake Harris, to summon them to place themselves and all that they were
and had, at his disposal as the king and Christ of the new dispensation.
The above instruction was given to them in direct reference to this
incident. It was followed by others fully exposing the delusive source
and nature of the doctrine and practice of Laurence Oliphant and Thomas
Lake Harris. The above Exhortation of Hermes to his Neophytes is now
given in full in this book for the first time. It is taken from "The
Life of A.K." Vol. I. pp. 282-283. S.H.H.

[50] See note p. 7

[51] The above reference is to an experience of mine which does not call
for relation here. E.M.

[52] Says E.M. in "The Life of A.K."--"The subtlety with which my most
sensitive places were searched out, and the mercilessness with which
they were probed by the influences which had now obtained access to us,
seemed to me to belong altogether to the infernal." (Life A.K. Vol. I.
p. 318.) S.H.H.

[53] The date was 27th March, 1880. S.H.H.

[54] The Hymn to the Planet-God has been referred to on p. 79. It is
given in full in the P.W. pp. 341-349: a portion of it concerning the
passage of the Soul, and concerning the Mystic Exodus, are given on pp.
169-173 post. The method of the recovery by A.K. of this most important
Hymn "was such as to constitute it a proof positive of the great
doctrine set forth in it, the doctrine of Reincarnation; for it was as
one of a band of initiates, making solemn procession through the aisles
of a vast Egyptian temple, chanting it in chorus, that 'Mary,' being
asleep, recollected it." (Life A.K. Vol. I. p. 456.) S.H.H.

[55] That is, the "strained conditions" under which their association
was then maintained and their work carried on. (Life A.K. Vol. I. p.
374.) S.H.H.

[56] See p. 130.

[57] On the night of the 23rd June, 1880. This vision was received by
E.M. as he pondered and while he was awake. (Life A.K. Vol. I. pp.
376-377.) S.H.H.

[58] Some of A.K.'s illuminations have thus been lost to the world.
(Life A.K. Vol. I. p. 374.) S.H.H.

[59] Lady Caithness. (Life A.K. Vol. I. p. 329.) See pp. 137 and 185
post. S.H.H.

[60] On the 13th-14th January, 1881. (Life A.K. Vol. I. p. 435.) S.H.H.

[61] A full account of this interview with William Lily is given in "The
Life of A.K." Vol. I. pp. 435-441.

[62] On the 9th April, 1877, in London. (Life A.K. Vol. I. p. 172.)
S.H.H.

[63] Christmas Day, 1880. (Life A.K. Vol. I. p. 430.)

[64] The time referred to was September, 1878. (Life A.K. Vol. I. pp.
285-385.)




CHAPTER V.

THE RECAPITULATION.


The first compendious statement of the doctrine which it was intended to
restore, was given to us at Paris in the summer of 1878, in the form of
an exposition of the principles of Biblical interpretation, under the
following circumstances.

We had been following our respective tasks[65] for several months
without any open or special illumination, and I had written enough to
make a considerable volume in exposition of the principles which
appeared to me to be those on which, in order to be a book of the soul,
the Bible ought to be constructed, and by which, therefore, it must be
interpreted. It was not intended for publication, but as an exercise for
myself, being purely tentative; though I was conscious of being aided by
the occasional suggestion of ideas which served as points of light and
guidance. Meanwhile, I was entirely without help from books; for,
besides being desirous of evolving the whole from my own consciousness,
as in the case of the demonstration of any mathematical problem, I was
not aware of any books which would help me; the little I knew of
Swedenborg at this time--who was the only writer known to me as a worker
in a similar direction--having failed to make much impression on me. I
could accept his general principles, but not his particular applications
of them. I felt also that the sources of the knowledges vouchsafed to
us, far transcended those to which Swedenborg had access. And I
accounted for the length of the interval which had elapsed without any
larger measure of light being vouchsafed, by supposing that it was
intended for me to exhaust my own resources first.

The time had come when these were exhausted, and I was reduced to the
conviction that if the work was to be carried any further, assistance
must be rendered, whether for confirmation, for correction, or for
extension. And on retiring to rest one night[66], painfully oppressed by
the sense of my own lack, and the prolonged absence of the needed light,
I stood at the open window, and in presence of a sky resplendent with
stars mentally addressed to those whom we were wont to speak of as the
Gods, and of whose presence I seemed to be dimly conscious, a strong
expression of my need, declaring my utter inability to advance another
step unassisted. Having done which I went to bed, but in a mood the
reverse of sanguine; so many were the months for which they had been
silent.

In the course of the following day, "Mary"--who knew nothing either of
my need or of my adjuration of the preceding night, and could not of
herself have helped me--found herself under an access of exaltation of
faculty which she described as resembling what might be produced by a
draught of spiritual champagne. For she felt herself at her very best,
having all her knowledge at her finger-ends. The expression recurred to
my mind some time afterwards on our receiving an explanation of the "New
Wine of Dionysos" in the ancient mysteries. In this state she went down
to the schools, where an examination in her subjects was being held, in
order to see how the candidates comported themselves, and to compare
them with herself; for it was an oral examination. From this she
returned home in high delight, declaring that she could have answered
every question asked, and far better than any of the students had done.
I hoped that her state might be an indication of the renewal of her
illuminations. But the events of the evening put all thoughts in this
direction entirely out of my mind. For, as if poisoned by the atmosphere
of the schools, she was seized with an attack of sickness so intense and
prolonged as seriously to endanger her life through the exhaustion
induced. And it was a late hour--past midnight--before she could be left
alone.

Nevertheless she was up betimes in the morning, and on our meeting
handed me a paper which she had written in pencil on waking, saying it
was something she had read in her sleep, and asking if it was anything
that I wanted, as she had written it down so rapidly that she scarcely
observed what it was about, and she had not had time to read it over and
think about it. Having read it, I found that it met my every difficulty,
and shed on the Bible a light which rendered it luminous from beginning
to end, disclosing it as pervaded by a system of thought which, when
once seen, was as obvious as it had previously been unsuspected.

And while it confirmed me in respect of principles and method, it
corrected both of us in respect of sundry particulars. It even referred
directly to one of my tentative hypotheses, at once negativing it and
giving another altogether satisfactory. This was my supposition of Adam
and Eve as possibly denoting spirit and matter. The following is the
writing:--

     "If, therefore, they be Mystic Books, they ought also to have a
     mystic consideration. But the fault of most writers lieth in
     this,--that they distinguish not between the books of Moses the
     prophet, and those books which are of an historical nature. And
     this is the more surprising because not a few of such critics have
     rightly discerned the esoteric character, if not indeed the true
     interpretation, of the story of Eden; yet have they not applied to
     the remainder of the allegory the same method which they found to
     fit the beginning; but so soon as they are over the earlier stanzas
     of the poem, they would have the rest of it to be of another
     nature.

     "It is, then, pretty well established and accepted of most authors,
     that the legend of Adam and Eve, and of the miraculous tree and the
     fruit which was the occasion of death, is, like the story of Eros
     and Psyche, and so many others of all religions, a parable with a
     hidden, that is, with a mystic meaning. But so also is the legend
     which follows concerning the sons of these mystical parents, the
     story of Cain and Abel his brother, the story of the Flood, of the
     Ark, of the saving of the clean and unclean beasts, of the rainbow,
     of the twelve sons of Jacob, and, not stopping there, of the whole
     relation concerning the flight out of Egypt. For it is not to be
     supposed that the two sacrifices offered to God by the sons of
     Adam, were real sacrifices, any more than it is to be supposed that
     the apple which caused the doom of mankind, was a real apple. It
     ought to be known, indeed, for the right understanding of the
     mystical books, that in their esoteric sense they deal, not with
     material things, but with spiritual realities; and that as Adam is
     not a man, nor Eve a woman, nor the tree a plant in its true
     signification, so also are not the beasts named in the same books
     real beasts, but that the mystic intention of them is implied.
     When, therefore, it is written that Abel took of the firstlings of
     his flock to offer unto the Lord, it is signified that he offered
     that which a lamb implies, and which is the holiest and highest of
     spiritual gifts. Nor is Abel himself a real person, but the type
     and spiritual presentation of the race of the prophets; of whom,
     also, Moses was a member, together with the Patriarchs. Were the
     prophets, then, shedders of blood? God forbid; they dwelt not with
     things material, but with spiritual significations. Their lambs
     without spot, their white doves, their goats, their rams, and other
     sacred creatures, are so many signs and symbols of the various
     graces and gifts which a mystic people should offer to Heaven.
     Without such sacrifices is no remission of sin. But when the mystic
     sense was lost, then carnage followed, the prophets ceased out of
     the land, and the priests bore rule over the people. Then, when
     again the voice of the prophets arose, they were constrained to
     speak plainly, and declared in a tongue foreign to their method,
     that the sacrifices of God are not the flesh of bulls or the blood
     of goats, but holy vows and sacred thanksgivings, their mystical
     counterparts. As God is a spirit, so also are His sacrifices
     spiritual. What folly, what ignorance, to offer material flesh and
     drink to pure power and essential being! Surely in vain have the
     prophets spoken, and in vain have the Christs been manifested!

     "Why will you have Adam to be spirit, and Eve matter, since the
     mystic books deal only with spiritual entities? The tempter himself
     even is not matter, but that which gives matter the precedence.
     Adam is, rather, intellectual force: he is of earth. Eve is the
     moral conscience: she is the mother of the living. Intellect, then,
     is the male, and Intuition the female principle. And the sons of
     Intuition, herself fallen, shall at last recover Truth, and redeem
     all things. By her fault, indeed, is the moral conscience of
     humanity made subject to the intellectual force, and thereby all
     manner of evil and confusion abounds, since her desire is unto him,
     and he rules over her until now. But the end foretold by the seer
     is not far off. Then shall the Woman be exalted, clothed with the
     Sun, and carried to the throne of God. And her sons shall make war
     with the dragon, and have victory over him. Intuition, therefore,
     pure and a virgin, shall be the mother and redemptress of her
     fallen sons, whom she bore under bondage to her husband the
     intellectual force."

This marvellously luminous exposition, she then told me, had been read
by her in a book she had found in a library which she had visited in
sleep, the owner of which was a courtly old gentleman in the costume of
the last century. The leaves of the book were of silver and reflected
her back to herself as she read. I took this as symbolising the
Intuition. The event proved that her host was no other than Swedenborg,
and that--as her Genius informed us--she had been enabled, "under the
magnetism of Swedenborg's presence, to recover a memory of no small
value," thus confirming my surmise about its intuitional character. The
event proved also that it was Swedenborg's doctrine, but without his
limitations. We ardently desired a continuation of it, and on the next
night but one, she received the following addition to it:--

     "Moses, therefore, knowing the mysteries of the religion of the
     Egyptians, and having learned of their occultists the value and
     signification of all sacred birds and beasts, delivered like
     mysteries to his own people. But certain of the sacred animals of
     Egypt he retained not in honour, for motives which were equally of
     mystic origin.

     And he taught his initiated the spirit of the heavenly hieroglyphs,
     and bade them, when they made festival before God, to carry with
     them in procession, with music and with dancing, such of the sacred
     animals as were, by their interior significance, related to the
     occasion. Now, of these beasts, he chiefly selected males of the
     first year, without spot or blemish, to signify that it is beyond
     all things needful that man should dedicate to the Lord his
     intellect and his reason, and this from the beginning, and without
     the least reserve. And that he was very wise in teaching this, is
     evident from the history of the world in all ages, and particularly
     in these last days. For what is it that has led men to renounce the
     realities of the spirit, and to propagate false theories and
     corrupt sciences, denying all things save the appearance which can
     be apprehended by the outer senses, and making themselves one with
     the dust of the ground? It is their intellect which, being
     unsanctified, has led them astray; it is the force of the mind in
     them, which, being corrupt, is the cause of their own ruin, and of
     that of their disciples. As, then, the intellect is apt to be the
     great traitor against heaven, so also is it the force by which men,
     following their pure intuition, may also grasp and apprehend the
     truth. For which reason it is written that the Christs are subject
     to their mothers. Not that by any means the intellect is to be
     dishonoured; for it is the heir of all things, if only it be truly
     begotten and be no bastard.

     "And besides all these symbols, Moses taught the people to have
     beyond all things an abhorrence of idolatry. What, then, is
     idolatry, and what are false gods?

     "To make an idol is to materialise spiritual mysteries. The
     priests, then, were idolaters, who coming after Moses, and
     committing to writing those things which he by word of mouth had
     delivered unto Israel, replaced the true things signified, by their
     material symbols, and shed innocent blood on the pure altars of the
     Lord.

     "They also are idolaters who understand the things of sense where
     the things of the spirit are alone implied, and who conceal the
     true features of the Gods with material and spurious presentations.
     Idolatry is materialism, the common and original sin of men, which
     replaces spirit by appearance, substance by illusion, and leads
     both the moral and intellectual being into error, so that they
     substitute the nether for the upper, and the depth for the height.
     It is that false fruit which attracts the outer senses, the bait of
     the serpent in the beginning of the world. Until the mystic man and
     woman had eaten of this fruit, they knew only the things of the
     spirit, and found them suffice. But after their fall, they began to
     apprehend matter also, and gave it the preference, making
     themselves idolaters. And their sin, and the taint begotten of that
     false fruit, have corrupted the blood of the whole race of men,
     from which corruption the sons of God would have redeemed them."

She had received this, also in sleep, as one of a class of neophytes
seated in an ancient amphitheatre of white stone, and listening to a
lecture delivered by a man in priestly garb, of which they took notes
the while. She complained that her notes had disappeared on waking, thus
preventing her from rendering what she had heard as perfectly as she
could have wished; for she had trusted to her notes for it.

The more we pondered these communications, the higher was our
appreciation of them. We felt that the "veil of Moses" was at length
"taken away" as promised, and we had been enabled to tap a reservoir of
boundless wisdom and knowledge. For we found in them the longed-for
solution of the purpose and nature of the Bible and Christianity, and
the key to man's spiritual history. The method of the Bible-writers, the
meaning of idolatry, the secret of the Cain and Abel feud between priest
and prophet, as the ministers respectively of the sense-nature and of
the intuition, and the process whereby the religion of Jesus had become
distorted into the orthodoxy which has usurped His name;--all these
things were now clear to us as the demonstration of a proposition in
geometry, the witness of which was in our own minds. And we, too, we
rejoiced to think, were of the school of the prophets, in that with all
the force of our minds we had "exalted the Woman," Intuition, and
refused to make the word of God of none effect by priestly traditions.

Not the least marvellous element in the case was the faculty whereby the
seeress had been able to reproduce, after waking, with such evident
faithfulness the things seen and heard at so great length in sleep. In
reply to my questionings she said that the words seemed to show
themselves to her again as she wrote[67].

Discoursing with her Genius on this subject of memory, she received the
following, which is valuable also for its recognition of the mystical
import of the Bible narratives, and confirmation of St Paul when he says
in reference to certain narratives in Genesis, "These things are an
allegory."

     "Concerning memory; why should there any more be a difficulty in
     respect of it? Reflect on this saying,--'Man sees as he knows.' To
     thee the deeps are more visible than the surfaces of things; but to
     men generally the surfaces only are visible. The material can
     perceive only the material, the astral the astral, and the
     spiritual the spiritual. It all resolves itself, therefore, into a
     question of condition and of quality. Thy hold on matter is but
     slight, and thine organic memory is feeble and treacherous. It is
     hard for thee to perceive the surfaces of things and to remember
     their aspect. But thy spiritual perception is the stronger for this
     weakness, and the profound is that which thou seest the most
     readily. It is hard for thee to understand and to retain the memory
     of material facts; but their meaning thou knowest instantly and by
     intuition, which is the memory of the soul. For the soul takes no
     pains to remember; she knows divinely. Is it not said that the
     immaculate woman brings forth without a pang? The sorrow and
     travail of conception belong to her whose desire is unto
     'Adam'"[68].

The following sentences sum up the conclusions to which, by degrees, we
were led. The first two paragraphs are from an exposition concerning the
dogma of the Immaculate Conception which we considered as one of the
most sublime and momentous of all her illuminations[69].

"All that is true is spiritual.... No dogma is real that is not
spiritual. If it be true, and yet seem to you to have a material
signification, know that you have not solved it. It is a mystery; seek
its interpretation. That which is true is for Spirit alone.

"For matter shall cease and all that is of it, but the Word of the Lord
shall remain for ever. And how shall it remain except it be purely
spiritual; since, when matter ceases, it would then be no longer
comprehensible?"

"For, though matter is eternally the mode whereby spirit manifests
itself, matter is not itself eternal."

"The church has all the truth, but the priests have materialised it,
making religion idolatry, and themselves and their people idolaters."

"In their real and divinely intended sense, its doctrines are eternal
verities, founded in the nature of Being. As ecclesiastically
propounded, they are blasphemous absurdities."

"All the mistakes made about the Bible arise out of the mystic books
being referred to times, places, and persons material, instead of being
regarded as containing only eternal verities about things spiritual."

"The Bible was written by intuitionalists, for intuitionalists, and from
the intuitionalist standpoint. It has been interpreted by externalists,
for externalists, and from the externalist standpoint. The most occult
and mystical of books, it has been expounded by persons without occult
knowledge or mystical insight"[70].

Thus gradually but surely we learnt that Ecclesiastical education has
rigidly excluded from its curriculum all those branches of study which
could throw light on the real nature of existence, and consists in
learning what other men have said who, themselves, did not know, but
were mere hearsay scholars lacking the witness in themselves.

We marvelled much as to how the priesthoods will comport themselves when
compelled to recognise the fact that a New Gospel of Interpretation has
actually been vouchsafed from the world celestial in correction of their
perversion and mutilation of the former Gospel of Manifestation, and
suppression of the true doctrine of salvation. Will Cain and Caiaphas
still have the dominion, and ecclesiasticism be as ready to crucify the
Christ on His second coming as it was on His first? And if not, how will
it find courage to face the world with the humiliating confession that
all through the long ages of its history, while arrogantly claiming to
be the faithful and infallible minister of the Gospel of Christ, it has
persistently withheld that gospel, and, losing the key to its meaning,
has substituted for the wholesome "bread" of divine truth, the "stones"
of innutritious because unintelligible dogmas; and for the "fish" of the
living waters, the "serpents" of the letter which kills? and that when
men have rightly suspected that Christianity has failed, not because it
is false, but because it has been falsified, and have sought to their
own inner light for the truth of which ecclesiasticism had defrauded
them, it dealt out to them pitiless anathema and persecution, making the
earth a scene of torture and slaughter in assertion of the right of the
priesthoods to teach wrong?

That the work committed to us implied nothing less than the fulfilment
of the prophecies of which the promise of the Second Coming of Christ
was the culmination, while intimated to us from the outset, was
gradually unfolded into full assurance, and we were enabled to see that
the very terms in which it was couched implied a spiritual advent, and
one which should disclose the perfect system at once of science,
philosophy, morality, and religion, of which Christ is both the
foundation and the consummation. For the "clouds of heaven" in which it
was to take place, were no other than the heaven of the kingdom within
man of his restored spiritual consciousness. "That wicked one," "the son
of perdition," and "mystery of iniquity" then to be revealed and
destroyed, was no other than the inspiring evil spirit of an
ecclesiasticism which had received indeed its doctrines from above, but
their interpretation and application from below. And the "Spirit of His
mouth," and the "Brightness of His Coming" were no other than a new Word
of God, in the form of a New Gospel of Interpretation, so potent in its
logic and so luminous in its exposition as to indicate the Logos Himself
as its source, and the "Woman" Intuition, "clothed with the Sun" of full
illumination, as its revealer.

We saw, too, that with this "Woman" thus rehabilitated, God's "Two
Witnesses,"--who have so long lain dead in the streets of "that great
city" wherein the Lord, the divinity in man, is ever systematically
crucified; the city of the world's system as fashioned and controlled by
an ecclesiasticism shrouded in the threefold veil of Blood, Idolatry,
and the Curse of Eve,--will rise and stand on their feet, and ascend to
the heaven of their proper supremacy, _vice_ Lucifer deposed and fallen.
And in them Lucifer himself will regain his lost estate, vindicating his
title to be called the Light-bearer, the bright and morning star, the
herald and bringer-in of the perfect day of the Lord God. For, as the
Intellect, he is the heir of all things, if only he be begotten of the
Spirit, and be no bastard engendered of the Sense-Nature.

For--as we had come to learn--God's Two Witnesses in man are ever the
Intellect and the Intuition, when duly unfolded and united in a pure
spirit. Under such conditions the Shiloh comes, and mounted on them man
rides triumphant as king into the holy city of his own regenerate
nature. But divorced from her, the Intuition, and--leagued with the
Sense-Nature--knowing matter only and the body, the Intellect becomes
"prince of devils" in man, the maker of men into fiends, and of the
earth into a hell. Wherefore his fall from the heaven of his power, on
the advent of that whole Humanity, of whom it is said, "the Man is not
without the Woman, nor the Woman without the Man, in the Lord," the
humanity of intellect and intuition combined, has ever been exultingly
hailed in anticipation by all true seers and prophets.

The chief points of the doctrine, the prospect of the restoration of
which has thus been the sustaining hope of the percipient faithful in
all ages, may be summarised as follows:--

The doctrine which, first and foremost, it is the purpose of the Bible
to affirm, and of the Christ to demonstrate, and in which reason
entirely concurs, is no other than that of the divine potentialities of
man, belonging to him in virtue of the nature of his constituent
principles, the force and the substance of existence. These are the
duality of the "heavens" which God is said to "create," meaning to put
forth from Himself, "in the beginning," and of the mutual interaction of
which all things are the product, varying according to the plane of
operation, alike for creation and redemption, generation and
regeneration. And that which Jesus really affirmed in the memorable but
little understood words, "Ye _must_ be born again, or from above, of
Water and the Spirit," was both the possibility and the necessity to all
men of realising the potential divinity belonging to them in virtue of
the divinity of their constituent principles. And in affirming this He
affirmed both the necessity and the possibility to every man of being
born exactly as He Himself, as typical man regenerate, is said to have
been born, of Virgin Mary and Holy Ghost, and also His own identity in
kind with all other men. And He affirmed, moreover, the utter falsity of
that priest-constructed system, which, ignoring Regeneration, insists on
Substitution, as the means of salvation. For "Virgin Mary," and "Holy
Ghost," are but the mystical synonyms with "Water and the Spirit," the
substance and force, or soul and spirit, of which, man is constituted,
in their divine because pure condition, the product of which in man is
the new regenerate selfhood called, as by St Paul, the "Christ within."
Begotten in man as matrix, of the pure Spirit and Substance which are
God, this new selfhood is son at once of God and of man; and in him God
and man are "reconciled" or "at-oned." And that man is said to be saved
by his blood, is because the "blood of God" is pure spirit, and it is
the pure spirit in the man that saves him; and that he is called the
only-begotten Son of God, is not because God begets no other of his
kind, but because God, as God, begets directly none of any other kind.

This, then, as we came to learn, and to recognise as having learned it
in our own long-past lives, is the doctrine which Jesus came to teach
and to demonstrate in His own person. Matter is spirit, being spiritual
substance, projected by force of the divine Will into conditions and
limitations, and made exteriorly cognisable. And being spirit it can
revert to the condition of spirit. In virtue of the divinity of his
constituent principles, man has within himself the seed of his own
regeneration, and the power to effectuate it. He has in him, this is to
say, the potentiality of divinity realisable at will. And the secret and
method of the achievement, which is no other than the secret and method
of Christ, is inward purification and unfoldment, the unfoldment of the
capacities, mental, moral, and spiritual, of his nature, of which inward
purification is the first and essential condition. Thus is the Finding
of Christ the realisation of the Ideal, and Christ is for every man the
summit of his own evolution.

Stated in terms of modern science, but correcting its aberrations, the
doctrine of Christ is in this wise. Evolution is the manifestation of
inherency. Owing to the divinity of the constituent principles of
existence, its Force and its Substance, both of which are God, the
inherency of existence is divine. Wherefore, as the manifestation of a
divine inherency, evolution is accomplished only by the attainment of
divinity; and the cause of evolution is the tendency of substance to
revert from its secondary and "created" condition of matter, to its
original and divine condition of pure spirit. Wherefore evolution is
definable as the process of the individuation of Deity in and through
Humanity.

Such is the genesis of the Christ in man. And he is called _a_ Christ
who, having accomplished this process in himself, returns into the
earth-life when he has no need to do so for his own sake, out of pure
love to redeem, by showing to others their own equal divine
potentialities and the method of the realisation thereof.

This method consists in love, love of perfection, which is God, for its
own sake, and love for others. The process is entirely interior to the
individual. It consists in the sacrifice of the lower nature to the
higher in himself, and of himself for others in love. That which
directly saves the man is not the love of another for the man, but the
love which he has in himself. All that can be done by another is to
kindle this love in him.

The philosophy of this doctrine of salvation by love was formulated for
us as follows:--"It is love which is the centripetal power of the
universe; it is by love that all creation returns into the bosom of God.
The force which projected all things is will, and will is the
centrifugal power of the universe. Will alone could not overcome the
evil which results from the limitations of matter; but it shall be
overcome in the end by sympathy, which is the knowledge of God in
others,--the recognition of the omnipresent Self. This is love. And it
is with the children of the spirit, the servants of love, that the
dragon of matter makes war"[71].

In making the means of salvation extraneous to the individual,
Sacerdotalism has defrauded man of his Saviour, making the first and
personal coming of Christ of none effect. Hence the necessity for the
second and spiritual coming represented by the New Gospel of
Interpretation as was foretold:--the coming which was to be in the
clouds of the heaven of man's restored understanding; the Hermes within.

But the process of regeneration is a prolonged one, extending over many
earth-lives; and so also is the prior process of evolution, whereby man
reaches the stage at which he is amenable to regeneration. Wherefore
regeneration has for its corollary reincarnation. To tell man that he
"must be born again" spiritually, and deny him the requisite
opportunities of experience, which must be acquired while in the
body--seeing that regeneration is _from out of the body_--would be to
mock him.

This doctrine of a multiplicity of earth-lives is implicit and sometimes
explicit in the Bible. The notion that the Hebrews had no belief in a
future state because of the failure of commentators to discover it in
their Scriptures, is altogether futile. The permanence of the Ego was a
matter of course with them, saving only the Sadducees. And the Bible
contemplates the persistence of the individual soul through all the
manifold stages of its evolution, from the "Adam" stage to the "Christ"
stage, saying, as by St Paul, "As in Adam all die, so in Christ shall
all be made alive." But the Christ insisted on by him was not He Who is
"after the flesh," not the man Jesus, who was but the vehicle of the
Christ, but the Christ within both Jesus and all other regenerate men.
For, as a highly illuminated follower of the Gnosis, St Paul was one who
"after the way which" his orthodox accusers "called heresy, worshipped
the God of his fathers, believing all things which are according to the
law, and are written in the prophets." Rejecting the doctrine of
regeneration, and with it that of reincarnation, in favour of
substitution, the orthodoxy which claims to be Christianity has
practically rejected both the doctrine of St Paul and that of Jesus as
declared to Nicodemus. And, as St Paul implies, the "mystery of
iniquity" was working even already in his days to annul the gospel of
Christ by substituting Jesus as the object of worship, and His physical
blood-shedding as the means of salvation. And Christendom, yielding to
sacerdotal dictation, has to this day accepted a doctrine which at once
dishonours God and robs men of their equal divine potentialities with
Jesus, thus preferring Barabbas. Professing to rest its faith on the
Bible, it has accepted the presentation of religion which the Bible
persistently condemns, that of the priests, and rejected that on which
the Bible emphatically insists, that of the prophets. That St Paul
employed sacerdotal modes of expression was in order to spiritualise
them. He was a mystic of mystics.

Nevertheless the dogmas of the Church contain the truth, but this is not
as the Church has propounded them. And--to cite two crucial
instances--so far from the Church's supreme dogmas, the Immaculate
Conception and the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, having any personal
or physical reference, they are prophecies of the method of redemption
for every individual soul. For, as the New Gospel of Interpretation
explicitly declares, restoring the Gnosis persistently rejected by the
builders of the orthodoxies,

     The Immaculate Conception is none other than the prophecy of the
     means whereby the universe shall at last be redeemed. Maria--the
     sea of limitless space--Maria the Virgin, born herself immaculate
     and without spot, of the womb of the ages, shall in the fulness of
     time bring forth the perfect man, who shall redeem the race. He is
     not one man, but ten thousand times ten thousand, the Son of Man,
     who shall overcome the limitations of matter, and the evil which is
     the result of the materialisation of spirit[72].

     By the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin
     Mary we are secretly enlightened concerning the generation of the
     soul, who is begotten in the womb of matter, and yet from the first
     instant of her being is pure and incorrupt.... As the Immaculate
     Conception is the foundation of the mysteries, so is the Assumption
     their crown.

     For the entire object and end of kosmic evolution is precisely this
     triumph and apotheosis of the soul. In the mystery presented by
     this dogma, we behold the consummation of the whole scheme of
     creation--the perpetuation and glorification of the individual
     human ego. The grave--the material and astral consciousness, cannot
     retain the immaculate Mother of God. She rises into the heavens;
     she assumes divinity.... From end to end the mystery of the soul's
     evolution--the history, that is, of humanity and of the kosmic
     drama--is contained and enacted in the cultus of the Blessed Virgin
     Mary. The acts and the glories of Mary are the one supreme subject
     of the holy mysteries[73].

     "Allegory of stupendous significance!" exclaimed the seeress's
     illuminator when imparting to her the mystery of the Immaculate
     Conception. "Allegory of stupendous significance! with which the
     Church of God has so long been familiar, but which yet never
     penetrated its understanding, like the holy fire which enveloped
     the sacred Bush, but which nevertheless the Bush withstood and
     resisted[10].

That such failure has been the rule and not the exception is the plea
for the New Gospel of Interpretation. For lack of comprehension of its
own symbols the Church has fallen into the disastrous errors of
mistaking the man Jesus for the Christ within every man, and Mary the
mother of Jesus for Virgin Mary the mother of that Christ, committing in
both instances idolatry by preferring the form to the substance, persons
to principles, and blinding men to the essential truth implied.

FOOTNOTES:

[65] A.K. was preparing for her second Doctorat, and E.M. was
elaborating out of his own consciousness "a key to the interpretation
especially of the initial chapters of Genesis." (Life A.K. Vol. I. p.
264.)

[66] On the 4th June, 1878. (Life A.K. Vol. I. p. 265.)

[67] E.M. says:--"Her notes, of course, disappeared with her dream, and
she had to reproduce it from memory. But this was abnormally enhanced,
for she said that the words presented themselves again to her as she
wrote, and stood out luminously to view." (Life A.K. Vol. I. p. 269.)

[68] That is the outer sense and lower reason.

[69] The illumination in question was received by A.K. in Paris on the
night of the 25th July, 1877, and was written down under trance. Further
portions are given on pp. 158, 159, 161. It is given in full in "The
Life of A.K." Vol. I. pp. 202-203.

[70] See further on this most important subject "The Bible's Own Account
of Itself," by E.M., the only complete edition of which is published by
"The Ruskin Press," Ruskin House, Stafford Street, Birmingham. S.H.H.

[71] From the exposition concerning the dogma of the Immaculate
Conception, referred to on p. 151.

[72] From the exposition concerning the dogma of the Immaculate
Conception, referred to on p. 151.

[73] From the exposition concerning the Christian Mysteries given in
full in "The Life of A.K." Vol. II. pp. 99-100.




CHAPTER VI.

THE EXEMPLIFICATION.


This chapter will be devoted to some examples of the recovered Gnosis,
bearing chiefly upon the supreme doctrine of Regeneration. As with all
else received by the Seeress, they are the product of intuitional memory
regained under divine illumination occurring mostly in sleep. And here I
will take occasion to state explicitly and positively, that the states,
whether of sleep or of trance, in which her faculty was exercised, were
all natural and spontaneous, being induced by the Spirit itself; and
that in no case were artificial means employed by either of us, whether
drugs, mesmerism, hypnotism, crystal-gazing, or any other of the devices
ordinarily used to induce abnormal states of consciousness or promote
enhancement of faculty. Our work was to be a real work, done not only by
us but in us, and we had from the first a profound instinctive distrust
of results obtained by such artificial stimulation.

Nor was any change even of a word ever made in the teachings received.
They came one and all in the finished perfection in which they are put
forth, coming down as the holy city from the heaven of the upper and the
within, and incapable of improvement. The following are the examples
proposed:--

(1) Concerning Holy Writ.

     All Scriptures which are the true Word of God, have a dual
     interpretation, the intellectual and the intuitional, the apparent
     and the hidden.

     For nothing can come forth from God save that which is fruitful.

     As is the nature of God, so is the Word of God's mouth.

     The letter alone is barren; the spirit and the letter give life.

     But that Scripture is the more excellent, which is exceeding
     fruitful and brings forth abundant signification.

     For God is able to say many things in one, as the perfect ovary
     contains many seeds in its chalice.

     Therefore there are in the Scriptures of God's Word certain
     writings which, as richly yielding trees, bear more abundantly than
     others in the self-same holy garden.

     And one of the most excellent is the history of the generation of
     the heavens and the earth.

     For therein is contained in order a genealogy, which has four
     heads, as a stream divided into four branches, a word exceeding
     rich.

     And the first of these generations is that of the Gods.

     The second is that of the kingdom of heaven.

     The third is that of the visible world.

     And the fourth is that of the Church of Christ.

(2) Concerning the Mystery of Redemption.

     All things in heaven and in earth are of God, both the invisible
     and the visible.

     Such as is the invisible, is the visible also, for there is no
     boundary line betwixt spirit and matter.

     Matter is spirit made exteriorly cognisable by the force of the
     Divine Word.

     And when God shall resume all things by love, the material shall be
     resolved into the spiritual, and there shall be a new heaven and a
     new earth.

     Not that matter shall be destroyed, for it came forth from God, and
     is of God indestructible and eternal.

     But it shall be indrawn and resolved into its true self.

     It shall put off corruption, and remain incorruptible.

     It shall put off mortality, and remain immortal.

     So that nothing be lost of the Divine substance.

     It was material entity: it shall be spiritual entity.

     For there is nothing which can go out from the presence of God.

     This is the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead: that is, the
     transfiguration of the body.

     For the body, which is matter, is but the manifestation of spirit:
     and the Word of God shall transmute it into its inner being.

     The will of God is the alchemic crucible: and the dross which is
     cast therein is matter.

     And the dross shall become pure gold, seven times refined; even
     perfect spirit.

     It shall leave behind it nothing: but shall be transformed into the
     Divine image.

     For it is not a new substance: but its alchemic polarity is
     changed, and it is converted.

     But except it were gold in its true nature, it could not be resumed
     into the aspect of gold.

     And except matter were spirit, it could not revert to spirit.

     To make gold, the alchemist must have gold.

     But he knows that to be gold which others take to be dross.

     Cast thyself into the will of God, and thou shalt become as God.

     For thou art God, if thy will be the Divine Will.

     This is the great secret: it is the mystery of Redemption.

(3) Concerning Sin and Death.

     As is the outer so is the inner: He that worketh is One.

     As the small is, so is the great: there is one law.

     Nothing is small and nothing is great in the Divine Economy.

     If thou wouldst understand the method of the world's corruption,
     and the condition to which sin hath reduced the work of God,

     Meditate upon the aspect of a corpse; and consider the method of
     the putrefaction of its tissues and humours.

     For the secret of death is the same, whether of the outer or of the
     inner.

     The body dieth when the central will of its system no longer
     bindeth in obedience the elements of its substance.

     Every cell is a living entity, whether of vegetable or of animal
     potency.

     In the healthy body every cell is polarised in subjection to the
     central will, the Adonai of the physical system.

     Health, therefore, is order, obedience, and government.

     But wherever disease is, there is disunion, rebellion, and
     insubordination.

     And the deeper the seat of the confusion, the more dangerous the
     malady, and the harder to quell it.

     That which is superficial may be more easily healed; or, if need
     be, the disorderly elements may be rooted out, and the body shall
     be whole and at unity again.

     But if the disobedient molecules corrupt each other continually,
     and the perversity spread, and the rebellious tracts multiply their
     elements; the whole body shall fall into dissolution, which is
     death.

     For the central will that should dominate all the kingdom of the
     body, is no longer obeyed; and every element is become its own
     ruler, and hath a divergent will of its own.

     So that the poles of the cells incline in divers directions; and
     the binding power which is the life of the body, is dissolved and
     destroyed.

     And when dissolution is complete, then follow corruption and
     putrefaction.

     Now, that which is true of the physical, is true likewise of its
     prototype.

     The whole world is full of revolt; and every element hath a will
     divergent from God.

     Whereas there ought to be but one will, attracting and ruling the
     whole man.

     But there is no longer Brotherhood among you; nor order, nor mutual
     sustenance.

     Every cell is its own arbiter; and every member is become a sect.

     Ye are not bound one to another: ye have confounded your offices,
     and abandoned your functions.

     Ye have reversed the direction of your magnetic currents: ye are
     fallen into confusion, and have given place to the spirit of
     misrule.

     Your wills are many and diverse; and every one of you is an
     anarchy.

     A house that is divided against itself, falleth.

     O wretched man; who shall deliver you from this body of Death?

(4) Concerning the Twelve Gates of Regeneration.

     Now, the Kingdom of God is within us; that is, it is interior,
     invisible, mystic, spiritual.

     There is a power by means of which the Outer may be absorbed into
     the Inner.

     There is a power by means of which Matter may be ingested into its
     original Substance.

     He who possesses this power is Christ, and He has the devil under
     foot.

     For He reduces chaos to order, and indraws the external to the
     centre.

     He has learnt that Matter is illusion, and that Spirit alone is
     real.

     He has found His own Central Point; and all power is given unto Him
     in heaven and on earth.

     Now, the Central Point is the number Thirteen: it is the number of
     the Marriage of the Son of God.

     And all the members of the microcosm are bidden to the banquet of
     the marriage.

     But if there chance to be even one among them which has not on a
     wedding garment,

     Such a one is a Traitor, and the microcosm is found divided against
     itself.

     And that it may be wholly regenerate, it is necessary that Judas be
     cast out.

     Now the members of the microcosm are Twelve: of the Senses three,
     of the Mind three, of the Heart three, and of the Conscience three.

     For of the Body there are four elements; and the sign of the four
     is Sense, in the which are three Gates,

     The gate of the Eye, the gate of the Ear, and the gate of the
     Touch[74].

     Renounce vanity, and be poor: renounce praise, and be humble:
     renounce luxury, and be chaste.

     Offer unto God a pure oblation: let the fire of the altar search
     thee, and prove thy fortitude.

     Cleanse thy sight, thine hands, and thy feet: carry the censer of
     thy worship into the courts of the Lord; and let thy vows be unto
     the Most High.

     And for the magnetic man[75] there are four elements: and the
     covering of the four is mind, in the which are three gates;

     The gate of desire, the gate of labour, and the gate of
     illumination.

     Renounce the world, and aspire heavenward: labour not for the meat
     which perishes, but ask of God thy daily bread: beware of wandering
     doctrines, and let the Word of the Lord be thy light.

     Also of the soul there are four elements: and the seat of the four
     is the heart, whereof likewise there are three gates;

     The gate of obedience, the gate of prayer, and the gate of
     discernment.

     Renounce thine own will, and let the law of God only be within
     thee: renounce doubt: pray always and faint not: be pure of heart
     also, and thou shalt see God.

     And within the soul is the Spirit: and the Spirit is One, yet has
     it likewise three elements.

     And these are the gates of the oracle of God, which is the ark of
     the covenant;

     The rod, the host[76], and the law:

     The force which solves, and transmutes, and divines: the bread of
     heaven which is the substance of all things and the food of angels;
     the table of the law, which is the will of God, written with the
     finger of the Lord.

     If these three be within thy spirit, then shall the Spirit of God
     be within thee.

     And the glory shall be upon the propitiatory, in the holy place of
     thy prayer.

     These are the twelve gates of regeneration: through which if a man
     enter he shall have right to the tree of life.

     For the number of that Tree is Thirteen.

     It may happen to a man to have three, to another five, to another
     seven, to another ten.

     But until a man have twelve, he is not master over the last enemy.

(5) Concerning the Passage of the Soul[77].

     Evoi, Father Iacchos, Lord God of Egypt: initiate thy servants in
     the halls of thy Temple;

     Upon whose walls are the forms of every creature: of every beast of
     the earth, and of every fowl of the air;

     The lynx, and the lion, and the bull: the ibis and the serpent: the
     scorpion and every flying thing.

     And the columns thereof are human shapes; having the heads of
     eagles and the hoofs of the ox.

     All these are of thy kingdom: they are the chambers of ordeal, and
     the houses of the initiation of the soul.

     For the soul passeth from form to form; and the mansions of her
     pilgrimage are manifold.

     Thou callest her from the deep, and from the secret places of the
     earth; from the dust of the ground, and from the herb of the field.

     Thou coverest her nakedness with an apron of fig-leaves; thou
     clothest her with the skins of beasts.

     Thou art from of old, O soul of man; yea, thou art from the
     everlasting.

     Thou puttest off thy bodies as raiment; and as vesture dost thou
     fold them up.

     They perish, but thou remainest: the wind rendeth and scattereth
     them; and the place of them shall no more be known.

     For the wind is the Spirit of God in man, which bloweth where it
     listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell
     whence it cometh, nor whither it shall go.

     Even so is the spirit of man, which cometh from afar off and
     tarrieth not, but passeth away to a place thou knowest not.

(6) Concerning the Mystic Exodus[77].

     Evoi, Iacchos, Lord of the Sphinx; who linkest the lowest to the
     highest; the loins of the wild beast to the head and breast of the
     woman.

     Thou holdest the chalice of divination: all the forms of nature are
     reflected therein.

     Thou turnest man to destruction: then thou sayest, Come again, ye
     children of my hand.

     Yea, blessed and holy art thou, O Master of Earth: Lord of the
     cross and the tree of salvation.

     Vine of God, whose blood redeemeth; bread of heaven, broken on the
     altar of death.

     There is corn in Egypt; go thou down into her, O my soul, with joy.

     For in the kingdom of the Body, thou shalt eat the bread of thine
     initiation.

     But beware lest thou become subject to the flesh, and a bond-slave
     in the land of thy sojourn.

     Serve not the idols of Egypt; and let not the senses be thy
     taskmasters.

     For they will bow thy neck to their yoke; they will bitterly
     oppress the Israel of God.

     An evil time shall come upon thee; and the Lord shall smite Egypt
     with plagues for thy sake.

     Thy body shall be broken on the wheel of God; thy flesh shall see
     trouble and the worm.

     Thy house shall be smitten with grievous plagues; blood, and
     pestilence, and great darkness; fire shall devour thy goods; and
     thou shalt be a prey to the locust and creeping thing.

     Thy glory shall be brought down to the dust; hail and storm shall
     smite thine harvest; yea, thy beloved and thy first-born shall the
     hand of the Lord destroy;

     Until the body let the soul go free; that she may serve the Lord
     God.

     Arise in the night, O soul, and fly, lest thou be consumed in
     Egypt.

     The angel of the understanding shall know thee for his elect, if
     thou offer unto God a reasonable faith.

     Savour thy reason with learning, with labour, and with obedience.

     Let the rod of thy desire be in thy right hand: put the sandals of
     Hermes on thy feet; and gird thy loins with strength.

     Then shalt thou pass through the waters of cleansing, which is the
     first death in the body.

     The waters shall be a wall unto thee on thy right hand and on thy
     left.

     And Hermes the Redeemer shall go before thee; for he is thy cloud
     of darkness by day, and thy pillar of fire by night.

     All the horsemen of Egypt and the chariots thereof; her princes,
     her counsellors, and her mighty men:

     These shall pursue thee, O soul, that fliest; and shall seek to
     bring thee back into bondage.

     Fly for thy life; fear not the deep; stretch out thy rod over the
     sea; and lift thy desire unto God.

     Thou hast learnt wisdom in Egypt; thou has spoiled the Egyptians;
     thou hast carried away their fine gold and their precious things.

     Thou hast enriched thyself in the body; but the body shall not hold
     thee; neither shall the waters of the deep swallow thee up.

     Thou shalt wash thy robes in the sea of regeneration; the blood of
     atonement shall redeem thee to God.

     This is thy chrism and anointing, O soul; this is the first death;
     thou art the Israel of the Lord,

     Who hath redeemed thee from the dominion of the body; and hath
     called thee from the grave, and from the house of bondage,

     Unto the way of the cross, and to the path in the midst of the
     wilderness;

     Where are the adder and the serpent, the mirage and the burning
     sand.

     For the feet of the saint are set in the way of the desert.

     But be thou of good courage, and fail thou not; then shall thy
     raiment endure, and thy sandals shall not wax old upon thee.

     And thy desire shall heal thy diseases; it shall bring streams for
     thee out of the stony rock; it shall lead thee to Paradise.

     Evoi, Father Iacchos, Jehovah-Nissi[78]; Lord of the garden and of
     the vineyard;

     Initiator and lawgiver; God of the cloud and of the mount.

     Evoi, Father Iacchos; out of Egypt has thou called thy Son.

To vindicate the suppressed mysteries of the pre-Christian churches by
disclosing them as the true _origines_ of Christianity, and to replace
the false doctrine of the exclusive divinity of one man by the true
doctrine of the potential divinity of all men,--these are among the
foremost objects of the New Gospel of Interpretation. And it is
especially in order to reinforce the last named, that it has restored
the following hymn in celebration of the supreme results of
regeneration, which formed part of the ritual of the greater mysteries
of the Greeks. It is addressed to the first of the Holy Seven, the
Spirit of Wisdom, as represented by his "angel," the angel of the sun,
even "that light which Adonai created on the first day," "whose name is,
in the Hebrew, Uriel, and in the Greek, Phoibos, the Bright One of God."
Breathing both the Spirit and the letter of the Bible, from Genesis to
the Apocalypse, the hymns, of which this is one, indicate unmistakeably
the identity in source and substance of the Hebrew and the Christian
with the other sacred mysteries of antiquity, and the derivation of the
later through the earlier from their common source in the world
celestial when once again they have been restored. And they supply also
the motive which led the Christians to destroy the second Alexandrian
library, showing that motive to have been the desire to conceal, first,
the derivation of the Christian presentment from its predecessors, and
next, the perversion of their doctrine in the interests of an
unscrupulous sacerdocy.

       *       *       *       *       *

Taken in connection with its fellow-hymns, similarly recovered, to
others of the "Holy Seven," the hymn to Phoibos throws a flood of light
on the creative week of Genesis, showing it to be no mere proem to
Scripture, or concerned with the world physical merely, but an integral
portion of Scripture, being an epitome of eternal verities ever in
process, and appertaining both to Creation and to Redemption. The Hymn
to Her who is mystically the fourth, but really the third of the Gods,
the "Spirit of Counsel" of Isaiah, is especially notable for its
solution of the problem of the inversion of the order of the third and
fourth days of creation. These hymns, moreover, show indubitably that
the order of the solar system was no secret to the hierophants of the
sacred mysteries of antiquity.

(7) Hymn to Phoibos, the First of the Gods.

     "Strong art thou and adorable, Phoibos Apollo, who bearest life and
     healing on thy wings, who crownest the year with thy bounty, and
     givest the spirit of thy divinity to the fruits and precious things
     of all the worlds.

     Where were the bread of the initiation of the Sons of God, except
     thou bring the corn to ear; or the wine of their mystical chalice,
     except thou bless the vintage?

     Many are the angels who serve in the courts of the spheres of
     heaven: but thou, Master of Light and of Life, art followed by the
     Christs of God.

     And thy sign is the sign of the Son of Man in heaven, and of the
     Just made perfect;

     Whose path is as a shining light, shining more and more unto the
     innermost glory of the day of the Lord God.

     Thy banner is blood-red, and thy symbol is a milk-white lamb, and
     thy crown is of pure gold.

     They who reign with thee are the Hierophants of the celestial
     mysteries; for their will is the will of God, and they know as they
     are known.

     These are the sons of the innermost sphere; the Saviours of men,
     the Anointed of God.

     And their name is Christ Jesus, in the day of their initiation.

     And before them every knee shall bow, of things in heaven and of
     things on earth.

     They are come out of great tribulation, and are set down for ever
     at the right hand of God.

     And the Lamb, which is in the midst of the seven spheres, shall
     give them to drink of the river of living water.

     And they shall eat of the tree of life, which is in the centre of
     the garden of the kingdom of God.

     These are thine, O Mighty Master of Light; and this is the dominion
     which the Word of God appointed thee in the beginning:

     In the day when God created the light of all the worlds, and
     divided the light from the darkness.

     And God called the light Phoibos, and the darkness God called
     Python.

     Now the darkness was before the light, as the night forerunneth the
     dawn.

     These are the evening and the morning of the first cycle of the
     Mysteries.

     And the glory of that cycle is as the glory of seven days; and they
     who dwell therein are seven times refined;

     Who have purged the garment of the flesh in the living waters;

     And have transmuted both body and soul into spirit, and are become
     pure virgins.

     For they were constrained by love to abandon the outer elements,
     and to seek the innermost which is undivided, even the Wisdom of
     God.

     And wisdom and love are one.

In view of the restoration of the Gods to recognition by the New Gospel
of Interpretation, it must be explained that the doctrines of Monotheism
and Polytheism are not necessarily incompatible. This has already been
shown in Chapter IV., in the utterance commencing--"In the bosom of the
Eternal were all the Gods comprehended, as the seven spirits of the
prism contained in the Invisible Light." For as light is one though its
rays are seven and each ray is light, so is God one though His spirits
are seven and each spirit is God.

And yet further. The deities recognised under various names or by
various peoples are not necessarily different Gods, but may be either
the same God or different modes or aspects of the same God. Notably is
this the case with the Gods of the Hebrews, the Greeks, and the
Christians. For while by the term Elohim is denoted the two principles,
masculine and feminine, of Force and Substance, which constitute
Original Being, by Jehovah or Yahveh, Adonai and Shaddai, is denoted the
resultant of the interaction of these two principles as Father and
Mother, who is called therefore their word, expression, and Son. By the
Holy Ghost is denoted the same two principles in activity, having
procession from the "Father-Mother" through the "Son," to be the
constituent principles of creation, being Deity dynamic as distinguished
from Deity static. By the Seven Spirits of God--as by the seven great
Gods of the Greeks,--are denoted the seven potencies into which Deity
differentiates on emerging as Holy Ghost from the prism constituted of
Father, Mother, and Son, which are to each other as the force,
substance, and phenomenon of which every manifest entity consists. For
"Every entity that is manifest, is manifest by the evolution of its
trinity." And by Christ is denoted the ultimate issue of such procession
of Deity into manifestation, namely, divinity individuated by means of
its passage through matter, and elaborated by co-operation of the Seven
Spirits of God, into a perfected _spiritual_ Ego, who is at once God and
man, and subsists under two modes--the microcosmic or individual, and
the macrocosmic or universal, and who is always in process of increase,
because, in manifestation, "the Father is greater than the Son;" and
"the manifest never exhausts the unmanifest."

Now the process of the Christ is by regeneration, and of this, as has
been said, reincarnation is the condition. The New Gospel of
Interpretation contains an utterance of Jesus on this subject which will
fitly conclude this series of examples. It was recovered by "Mary" under
illumination early in 1880, and consequently when we had not fully come
to realise the actuality of the doctrine and the possibility of the
recovery of the memories of past lives. Hence she sought from her
illuminators confirmation of the genuineness of the experience, when she
was distinctly and positively assured that the incident had actually
occurred, and that she had borne part in it, though no record of it
survives. Such is the extrinsic testimony on which it rests. We found
the intrinsic no less satisfactory, whether as regards the substance or
the form.

(8) Concerning the previous lines of Jesus, and Reincarnation.

     This morning between sleeping and waking I saw myself, together
     with many other persons, walking with Jesus in the fields round
     about Jerusalem, and while He was speaking to us, a man approached,
     who looked very earnestly upon Him. And Jesus turned to us and
     said, "This man whom you see approaching is a seer. He can behold
     the past lives of a man by looking into his face." Then, the man
     being come up to us, Jesus took him by the hand and said, "What
     readest thou?" And the man answered, "I see Thy past, Lord Jesus,
     and the ways by which Thou hast come." And Jesus said to him, "Say
     on." So the man told Jesus that he could see Him in the past for
     many long ages back. But of all that he named, I remember but one
     incarnation, or, perhaps, one only struck me, and that was _Isaac_.
     And as the man went on speaking, and enumerating the incarnations
     he saw, Jesus waved His right hand twice or thrice before his eyes,
     and said, "It is enough," as though He wished him not to reveal
     further. Then I stepped forward from the rest and said, "Lord, if,
     as thou hast taught us, the woman is the highest form of humanity,
     and the last to be assumed, how comes it that Thou, the Christ, art
     still in the lower form of man? Why comest Thou not to lead the
     perfect life, and to save the world as woman? For surely Thou has
     attained to womanhood." And Jesus answered, "I have attained to
     womanhood, as thou sayest; and
     already have I taken the form of woman. But there are three
     conditions under which the soul returns to the man's form; and they
     are these:--

     "1st. When the work which the Spirit proposes to accomplish is of a
     nature unsuitable to the female form.

     "2nd. When the Spirit has failed to acquire, in the degree
     necessary to perfection, certain special attributes of the male
     character.

     "3rd. When the Spirit has transgressed, and gone back in the path
     of perfection, by degrading the womanhood it had attained.

     "In the first of these cases the return to the male form is outward
     and superficial only. This is my case. I am a woman in all save the
     body. But had My body been a woman's, I could not have led the life
     necessary to the work I have to perform. I could not have trod the
     rough ways of the earth, nor have gone about from city to city
     preaching, nor have fasted on the mountains, nor have fulfilled My
     mission of poverty and labour. Therefore am I--a woman--clothed in
     a man's body that I may be enabled to do the work set before Me.

     "The second case is that of a soul who, having been a woman perhaps
     many times, has acquired more aptly and readily the higher
     qualities of womanhood than the lower qualities of manhood. Such a
     soul is lacking in energy, in resoluteness, in that particular
     attribute of the Spirit which the prophet ascribes to the Lord when
     he says, 'The Lord is a Man of war.' Therefore the soul is put back
     into a man's form to acquire the qualities yet lacking.

     "The third case is that of the backslider, who, having nearly
     attained perfection,--perhaps even touched it,--degrades and soils
     his white robe, and is put back into the lower form again. These
     are the common cases; for there are few women who are worthy to be
     women"[79].

(9) Concerning the "Work of Power."

     You have asked me if the Work of Power is a difficult one, and if
     it is open to all.

     It is open to all potentially and eventually, but not actually and
     in the present. In order to regain power and the resurrection, a
     man must be a Hierarch; that is to say, he must have attained the
     _magical_ age of thirty-three. This age is attained by having
     accomplished the Twelve Labours, passed the Twelve Gates, overcome
     the Five Senses, and obtained dominion over the Four Spirits of the
     elements. He must have been born Immaculate, baptised with Water
     and Fire, tempted in the Wilderness, crucified and buried. He must
     have borne Five Wounds on the Cross, and he must have answered the
     riddle of the Sphinx. When this is accomplished he is free of
     matter, and will never again have a phenomenal body.

     Who shall attain to this perfection? The Man who is without fear
     and without concupiscence; who has courage to be absolutely poor
     and absolutely chaste. When it is all one to you whether you have
     gold or whether you have none, whether you have a house and lands
     or whether you have them not, whether you have worldly reputation
     or whether you are an outcast,--then you are voluntarily poor. It
     is not necessary to have nothing, but it is necessary to care for
     nothing. When it is all one to you whether you have a wife or
     husband, or whether you are celibate, then you are free from
     concupiscence. It is not necessary to be a virgin; it is necessary
     to set no value on the flesh. There is nothing so difficult to
     attain as this equilibrium. Who is he who can part with his goods
     without regret? Who is he who is never consumed by the desires of
     the flesh? But when you have ceased both to wish to retain and to
     burn, then you have the remedy in your own hands, and the remedy is
     a hard and a sharp one, and a terrible ordeal. Nevertheless, be not
     afraid. Deny the five senses, and above all the taste and the
     touch. The power is within you if you will to attain it. The Two
     Seats
     are vacant at the Celestial Table, if you will put on Christ. Eat
     no dead thing. Drink no fermented drink. Make living elements of
     all the elements of your body. Mortify the members of earth. Take
     your food full of life, and let not the touch of death pass upon
     it. You understand me, but you shrink. Remember that without
     self-immolation, there is no power over death. Deny the touch. Seek
     no bodily pleasure in sexual communion; let desire be magnetic and
     soulic. If you indulge the body, you perpetuate the body, and the
     end of the body is corruption. You understand me again, but you
     shrink. Remember that without self-denial and restraint there is no
     power over death. Deny the taste first, and it will become easier
     to deny the touch. For to be a virgin is the crown of discipline. I
     have shown you the excellent way, and it is the _Via Dolorosa_.
     Judge whether the resurrection be worth the passion; whether the
     kingdom be worth the obedience; whether the power be worth the
     suffering. When the time of your calling comes, you will no longer
     hesitate.

     When a man has attained power over his body, the process of ordeal
     is no longer necessary. The Initiate is under a vow; the Hierarch
     is free. Jesus, therefore, came eating and drinking; for all things
     were lawful to Him. He had undergone, and had freed His will. For
     the object of the trial and the vow is polarisation. When the fixed
     is volatilised, the Magian is free. But before Christ was Christ He
     was subject; and His initiation lasted thirty years. All things are
     lawful to the Hierarch; for he knows the nature and value of
     all[80].

This chapter may appropriately terminate with a few remarks in reply to
the inevitable question, why our country and language were selected as
the place and tongue of the new revelation in preference to all others.

It is, as we were enabled to see, because the British people are
recognised in the celestial world, as possessing that peculiar quality
of soul which, in spite of their many and grievous limitations, has made
them to be the foremost witness among the nations to God and the
Conscience, in such wise as to constitute them the counterpart of Israel
in the modern world. Others besides ourselves have recognised this
characteristic. Said Milton, speaking of a crisis which, momentous as it
was, pales in presence of that which now is, seeing that Religion itself
as Religion was not menaced then as in our time--

"Now once again, by all concurrence of signs, and by the general
instinct of devout and holy men, as they daily and solemnly express
their thoughts, God is beginning to devise some new and great period in
His Church, even to the reforming of Reformation itself. What does He
then, but address Himself to His servants, and--as His manner is--first
to His Englishmen."

To which we may add in reference to the present, "And having by the
hands of His Intellectualists, beaten down the false interpretation of
His holy Word, accomplishing the work of destruction, is about by the
hands of His Intuitionalists, to establish the true interpretation,
accomplishing the work of re-construction."

Nor are there wanting specific historical facts pointing in the same
direction. To Britain it was given by a timely act of revolt against a
domination at once foreign and sacerdotal, to rescue the letter of
Scripture from suppression and virtual extinction at the hands of an
order bent only on exalting itself at whatever cost to truth and
humanity. Meanwhile, for three centuries and a half--period suggestive
of the mystical "time, times, and half a time,"--Britain has faithfully
and lovingly, albeit unintelligently and mistakenly, guarded and
cherished the letter thus rescued, even to the erecting of it into a
fetish. And it may well be that she has now, for her guerdon, been
further commissioned to be the recipient and minister of its
interpretation.

Moreover, as Mistress of the Sea, the especial symbol of the Soul, she
has a prescriptive claim to be the vehicle of the latest and crowning
message to earth, of which the Soul herself is at once the source, the
subject, and the object.

Nor are the universality of her language and the grandeur of her
literature elements to be left out of consideration. All things point to
her language as destined to become, practically, the language of the
world; and hence its peculiar fitness to be the vehicle of that "eternal
gospel" which it is declared should, at the end of the age, be
proclaimed "unto them that dwell on the earth, even unto every nation,
and tribe, and tongue, and people."

FOOTNOTES:

[74] Taste and smell being modes of touch. E.M.

[75] _I.e._, the astral and mental part of man, which is accounted a
person or system in itself. E.M.

[76] The Sacramental bread called by the Hebrews "showbread."

[77] See note on p. 122, ante.

[78] The names Nyssa, Nysa, Nysas, and Nissi are identical with each
other, and also with Sinai, Sion, and those of other sacred mounts. For
they all are names for the Mount of Regeneration, the mount or "holy
hill" of the Lord, within the man, to be on which is to be in the
Spirit. The river Hiddekel has the like import. It is the river of the
soul, herself fluidic and called Maria (waters), which, as the
receptacle of the divine nucleus, winds about and encompasses the
Spirit. Thus Daniel is said to be "on Hiddekel" when under divine
illumination. ("The Life of A.K." Vol. I. p. 459.)

[79] A.K. was distinctly and positively assured that the incident then
shown to her was one that actually occurred, and that she had borne part
of it though no record of it survives. S.H.H.

[80] This instruction is taken from "The Life of A.K." Vol. I, pp.
424-425.




CHAPTER VII.

THE PROMULGATION AND RECOGNITION.


As will readily be imagined, the interest was intense with which we
watched the progress of our work, in order to see whether the crucial
event of its promulgation would coincide with the date prophesied for
the turning point between the outgoing and the incoming dispensations.
The predictions covered a period of six years, namely from 1876 to 1881
inclusive. In this period was to be laid the foundation of a universal
kingdom of justice and knowledge, which should constitute the reign of
Michael, and spring from a new illumination, one feature of which was to
be the "return of the Gods" in 1876. It was in the autumn of this year
that they first came to us, and the intimation was given us that the
reign of Michael was then actually commencing; we having no knowledge
either of the meaning or of the fact of such predictions. For, while the
Bible references to Michael were altogether unintelligible to us, we had
not learnt to refer the event to any assignable period. The fulfilment
of this prediction disposed us to attach value to those which pointed to
the year 1881 as that in which our work--supposing our estimate of its
significance to be correct--ought to see the light. For our illuminators
observed silence respecting times and seasons, contenting themselves
with bringing under our notice the books containing the predictions,
the application being left to our own perspicacity. We were powerless to
influence events, even had we desired to do so. We could but work
steadily on, as we did, "without haste, without rest," until my
colleague had finished her university course and obtained her diploma.
This she accomplished in the summer of 1880, soon after which we
returned to England; and in the summer of 1881 we delivered in London,
to a private audience, the lectures which constituted the first
promulgation of our work. These were published in the following winter
under the title of "The Perfect Way, or the Finding of Christ," our
excellent friend at Paris faithfully fulfilling the mission she had
accepted in relation to us and our work[81]. Thus were fulfilled exactly
all the predictions respecting the dates, the character, and the manner
of our work.

There were many other coincidences of a kind so remarkable as to make us
feel that to ascribe them to accident would require a larger measure of
credulity than to ascribe them to design. Among the most striking were
those which concerned "Mary's" names, and which were in this wise.

When first the significance of the Apocalyptic utterance concerning the
river Euphrates and the kings of the East was flashed on my mind, I
asked her if she knew that she was mentioned, even to her very name, in
the book of Revelation. To which she replied, smiling, that she had
known it for some time, but which of her names did I mean? I said that I
meant her married surname, which fitted exactly a way made for kings
across a river, by the drying up of its waters, namely a _king's ford_;
the "Kings of the East," meaning those principles in man whereby he has
knowledge of divine things--the East being the mystical expression for
the place of the dawn of spiritual light, such as that of which she was
the revealer. While the Euphrates means, in the Apocalypse as in
Genesis, the highest principle in the fourfold kosmos of man, the Spirit
or Will[82]. Only when this principle in man is "dried up," or
sublimated by being made one with the divine Will, is man accessible to
the divine knowledges brought by the "Kings of the East." As the channel
by which these knowledges were being restored to the world, she was the
_kings' ford_ implied. She then told me, what I had not yet observed,
that her baptismal and maiden names were equally appropriate, as the
Latin for the "acceptable year of the Lord," or _good time_, announced
as to follow the restoration of the knowledges brought by the Kings of
the East, is--allowing for difference of gender--_Annus Bonus_. The
coincidence of names did not end here, for we shortly afterwards, in the
course of our researches, came upon an old prophecy declaring that the
initials of the "Messenger" of the new Avâtar, due at this time, would
be A.K.!

She further identified the "Kings of the East" as functions of the three
principles in man, the Spirit, the Soul, and the Mind; being
respectively, right aspiration, which is of the Spirit; right
perception, which is of the Soul; and right judgment, which is of the
Mind; the combination of which is the necessary and sufficient condition
of divine knowledge.

Had we been sanguine of a favourable reception of our book by the press
at large--which we were not--our disappointment would have been great.
But we were by no means prepared either for the gross misrepresentation
and even vulgar ribaldry with which it was treated by the few organs in
the literary press which noticed it at all, or for the complete neglect
of it by that portion of the press which especially concerns itself with
religious exegesis. In no instance was any attempt made to exhibit its
plan, purpose, and real nature, or any recognition accorded to its
luminous solutions of the profound problems dealt with. The very claim
to have experiential knowledge of things spiritual was accounted an
offence; and it seemed as if the word had gone forth to adopt towards it
an attitude which should effectually restrain the public from making its
acquaintance, even though it met absolutely the need recognised on all
hands as the world's supreme need, and vindicated its claim thereto by
the presentation of teachings avowedly of divine derivation and
demonstrating their divinity by their intrinsic character to all who are
in the smallest degree spiritually percipient. To this day that attitude
has never been abandoned or relaxed; and notwithstanding the assiduous
endeavours made to counteract its influence, the whole mass of our
people, saving only a few select circles, have yet to learn that the
longed-for New Gospel of Interpretation has actually been vouchsafed,
having been for years in their midst waiting but to be recognised of
them,--a "light shining in darkness and the darkness comprehending it
not"[83].

In compliance with the injunctions of our illuminators, we had withheld
our names from our first edition, in order to secure for it a judgment
unbiased by any personal element. But though we ourselves thus escaped
the opprobrium attaching to our book, "Mary" was at first inclined to
repent of having exposed her pearls to such profanation; and was only
reassured by the suggestion that it showed how desperate was the need
for precisely the change our work was designed to accomplish, and how
exactly was fulfilled the prophecy which foretold the wrath of the
dragon and his angels at the advent of the "Woman" Intuition, their
destined destroyer, and the consequent shortness of their own time. We
knew of course better than to regard such criticism as being in any
sense a measure of our work. For us it was, like criticism in general, a
measure not of the thing criticised but of the critics themselves. And
these, in our case, but truly represented the condition of the age, and
knew not what they were doing.

Such is the reason why so many will hear for the first time from this
book that a New Gospel of Interpretation has been received. To turn to
the other and compensating side. With those who were specially qualified
to judge, it was far otherwise. And among the most notable of the
recognitions received from this quarter was the weighty utterance which
appears in the preface to the second and succeeding editions, coming
from that veteran student of the "Divine Science," the friend, disciple,
and literary heir of the renowned Kabalist and magian, the late Abbé
Constant ("Eliphas Levi"), namely, Baron Spedalieri of Marseilles, who
though then an entire stranger to us, wrote to us as follows--for I
think it may with advantage be reproduced here:--

     "As with the corresponding Scriptures of the past, the appeal on
     behalf of your book is, really, to miracles, but with the
     difference that in your case they are intellectual ones, and
     incapable of simulation, being miracles of interpretation. And they
     have the further distinction of doing no violence to common sense
     by infringing the possibilities of Nature; while they are in
     complete accord with all mystical traditions, and especially with
     the great Mother of these, the Kabala. That miracles such as I am
     describing are to be found in _The Perfect Way_, in kind and number
     unexampled, they who are the best qualified to judge will be the
     most ready to affirm.

     "And here, _apropos_ of these renowned Scriptures, permit me to
     offer you some remarks on the Kabala as we have it. It is my
     opinion--

     "(1) That this tradition is far from being genuine, and such as it
     was on its original emergence from the sanctuaries.

     "(2) That when Guillaume Postel--of excellent memory--and his
     brother Hermetists of the later middle age--the Abbot Trithemius
     and others--predicted that these sacred books of the Hebrews should
     become known and understood at the end of the era, and specified
     the present time for that event, they did not mean that such
     knowledge should be limited to the mere divulgement of these
     particular Scriptures, but that it would have for its base a new
     illumination, which should eliminate from
     them all that has been ignorantly or wilfully introduced, and
     should re-unite that great tradition with its source by restoring
     it in all its purity.

     "(3) That this illumination has just been accomplished, and has
     been manifested in _The Perfect Way_. For in this book we find all
     that there is of truth in the Kabala, supplemented by new
     intuitions, such as present a body of doctrine at once complete,
     homogeneous, logical and inexpungnable.

     "Since the whole tradition thus finds itself recovered or restored
     to its original purity, the prophecies of Postel and his
     fellow-Hermetists are accomplished; and I consider that from
     henceforth the study of the Kabala will be but an object of
     curiosity and erudition, like that of Hebrew antiquities.

     "Humanity has always and everywhere asked itself these three
     supreme questions: Whence come we? What are we? Whither go we? Now,
     these questions at length find an answer, complete, satisfactory,
     and consolatory, in _The Perfect Way_"[84].

He subsequently wrote:--

     "If the Scriptures of the future are to be, as I firmly believe
     they will be, those which best interpret the Scriptures of the
     past, these writings will assuredly hold the foremost place among
     them"[85].

For those who are unacquainted with the Kabala, its origin, nature, and
intent, it will be well to state that it represents the transcendental
and esoteric doctrine of the Hebrews, as handed down from the remotest
times. In recognition of its divine origin, the Rabbins describe it as
having been communicated by God, first, to "Adam in Paradise," and,
next, to "Moses on Sinai." By which expressions they implied that its
doctrine was due to the highest possible illumination.

It was also in recognition of this element in our book that Mr.
MacGregor Mathers dedicated his learned work, "The Kabala Unveiled," to
us, saying--

     "I have much pleasure in dedicating this work to the authors of
     _The Perfect Way_, as they have in that excellent and wonderful
     book touched so much on the doctrines of the Kabala, and laid such
     value on its teachings. _The Perfect Way_ is one of the most deeply
     occult works that has been written for centuries."

As the foregoing testimonies represent the _consensus_ of the Kabalists,
Hermetists, and other great ancient schools of spiritual science in the
West, so the following represents the _consensus_ of the corresponding
schools of the East. As will be seen, it involves a coincidence so
notable as to point to a source transcending the human and terrestrial,
as that of the great spiritual revival which our age is witnessing. That
coincidence is in this wise:--

Within two years of the commencement of our collaboration in the work
which proved to be that of the restoration of the _Gnosis_ of the
West--the divine doctrine of which, as we had come to learn, Christ was
the personal demonstration, and the religion called after Him ought to
have been the expression; a collaboration was commenced which had for
its end the like exposition in regard to the religious systems of the
East. This is the collaboration, also of a woman and a man, which had
its issue in the Theosophical Society. The two pairs of collaborators
worked simultaneously through the succeeding years in entire ignorance
of each other and their work, until the commencement of the publication
of our results in 1881, at which time the Theosophical Society was still
so far from having completed the system of its doctrine, that neither of
its two now fundamental tenets had yet been recognised by it, the
tenets, namely, of Reincarnation and Karma--its chief text-book, the
"Isis Unveiled" of its foundress, not containing them. We, on the
contrary, had both of these doctrines, having derived them, as already
stated herein, directly from celestial sources and wholly independently
of human authority and tradition, of spiritualism, and of our own
prepossessions.

It was clear, both by this fact and by the avowals of the parties
concerned, that up to this time the chiefs of the Theosophical Society
had been unable to obtain from those whom they claimed as their masters
more than a very meagre instalment of their doctrine. But after the
arrival of our book in India this state of things was changed. It was
then declared on behalf of the "masters" that we had obtained, from
original and independent sources, a system of doctrine substantially
identical with that of which they had for ages been, as they supposed,
in exclusive possession, but had never been permitted to divulge, as it
had always been reserved for initiates. The revelation of it through us,
we were further informed, had "forced the hands of the masters," by
showing them that the time had come when secrecy was no longer possible,
and compelling them, if only in vindication of their own claims, to
relax their rule of silence in regard to their mysteries.

The coincidence between their doctrine and ours comprised sundry
particulars the most recondite, including--besides the two great tenets
already named--the multiplicity of principles in the human system, and
their separation and respective conditions after death,--a subject lying
outside the cognisance of "Spiritualism." Among other points of
agreement was that of their recognition of the great antiquity of the
soul of "Mary," whom they pronounced to be "the greatest natural mystic
of the present day, and countless ages ahead of the great majority of
mankind, the foremost of whom--the most civilised--belong to the last
race of the fourth round, while she belongs to the first race of the
fifth round."

In presence of these and other proofs of the possession by the Eastern
occultists, of knowledges which we had obtained directly at first hand
from celestial sources, we could not but pay respectful heed to the
claims of the representatives of the Theosophical Society, and welcome
any token which might indicate it as a destined fellow-agent in the
great spiritual revival of the age. So might it constitute, with
"Spiritualism" and the work represented by us, a threefold power for
accomplishing the promotion predicted for this era, of the consciousness
of the race to a level which should transcend any yet reached by it as a
race. With Spiritualism to represent the phenomenal and personal,
Theosophy the philosophical and occult, and our own work the mystical
and divine, every region of man's higher nature would find its due
recognition and unfoldment. Meanwhile, the organ of the Society in India
thus expressed itself respecting "The Perfect Way":--

     "A grand book, keen of insight and eloquent in exposition; an
     upheaval of true spirituality.... We regard its authors as having
     produced one of the most--perhaps the most--important and
     spirit-stirring of appeals to the highest instincts of mankind
     which modern European literature has evolved"[86].

We had a yet further warrant, derived from Scripture itself, for looking
to the Theosophical Society as possibly a divinely appointed factor in
the spiritual evolution of the time. The unsealing of the World's Bibles
was upon us, and not of that of Christendom only. And we saw in the
following saying of Jesus an obvious allusion to the present epoch, "In
those days many shall come from the East, and the West, and the North,
and the South, and shall sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, in the
kingdom of heaven." Not that the terms East, West, North, and South,
denoted for us the quarters of the physical globe. We had learnt to
understand them in their mystical sense, wherein they denote the various
human temperaments, the intuitional, the traditional, the intellectual,
and the emotional, all of which would find satisfaction in the doctrine
then to be recovered. It was in the terms Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,
that the significance of the utterance lay for us; these being in one
aspect the Hebrew equivalents for Brahma, Isis, and Iacchos, and
denoting the mysteries respectively of India, Egypt, and Greece, of the
Spirit, the Soul, and the Body, and therein of the whole Man. For these
mysteries together comprised the perfect doctrine of Existence, called
also in Scripture the "Word of God," the "Law and the Prophets," and the
"_Theou Sophia_," "Wisdom of God," and "hidden Wisdom," of which the
Christ, as the typical Man regenerate, is the fulfilment and personal
demonstration. This is to say, they constituted that Gnosis, or
Knowledge, with the taking away and withholdment of the key of which
Jesus so bitterly reproached, in the Ecclesiasticism of His time, that
of all time, and, therefore, that knowledge to the restoration of which,
in our day, through the faculty by means of which it was originally
obtained and can alone be discerned, the prophecies one and all pointed,
as to mark and to make the "time of the end" of the "adulterous,"
because idolatrous, "generation," hitherto in possession in the Church,
and to introduce the "kingdom of God with power."

Having warrant so high for anticipating the restoration at this time of
the faculties and knowledges represented by the various movements in
question, and knowing also, if only by the example of ourselves, that
the divinity of a mission is not invalidated by the limitations, real or
supposed, of its instruments, but that these must be educated by
experience, and in such sense "perfected through suffering" to be fitted
for their appointed tasks;--we had no doubt as to the attitude it was
our duty to maintain towards all candidates for a share in that which we
recognised as the greatest of all the endeavours yet made by the human
soul to regain her long-lost rightful dominion over the minds and hearts
of men, leaving it to time to determine that which was of divine
appointment, and that which was not.

It will have been observed that I have used the terms "mystical" and
"occult" in such wise as to imply a distinction between them. It is
important to the purpose of this book to define and emphasise that
distinction. The instructions received by us from our illuminators were
explicit and positive on this point.

This is because they refer to two different domains of man's system.
Occultism deals with transcendental physics, and is of the intellectual,
belonging to science. Mysticism deals with transcendental metaphysics,
and is of the spiritual, belonging to religion. Occultism, therefore,
has for its domain the region which, lying between the body and the
soul, is interior to the body but exterior to the soul; while Mysticism
has for its domain the region which, comprising the soul and the spirit,
is interior to the soul, and belongs to the divine. Of course, the terms
themselves, which are respectively the Latin and the Greek for the same
thing, and mean hidden from the outer senses and also from
non-initiates, do not imply such distinction, but they have come by
usage to be thus referable.

The following citations are from the teachings received by us in this
connection. They account for the scientific part of the training imposed
on us.

     "The science of the Mysteries can be understood only by one who has
     studied the physical sciences, because it is the climax and crown
     of all these, and must be learned last and not first. Unless thou
     understand the physical
     sciences, thou canst not comprehend the doctrine of _Vehicles_,
     which is the basic doctrine of occult science. 'If thou understood
     not earthly things, how shall I make thee understand heavenly
     things?' Wherefore, get knowledge, and be greedy of knowledge, ever
     more and more. It is idle for thee to seek the inner chamber, until
     thou hast passed through the outer. This, also, is another reason
     why occult science cannot be unveiled to the horde. To the
     unlearned no truth can be demonstrated. Theosophy is the royal
     science[87]; if thou would reach the king's presence chamber, there
     is no way save through the outer rooms and galleries of the
     palace[88].

     "The adept or occultist is, at best, a religious scientist; he is
     not a 'saint.' If occultism were all, and held the key of heaven,
     there would be no need of 'Christ.' But occultism, although it
     holds the 'power,' holds neither the 'kingdom' nor the 'glory,' for
     these are of Christ. The adept knows not the kingdom of heaven, and
     'the least in this kingdom are greater than he.'

      "'Desire _first_ the kingdom of God and God's righteousness; and
     all these things shall be added unto you.' As Jesus said of
     Prometheus[89], 'Take no thought for to-morrow. Behold the lilies
     of the field and the birds of the air, and trust God as these,' For
     the saint has faith; the adept has knowledge. If the adepts in
     occultism or in physical science could suffice to man, I would have
     committed no message to you. But the two are not in opposition.
     All things are yours, even the kingdom and the power, but the glory
     is to God. Do not be ignorant of their teaching, for I would have
     you know all. Take, therefore, every means to know. This knowledge
     is of man, and cometh from the mind. Go, therefore, to man to learn
     it. 'If you will be perfect, learn also of these.' 'Yet the wisdom
     which is from above, is above all.' For one man may begin from
     within, that is, with wisdom, and wisdom is one with love. Blessed
     is the man who chooseth wisdom, for she leaveneth all things. And
     another man may begin from without, and that which is without is
     power. To such there shall be a thorn in the flesh[90]. For it is
     hard in such case to attain to the within. But if a man be first
     wise inwardly, he shall the more easily have this also added unto
     him. For he is born again and is free. Whereas at a great price
     must the adept buy freedom. Nevertheless, I bid you seek;--and in
     this also you shall find. But I have shown you a more excellent way
     than theirs. Yet both Ishmael and Isaac are sons of one father, and
     of all her children is Wisdom justified. So neither are they wrong,
     nor are you led astray. The goal is the same; but their way is
     harder than yours. They take the kingdom by violence, if they take
     it, and by much toil and agony of the flesh. But from the time of
     Christ within you, the kingdom is open to the sons of God. Receive
     what you can receive; I would have you know all things. And if you
     have served seven years for wisdom, count it not loss to serve
     seven years for power also. For if Rachel bear the best beloved,
     Leah hath many sons, and is exceeding fruitful. But her eye is not
     single; she looketh two ways, and seeketh not that which is above
     only. But to you Rachel is given first, and perchance her beauty
     may suffice. I say not, let it suffice; it is better to know all
     things, for if you know not all, how can you judge all? For as a
     man heareth, so must he judge. Will you therefore be regenerate in
     the without, as well as in the within? For they are renewed in the
     body, but you in the soul. It is well to be baptised into John's
     baptism, if a man receive also the Holy Ghost. But some know not so
     much as that there is any Holy Ghost. Yet Jesus also, being Himself
     regenerate in the spirit, sought unto the Baptism of John, for thus
     it became Him to fulfil Himself in all things. And having
     fulfilled, behold, the 'Dove' descended on Him. If then you will be
     perfect, seek both that which is within and that which is without;
     and the circle of being, which is the 'wheel of life,' shall be
     complete in you."

The Scriptural allusions in this teaching, which was received by "Mary"
under illumination occurring in sleep, proved to be on the lines of the
Kabala.

There were sundry other tokens of recognition which are entitled to
reproduction here, as showing to how wide a range of educated and
intelligent opinion within the pale of Christianity our work appeals.
Their value is due to their representing a class of minds which, while
possessed of the ordinary ecclesiastical training, are not restricted to
the knowledge thereby acquired. For, seeing that such training means
little, if anything, more than the mechanical learning of what other men
have said who, themselves, had no real knowledge, the opinions,
expressed on the strength of it, are neither educated nor intelligent,
but adoptive only and perfunctory, and represent learning without
insight. And as such precisely are the opinions which constitute
ecclesiastical orthodoxy, the judgment of the representatives of that
orthodoxy on our work possesses no more real value than did that of
Caiaphas and his coadjutors on Jesus and His work[91]. Denouncing Him
as a blasphemer, they were themselves blasphemers. And inasmuch as they
were types of the votaries of ecclesiastical orthodoxy of all time, it
is obvious that the only new revelation--if any--which would find
acceptance at their hands, would be one that confirmed and reinforced
their errors, instead of exposing and correcting them. Proceeding, as
was declared by Jesus, from their "father, the devil," a
priest-constructed system ever prefers Barabbas to Christ;--prefers,
that is, a system which defrauds--hence the force of the term "robber"
as applied to Barabbas--man of the divine potentialities which Christ
came to reveal to him by demonstrating them in His own person, together
with the manner of their realisation.

Not that all who bear the title of Ecclesiastics come under this
condemnation. In every age of the Church there have been those who,
while holding office in it, have not consented to the "Scarlet Woman" of
Sacerdotalism. And never was there a time when the proportion of these
was larger, or when their sense of the need of a New Gospel of
Interpretation was more keen and urgent than now: so intolerable to
multitudes of the clergy of all sections of the Church has become the
antagonism recognised by them as subsisting between the traditional and
official presentation of religion and their own clear perceptions of
goodness and truth[92].

The testimonies which remain to be added are valuable as coming from men
who, while possessed of ecclesiastical training, have been taught also
of the Spirit, and, adding to tradition intuition, and to learning
insight, have in themselves the witness to that which they utter.

A distinguished French ecclesiastic, the Abbé Roca, writing in
_L'Aurore_, says of our books--

     "These books seem to me to be the chosen organs of the Divine
     Feminine" (_i.e._ the interpretative) "Principle, in view of the
     new revelation of Revelation."

By which it will be seen that he shared Cardinal Newman's expectation
referred to in the introduction; and accepted as realised the forecast
of Joseph de Maistre when he said "Religion and Science, in virtue of
their natural affinity, will meet in the brain of some man of
genius--perhaps of more than one--and the world will get what it needs
and cries for, _not a new religion, but the revelation of Revelation_."
As the event shows, for "the brain of some man," he should have said
"the mind and soul of a woman."

The Rev. Dr. John Pulsford, author of "The Supremacy of Man," "Quiet
Hours," "Morgenrothe," and other works distinguished for the depth of
their piety and insight, thus wrote to me on the publication of "Clothed
with the Sun"--

     "I cannot tell you with what thankfulness and pleasure I have read
     _Clothed with the Sun_. It is impossible for a spiritually
     intelligent reader to doubt that these teachings were received from
     _within_ the astral veil. They are full of the concentrated and
     compact wisdom of the Holy Heavens and of God. If Christians knew
     their own religion, they would find in these priceless records our
     Lord Christ and His vital process abundantly illustrated and
     confirmed. The regret is that so few, comparatively, who read the
     book, will be aware of the tithe of its pearls. But that such
     communications are possible, and are permitted to be given to the
     world, is a sign, and a most promising sign of our age.

     "It is no little joy to me to feel that I am so much more in
     sympathy with God's daughter, the Seeress, than I supposed. The
     testimony is so clearly above, and distinct from, aught that is
     derived from the occult powers of the universe, rather than from
     the Supreme Spirit and Father-Mother of our Spirits."

Another notable student of spiritual science, a Priest, writing in
_Light_ of 21st October, 1882, after describing _The Perfect Way_ as
"that most wonderful of all books which has appeared since the beginning
of the Christian Era," said:--"It is a book that no student can be
without if he will know _the truth_ on these matters. It furnishes us
with a master-key to the phenomena which so perplex the minds of
enquirers, and gives a system, the like of which has not been seen for
eighteen centuries." The late Rev. John Manners, a man venerable of
years and mature of spirit, and deeply versed in the sciences of both
worlds, declared of these illuminations, "the Great I Am speaks in
every line of them. Only the Logos Himself could be their source." Lady
Caithness, already referred to, upon receiving a copy of _The Perfect
Way_, wrote: "I have got another Bible, the _most complete_ Revelation,
_certainly_, that has yet been given to man on this planet"[93]. And a
Parsee scholar, a native of India, wrote: "_The Perfect Way_ has made me
a much nobler man--a man of tranquility and calmness, due to the
knowledge of the philosophy of Being imbibed by me from it, and for
which my mind was fortunately prepared"[94].

       *       *       *       *       *

As stated in the preface, this present book is intended but as an
epitome and instalment of the far larger book in course of preparation.
For, as with the old Gospel of Manifestation, so with the New Gospel of
Interpretation, the excusable hyperbole is no less appropriate to
it,--"I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books
which might be written."

For the human soul is a theme as inexhaustible as it is paramount. And,
as never in the world's history have the need and the desire for the
knowledge of it been so urgent as they now are, so never in the world's
history has there been a revelation of it comparable with that which has
been vouchsafed in our day, and is contained in the narrative, the
completion of which, and this alone, will enable me to "depart in
peace," having no apprehension of after disquietude on the score of
having left unaccomplished a portion so important of the task committed
to me.


THE END.


[Illustration]

FOOTNOTES:

[81] The French edition, subsequently issued at Paris, is also due to
her zeal and generosity. See p. 137, ante.

[82] For the meaning of the "Four Rivers of Eden" see P. W., vi. par. 6.
See note on p. 172, ante as to meaning of river Hiddekel.

[83] This indictment is as true to-day as it was twelve years ago, when
the above passage was written. S.H.H.

[84] Cited from the preface to the second and succeeding editions of
"The P. W."

[85] Cited from "The Life of A.K." Vol. II. p. 155.

[86] The Theosophist, May, 1882.

[87] The term Theosophy is here used in its Pauline and ancient sense of
the science of the realisation of man's potential divinity;--the
process, that is, of the Christ.--1 Cor. ii. 7. E.M.

[88] From an address given on the 17th July, 1883, by A.K. to the
Theosophical Society, a full report of which is given in "The Life of
A.K." Vol. II. pp. 124-128.

[89] A term which signifies forethought. The remonstrance is against
undue anxiety and alarm on the soul's behalf while in the path of duty,
as implying distrust of the divine sufficiency. E.M.

[90] Meaning that in such case the flesh itself is the impediment.

[91] In a letter on "The Church and the Bible," in the "Agnostic
Journal" of 5th January, 1895, E.M. says:--

"Among the fallacies to be discarded is the fallacy which consists in
believing that the Church, so vehemently denounced in its own sacred
books for its manifold, grievous, and fatal perversions of the truth
contained in those books, and so ignorant as to be unaware either of the
source or of the meaning of its own dogmas, must understand its
doctrines better than I understand them, whose high privilege it is to
have been one of the two recipients of the New Gospel of Interpretation,
which has been vouchsafed expressly to correct those perversions, and
who not only have that gospel by heart, but who know absolutely by my
own soul's experience--as also did my colleague--the truth of every word
of it." (A long extract from this letter, including the above, is
printed in the appendix to B.O.A.I. p. 83.) S.H.H.

[92] See also E.M.'s remarks to the same effect in the "Statement
E.C.U." pp. 10-11.

[93] See Life A.K. Vol. II. pp. 52-53.

[94] See Life A.K. Vol. II. p. 241.




"SCRIPTURES OF THE FUTURE."


Books rapidly coming into use in the Roman, Greek and Anglican
communions as the text-books which represent the prophesied restoration
of the Ancient Esoteric doctrine which, by interpreting the mysteries of
religion, should reconcile faith and reason, religion and science, and
accomplish the downfall of that sacerdotal system, which--"making the
word of God of none effect by its traditions"--has hitherto usurped the
name and perverted the truth of Christianity. Their standpoint is that
Christian doctrines, when rightly understood, are necessary and
self-evident truths, recognisable as founded in and representing the
actual nature of existence, incapable of being conceived of as
otherwise, and constituting a system of thought at once scientific,
philosophic and religious, absolutely inexpugnable, and satisfactory to
man's highest aspirations, intellectual, moral and spiritual.

=The Perfect Way;= or The Finding of Christ. By Anna Kingsford and
Edward Maitland. Third English Edition, Price 6s. net.

=The Life of Anna Kingsford=; by Edward Maitland. A new edition in
preparation.

=The New Gospel of Interpretation;= being an Abstract of the doctrine
and Statement of the objects of The Esoteric Christian Union, founded by
Edward Maitland, Nov., 1891.

=The Story of Anna Kingsford and Edward Maitland, and of The New Gospel
of Interpretation=; by Edward Maitland. Third and enlarged Edition, 228
pp., edited by Samuel Hopgood Hart, Cloth Gilt, Back and Side; Price 3s.
6d. net; Post Free 3s. 10d. The Ruskin Press, Stafford Street,
Birmingham.

=The Bible's Own Account of Itself=; by Edward Maitland. Second Edition,
edited by Saml. Hopgood Hart, complete, with Appendix. Crown 8vo. 96
pp., Stiff Paper Covers, Price 6d.; Post Free 7d,; or in Cloth Covers,
Gilt, 1s. 6d. net; Post Free 1s. 8d. The Ruskin Press, Birmingham.

All the above Works may be obtained from

=_THE RUSKIN PRESS, STAFFORD STREET, BIRMINGHAM._=

(_Postages in addition to the above Prices._)

=_Some Testimonies of notable profiolents in religious science._=

     "If the Scriptures of the future are to be, as I firmly believe
     they will be, those which best interpret the Scriptures of the
     past, these writings will assuredly hold the foremost place among
     them.... They present a body of doctrine at once complete,
     homogeneous, logical and inexpugnable, in which the three supreme
     questions, Whence come we? What are we? Whither go we? at length
     find an answer, complete, satisfactory, and consolatory."--BARON
     SPEDALIERI (_The Kabalist_).

     "It is impossible for a spiritually intelligent reader to doubt
     that these teachings were received from within the astral veil.
     They are full of the concentrated and compact wisdom of the Holy
     Heavens and of God. If Christians knew their own religion, they
     would find in these priceless records our Lord Christ and His vital
     process abundantly illustrated and confirmed. That such
     communications are possible, and are permitted to be given to the
     world, in a sign, and a most promising sign, of our age."--REV. DR.
     JOHN PULSFORD.




THE BIBLE'S OWN ACCOUNT OF ITSELF.

By EDWARD MAITLAND (_B.A., Cantab_)


Author of "The Keys of the Creeds," "The Story of the New Gospel of
Interpretation," "The Life of Anna Kingsford," etc.; and Joint Writer
with Dr. Anna Kingsford of "The Perfect Way," etc.

EDITED BY SAMUEL HOPGOOD HART.

=Second Edition, (Complete) with Appendix, PRICE SIXPENCE.=

Or in Cloth Covers, gilt, One Shilling and Sixpence.

"Now there come out of the darkness and the storm which shall arise upon
the earth, two dragons. And they fight and tear each other, until there
arises a star, a fountain of light, a queen, who is Esther."--The Vision
of Mordecai, as interpreted in "Clothed with the Sun," I., IX.

BIRMINGHAM: The Ruskin Press, Stafford St., and all Booksellers.


SOME PRESS OPINIONS

OF

_The Story of Anna Kingsford and Edward Maitland and of The New Gospel
of Interpretation._

_Literary World_--"A strangely interesting book--very curious--few who
have any sympathy with mental phenomena of the 'occult' kind will fail
to read it with sustained interest."

_Light_--"A psychic history of umblemished veracity and astounding
facts--supremely interesting--'full of beauty and perfect simplicity of
purpose'--and showing that the 'fig-tree of the inward understanding is
no longer barren, but has budded and blossomed and borne fruit.'"

_Church Bells, 27th April, 1894_--"Mr. Maitland has written a
fascinating book."

_The Gentleman's Journal, March, 1894_--"Nothing Mr. Maitland writes
would I like to miss--I never study his searching and striking pages
without profit."

_Agnostic Journal_--"A fascinating volume--the history of a work
calculated to effect a fundamental revolution in religion--told in
language which leaves nothing to be desired."

_The Illustrated Church News, 31st March, 1894_--"This work is to
Christians of real interest; for it enables them to study Gnosticism
alive and vigorous in the nineteenth century."

_Brighouse Gazette_--"One of those really great books associated with
the names of Anna Kingsford and Edward Maitland."

_The Unknown World_--"There is no man now known to be living in England
who has had such an abundant transcendental experience."




RELIGION AND MENTAL PHENOMENA.

_From the "Christian Union."_


Whatever may be said in favour or disfavour of Mr. Edward Maitland's
"Story of the New Gospel of Interpretation," it is one of the most
remarkable and most fascinating books on mental-visional perceptions of
Divine Revelation that has appeared at any time. It is a book that
carries the reader away from the materialistic to the mystical and
spiritual. The author claims to bring to the old revelation a new
interpretation, or more correctly, to restore the original and spiritual
interpretation which has been lost through literalism. According to the
narrative, the two persons concerned were for some years in reception of
revelations which convinced them that they had been enabled "to tap a
boundless reservoir of wisdom and knowledge" before the method and
source were declared to them.... At length it was made clear to them
that the knowledges they had acquired were due to intuitional
recollection occuring under Divine illumination. "Inborn knowledge and
the perception of things--these are the sources of Revelation. The soul
of the man instructeth him, having already learned by experience.
Intuition is inborn experience, that which the soul knoweth of old and
of former lives." The ordinary mind will doubtless be ready to pronounce
it to be strange mental phenomena, and nothing more. But surely mental
phenomena of an extraordinary character must have an extraordinary use
and purpose. And so few persons know enough of the psyhic powers latent
in man, to be able to believe in the reality of these manifestations....
The nature of the results is such as to negative all materialistic
explanations. For the knowledges recovered are real, solving problems in
the profoundest domains of theology, hitherto given up as mysteries
hopeless of solution. And they are being thus recognised far and wide by
the profoundest students of spiritual science.... Judge the story of the
New Gospel of Interpretation in what light we may, it has in it all the
evidences of a marvellous work in its mental and spiritual conception,
exposition, interpretation, illustration, and Divine communication. It
stands out conspicuously as a fuller development of Biblical truth, such
as Cardinal Newman must have anticipated when he said that he saw no
hope for religion, save in a new Revelation.

THE RUSKIN PRESS.

STAFFORD STREET, BIRMINGHAM,

PRINTERS.


       *       *       *       *       *

Transcribers notes:

Maintained original spelling and punctuation.

Silently corrected obvious typesetting errors.