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LIBRARY
DEPOSITED BY THE
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The Great Secret

The Great Secret
BY
MAURICE MAETERLINCK
. > *•
Translated by
BERNARD MIALL

NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.
1922

Copyright, 1922, by
The Centuet Co.

PBINTED IN U. S. A.

CONTENTS
OHAPTBB PAOB
I Prologue  3
II India  26
III Egypt  98
IV Persia  116
V Chaldea  121
VI Greece Before Socrates . . . .126
VII The Gnostics and the Neoplatonists 153
VIII The Cabala  159
IX The Alchemists  179
X The Modern Occultists .... 192
XI The Metapsychists  214
XII Conclusions  255

THE GREAT SECRET

THE GREAT SECRET

CHAPTER I
PROLOGUE

DO not look to find in this volume a history
of occultism, or a methodical monograph
on the subject. To such a work one would
need to devote whole volumes, which would of
necessity be filled with a great measure of that
very rubbish which I wish above all to spare the
reader. I have no other aim than to tell as
simply as possible what I have learned in the
course of some years that were spent in these
rather discredited and unfrequented regions.
I bring thence the impressions of a candid
traveler who has traversed them rather as one
seeking to observe than as a believer. These
pages contain, if you will, a kind of summary, a
provisional stock-taking. I know nothing that
may not be learned by the first comer who will
travel the same road. I am not an initiate;
I have sat at the feet of no mysterious and evan
escent masters, coming from the ends of the
3

The Great Secret
earth, or from another world, expressly to re
veal to me the ultimate verities and to forbid
me to repeat them. I have had no access to
those secret hbraries, to those hidden sources
of the supreme wisdom which, it seems, are
somewhere to be found but will always be for
us as though they were not, since those who
win through to them are condemned, on pain
of death, to an Inviolable silence. Neither
have I deciphered any incomprehensible books
of magic, nor found a new key to the sacred
books of the great religions. I have but read
and studied most of what has been written of
these matters, and amidst an enormous mass of
documents, absurd, puerile, tedious, and useless,
I have given my attention to those works of
outstanding value which are really able to teach
us something that we do not find elsewhere.
In thus clearing the approaches to an inquiry
that is only too often encumbered by a weari
some amount of rubbish, I shall perhaps facil
itate the task of those who may wish, and be
able, to go farther than I have traveled.

Thanks to the labors of a science which Is
comparatively recent, and more especially to
the researches of the students of Hindu and
Egyptian antiquities, it is very much easier to
day than It was not so long ago to discover the
4

Prologue
source, to ascend the course and unravel the
underground network of that great mysterious
river which since the beginning of history has
been flowing beneath all the religions, all the
faiths, and all the philosophies: In a word, be
neath all the visible and every-day manifesta
tions of human thought. It Is now hardly to
be contested that this source is to be found In
ancient India. Thence in all probability the
sacred teaching spread Into Egypt, found its
way to ancient Persia and Chaldea, permeated
the Hebrew race, and crept Into Greece and the
north of Europe, finally reaching China and
even America, where the Aztec civilization was
merely a more or less distorted reproduction
of the Egyptian civilization.
There are thus three great derivatives of
primitive occultism, Arya-HIndu or Atlanto-
Hlndu : ( I ) the occultism of antiquity — that
Is, the Egyptian, Persian, Chaldean, and He
brew occultism and that of the Greek myster
ies; (2) the Hebrew-Christian esoterism of the
Essenes, the Gnostics, the Neoplatonists of
Alexandria, and the cabalists of the middle
ages; and (3) the modern occultism, which Is
more or less permeated by the foregoing, but
which, under the somewhat Inaccurate label of
occultism, denotes more especially. In the lan
guage of the theosophists, the spiritualism and
metapsychism of to-day. 5

The Great Secret

3
As for the sources of the primary source, it
is almost Impossible to rediscover them. Here
we have only the assertions of the occultist tra
dition, which seem, here and there, to be con
firmed by historical discoveries. This tradi
tion attributes the vast reservoir of wisdom
that somewhere took shape simultaneously with
the origin of man, or even If we are to credit
It, before his advent upon this earth, to more
spiritual entitles, to beings less entangled In
matter, to psychic organisms, of whom the last-
comers, the Atlantldes, could have been but the
degenerate representatives.
From the historical point of view we have
absolutely no documents whatever If we go
back a greater distance than five, or six, or
perhaps seven thousand years. We cannot tell
how the religion of the Hindus and Egyptians
came into being. When we become aware of
it we find It already complete In Its broad out
lines. Its main principles. Not only is It com
plete, but the farther back we go the more per
fect It is, the more unadulterated, the more
closely related to the loftiest speculations of
our modern agnosticism. It presupposes a pre
vious civilization, whose duration, In view of
the slowness of all human evolution, it is quite
impossible to estimate. The length of this
6

Prologue
period might in all probabihty be numbered by
mlUions of years. It Is here that the occultist
tradition corries to our aid. Why should this
tradition, a priori, be despised and rejected,
when almost all that we know of these primi
tive religions Is likewise founded on oral tradi
tion — for the written texts are of much later
date, — and when, moreover, all that this tradi
tion teaches us displays a singular agreement
with what we have learned elsewhere ?

At all events, even if we have need of occult
tradition to explain the origin of this wisdom,
which to us, with good reason, has a savor of
the superhuman, we can very well dispense with
it in all that concerns the essential nature of
this same wisdom. It Is contained. In all Its
Integrity, in authentic texts, to which we can
assign a place in history ; and in this connection
the modern theosophists, who profess to have
had at their disposal certain secret documents,
and to have profited by the extraordinary reve
lations with which the adepts or Mahatmas,
members of a mysterious brotherhood, are sup
posed to have favored them, have taught us
nothing that may not be read In the writings
accessible to any Orientalist. The factors
which distinguish the occultists — for example,
the theosophists of Blavatski's §chool, which
7

The Great Secret
dominates all the rest — from the scientific In-
dlanlsts and Egyptologists are In nowise con
nected with the origin, the plan, and the pur
pose of the universe, the destiny of the earth
and of man, the nature of divinity, and the
great problems of ethics; they are, almost ex
clusively, problems touching the prehistoric
ages, the nomenclature of the emanations of
the unknowable, and the methods of subdu
ing and utilizing the unknown energies of na
ture. Let us first of all consider the points upon
which they are agreed; which are, for that mat
ter, the most Interesting, for all that deals with
the prehistoric era Is of necessity hypothetical
and the names and functions of the Interme
diary gods possess only a secondary interest;
while as for the utilization of unknown forces,
this Is rather the concern of the metapsychlcal
sciences to which we shall refer In a later
chapter. 5
"What we read in the 'Vedas,' " says Ru
dolph Stelner, one of the most scholarly and, at
the same time, one of the most baflling of con
temporary occultists; "What we read In the
'Vedas,' those archives of Hindu wisdom, gives
us only a faint idea of the sublime doctrines
of the ancient teachers, and even so these are
8

Prologue
not In their original form. Only the gaze of
the clairvoyant, directed upon the mysteries of
the past, may reveal the unuttered wisdom
which lies hidden behind these writings."
Historically it Is highly probable that Stelner
Is right. As a matter of fact, as I have al
ready stated, the more ancient the texts, the
purer, the more awe-lnsplring are the doctrines
which they reveal; and It Is possible that they
themselves are, In Stelner's words, merely an
enfeebled echo of subllmer doctrines. But If
we are not gifted with the vision of a seer we
must be content with what we have before our
eyes. The texts which we possess are the sacred
books of India, which corroborate those of
Egypt and of Persia. The influence which
rhey have exerted upon human thought. If not
In their present form, at least by means of the
oral tradition which they have merely placed
on record, goes back to the beginnings of his
tory, has extended Itself In all directions, and
has never ceased to make Itself felt, but as
regards the Western world their discovery and
methodical study are comparatively recent.
"Fifty years ago," wrote Max Mulier In 1875,
"there was not a scholar in existence who could
translate a hne of the 'Veda,' the 'Zend-
Avesta,' or the Buddhist 'Tripltaka,' to say
nothing of other dialects or languages."
9

The Great Secret
If the historical data were to assume from
the outset In the annals of mankind the signifi
cance which they were afterward to acquire,
the discovery of these sacred books would prob
ably have turned all Europe upside down; for
it was, without a doubt, the most Important
event which had occurred since the advent of
Christianity. But a moral or spiritual event
very rarely propagates Itself quickly through
the masses. It Is opposed by too many forces
which would gain by its suppression. This
particular event remained confined to a small
circle of scholars and philologists, and afFected
the meta-physiclan and the moral philosopher
even less than might have been expected. It Is
still awaiting the hour of Its full expansion.

The first question to present itself is that
of the date of these texts. It is very difli-
cult to answer this question exactly; for
while it Is comparatively easy to determine the
period when these books were written it is im
possible to estimate the time during which they
existed only In the memory of man. Accord
ing to Max Mulier there Is hardly a Sanskrit
manuscript In existence that dates farther back
than I GOO A. D., and everything seems to show
that writing was unknown In India until the
beginning of the Buddhist era (the fifth cen-
lO

Prologue
tury B. c.) ; that Is until the close of the period
of the ancient Vedic literature.
The "Rig-Veda," which contains 1028 hymns
of an average length of ten lines, or a total of
153,826 words, was therefore preserved by the
effort of the memory alone. Even to-day the
Brahmans all know the "RIg-Veda" by heart,
as did their ancestors three thousand years ago.
We must attribute the spontaneous development
of -Vedic thought, as we find It in the "RIg-
Veda," to a period earlier than the tenth cen
tury B. C. Three centuries before the Chris
tian era — once more, according to Max Miiller
— Sanskrit had already ceased to be spoken by
the people. This is proved by an Inscription
whose language Is to Sanskrit what Italian Is
to Latin.
But according to other Orientalists the age
of the "Chandas" probably goes back to a pe
riod two or three thousand years before Christ.
This takes us back five thousand years : a very
modest and prudent claim. "One thing is cer
tain," says Max Mulier, "namely, that there Is
nothing more ancient, nothing more primitive,
than the hymns of the 'Rig-Veda,' whether In
India or the whole Aryan world. Being
Aryan In language and thought, the 'RIg-Veda'
is the most ancient of our sacred books." ^
Since the works of the great Orientalist were
1 Max Mulier, "Origin and Development of Religion."
II

The Great Secret
written other scholars have set back the date
of the earliest manuscripts, and above all of the
earhest traditions, to a remarkable extent; but
even so these dates fall short by a stupendous
amount of the Brahman calculations, which
refer the origin of their earliest books to thou
sands of centuries before our era. "It Is actu
ally more than five thousand years," says
SwamI Dayanound SaraswatI, "since the 'Vedas'
have ceased to be a subject of Investigation";
and according to the computations of the Ori-
entahst Hailed, the "Shastras," In the chronol
ogy of the Brahmans, must be no less than seven
million years old.
Without taking sides In these disputes the
only point which It Is Important to establish Is
the fact that these books, or rather the tradi
tions which they have recorded and rendered
permanent, are evidently anterior — with the
possible exceptions of Egypt, China, and
Chaldea — to anything known of human history.
7
This literature comprises. In the first place,
the four "Vedas" : the "Rig-Veda," the "Sama-
Veda," the "Yadjour-Veda," and the "Atharva-
Veda," completed by the commentaries, or
"Brahmanas," and the philosophical treatises
known as "Aranyakas" and "Upanlshads," to
which we must add the "Shastras," of which
12

Prologue
the best known Is the "Manava-Dharma-
Shastra," or "Laws of Manu" — which, accord
ing to William lones, Chezy, and Loiseleur-
Deslongchamps, date back to the thirteenth cen
tury before Christ — and the first "Puranas."
Of these texts the "RIg-Veda" Is Incontest-
ably the most ancient. The rest are spread
over a period of many hundreds, perhaps even
of many thousands, of years; but all, excepting
the latest "Puranas," belong to the pre-Chris
tian era, a fact which we must always keep In
view; not because of any feeling of hostility
toward the great rehgion of the West, but In
order to give the latter Its proper place In the
history and evolution of human thought.
The "RIg-Veda" Is still polytheist rather
than pantheist, and It Is only here and there
that the peaks of the doctrine emerge from It,
as, for example, In the stanzas which we shall
presently quote. Its divinities represent only
those amplifical physical forces which the
"Sama-Veda," and above all the "Brahmanas"
subsequently reduce to metaphysical concep
tions, and to unity.
The "Sama-Veda" asserts the unknowable
and the "Yadjur-Veda" pantheism. As for
the "Atharva," according to some the oldest,
and according to others the most recent, it
consists above all of ritual.
These Ideas were developed by the commen-
13

The Great Secret
taries of the "Brahmanas," which were pro
duced more especially between the twelfth and
seventh centuries before Christ; but they may
probably be referred to traditions of much
greater antiquity, which our modern theoso
phists claim to have rediscovered, though with
out supporting their assertions by sufficient
proof- Consequently, when we speak of the religion
of India we must consider It In Its entirety, from
the primitive Vedism by way of Brahmanism
and Krishnaism, to Buddhism, calling a halt,
should the student so prefer, some two or three
centuries before our Christian era, In order to
avoid all suspicion of ludo-Christlan infiltra
tion. All this literature — to which may be added,
among many others, the semi-profane texts of
the "Ramayana" and the "Mahabarata," in the
midst of which blossoms the "Bhagavata-GIta,"
or "Song of the Blessed," that magnificent
flower of Hindu mysticism — is still very imper
fectly known, and we possess of It only so much
as the Brahmans have chosen to give us.
This literature confronts us with a host of
problems of extreme complexity, of which very
few have as yet been solved. It may be added
that the translation of the Sanskrit texts, and
especially of the more ancient, are still very
unreliable. According to Roth, the true pio-

Prologue
neer of Vedic exegesis, "the translator who
will render the 'Veda' intelligible and readable,
mutatis mutandis, as Homer has been since the
labors of Voss, has yet to appear, and we can
hardly anticipate his advent before the coming
century." In order to form some Idea of the uncertain
character of these translations, it is enough to
turn, for an example, to the end of the third
volume of the Religion Vedique of Bergalgne,
the great French Orientalist. Here we shall
find the disputes which arose between the most
famous Indianlsts, such as Grassmann Ludwig,
Roth and Bergalgne himself, as to the Inter
pretation of almost all the essential words of
the "Hymn to the Dawn" (I, 123). As Ber
galgne says, "It exposes the poverty of the
present Interpretation of the 'RigrVeda.' " ^
The neotheosophlsts have endeavored to
solve certain of the problems propounded by
Hindu antiquity ; but their works, though highly
Interesting as regards their doctrine, are ex
tremely weak from a critical point of view; and
It Is Impossible to follow them on paths where
we meet with nothing but hypotheses Incapable
of proof. The truth Is that In dealing with
India we must abandon all hope of chronolog
ical accuracy. Contenting ourselves with a
1 La Religion Vedique d'apres les Hymnes du Rig-Veda, A.
Bergaigne; VoL III. p. 283 et seq.
15

The Great Secret
minimum of certainty, which undoubtedly falls
far short of reality, and leaving behind us a
possibly stupendous waste of nebulous centuries,
we will refer only to the three or four thousand
years that saw the birth and growth of the
"Brahmanas"; when we find that there existed
at that period among the foot-hills of the Him
alayas, a great religion, pantheist and agnostic,
which later became esoteric; and this, for the
moment. Is all that concerns us.

And what of Egypt? some will say. What
of her monuments and her hieroglyphics? Are
they not much more ancient? Let us listen In
this connection to the learned Egyptologist Le
Page Renouf, ^ one of the great authorities on
this subject. He holds that the Egyptian mon
uments and their inscriptions cannot serve as
a basis for establishing definite dates ; that the
calculations based on the heliacal rising of the
stars are not convincing, as In the texts It Is
probable that the transit of the stars is referred
to rather than their rising. He Is, however,
convinced that according to the most moderate
calculations the Egyptian monarchy was al
ready In existence more than two thousand
years before the Book of Exodus was written.
^ "Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion as
Illustrated by the Religion of Ancient Egypt," by P. Le Page
Renouf. l6

Prologue
Now Exodus probably dates from the year 13 lo
B. c, and the date of the Great Pyramid can
not be fixed at less than 3000 or 4000 years be
fore our era. These calculations, like those
which make the Chinese era begin 2697 years
before Christ, lead us back strangely enough,
to the period assigned by the students of Indian
history to the development of the Vedic Ideal;
a development which presupposes a period of
gestation and formation Infinitely more remote.
For the rest, they do not deny that the Egyp
tian civilization, like the Hindu civilization,
may be very much more ancient. Another
great Egyptologist, Leonard Horner, between
the years 1851 and 1854, had ninety-five shafts
sunk In various parts of the Nile Valley. It
Is established that the Nile increases the depth
of its alluvial bed by five Inches In a century —
a depth which owing to compression should be
less for the lower strata. Human and animal
figures carved in granite, mosaics, and vases,
were found at depths of seventy-five feet or
less, and fragments of brick and pottery at
greater depths. This takes us back some
17,000 or 18,000 years. At a depth of thirty-
three feet six inches a tablet was unearthed,,
bearing Inscriptions which a simple calculation
shows to have been nearly 8000 years old.
The theory that the excavators may have hit,
liy chance, upon wells or cisterns must be aban-
17

The Great Secret
doned, for the same state of affairs was proved
to exist everjrwhere. These proofs, it may be
remarked, furnish yet one more argument In
support of the occultist traditions as regards the
antiquity of human civilization. This prodi
gious antiquity Is also confirmed by the astro
nomical observations of the ancients. There is,
for example, a catalogue of stars known as the
catalogue of Siirya-Siddhanta ; and the differ
ences In the position of eight of these fixed
stars, taken at random, show that the Surya-
Slddhanta were made more than 58,000 years
ago. 9
Was Egypt or India the direct legatee of
the legendary wisdom bequeathed by more
ancient peoples, and notably by the probable
Atlantldes ? In the present state of our knowl
edge, without relying upon occultist traditions,
it Is not yet possible to reply.
Less than a century ago virtually nothing
was known of ancient Egypt. The little that
was known was based upon hearsay and the
more or less fantastic legends collected by later
historians, and above all on the divagations of
the philosophers and theurglsts of the Alexan
drian period. It was only In 1820 that lean-
Frangols ChampoUIon, thanks to the threefold
text of the famous Rosetta Stone, found the
18

Ptologue
key to the mysterious writing that covers all the
monuments, all the tombs, and almost every ob
ject of the land of the Pharaohs. But the
working out of the discovery was a long and
difficult business, and It was almost forty years
later that one of Champollion's most Illustrious
successors, de Rouge, was able to say that there
was no longer any Egyptian text that could not
be translated. Innumerable documents were
deciphered and as regards the material sense
of most of the inscriptions an all but absolute
certainty was attained.
Nevertheless It seems more and more prob
able that beneath the literal meaning of the re
ligious Inscriptions another and an Impene
trable meaning Is concealed. This Is the
hypothesis toward which the most objective and
most scientific Egyptologists have inevitably
tended. In view of the antiquity of many of
the words employed, although they Immediately
add that It cannot be definitely confirmed. It
is therefore highly probable that beneath the
ofliclal religion taught to the vulgar, there was
another reserved for the priests and the Initiate,
and here the theory which the scholars are com
pelled to entertain once more confirms the asser
tions of the occultists, and notably those of the
Neoplatonists of Alexandria, as regards the
Egyptian mysteries.

19

The Great Secret
lO
However this may be, there are texts as to
whose authenticity there Is not the slightest
doubt— the "Book of the Dead," the "Books of
Hymns," and Ptahhoteph's "Collection of
Moral Sentences" — the most ancient book In
the world, since It Is contemporary with the pyr
amids — and many more, which enable us to
form a very exact Idea of the (at first) lofty
morality, and above all of the fundamental
theosophy of Egypt, before this theosophy was
corrupted to satisfy the common people and
transformed Into a monstrous polytheism,
which, for that matter, was always more ap
parent than real.
Now the older these texts the more closely
does their teaching approximate to the Hindu
tradition. Whether they are in fact earlier or
later than the latter Is after all a question of
secondary Importance; what Interests us more
deeply Is the problem of their common origin,
a sole and Immemorial origin whose probabil
ity Increases with every step adventured Into
the prehistoric ages.
The farther back we go the more plainly Is
this agreement upon the essential points re
vealed. For example the Ideal which the Egyp
tian religion. In Its beginnings, conceived of
God. We shall find a little farther on the
20

Prologue
Hindu original or repUca, just as we shall have
occasion to compare the two theogonies, the
two cosmogonies, the two systems of ethics,
which are evidently the sources of all the theo
gonies, all the cosmogonies, and all the ethical
systems of humanity.
For the Egyptian who has preserved the
faith of the earliest days there Is only one sole
God. "There Is none other God than He."
"He Is the sole living Being In substance and in
truth." "Thou art alone and millions of liv
ing beings proceed from Thee." "He hath
created all things, and He alone Is uncreated."
"In all times and places. He Is the sole sub
stance and Is unapproachable." "He Is One,
the only One." "He is yesterday, to-day, and
to-morrow." "He Is God by God created,
existing of Himself — the twofold Being, self-
begotten, the Begetter of all since the begin
ning." _
"It Is more than five thousand years," — says
de Rouge, "since men first sang In the valley of
the Nile the hymn to the unity of God and the
Immortality of the soul. ... In this belief In
the unity of the Supreme God and His attri
butes as Creator of and Lawgiver to Man,
whom he endowed with an Immortal soul, we
have the primitive conceptions, encrusted like
indestructible diamonds In the mythological
21

The Great Secret
superfetatlons accumulated by the centuries
which have passed over this ancient civili
zation." ^
It Is true that we have not here, in this def
inition of the Deity, the penetration and sub
tlety, the metaphysical spaciousness, the hap
piness of expression, the verbal magnificence —
in a word, the genius, — which we shall find In
the Hindu definitions. The Egyptian temper
ament is colder, drier, more sober, less grace
ful, more realistic; it has a more concrete im
agination, which is not fired by the Inaccessible,
the Infinite, as Is the spirit of the Asiatic
peoples. Moreover, we must not lose sight
of the fact that we are not yet acquainted with
the secret meaning which may lie hidden be
neath these definitions. But at all events, as
we understand them, the Idea expressed Is the
same, denoting a single origin which. In con
formity with esoteric tradition and pending
further enlightenment, we may call the Atlan-
tean Idea. This supposition. Incidentally, is
confirmed by the famous passage In Tlmjeus,
according to which, as Is stated by the Egyp
tian priest speaking to Solon, Egypt twelve
thousand years ago, had an Atlantean col
ony. ''
1 De Rouge, Annates de la PhUosophie Chretienne; Vol.
XX. p. 327. 22

Prologue II
As for Mazdeism or Zoroastrianism, the
third of the great rehglons, the problem of its
derivation Is a simpler one, although that of its
chronology Is equally complicated. Zoroaster,
or rather one of the Zoroasters — the last of
them, — lived, according to Aristotle, In the
seventh century before Christ. Pliny places
him a thousand years before Moses, and Her-
mlppus of Smyrna, who translated his works
into Greek, four thousand years before the
fall of Troy, and Eudoxlus six thousand years
before the death of Plato.
Modern science, as Edouard Schure has dem
onstrated, deriving his proofs from the schol
arly research of Eugene Burnouf, Spiegel,
James Darmesteter, and Harlez, declares that
it is not possible to determine the period of
the great Iranian philosopher who wrote the
"Zend-Avesta"; but In any case he places him
2500 years B. c. Max Mulier, on the other
hand, gives us proof that Zoroaster, or Zara-
thustra, and his disciples lived In India. "Some
of the Zoroastrian gods," he says, "are only re
flections, distortions, of the primitive and au
thentic gods of the 'Vedas.' "
Here, then, there is not the slightest doubt
as to the priority of the Hindu books, and
23

The Great Secret
here at the same time Is yet another confirma
tion of the fabulous antiquity of these books
or traditions.
These preliminary observations, which would
require volumes for their exposition, are
enough — and for the moment It Is this that
concerns us — to prove that the teaching which
we find. In the after ages, at the bottom of all
the religions, In the shape of mysteries. Initia
tions, and secret doctrines, dates, according to
the most cautious calculations, from thousands
of years ago. They will suffice, at all events,
to dispel the somewhat puerile argument of
those who maintain that It Is comparatively
recent and has been Influenced by the Judo-
Christlan revelations. This argument is no
longer seriously maintained, but there are those
who evade the difficulty by saying : Yes, there
are truths In this primitive religion, and even
texts which can be more or less definitely dated,
antecedent to Moses and to Christ; but who can
sift from these the successive Interpolations
which have transformed them?
There are In India, it appears, more than
twelve hundred texts of the "Vedas" and more
than 350 of the "Laws of Manu," to say noth
ing of those of the sacred books which the
Brahmans have not surrendered to us; and It
cannot be denied that there are obvious inter
polations in these texts and In the doctrines
24

Prologue
which they contain. We must never lose sight
of the fact that the Oriental religion which Is
commonly and most improperly known as Bud
dhism falls Into three great periods, which
correspond pretty closely with the three periods
into which Christianity might be divided;
namely, Vedism, or the primitive religion, which
the Brahmans commented upon, complicating It
and corrupting it to their own advantage, until
It became the Brahmanism which SIddhartha
Gautama Buddha, or Sakyamuni, revolted
against and reformed in the fifth century
B. C.
The Indianlsts, thanks above all to the his
torical landmarks afforded them by the caste
system, and the changes of language and of
meter, have learned to distinguish easily enough
these three currents In the suspect texts, and
beneath the luxuriance and complications of the
interpolations the broad outlines and essential
truths which are all that matter to us are
always visible.

25

CHAPTER II
INDIA

LET us first of all consider the conception
of Deity which was formed by these an
cestors, simultaneously with the Egyptians, or,
as Is much more probable, before them. Their
traditions may lay claim to at least five or six
thousand years, and they themselves received
these traditions from peoples who to-day have
disappeared, their last trace In the memory of
man dating back, according to TImaeus and the
"Critlas" of Plato, one hundred and twenty
centuries. I must apologize to the reader for the Inex
tricable nomenclature of Oriental mythology
and the multiplicity of those anthropomorphic
divinities whom the priests of Ii^dla, like those
of Egypt and of Persia, and Indeed of all
times and countries, were compelled to create
in order to satisfy the demands of popular
idolatry. I shall also spare him the ostenta
tion of a facile scholarship, lavish of unpro
nounceable names, in order at once to proceed
to and consider only the essential conception of
the First Cause, as we find it in the remotest
26

India
sources, which, If not withheld from the com
mon people, ceased gradually to be under
stood by them, until It became the Great Se
cret of the elect among the priests and initi
ates. Let us at once give ear to the "Rig-Veda,"
the most authentic echo of the most Immemo
rial traditions; let us note how It approaches
the formidable problem:
"There was neither Being nor non-Being.
There was neither atmosphere nor heavens
above the atmosphere. What moved and
whither? And In whose care? Were there
waters, and the bottomless deep?
"There was then neither death nor Immor
tality. The day was not divided from the
night. Only the One breathed. In Himself,
without extraneous breath, and apart from Him
there was nothing.
"Then for the first time desire awoke within
Him; this was the first seed of the Spirit. The
sages, full of understanding, striving within
their hearts, discovered In non-Being the link
with Being.
"Who knoweth and who can tell where crea
tion was born, whence It came, and whether
the gods were not born afterwards? Who
knoweth whence It hath come?
"Whence this creation hath come, whether
it be created or uncreated. He whose eye
27

The Great Secret
watches over It from the highest heaven, He
alone knoweth: and yet doth He know?" ^
Is it possible to find. In our human annals,
words more majestic, more full of solemn an
guish, more august In tone, more devout, more
terrible? Where could we find at the very
foundation of hfe, a completer and more Ir
reducible confession of Ignorance? Where,
from the depths of our agnosticism, which
thousands of years have augmented, can we
point to a wider horizon? At the very outset
It surpasses all that has been said, and goes far
ther than we shall ever dare to go, lest we fall
Into despair, for it does not fear to ask itself
whether the Supreme Being knows what He
has done — knows whether He Is or Is not the
Creator, and questions whether He has become
conscious of Himself.

Now let us hear the "Sama-Veda," confirming
and elucidating this magnificent confession of
ignorance :
"If thou sayest, 'I have perfect knowledge of
the Supreme Being,' thou deceivest thyself, for
who shall number His attributes? If thou
sayest, 'I think I know Him; I do not think I
know Him perfectly, nor that I do not know
Him at all ; but I know Him in part ; for he who
1 "Rig-Veda"; X, 129. 28

India
knows all the manifestations of the gods who
proceed from Him knows the Supreme Being' ;
If thou sayest this, thou deceivest thyself, for
liot to be wholly ignorant of Him is not to
know Him.
"He, on the contrary, who beheves that he
does not know Him, is he that does know Him;
and he who believes that he knows Him Is he
that does not know Him. Those who know
Him best regard Him as Incomprehensible and
those who know nothing at all of Him be
lieve that they know Him perfectly."
To this fundamental agnosticism the "Yad-
jur Veda" brings its absolute pantheism :
"The sage fixes his eyes upon this mysterious
Being In whom the universe perpetually ex
ists, for It has no other foundation. In Him
this world Is contained; It Is from Him that
this world has Issued. He is entwined and en-
woven in all created things, under all the va
ried forms of life.
"This sole Being, to whom nothing can at
tain. Is swifter than thought; and the gods
themselves cannot comprehend this Supreme
Mover who has preceded them all. He is
remote from all things and close at hand. He
fills the entire universe, yet infinitely surpasses
It. "When man has learned to behold all crea
tures In this Supreme Spirit, and his Supreme
29

The Great Secret
Spirit in all His creatures, he can no longer'
despise anything whatsoever.
"Those who refuse to believe In the iden
tity of all created things have fallen into a pro
found darkness; those who beheve only In their
Individual selves have fallen Into a much pro-
founder darkness.
"He who beheves In the eternal Identity of
created beings wins Immortality.
"All creatures exist In this Supreme Spirit,
and this Supreme Spirit exists In all creatures.
"All creatures appear to Him as they have
been from all eternity, always resembling
themselves."

Our ancestors did their best thoroughly to
examine this tremendous confession of ignor
ance, to people this abysmal void, in which man
could not draw breath; and sought to define
this Supreme Being, whom a tradition more
prehistoric than themselves had not ventured
to conceive. No spectacle could be more ab
sorbing than this struggle of our forefathers of
five to ten thousand years ago with the Un
knowable ; and In order to convey some Idea of
this struggle, I shall borrow their own voices,
reproducing only the almost despairing terms
by which they expressed themselves In the most
ancient and authentic of their sacred books,
30

India
which we must read without allowing ourselves
to be alarmed by that incoherence of the images
employed which Is, as Bergaigne remarks, the
dally bread of Vedic poetry.
God, they tell us. Is Being. He is all things,
existing and In Himself; unknowable, and the
cause without a cause of all causes. He Is
Infinitely ancient, infinitely unknown. He Is all
things and in all things, the eternal soul of all
created beings, whom no one can comprehend.
He Is the unification of all material. Intel
lectual, and moral forms of all existing be
ings. He is the sole primordial germ, undis
closed by all, the unknown deep, the uncreated
substance of the unknown. "No, No, is His
name" ; and all things waver perpetually be
tween "All things are" and "Nothing exists."
"The sea alone knows the depths of the sea;
space alone knows the extent of space; God
alone can know God." He contains all things,
yet Is unknown to all; He Is non-existent be
cause He Is absolute Being — that which Is noth
ing while It Is nevertheless all things. "He
who Is, yet Is not, the eternal cause that Is non
existent; the Undiscovered and the Undiscover-
able, whom no created being can understand,"
says Manu. He Is no definite thing; He Is no
known or visible being, nor can we bestow upon
Him the name of any object. He Is the secret
of all secrets; He Is It, the passive and latent
31

The Great Secret
element. The world Is His name. His Image ;
but It Is only His former existence, which con
tains all things In Itself, that is actually exist
ent. This universe Is He ; it comes from Him,
It returns to Him. All the worlds are one
with Him, for they exist only by His will; an
everlasting will. Inborn In all created things.
This will is revealed In what we call the crea
tion, preservation, and destruction of the uni
verse; but there Is no creation properly so-
called, for, since all things have from all time
existed In Him, creation Is but an emanation
of that which Is In Him. This emanation,
merely renders visible to our eyes what was
not visible. Similarly there Is no such thing
as destruction, this being but an inhalation of
that which has been exhaled; and this Inhala
tion, In Its turn, does no more than render In
visible that which was aforetime seen; for all
things are Indestructible, being merely the sub
stance of the Supreme Being who Himself
has neither beginning nor end, whether in space
or In time. 4
To have explored thus profoundly and com
prehensively, since what our Ignorance calls
the beginning, the Infinite mystery of the un
knowable First Cause, must obviously presup
pose a civilization, an accumulation of Ideas
32

India
and meditations, an experience, a degree of
contemplation and a perception of the universe,
which are well calculated to amaze and hu
miliate us. We are now barely regaining the
heights whence these Ideas have come down
to us — Ideas In which pantheism and mono
theism are confounded, forming only a single
complex In the Incommensurable Unknown.
And who knows whether we could have recov
ered them without their aid? Less than a cen
tury ago we still knew nothing of these defini
tions In their original majesty and lucidity;
but they had spread In all directions, and were
floating like wreckage on the subterranean
waters of all the religions, and above all on
those of the official religion of Egypt, In which
the Nu Is as unknowable as the Hindu It, and
In which, according to the occultist tradition,
the supreme revelation at the close of the final
initiation consisted of these terrible words,
dropped casually into the ears of the adept:
"Osiris is a dark god!" that Is, a god who can
not be understood, who will never be under
stood. They were found, likewise, adrift In
the Bible; or if not In the Vulgate, In which
they become unrecognizable, at least In the ver
sions of the Hebraizers, such as Fabre d'Olivet,
who have restored its actual meaning, or be
lieve themselves to have done so. Fitfully, too,
they showed beneath the mysteries of Greece,
33

The Great Secret
which were merely a pale and distorted repro
duction of the Egyptian mysteries. They were
visible, too, though nearer the surface, beneath
the doctrines of the Essenes, who, according to
Pliny, had lived for thousands of centuries by
the shores of the Dead Sea : '"'Per saculorum
millia," which Is obviously exaggerated. They
drifted through the cabala, the tradition of
the ancient Hebrew Initiates, who claimed to
have preserved the oral law which God gave to
Moses on Sinai and which, passing from mouth
to mouth, were written down by the learned
rabbis of the rniddle ages. They might be
glimpsed behind the extraordinary doctrines
and dreams of the Gnostics, the probable heirs
of the undiscoverable Essenes; beneath the
teachings of the Neoplatonists, and those of
the early Christians; as In the darkness in which
the unhappy medieval Hermetlcs lost their way,
amid texts which bear the marks of an ever-
Increasing mutilation and corruption, following
gleams of light that grew more and more per
ilous and uncertain. 5
Here, then, Is a great truth; the first of
all truths, the fundamental truth, that lies at
the root of things, to which we have now re
turned; the unknowable nature of the causeless
cause of all causes. But of this cause, or this
34

India
God, we should never have known anything had
He remained self-absorbed, had He never mani
fested Himself. It was necessary that He
should emerge from His Inactivity, which for
us was equivalent to nothingness, since the uni
verse seems to exist, and we ourselves believe
that we live. In Him. Freed from the creeper-
like entanglements of the theogonic and theo
logical theories that quickly Invaded It on every
hand, the First Cause, or rather the Eternal
Cause — for having no beginning It can be
neither first nor second, — has never created
anything. There was no creation, since all
has existed, within this Cause, from all eternity,
In a form invisible to our eyes, but more real
than It could be if they beheld It, since our eyes
are so fashioned as to behold Illusions only.
From the point of view of this Illusion, this all,
that exists always, appears or disappears In ac
cordance with an eternal rhythm beaten out by
the sleeping and waking of the Eternal Cause.
"Thus It Is," say the "Laws of Manu," "that by
an alternation of awakening and repose the Im
mutable Being causes all this assemblage of
creatures, mobile and immobile, eternally to re
turn to life and to die." ^ He exhales himself,
or expels his breath, and spirit descends into
matter, which Is only a visible form of spirit;
and throughout the universe Innumerable
1 "Laws of Manu" ; I, 57. 35

The Great Secret
worlds are born, multiply and evolve. He him
self inhales, Indrawing his breath, and matter
enters into spirit, which Is but an Invisible form
of matter: and the worlds disappear, without
perishing, to reintegrate the Eternal Cause, and
emerge once more upon the awakening of Brah
ma — that Is, thousands of milhons of years
later; to enter Into Him again when He sleeps
once more, after thousands of millions of years;
and so It has been and ever shall be, through
all eternity, without beginning, without cessa
tion, and without end.

Here again we have a tremendous confession
of Ignorance; and this new confession, the old
est of all, however far back we go. Is also the
most profound, the most complete, and the
most Impressive. This explanation of the in
comprehensible universe, which explains noth
ing, since one cannot explain the Inexplicable, is
more acceptable than any other that we could
offer, and Is perhaps the only one that we could
accept without stumbling at every step over
Insurmountable objections and questions to
which our reason gives no reply.
This second admission we find at the origin of
the two mother-faiths. In Egypt, even in the
superficial and exoteric Egypt which is all that
we know, and without taking Into account the
36

India
secret meaning which probably underlies the
hieroglyphs. It assumes a similar form. Here,
too, there Is no creation properly so called, but
the externalizatlon of a latent and everlasting
spiritual principle. All beings and all things
exist from all eternity In the Nu and return
thither after death. The Nu is the "deep" of
Genesis, a divine spirit hovers above it vaguely,
bearing within It the total sum of future exist
ences ; whence its name, Tum, whose meaning is
at once Nothingness and Totality. When Tum
wished to create within his heart all that exists,
he rose up amid what things were present
In the Nu, outside the Nu, and all lifeless
things: and the sun, Ra, was, and there was
light. But there were not three gods — the
deep, the spirit In the deep, and hght without
the deep. Tum, exteriorized by virtue of his
creative desire, became Ra the sun-god, without
ceasing to be Tum and without ceasing to be Nu.
He says of himself: "I am Tum; I am that
which existed alone In the abyss. I am the
great God, self-created; that Is, I am Nu, the
father of the gods." He Is the total sum of
the hves of all created beings. And to express
the Idea that the demiurge has created all
things of his own essence, the famous Leyden
papyrus explains: "There was no other God
before Him, nor any beside Him; when He
decreed His likeness, there was no mother for
37

The Great Secret
Him, who was self-named [In Egyptian naming
is equivalent to creating] : no father for Him
who uttered this name, saying: 'It Is I who
have created thee.' " ^
In order to create, the Egyptian first thinks
and then utters the world. (Here already is
the "Word," the famous Logos of the Alex
andrian philosophers, which we shall encounter
again later on.) His supreme intelligence as
sumes the name of Phtah; his heart, which Is
the spirit that moves him. Is Horus, and the
Word, the Instrument of creation. Is Thoth.
Thus we have Phtah-Horus-Thoth ; the Creator
Spirit-Word, the trinity In unity of Tum. Sub
sequently, as In the Vedic, Persian, and Chal
dean religions, the supreme and unknowable
Deity was gradually relegated to oblivion, and
we hear only of his Innumerable emanations,
whose names vary from century to century and
occasionally from city to city. Thus, In the
"Book of the Dead," Osiris, who becomes the
best-known god of Egypt, states that he Is Tum.
In Mazdeism, or Zoroastrianism, which Is
merely an adaptation of Vedism to the Iranian
temperament, the supreme Deity Is not the om
nipotent Creator who could fashion the world
as he desired; he Is subject to the Inflexible laws
of the unknown First Cause, which Is perhaps
1 See A. Moret, Les My ster es Egyptiens; pp. no et seq.;
and Pierret, Etudes Egyptologigues; p. 414.
38

India
himself. In Chaldea, that crossroads where
the religions of India, Egypt, and Persia meet,
matter self-existent and still uncreated, gives
birth to all things; not creating because all
things have their being In It, but manifesting
Itself periodically, when Its image is reflected
In the world visible to our eyes. In the Cabala
the last echo, the blurred copy of the esoteric
doctrines of Chaldea and Egypt, we find the
same confusion; the Eternal Spirit, Increate and
unknowable, not understood In Its pure essence,
contains In Itself the principle of all that exists,
manifesting itself arid becoming visible to man
only by its emanations.
Lastly, If we open the Bible — not Its re
stricted, superficial, and empirical translation,
but a version which goes to the heart of the in
ner meaning, essential and radical, of the He
brew words such as that which Fabre d'Olivet
attempted, — we find, In the first verse of Gene
sis: "In the first beginning which Is to say be
fore all. He, Elohlm, God of Gods, the exist
ing Being, created — which does not mean made
something out of nothing, but drew from an un
known element, caused to pass from its princi
ple to Its essence, the Very Self of the heavens
and the Very Self of earth."
"And the earth existed, a contingent power
of being In the dominion of being, and the
darkness (a cpmpresslve and indurating force)
39

The Great Secret
was over the face of the deep (the universal
and contingent power of being) ; and the breath
of the God of Gods (an expansive and dilating
force) moved with generative power upon the
face of the waters (universal passivity)." ^
Is It not Interesting to note that this literal
translation brings us very close to India, to the
Idea of the unknown origin, and closer still to
the Hindu creation; the passing from princi
ple to essence, the expansion of the Being of
Beings who contains all things, and of the ex
ternalizatlon, upon his awakening, of the pow.er
that was latent within him during his sleep?
Let us remember that In 1875 Max Mulier
wrote, "Fifty years ago there was not a single
scholar who could translate a line of the
'Veda.' " We must therefore beheve, despite
the assertion of the great Orientalist, either
that Fabre d'Olivet was capable of translating
It, or that he had divined the spirit of It In the
traditions of the cabala, which he could not
have known save for the very Incomplete and
Inaccurate Kabhala Denudata of Rosenroth; or
else that the Hebrew text. If It really says what
he makes It say, as everything seems to prove,
reproduces the Hindu sources In a singular
fashion, for his translation, the fruit of long
previous labors, appeared in 18 15; that is, ten
1 Fabre d'Olivet, La Langue Lebraique restituee; Vol. II,
pp. 25-27. 40

India
or twenty years before any one had learned to
read Sanskrit and the Egyptian hieroglyphs.

Is It possible to-day, with all that we believe
we know, or rather with all that we have at
last realized that we do not know, to give a
more comprehensive, more profoundly nega
tive Idea of divinity than that conveyed by these
religions at the beginnings of the human race,
or one that corresponds more closely with the
vast and hopeless Ignorance which will always
characterize our discussions as to the First
Cause? Do we not find ourselves now at an
enormous height above the more or less anthro
pomorphic gods that followed the supreme
Unknowable of that religion which was the
misappreciated mother of all the rest? Is It
not to her nameless enigma that we are return
ing at long last, after all our protracted
wanderings ; after wasting so much energy and
so many centuries, after committing so many
errors, so many crimes. In seeking for her
where she was not, far from the aboriginal
summits on which she has awaited us for so
many thousands and thousands of years?

But this admission of ignorance had to be
embeUished and peopled; the fathomless gulf
41

The Great Secret
had to be filled; an abstraction which surpassed
the bounds of understanding, with which man
kind could never be content, had to be quick
ened into life. And this all religions endea
vored to accomplish, beginning with that one
which first made the venture.
Once more I brush aside the brambles of the
theogonies, simple at their origin but soon In
extricable, to follow the broad outlines. In
the primitive religion, as we have already seen,
the unknown Cause, at a given moment of the
infinity of time, beginning once more what it
has done from all eternity, awakes, divides It
self, becomes objective. Is reflected In the uni
versal passivity, and becomes, until Its approach
ing slumber, our visible universe. Of this un
known self-existent cause which divides itself
into two parts, to render visible that which was
latent In It, are born Brahma or Nara, the
father, and Narl, the universal mother, of
whom Is born In his turn VIradj, the son, the
universe. This primitive triad, assuming a
more anthropomorphic form, becomes Brahma,
the creator, Vishnu, the preserver, and Shiva,
the destroyer and regenerator. In Egypt we
have Nu, Tum, and Ra; then Phtah, Horus,
and Thoth; who then became Osiris, Isis, and
Horus. After these first subdivisions of the unknown
Cause the primeval Pantheons are filled by the
42

India
serried hosts of gods who are merely intermit
tent emanations, transitory representatives,
ephemeral offshoots of the First Cause; person
ifications, more and more human, of its mani
festations. Its purposes, its attributes or powers.
We need not examine these here, but It Is In
teresting to note. In passing, the profound
truths which these Immemorial cosmogonies
and theogonies almost always discover, and
which are gradually being confirmed by sci
ence. Was It, for example, mere chance that
decreed that the earth should proceed from
chaos, take shape and be covered with life pre
cisely In the order which they describe? Ac
cording to the "Laws of Manu" the ether en
genders the atmosphere ; the atmosphere, trans
forming Itself, engenders light; the atmos
phere and light, giving rise to heat, produce
water; and water Is the mother of all living
creatures. "When this world had emerged
from the darkness," says the "Bhagavata Pu-
rana," which according to the Hindus Is con
temporary with the "Veda," "the subtle ele
mentary principle produced the vegetable seed
which first of all gave life to the plants. From
the plants life passed Into the fantastic crea
tures which were born of the slime in the
waters; then, through a series of different
shapes and animals. It came to man." "They
passed In succession by way of the plants, the
43

The Great Secret
worms, the Insects, the serpents, the tortoises,
cattle and the wild animals — such is the lower
stage," says Manu again, who adds: "Creatures
acquired the qualities of those that preceded
them, so that the farther down its position in
the series, the greater Its qualities." ^
Have we not here the whole of Darwinian
evolution confirmed by geology and foreseen at
least six thousand years ago? On the other
hand. Is not this the theory of the Akahsa,
which we more clumsily call the ether, the sole
source of all substances, to which our physical
science Is returning? ^ One might give an In
finite number of these disquieting examples.
Whence did our prehistoric ancestors. In their
supposedly terrible state of Ignorance and aban
donment, derive those extraordinary Intui
tions, that knowledge and assurance which we
ourselves are scarcely reconquering? And If
their ideas were correct upon certain points
which we are able by chance to verify, have
we not reason to ask ourselves whether they
^ "Laws of Manu" ; I, 20.
2 It is true that the recent theories of Einstein deny the
existence of the ether, supposing that radiant energy — ivisible
light, for exaraple — is propagated independently through a
space that is an absolute void. But apart from the fact
that these theories seem still to be doubtful, it should be
noted that the scientific ether, to which our modern sci
entists have been obliged to resort, is not precisely the Hindu
Akahsa, which is much raore subtle and imraaterial, being
a sort of spiritual element or divine energy, space uncreated,
imperishable, and infinite.
44

India
may not have seen matters more correctly and
farther ahead than we did in respect of many
other problems, as to which they are equally
definite In their assertions but which have hith
erto been beyond our verification? One thing
is certain, that to reach the stage at which they
then stood they must have had behind them
a treasury of traditions, observations, and ex
periences — In a word, of wisdom — of which we
find it difficult to form any conception; but In
which, while waiting for something better, we
ought to place rather more confidence than we
have done, and by which we might well benefit,
assuaging our fears and learning to understand
and reassure ourselves in respect of our future
beyond the tomb and guiding our lives.

We have just seen that the primitive reli
gions, and those which derive therefrom, are In
agreement as to the eternally unknowable na
ture of the First Cause; and that their explana
tions of the transition from non-being to being,
from the passive to the active, and of the gen
erative division which gives rise to the triad,
are almost Identical.
Let us here note the strange defect of logic
which dominates and spreads its shadow over
the whole problem of religion. The mother-
religions, or rather the mother-religion, tells
45

The Great Secret
us that the Cause of Causes Is unknowable;
that it is impossible to define, comprehend, or
Imagine It; that it is It and nothing more;
that It Is non-existence while it is yet preemi
nently and essentially Being, eternal. Infinite, oc
cupying all time and space ; Indeed It is all time
and space, having neither shape nor desire nor
any particular attribute, since It has all. Now,
from this unconditioned Something, this abso
lute of the absolute, of which we cannot say
what it Is, and even less what It purposes — of
this, the very source of the undefinable, and
the unknowable, religion calls forth emana
tions which Immediately become gods, per
fectly comprehended, perfectly defined, acting
very definitely In their respective spheres,
manifesting a personal power and will, pro
mulgating laws and a whole moral code with
which man Is enjoined to comply. How
can entities so completely comprehended
emerge from an entity essentially unknown?
How, if the whole Is unknowable, can a
part of this whole suddenly become famil
iar? In this Illimitable and Inconceivable
Something, the only thing admissible, for it Is
to this that science Is leading us back, where is
the point whence the gods who have been Im
posed upon us emerge? Where Is the link?
Where the affinity? Where and at what
moment was the incomprehensible miracle per-
46

India
formed of the transubstantiatlon of the un
knowable? Where Is the transition- which
justifies this formidable change from unfathom
able obscurity, not to the possible or the
probable merely, but to the known, described
even to Its smallest details?
Does It not seem as though the mother-reli
gion — and after it all the other faiths, which
are but Its offspring, more or less disguised —
must have wilfully split Itself In two, or rather
that it must have taken a stupendous and wil
fully blind leap Into the gulf of unreason? Is
It not possible that it has not dared to deduce
all the consequences of Its tremendous admis
sion? And would it not, for that matter, have
deduced the consequences elsewhere, and pre
cisely in the secret doctrines whose traces we
are still vainly seeking, and whose revelation
sealed forever the lips of the great Initiates?
IO
This suspicion, which will recur more than
once as we probe more deeply Into these reli
gions, would explain the dread cry of occultist
tradition, of which we have we have already
spoken: "Osiris is a dark god!" Can It be
that the great, supreme secret Is absolute ag
nosticism? Without speaking of the esoteric
doctrines, of which we are Ignorant, have we
not an all but public avowal In the word Maya
47

The Great Secret
— the most mysterious of Indian words, which
means that all things, even the universe and the
gods who create, uphold, and rule It, are but
the Illusion of Ignorance, and that the uncreated
and the unknowable alone are real?
But what religion could proclaim to Its faith
ful: "We know nothing; we merely declare
that this universe exists, or, at least appears
to our eyes to exist. Does it exist of Itself,
Is It Itself a god, or Is It but the effect of a re
mote cause? And behind this remote cause
must we not suppose yet another and remoter
cause, and so forth indefinitely, to the verge
of madness: for If God is, who created God?
"Whether He Is cause or effect matters little
enough to our Ignorance, which in any case re
mains irreducible. Its blind spots have merely
been shifted. Traditions of great antiquity
tell us that He is rather the manifestation of
a Cause even more Inconceivable than Him
self. We accept this tradition, which Is, per
haps, more Inexplicable than the riddle Itself
as we perceive It, but which seems to take Into
account Its apparently transitory or perishable
elements, and to replace them by an eternal
foundation. Immutable and purely spiritual.
Knowing absolutely nothing of this Cause we
must confine ourselves to noting certain pro
pensities, certain states of equilibrium, certain
laws, which seem to be its will. Of these, for
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the time being, we make gods. But these gods
are merely personifications, perhaps accurate,
perhaps Illusory, perhaps erroneous, of what
we believe ourselves to have observed. It Is
possible that other more accurate observations
will dethrone them. It Is possible that a day
will come when we shall perceive that the un
known Cause, In some respect a little less un
known, has had other intentions than those
which we have attributed to it. We shall then
change the names, the purposes, and the laws
of our gods. But In the meantime those whom
we offer you are born of observations and ex
periences so wise and so ancient that hitherto
none have beeri able to excel them."
II
While It was Impossible thus to address Its
faithful, who would riot have understood its
confession, It could safely reveal the secret to
the last Initiates, who had been prepared by
protracted ordeals and whose Intelligence was
attested by a selection of inhuman severity. To
certain of these, then, it admitted everything.
It probably told them : "In offering mankind
our gods we had no wish to deceive them. If
we had confessed to them that God Is unknown
and Incomprehensible ; that we cannot say what
He Is or what He purposes; that He has nei
ther shape nor substance nor dwelling-place, nei-
49

The Great Secret
ther beginning nor end; that He Is everywhere
and nowhere; that He Is nothing becauses He
is everything: they would have concluded that
He does not exist at all, that neither laws nor
duties have any existence, and that the uni
verse Is a vast abyss In which all should make
haste to do as they please. Now. even If we
know nothing we know that this Is not so and
cannot be so. We know, In any case, that the
Cause of Causes Is not material, as men would
understand It, for all matter appears to be per
ishable, and perishable It cannot be. For us
this unknown Cause Is actually our God, be
cause our understanding Is capable of perceiv
ing It as having a scope which Is limited only
by our finite Imagination. We know, with a
certainty that nothing has power to shake, that
this Cause, or the Cause of this Cause, and so
forth Indefinitely, must exist, although we are
aware that we can never know It or understand
It. But very few men are capable of convinc
ing themselves of the existence of a thing which
they can never hope to touch, feel, hear, know,
or understand. This. Is why. Instead of the
nothingness which they would think that we
were offering them were we to tell them how
Ignorant we are of all things, we offer them as
their guide certain apparent traces of purpose
which we believe ourselves to have detected In
the darkness of time and space."
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12
This confession of absolute Ignorance in re
spect of the First Cause and the essential nature
of the God of Gods will be found likewise at
the root of the Egyptian religion. But It is
very probable that once It was lost to sight —
for humanity does not care to linger In hope
lessness and Ignorance — It would have been
necessary to repeat It to the Initiates, to state
It definitely, to emphasize It and to deduce
Its consequences; and, thus revealed in Its en
tirety. It may have become the foundation of
the secret doctrine. We find. In fact, that the
makers of the subsequent theogonies were eager
to forget the confession recorded on the first
pages of the sacred books. They no longer
took It Into account; they thrust It back into
the darkness of the beginning, the night of the
incomprehensible. No longer was it discussed,
for men concerned themselves now only with
the gods who had Issued from It, forgetting
always to add that having emanated from the
Inexpressible unknown they must necessarily,
essentially and by definition, participate In Its
nature, and must be equally unknown and un
knowable. It may therefore be the case that
the secret doctrine reserved to the high priests
led them to a more accurate conception of the
primordial truth. SI

The Great Secret
There was in all probabihty no need to add
further explanations to this confession since It
destroys the very grounds of all possible ex
planations. What, for example, could the Ini
tiates be told on the subject of the first and
most formidable of all enigmas, which is en
countered immediately following that of the
Cause of Causes — the origin of evil? The ex
oteric rehgions solved the riddle by dividing
and multiplying their gods. This was a simple
and easy procedure. There were gods of light
who represented, and did, good; and there were
gods of darkness who represented, and did,
evil ; they fought one another In all the worlds,
and although the good gods were always the
more powerful they were never completely
victorious In this world. We shall find the
most definite types of this dualism In the my
thology of the "Avesta," In which they take
the names of Ormuz and Ahrlman; but by
other names, and In other shapes, and Indefi
nitely multiplied, we shall find them In all reli
gions — even In Christianity, in which Ahrlman
becomes the prince of devils.
But what could the Initiates have been told?
The modern theosophists who profess to un
veil at least a portion of the secret doctrines,
by subdividing in a similar fashion the mani
festations of the unknown origin, do no more
than reproduce In another shape the too facile
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explanations of exoteric religion, so that they
remain as far removed from the source of the
enigma as the exoteric doctrine itself; and in
the whole domain of occultism we do not find
even a shadow of the beginning of an explana
tion which differs otherwise than In Its terms
from those of the oflJcIal religions. We do not
know, then, what was revealed to them; and It
Is likely enough that, just as in the case of the
mysterious First Cause, they had to be told
that no one knew anything. In all probability
It was impossible to tell them anything that
the optimistic philosophies of to-day could not
tell us; namely, that evil does not exist of It
self, but only from our point of view; that It Is
purely relative, that moral evil is but a blind
ness or a caprice of our judgment, while phys
ical evil Is due to a defective organization or
an error of sensibility; that the most terrible
pain Is only pleasure Incorrectly Interpreted by
our nerves, just as the keenest pleasure Is al
ready pain. This may be true; but we
wretched human beings, and above all the
lower animals whose only life is this one, have
a right to demand a few supplementary expla
nations. If, as Is only too often the case, this
life Is merely a tissue of intolerable suffering.
The Initiated must have been given such ex
planations. They were referred to reincarna
tion, to theories of expiation and purification.
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The Great Secret
But these hints, valuable enough If we admit
the hypothesis of Intelligent gods whose Inten
tions are known, are less defensible when we are
dealing with an unknowable Cause, to which
we cannot attribute Intelligence or will without
denying that they are unknown. If the adepts
were ever given any other explanation, of a
nature to impose itself upon them, this explana
tion should have contained the sovereign key
of the enigma; It should have revealed all the
mysteries. But not even the shadow of this
chimerical key has come down to us.
13
Uncertain though Its foundations may be,
since they rest only on the unknowable, the fact
remains that this primitive religion has handed
down to us an Incomparable body of doctrine
touching the constitution and evolution of the
universe, the duration of the transformations
of the stars and the earth, time, space, and
eternity, the relations between matter and
mind, the invisible forces of nature, the prob
able destiny of mankind, and morahty. The
esoterism of all the religions, from that of
Egypt perhaps, and in any case from those of
Persia and Chaldea, and the Greek mysteries,
down to the Hermetlcs of the middle ages,
benefited by this doctrine, deriving from It the
most Important and most reliable elements of
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India
Its prestige, by attributing them to a secret rev
elation, until the discovery of the sacred books
of India made known their actual source and
propounded a fresh enigma. Fundamentally
esoterism was never anything more than a more
learned cosmogony, a more rational, more ma
jestic, and purer theogony, a loftier morality
than that of the vulgar religions; moreover It
possessed, for the preservation or defense of
Its doctrines, the secret, painfully transmitted
and often terribly obscured, of the manipula
tion of certain forgotten forces. To-day we
are able, beneath all Its deformations, all Its
disguises, and all Its masks, which are some
times dreadfully distorted, to recognize the
same countenance. From this point of view
it is certain that since the publication and trans
lation of the authentic texts, occultism, as It
was still understood scarcely more than fifty
years ago, has lost three fourths of Its richest
territories. Notably It has lost almost all
doctrinal Interest except as a means of verifica
tion, since we are now able to learn, at the
very source from which It used to flow so
grudgingly, all that It used secretly to teach:
on the subject of God or the gods; the origin
of the world; the immaterial forces which
govern It; heaven and hell, as understood by
the Jews, Greeks, and Christians; the constitu
tion of the body and the soul, the destiny of
55

The Great Secret
the latter, its responsibilities, and Its life be
yond the tomb.
On the other hand, If these ancient and au
thentic texts having at last been translated,
prove that nearly all the affirmations of oc
cultism, from the doctrinal point of view, were
not purely Imaginary but were based on real
and Immemorial traditions, they permit us like
wise to suppose that all Its assertions In other
respects, and especially with regard to the
utilization of certain unknown energies, may
be not purely chimerical; and In this way It
gains on the one hand what It loses on the other.
In fact, while we possess the more Important
of the sacred books of India, It is almost cer
tain that there are others with which we are
not yet acquainted, just as It Is highly probable
that we have still to fathom the hidden mean
ing of many of the hieroglyphs. It may there
fore be a fact that the occultists became ac
quainted with these writings or these oral tradi
tions by Infiltrations such as those which we
have remarked. It would seem that the traces
of such Infiltrations are perceptible in their
biology, their medicine, their chemistry, their
physics, their astronomy, and especially In all
that touches on the existence of the more or
less immaterial entities who appear to live
with and around us. In this connection oc
cultism still retains an Interest and deserves an
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attentive arid methodical study which might ef
fectively support and perhaps participate in
the investigations which the Independent and
methodical metapsychists have on their part
undertaken In respect of the same subject.
14
As for the primitive tradition, while it has
lost the prestige attaching to occultism, and
while on the other hand Its foundations are In
admissible in that it derives all its precepts and
all Its affirmations from a source which It has
itself declared to be forever Inaccessible, In
comprehensible, and unknowable, it is none the
less true. If we ignore this defective founda
tion, that these aflirmations and precepts are
the most unlooked-for, the loftiest, the most
admirable and the most plausible that man
kind has hitherto known.
Have we the right, for example, to reject a
priori, as a puerile fancy, wholly unsupported,
the conception of the Fall of Man, which we
cannot verify, when close beside it, almost con
temporary with It, we find another disaster,
equally general; that of the world-wide, pre
historic deluges and cataclysms which the
geologists have actually verified? With what
profound truth may not this legend of a super-
humanity, happier and more Intelligent than
ours, correspond? So far we know nothing of
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The Great Secret
it; but neither did we know what corresponded
with the tradition of the great catastrophes be
fore the annals of these upheavals. Inscribed In
the bowels of the earth, revealed to us what
had occurred. I might mention a large num
ber of traditions of this sort, the intuitions of
genius or Immemorial truths, to which science Is
to-day returning, or Is at least discovering their
vestiges. I have already spoken of the suc
cessive appearance of the various forms of life
precisely In the order assigned to them by the
paleontologists. To these we must add the
preponderant part played by the ether, that
cosmic. Imponderable fluid, the bridge between
mind and matter, the source of all that which
the primitive rehgion called Akahsa, and which
by constant repetition, becomes the Telesma of
Hermes Trismeglstus, the living fire of Zo
roaster, the generative fire of Herodotus, the
ignis subtillissimus of Hippocrates, the astral
light of the cabala, the pneuma of Galllen, the
quintessence or azote of the alchemists, the
spirit of life of St. Thomas Aquinas, the sub
tle matter of Descartes, the spiritus subtillh-
simus of Newton, the Od of Relchenbach and
Carl du Prel, "the Infinite ether, mysterious and
always In movement, whence all things come
and whither all return," to which our scientists,
in their laboratories, are at last obhged to have
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India
recourse in order to account for a host of
phenomena which without It would be utterly
inexplicable. All that our chemists and phys
icists call heat, light, electricity, and magnet
ism was for our ancestors merely the element
ary manifestations of a single substance.
Thousand of years ago they recognized the
presence and the all-powerful Intervention of
this ubiquitous agent In all the phenomena of
life; just as they described, long before our
astronomers, the birth and formation of the
stars ; just as the pretended myth of the trans
mutation of the metals, which they bequeathed
to the alchemists of the middle ages. Is likewise
confirmed by the chemical and thermal evolu
tion of the stars, "which," as Charles Nord-
mann remarks, "offer us a perfect example of
this transmutation, since the heavier metals ap
pear only after the lighter elements and when
they have cooled sufficiently"; and lastly, since
we must draw the line somewhere, just as they
taught. In opposition to the scientists of a
fairly recent period, that the duration of the
universe, the ages of the earth, and the time
which will elapse between Its birth and its de
struction, must be Increased to millions of cen
turies, since a day of Brahma, which corre
sponds with the evolution of our world, con
tains 4320 millions of years.
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The Great Secret
15
Our forebears had also an unexpected tradi
tion concerning yet another problem, more awe-
inspiring and more essential, since It Involves
the fundamental law of our universe. Of this
tradition humanity will never be able to verify
more than an infinitesimal portion. They tell
us that the cosmos, the visible manifestation
of the unknown and invisible Cause, has never
been and will never be other than an uninter
rupted sequence of expansions and contractions,
of evaporations and condensations, of sleeping
and waking, of Inspirations and expirations, of
attractions and repulsions, of evolution and In
volution, of materialization and splrltuallza-
tion, "of Interlorlzatlon and exteriorization"
as Dr. Jaworski observes, who has discovered
an analogous principle in biology.
The unknown Cause awakens, and for thou
sands of millions of years suns and planets radi
ate energy, dispersing and scattering them
selves, spreading throughout space; It sleeps
again, and for thousands of millions of years
the same worlds, hastening from every point of
the horizon, attracting one another, concentrat
ing, contracting, and solidifying until they form
— without perishing, for nothing can perish —
only one sole mass, which returns to the invisi
ble Cause. It is precisely in one of these peri*
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ods of contraction or inhalation that we are
living. It is ruled by that vast, mysterious law
of gravitation, of which no one can say whether
it is electricity or magnetism or a spiritual
force, although It Is predominant over all the
other laws of nature. If all bodies — so New
ton tells us — had from all eternity, without be
ginning, mutually attracted one another In
direct proportion to their mass, and Inversely
as the squares of their distances, all the sub
stance of the universe ought by now to form
nothing but an Infinite mass, unless we presup
pose an absolute and Immovable equilibrium
which would amount to eternal Immobihty. In
the perpetual motion of the heavenly bodies.
In which the displacement of an atom would
disturb It, It does not seem possible that this
equilibrium could exist. As a matter of fact,
it is almost certain that It does not exist, and
the Apex, that mysterious spot In the celestial
sphere, not far from Vega, toward which our
solar system is hurling Itself with all its retinue
of planets, may possibly be, as far as we are
concerned. Its point of rupture and one of the
first phases of the great contraction, which, ac
cording to the latest calculations of the astron
omers, will take place In 400,000 years' time.
But If It Is fact that this terrible contraction
must almost Inevitably occur, the universe will
one day be no more than a monstrous mass of
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The Great Secret
matter, compact, Infinite, and probably forever
lifeless, outside which nothing could possibly
find place. Would this Illimitable mass, con
sisting of the total sum of all cosmic matter, In
cluding the etheric arid all but spiritual fluid
that fills the fabulous interstellar spaces, occupy
the whole of space, finally and eternally con
gealed in death, or would it float In a void more
subtle than that of etheric space, and hence
forth subject to other forces? It seems as
though the fundamental law of the universe
must result In a sort of annihilation, a bhnd
alley, an absurdity; while on the other hand. If
we deny this universal attraction or gravitation,
we are denying the only phenomenon which we
can estabhsh as Indisputable, and all the
heavenly bodies will be absolutely uncontrolled
by law. i6
The Imagination, the intuition, the observa
tions, or the traditions of our forefathers
passed this dead point. Behind their mythical
or mystical phraseology they pondered the uni
verse, regarding it as an electrical phenomenon,
or rather as a vast source of subtle and Incom
prehensible energy, obeying the same laws as
those which control magnetic energy. In which
all Is action and reaction; In which two antag
onistic forces are always face to face. When
the poles of the magnet are reversed attraction
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India
Is followed by repulsion, and centripetal by cen
trifugal force ; while gravitation is opposed by
another law which as yet is nameless, but which
redistributes matter and the worlds. In order
to recommence a new day of Brahma. This
is the solve et coagula of the alchemists.
This, obviously. Is merely a hypothesis, some
aspects of which cannot be maintained save by
certain electrical and magnetic phenomena, and
the properties of radioactive bodies, and which
as a whole cannot of course be verified. But
it Is Interesting to note once again that this
hypothesis, the most majestic, the boldest, and
also the most ancient, being Indeed the first a.f
all. Is perhaps the only one to which science
might rally without derogation. Here again
have we not the right to ask ourselves whether
our forefathers were not more far-sighted,
more perspicacious than we, and whether we
ourselves are capable of Imagining so vast and
so probable a cosmogony as theirs?
If now from these heights we return to man
kind we shall discover Intuitions or convic
tions of no less remarkable a nature. With
out venturing ourselves amid the complexity
of subdivisions which, after all, are of later
date and would lead us too far afield, we shall
confine ourselves to saying that in all the prlmi-
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The Great Secret
tive doctrines, which agree In a most remark
able fashion, man Is composed of three essen
tial parts: a perishable physical body; a spiri
tual principle, a shadow or astral double, like
wise perishable, but much more durable than the
body, and an Immortal principle which, after
more or less protracted developments, returns
to its origin, which Is God.
Now we can prove that In the phenomena of
hypnotism, magnetism, mediumship, and som
nambulism, in all that concerns certain extraor
dinary faculties of the subconsciousness, which
seem independent of the physical body, and
also In certain manifestations from beyond the
grave, which to-day can hardly be denied, our
metaphsychlcal sciences are In a sense obliged
to admit the existence of this astral double,
which everywhere extends beyond the physical
entity and Is able to leave it, to act Independ
ently of It and at a distance, and In all proba
bility to survive It, which seems once again, and
in an extremely Important connection, to jus
tify the almost prehistoric Intuitions of our
Hindu and Egyptian ancestors. i8
As I have only too often repeated, we might
multiply such Instances; and when our science
has thus confirmed one of these intuitions or
traditions it would be only sensible to regard
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such as are still awaiting this confirmation with
a little more confidence. The greater the num
ber of instances In which It has been proved that
they were not mistaken, the greater the chances
that they are In the right In respect of other
Instances which cannot yet be verified. Very
often these latter are the most Important, be
ing those which affect us most directly and
profoundly. We must not as yet draw too
general or too hasty conclusions ; rather let us,
as a result of these first confirmations, or be
ginnings of confirmations, accord a provisional
and vigilant credit to the other hypotheses.
When we have finally verified these first In
stances we shall not be out of the wood; but
we shall be a great deal nearer the open sky
than we were, which Is as much as we have
the right to hope or demand from any religious
or philosophical system, or even from any sci
ence; to say nothing of the fact that the least
advance here, at the center of all things, Is
of incomparably greater Importance than an ad
vance along a diameter or on the circumference;
since from this hub or center spring all the
spokes of that vast wheel of which science has
barely examined the outer rim.
It must be admitted once for all that we can
not understand or explain anything; otherwise
we should be no longer men but gods : or rather
the one God. Apart from a few mathematical
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The Great Secret
and material proofs whose essential drift we
cannot after all perceive, all Is hypothetical.
We have nothing but hypotheses on which to
order our lives. If we cease to count upon cer
tainties which will probably never emerge. It
Is therefore of great Importance that we should
select our vital hypotheses carefully, accepting
only the noblest, the best, and the most credi
ble ; and we shall find that these are almost in
variably the most ancient. In the hierarchy of
evolution we shall never know that central or
supreme Being, nor His latest thought; but
for all that we must do our best to learn a great
deal more than we do know. That we can
not know everything Is no reason for resigning
ourselves to knowing nothing; and If branches
of knowledge other than science, properly or
improperly so called, are able to help us, to
lead us farther or more rapidly, we shall do
well to Interrogate them, or at least not to
reject them beforehand without due Investi
gation, as has hitherto been done only too read
ily and only too often. 19
Among these assertions and these doctrines
that cannot be verified we shall consider only
those that concern us most Intimately, and nota
bly those which touch upon the conduct of our
lives; on the sanctions, the responsibilities, the
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compensations, and the moral philosophy that
proceed therefrom; on the mysteries of death,
the life beyond the tomb, and the final destinies
of mankind.
Hitherto almost all the doctrines which touch
upon these points have been, for us Europeans,
esoteric, hidderi away In the scrolls of the cabala
or the gnosis, the persecuted, humble, and hag
gard heirs of the Hindu, Egyptian, Persian,
and Chaldean wisdom. But since the Sanskrit
texts have been deciphered they are so no
longer, at least In their essential elements ; for
although, as I have already stated, we are far
from being acquainted with all the sacred books
of India, and are perhaps even farther from
having grasped the secret meaning of the hiero
glyphs, nevertheless It Is by no means likely that
any fresh revelation or complete explanation
would be of a nature seriously to unsettle what
we already know. 20
No rule of conduct, no moral philosophy
could be derived from the unknowable First
Cause, the one unmanlfested God. It Is in
deed impossible to know what He desires or
intends, since It is impossible to know Him. To
discover a purpose In the Infinite, In the uni
verse, or In the Deity, we are compelled to
cast ourselves adrift on the unprovable, and to
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The Great Secret
cross great gulfs of lUoglc of which we have
already spoken, evoking from this Cause, which
to manifest Itself has divided Itself, one god or
many, emanations from the Unknowable, who
suddenly become as familiar as though they had
Issued from the hands of man. It Is obvious
that the ethical basis resulting from this ar
bitrary procedure will always be precarious,
offering Itself merely as a postulate which must
be accepted with closed eyes. But it is worthy
of note that, following upon this preliminary
operation, or concurrently with It, In all the
primitive religions, we shall find another which
Is, as It were, Its necessary and. In any case. Its
invariable consequence : the voluntary sacrifice
of one of these emanations of the Unknowable,
Who becomes Incarnate, renouncing His pre
rogatives, in order to deify humanity by hu
manizing God.
Egypt, India, Chaldea, China, Mexico, Peru
— all know the myth of the child-god born of
a virgin; and the first Jesuit missionary to
China discovered that the miraculous birth of
Christ had been anticipated by Fuh-Ke, who
was born 3468 years before Jesus. It has
very truly been said that If a priest of ancient
Thebes or Hehopolis were to return to earth
he would recognize. In Raphael's painting of
the Virgin and Child, the picture of Horus
In the arms of Isis. The Egyptian Isis, like
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our own Immaculate Virgin, was represented
standing on a crescent moon and crowned with
stars. DevakI also Is depicted for us bearing
In her arms the divine Krishna, while Istar,
In Babylon, holds the Infant Tammuz on her
knees. The myth of the Incarnation, which Is
also a solar myth, is thus repeated from age
to age, under different names, but It is In India,
where It almost certainly originated, that we
find It In its purest, loftiest, and most signi
ficant form. 21
Without lingering over the doubtful Incar
nations of the Hermes, the Manus, and the Zo
roasters, which cannot be historically verified, let
us consider, among the many Incarnations of
Vishnu, the second person of the Brahman Trin
ity, only the two most famous: the eighth,
which Is that of Krishna, and the ninth, which Is
that of Buddha. The approximate date of the
earlier Incarnation Is given us by the "Bhaga-
vat-GIta," which gives prominence to the
wonderful figure of Krishna. The Catholic
Indianlsts, fearing with all their too narrow
point of view, that the Incarnation of Krishna
might endanger that of Christ, admit that the
"Bhagavat-GIta" was written before our era,
but maintain that it has since been revised. As
it is difficult to prove such revisions, they add
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The Great Secret
that if It Is actually proved that the "Bhagavat-
GIta" and other sacred books of an equally em
barrassing character are really anterior to
Christ, they are the work of the devil, who,
foreseeing the incarnation of Jesus, purposed
by these anticipations to lessen its effect. How
ever this may be, the purely scientific Indian
lsts — William Jones, Colebrooke, Thomas
Strange, Wilson, Princeps, et al agree In the
opinion that It dates from at least twelve or
fourteen centuries before our era. It is in
fact commented upon and analyzed in the Mo-
dana-Ratna-Pradipa, (a selection from the
texts of the most ancient lawmakers). In "Vri-
haspatl," In "Parasara," In "Narada," and In
a host of other works of Indisputable authen
ticity. According to other Orientalists, since
the truth must be told, the poems upon Krishna
are no older than the "Mahabharata," which
after all takes us back two centuries before
Jesus Christ.
As for the Incarnation of SIddartha Gautama
Buddha, or Sakya-Muni, no doubt Is any longer
possible. Sakya-MunI was a historical person-
nage who lived In the fifth century before
Christ. 22
All this, moreover. Is well enough known; It
Is needless to labor the point. But what can
be the secret meaning of a myth so Immemorial,
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so unanimous, so disconcerting? The unknown
Cause of all causes, subdividing Itself, de
scending from the heights of the Inconceivable,
sacrificing Itself, circumscribing Itself, and be
coming man that It might make Itself known
to men ! Would not all the possible interpreta
tions be unreasonable did we refuse to see,
beneath this Incomprehensible myth, yet an
other confession, this time more Indirect, better
disguised, more profoundly concealed, of the
fundamental agnosticism, the sublime and In
vincible Ignorance of the great primitive teach
ers? They knew that the unknowable could
give birth to nothing but the unknown. They
knew that man could never know God; and
this Is why, no longer searching In a direction
In which all hope was Impossible, they directly
approached humanity, as the only thing with
which they were acquainted. They said to
themselves: "It Is impossible for us to know
what God Is, or where He Is, or what He pur
poses; but we do know that, being everywhere
and everything. He Is necessarily In man, and
that He is man: It is therefore only In man and
through man that we can discover His pur
pose." Under the symbol of the Incarnation
they thus conceal the great truth that all the
divine laws are human; and this truth Is only
the reverse of another truth, of no less magni
tude; namely, that in mankind is the only god
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The Great Secret
that we can ever know. God manifests Him
self in nature, but He has never spoken to
us save by the voice of mankind. Do not look
elsewhere ; do not seek In the Inaccessible infin
ity of space the God whom you are eager to
find; it Is In you yourself that He Is hidden
and It Is In you yourself that you must find
Him. He is there, within you, no less than In
those in whom He appears to be incarnated
ia a more dazzling fashion. Every man Is
Krishna, every man Is Buddha; there Is no
difference between the God Incarnate In them
and Him who Is Incarnate In you; but they
found Him more easily than you have done.
Imitate them and you will be their peer; and
If you cannot keep up with them you can at
least give ear to what they tell you, for they
can but tell you what the God who Is within
you would tell you. If you had learned to
listen to Him as they have listened.
23
There we have the foundation of the whole
of the Vedic religion, and of all the esoteric
rehgions which have sprung from It. But at
Its source the truth will hardly be enwrapped
In symbols or transparent myths. There Is
nothing secret about It; often. Indeed, It de
clares Itself aloud, without reticence and with
out disguise. "When all the other gods are
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no more than disappearing names," says Max
Mulier, "there are left only the Atman, the
subjective self, and Brahma, the objective self;
and the supreme knowledge Is expressed In
these words: 'Tat Twam, Hoc tu' ; 'That Is
You' ; you, your true self, that which cannot be
taken from you when all has disappeared that
seemed for a time to be yours. When all
created things vanish like a dream your true
ego belongs to the Eternal Self: the Atman, the
personality within you. Is the true Brahma:
that Brahma from whom birth and death di
vided you for a moment, but who receives you
again into his bosom, so soon as you return
to him." 1
"The 'Rig- Veda,' or the 'Veda' of the hymns,
the true 'Veda,' the 'Veda' par excellence,"
continues Max Mulier, "ends In the 'Upanl
shads,' or, as they were afterwards called, the
'Vedanda.' Now the dominant note of the
'Upanlshads' Is 'Know thyself ; that Is, Know
the being who Is the upholder of your ego;
learn to find Him and to know Him In the
Eternal and Supreme Being, the One Alone,
who is the upholder of the whole universe."
"This rehgion at Its ultimate height, the
religion of the Vanaprastha, that Is, of the old
man, the man who has paid his three debts,
whose eyes have beheld 'the son of his son'
1 Max Miiller, "The Origin of Religion."
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The Great Secret
and who withdraws Into the forest, becomes
purely mental; and finally self-examination. In
the profoundest meaning of the word, that is,
the recognition of the Individual self as one
with the Eternal Self, becomes the only oc
cupation which Is still permitted to him."
"Search for the Me hidden In your heart,"
says the "Mahabharata," the final echo of the
great doctrine; "Brahma, the True God, Is
you yourself." This, let me repeat. Is the
foundation of Vedic thought, and It is from
this thought that all the rest proceeds. To
recover It we have no need of modern theos
ophy, which has but confirmed It by less famil
iar texts whose authority is less assured. It
was never secret, but by Its very magnitude It
escaped the gaze of those who could not under
stand It, and little by little, as the gods multi
plied and stepped down to the level of mankind.
It was lost to sight. Its very nobility made It
esoteric. In the heroic age of Vedism, when
almost all men, having done their duty to their
parents and their children, used to withdraw
Into the forest, there peacefully to wait for
death, retiring within themselves and seeking
there the hidden god with whom they were
soon to be confounded. It was the thought of
a whole people. But the peoples are not
long faithful to the heights. To avoid losing
all touch with them It was forced to descend,
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to conceal Its features, to mingle with the
crowd In a thousand disguises. Nevertheless
we always discover It beneath the Increasingly
heavy veils with which it cloaks itself. "Man
is the key to the universe," declared the funda
mental axiom of the medieval alchemists. In a
voice stifled beneath the htter of Illegible texts
and undecipherable conjuring-books, as Novalis,
perhaps without realizing that he was redis
covering a truth many thousands of years old,
indeed almost as old as the world, once more
repeated It In a form scarcely altered, when he
taught that "our first duty Is the search for
our transcendental ego."
Abandoned In an Infinite universe In which
we cannot know anything but ourselves. Is not
this, as a matter of fact, the only truth that has
survived, the only one that Is not Illusory, and
the only one to which we might still hope to re
turn, after so many misadventures, so • many
erroneous Interpretations In which we failed to
recognize It? 24
God, or the First Cause, Is unknowable; but
being everywhere He is necessarily within us :
It Is therefore within ourselves that we shall
succeed In discovering what It behooves us to
know of Him. These are the two supporting
piers of the arch sustaining the primitive re-
75

The Great Secret
ligion and all those religions which spring there
from, or, at least, the actual though secret
doctrine of all those religions : that is, of all
the religions known to us, apart from the fet
ishism of utterly barbarous peoples. It found
these points of support In the beginning, or
rather In what we call the beginning, which
must have had behind It a past of thousands,
perhaps millions, of years. We have found no
others; we never shall find others, falling an
Impossible revelation — Impossible In fact If not
In principle, — for nothing that Is not human
or divinely human can reach us. We have re
turned to the point whence our forefathers set
out; and the day on which humanity discovers
another such point will be the most extraor
dinary day that will have shone upon our planet
since its birth.
The Incarnations of God, In primitive re
ligious thought, are merely periodical and spo
radic externalizations, dazzling manifestations,
synthetic and exceptional, of the God who Is in
every human being. This Incarnation Is uni
versal, and latent In each of us ; but while thc
incarnation Is regarded as a privilege for the
man in whom It occurs. It Is considered a sacri
fice on the part of the god. VIshna willingly
sacrifices himself when he descends to earth in
the person of Krishna or Buddha. Has he
likewise sacrificed himself by descending to
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earth in -the rest of mankind? Whence comes
this idea of sacrifice? It Is a mysterious Idea,
dating assuredly from traditions of great an
tiquity; In any case, it does not appear to be
purely rational, like the two previous concep
tions. Nowhere is It explained why It Is neces
sary that an emanation of God should descend
Into man, who Is already a divine emanation.
Here is a gap which is not bridged by the myth
of the Fall, a myth which Is likewise unex
plained, unless the idea In question is based
merely upon the declaration that every man who
surpasses his fellows, whose sight Is keener
than theirs, and who teaches them what they
cannot yet understand. Is necessarily misunder
stood, persecuted, a hapless sacrifice.
25
This idea, whether It can or cannot be ex
plained, is none the less of great importance;
for it seems to have steered primitive moral
ity Into one of its principal highways. Indeed,
the conception of the unknowable, while It set
free those courageous thinkers who adventured
upon Its naked peaks, was powerless to afford
more than a negative doctrine. To be sure. It
dispersed the little anthropomorphic and almost
always maleficent gods, but In their place It left
only a vast and silent void. On the other hand,
pantheism, being as comprehensive as agnosti-
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The Great Secret
cism, taught that as God was everjrwhere and
all things were God, all things ought to be
loved and respected; but It followed that evil,
or at least that which man is forced to call
evil, was divine, just as goodness Is divine,
so that It must be loved and respected equally
with goodness. The Idea was too stark, too
Illimitable, over-arching the two poles of the
universe In too colossal a fashion; man did not
dare to Involve himself, did not dare to select
a pathway. Lastly, the search for the god hidden in each
of us, which is one of the corollaries of panthe
ism, if it be left without guidance, could only
have perilous consequences. There are within
us all kinds of gods; that Is, all sorts of In
stincts, thoughts, or passions, which may be
taken for gods. Some are good and some evil,
and the evil gods are often more numerous,
and In any case more readily discoverable than
the good. The true God, the supremest Deity
and the most Immaterial, reveals Himself only
to a few. This God being thus revealed —
who Is, after all, no more than the best thoughts
of the best of us, — He had to call upon
Himself the attention of other men, to make
Himself known to them, to Impose Himself
upon them; and It Is perhaps for this reason
that this singular myth, which fundamentally Is
probably no more than the recognition of a
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natural and human phenomenon, has little by
little obtruded Itself, struck root, and de
veloped. It Is Indeed probable enough, like
everything else connected with the evolution of
mankind, that It did not suddenly spring from
a single mind, but dimly took shape, slowly
assuming a definite form In the course of un
numbered centuries of tentative experiments.
26
Without lingering longer over this enigma
we shall confine ourselves to considering Its
Influence on primitive morality, by directing the
latter from the very outset toward other pin
nacles than those to which the understand
ing pointed the way. In its absence the primi
tive morality which believed Itself to be listen
ing to a hidden God, but which In truth was
only giving ear to human reason, would have
been no more than a morality of the brain that
might have been deflected toward a barren con
templation or a cold, rigid, austere, and im
placable rationalism; for the reason alone, even
when it reaches the loftiest heights and Is taken
for the voice of God, Is not enough to guide
mankind toward the summits of abnegation,
goodness, and love. The example of an in
itial sacrifice curbed Its severity, launching It
In another direction and toward a goal of which
it might perhaps In the end have caught a
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The Great Secret
glimpse, but which it would not have reached
until very much later, after many grievous
mistakes. Is It upon this myth of Incarnation that the
dogma has grafted itself, although properly
speaking there are no dogmas In the Oriental
religions — the dogma of reincarnation in
which are found all the sanctions and all the
rewards of the primitive religion? The es
sential principle of man, the basis of his ego,
being divine and Immortal, after the disap
pearance of the body which has for the time
being divorced It from Its spiritual origin,
should logically return to that origin. But,
on the other hand, the invisible God having
through the medium of the great incarnations
introduced into morality the conception of good
and evil. It did not seem admissible that the
soul, which had not hstened to Its own voice
or to that of the divine teachers, and which
had become more or less soiled by Its earthly
life, should be able, at once and without pre
vious purification, to return to the Immaculate
ocean of the Eternal Spirit. From Incarnation
to reincarnation there was only a step, which,
without doubt, was taken all but unconsciously;
from reincarnation to successive reincarnations
and purifications the transition was even sim
pler; and from these proceeds the whole of
the Hindu moral philosophy, with Its Karma,
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•vhlch after all Is only the judicial record of
the soul, a record which is always up to date,
becoming worse or better In the course of Its
palingeneses, until the attainment of Nirvana ;
which Is not, as It Is too often described, an
annihilation or a dispersal in the bosom of the
Deity, nor yet, on the other hand, a reunion
with God, coinciding with the perfecting of
the human spirit freed of matter, an absolute
acquiescence in the law, an unalterable tran
quillity in the contemplation of that which ex
ists, a disinterested hope In that which ought
to be, and repose In the absolute, that Is, In
the world of causes In which all the Illusions
of the senses disappear; but a more mysterious
state which is neither perfect happiness nor
annihilation, but, properly speaking and once
again, the Unknowable. "That Perfection ex
ists after death," says a text contemporary with
the Buddha, revealing the meaning of Nirvana,
which had then become esoteric: — "That Per
fection both exists and does not exist after
death, that likewise Is not true." ^
As Oldenberg says very truly, citing this
pasage among several others In which the same
admission Is made: "This is not to deny Nir
vana or Perfection, or to conclude that It does
not exist at all. Here the spirit has reached
the brink of an unfathomable mystery. Use-
i"Sanyatta Nikaya"; Vol. II, fol. no and 199.
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The Great Secret
less to seek to disclose It. If one were finally
to renounce a future Eternity one would speak
in another fashion; It is the heart that takes
refuge behind the veil of the mystery. From
the mind that hesitates to admit eternal life
as conceivable it seeks to wrest the hope of a
life that passes all understanding." ^
All this amounts to a repetition of the old
fundamental admissions that in respect of es
sentials we know nothing and can know noth
ing, while It Is also a fresh proof of the mag
nificent sincerity and the lofty and sovereign
wisdom of the primitive religion.
Will all living beings end by attaining Nir
vana? What Is to happen in that case, and
why Is It, since all things exist from all eternity,
that all have not already reached It? To these
questions and others of a like nature the "Ve
das" vouchsafed only a disdainful silence; but
some of the Buddhist texts, and among them
the following, discreetly reply to those who
would know too much:
"This the Sublime One has not revealed,
because it does not minister to salvation, be
cause it Is no help to the devout life, because It
does not conduce to detachment from earthly
things, to the annihilation of desire, to cessa
tion, to repose, to knowledge, to Illumination,
1 Oldenberg, Le Bouddha; p. 285.
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to Nirvana; for this reason the Sublime has
revealed nothing relating to It."
27
Whatever the value of these hypotheses, it
is Indubitable that the moral system which we
find proceeding from this boundless agnosti
cism and pantheism Is the noblest, the purest,
the most disinterested, the most sensitive, the
most thoroughly investigated, the most fastidi
ous, the clearest, the completest that we have
as yet known and doubtless could ever hope to
know. This morality, as well as the enigma of In
carnation and sacrifice of which we have just
been speaking, and many other points which we
have only touched upon, ought to be subjected
to a special examination which does not enter
Into our design. It will suffice to recall the
fact that It Is based on the principle of succes
sive reincarnations and of Karma.
The world, properly speaking, was not cre
ated; there Is no word In Sanskrit that corre
sponds with the Idea of creation, just as there
Is none that corresponds with the conception of
nothingness. The universe is a momentary and
doubtless illusory materialization of the un
known and spiritual Cause. Divided from the
Spirit which Is Its proper essence, actual and
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The Great Secret
eternal, matter tends to return to it through all
the phases of evolution. Starting from be
neath the mineral stage, passing through plant
and animal, ending in man, and outstripping
him. It Is transformed and spiritualized until
It Is sufdclently pure to return to Its point of
origin. This purification often demands a long
series of reincarnations, but It Is possible to re
duce their number, and even to set a term to
them, by an Intensive splrltuallzation, heroic
and absolute, which at death, and sometimes
even during life, leads the soul back to the
bosom of Brahma.
This explanation of the inexplicable, despite
the objections which suggest themselves, nota
bly In respect of the origin and necessity of
matter, or of evil, which remain obscure. Is as
good as any other, and has the advantage of
being the earliest In date, apart from the fact
that It is the most comprehensive, embracing
all that can be Imagined, setting out from the
great spiritual principle to which, In the ab
sence of any other of an acceptable nature,
we are more and more Imperiously compelled
to return.
In any case, as It has proved. It has favored
more than any other the birth and development
of a morality to which man had never attained,
and which, so far, he has never surpassed.
To give a sufliclent Idea of this morality
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would require more space than is at my dis
posal, and destroy the scheme of this Inquiry.
The wonderful thing about this morality,
when we consider It near Its source, where It
still retains Its purity, Is that It is wholly in
ternal, wholly spiritual. It finds its sanctions
and Its rewards only In our own hearts. There
Is no Judge awaiting the soul on Its release
from the body; no paradise and no hell, for
hell was a later development. The soul it
self, the soul alone. Is Its Judge, Its heaven, or
Its hell. It encounters nothing, no one. It
has no need to judge Itself, for it sees itself as
It Is, as its thoughts and actions have made It,
at the close of this life and of previous lives.
It sees Itself, in short. In Its entirety. In the
Infallible mirror which death holds up to It,
and realizes that It Is Its own happiness. Its
own misery. Happiness and suffering are self-
created. It Is alone In the Infinite; there is
no God above It to smile upon it or to fill It
with terror; the God whom It has disappointed,
displeased, or satisfied Is itself. Its condemna
tion or Its absolution depend upon that which
It has become. It cannot escape from Itself
to go elsewhere where It might be more fortu
nate. It cannot breathe save in the atmosphere
which It has created for Itself; It Is Its own at
mosphere, Its own world. Its own environment;
and It must uplift and purify Itself In order
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The Great Secret
that this world and this environment may be
purified and uphfted, expanding with It and
around It.
"The soul," says Manu, "Is Its own witness;
the soul Is Its own refuge; never despise your
soul, the sovereign witness of mankind !
"The wicked say: 'No one sees us'; but the
gods are watching them, as Is the Spirit en
throned within them."
"O man! when thou sayest to thyself: 'I
am alone with myself,' there dwells forever
In thy heart this supreme Spirit, the attentive
and silent observer of all good and all evil.
"This Spirit enthroned In thy heart Is a strict
judge, an Inflexible avenger; he Is Yama, the
Judge of the Dead." ^ 28
Between birth and death, which Is but a
new birth, the "Laws of Manu" distinguish
five stages : conception, childhood, the noviti
ate (or period of studying the sciences, divine
and human), fatherhood, and, last of all, the
stage of the anchorite preparing for death.
Each of these periods has Its duties, which must
be accomplished before a man may look for
ward to withdrawal into the forest. While
awaiting this hour, desired above all, "resigna
tion," says Manu, "the act of returning good
i"Manu"; Vlll, 84, 85, 91, 92-
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for evil, temperance, honesty, purity, chastity,
repression of the senses, knowledge of the sa
cred books, worship of truth, and abstention
from anger : such are the ten virtues of which
duty consists." ^
The aim of our life on this earth Is to set
a limit to our reincarnations, for reincarna
tion is a punishment which the soul Is com
pelled to inflict upon Itself for so long as it
does not feel that It Is pure enough to return
to God. "To attain the last phase," says
Manu, "never again to be reborn upon this
earth — that is the Ideal. To be assured of
eternal happiness — assured that the earth shall
no longer behold the soul returning to cloak It
self once again In Its gross substance !"
This purification, this progressive dema-
terlallzatlon, this renunciation of all egoism,
begins when life begins and Is continued through
all the phases of existence; but one must first
of all accomplish all the duties of this active
existence. "For all of you must know," say the
sacred books, "that none of you shall achieve
absorption into the bosom of Brahma by prayer
alone; and the mysterious monosyllable will
not efface your latest defilement, except you
reach the threshold of the future life laden
with good works ; and the most meritorious of
these works will be those which are based upon
i"Manu''; VI, 92. 87

The Great Secret
the motives of charity and love for one's
neighbor." "One single good action," says Manu
further, "Is worth more than a thousand good
thoughts, and those who fulfil their obligations
are superior to those who perceive them."
"Let the sage constantly observe the moral
obligations (Yamas) more attentively than the
rehgious duties (Nlyamas) for he who neg
lects the moral duties Is losing ground even if
he observes his religious obligations."
29
There are In the life of man two plainly
distinguished periods : the active or social phase
during which he establishes his family, assures
the fate of his posterity, and tills the soil with
his own hands, fulfilling the humble duties of
every-day life toward his relatives and those
about him. For these yet ungodly days abound
In the most angelic precepts of resignation, of
respect for life, of patience and love.
"The Ills which we Inflict upon our neigh
bor," says Krishna, "pursue us as our shadows
follow our bodies.
"Just as the earth upholds those that trample
it underfoot and rend its bosom with the plow,
so we should return good for evil.
"Let all men remember that self-respect and
love for one's neighbor stand above all things.
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"He who fulfils all his obligations to please
God only and without thinking of future re
ward is sure of Immortal happiness. ^
"If a pious action proceeds from the hope
of reward In this world or the next, that ac
tion Is described as Interested. But that
which has no other motive than the knowledge
and love of God is said to be disinterested." ^
(Let us reflect for a moment upon this saying,
many thousands of years old: one of those
sayings which we can repeat to-day without
the change of a syllable, for here God, as
in all the Vedic literature, Is the best and
eternal part of ourselves and of the universe.)
"The man whose religious actions are all
interested attains the rank of the saints and the
angels [Devas]. But he whose pious actions
are all disinterested divests himself forever of
the five elements, to acquire Immortality In the
Great Soul."
"Of all things that purify man purity In
the acquisition of wealth Is the best. He who
retains his purity while becoming rich Is truly
pure, not he who purifies himself with earth
and water."
"Learned men purify themselves by the for
giveness of trespasses, alms, and prayer. The
understanding Is purified by knowledge."
i"Manu"; II, 15.
2 Ibid.; Xll, 89. 89

The Great Secret
"The hand of a craftsman Is always pure
while he Is working."
"Although the conduct of her husband be
blameworthy, although he may abandon him
self to other loves and may be without good
qualities, a virtuous woman must always revere
him as a god."
"He who has defiled the water by some im
purity must live upon alms only for a full
month." "In order not to cause the death of any
living creature, let the Sannyasi ^ [that Is, the
mendicant ascetic], by night as well as by
day, even at the risk of Injury, walk with his
gaze upon the ground." ^
"For having on one occasion only, and with
out any 111 Intention, cut down trees bearing
fruit, or bushes, or tree-creepers, or climbing
plants, or crawhng plants In flower, one must
repeat a hundred prayers from the 'RIg-
Veda.' "
"If a man Idly uproots cultivated plants or
plants which have sprung up spontaneously In
the forest, he must follow a cow for a whole
day and take no food but milk."
"By a confession made in public, by repent
ance, by piety, by the recitation of sacred
prayers, a sinner may be acquitted of his offense,
1 Literally, "the abandoner." — Trans.
2 "Manu"; XII, 90; V, 106, 107, 129, 154; XI, 2SS; VI, 68.
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as well as by giving alms, when he finds It
impossible to perform the other penance."
"In proportion as his soul regrets a bad ac
tion, so far his body is relieved of the burden
of this perverse action."
"Success in all worldly affairs depends upon
the laws of destiny, controlled by the actions
of mortals In their previous lives, and the
conduct of the Individual; the decrees of destiny
are a mystery; we must accordingly have re
course to means which depend upon man."
"Justice Is the sole friend who accompanies
man after death, since all affection Is subject
to the destruction suffered by the body." ^
"If he who strikes you drops the staff which
he has used, pick It up and return It to him
without complaint."
"You will not abandon animals In their old
age, remembering what services they have
rendered you." ^
"He who despises a woman despises his
mother. The tears of women draw down the
fire of heaven upon those that make them
flow." "The upright man may fall beneath the blows
of the wicked, as does the sandal-tree, which,
when It is felled, perfumes the ax that lays it
low." 3
i"Manu"; XI, 142, 144, 227, 229; VII, 205.
2"Sama Veda."
» "?radasa." 91

The Great Secret
"To carry the three staves of the ascetic,
to keep silence, to wear the hair In a plait,
to shave the head, to clothe one's self in gar
ments of bark or skins, to say prayers and per
form ablutions, to celebrate the Agnihotra, to
dwell In the forest, to allow the body to be
come emaciated — all this Is useless If the heart
is not pure."
"He who, whatever pains he may spend
on himself, practises tranquillity of mind, who
is calm, resigned, restrained, and chaste, and
has ceased to find fault with others, that man
is truly a Brahman, a Shraman [an ascetic],
a Bhikshu [a mendicant friar]."
"O Bharata, of what avail Is the forest to
him who has mastered himself, and of what
avail is it to him who has not mastered him
self? Wherever there lives a man who has
mastered himself, there Is the forest, there is
the hermitage."
"If the wise man stay at home, whatever
care he may take of himself. If all the days of
his life he Is always pure and full of love, he Is
delivered from all evil."
"It Is not the hermitage that makes the
virtuous man; virtue comes only with practice.
Therefore let no man do unto others that
which would cause pain to himself."
"The world is sustained by every action
whose sole object Is sacrifice; that is, the volun-
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India
tary gift of self. It is in making this volun
tary gift that man should perform the action,
without respect of usage. The sole object of
action should be to serve others. He who sees
Inaction In action and action In Inaction Is wise
among men : he Is attuned to the true principles,
whatever action he may perform. Such a man,
who has renounced all Interest in the result of
his action, and Is always content, depending up
on no one, although he may perform actions.
Is as one who does not perform them. All
his thoughts, stamped with wisdom, and all his
actions, consisting of sacrifice, are as though
faded into air." ^ 30
There, taken at random, from an enormous
treasury which Is still partly unknown, are a
few words of counsel, thousands of years old,
which, long before the advent of Christianity,
guided men of good will to the border of the
forest. Then, as Manu says, "when the head
of the family sees his skin grow wrinkled and
his hair turn white, when he beholds the son
of his son" ; when he has no further obligations
to fulfil; when no one has further need of his
assistance, then, whether he be the richest
merchant of the city or the poorest peasant
1 "Vanaparva" ; 13,445: "Parables of Buddhgosha";
"Cantiparva" ; 5951: "Vanaparva; 13,550: "Laws of
Yajnavalkya"; III, 65: "Bhaghavat-Gita." 93

The Great Secret
of the village, he may at last devote himself
to things eternal, leaving his wife, his children,
his kinsfolk, his friends, and, "taking a gazelle-
skin or a cloak of bark," may withdraw Into
sohtude, burying himself In the vast tropical
forest, forgetting his body and the vain ideas
born of It, and giving ear to the voice of the
God hidden in the depths of his being; the
voice "of the unseen traveler," In the words
of the "Brahman of the Hundred Paths" ; "the
voice of him who, understanding. Is not under
stood; of the thinker of whom none thinks;
of him who knows but is not known; of the
Atman, the Inner guide, the Imperishable, apart
from whom there Is only suffering." He may
meditate on the Infinity of space, the infinity
of reason, and "the non-existence of nothing";
may seize the moment of Illumination which
brings with It "the deliverance which no one
can teach, which each must find for himself,
which is Ineffable," and may purify his soul
In order to spare It, If that be possible, yet
another return to earth.
Having reached this stage, "let him not wish
for death; let him not wish for life. Like a
harvester who, at the fall of night, waits
quietly for his wages at his master's door, let
him wait until the moment has arrived."
"Let him meditate, with the most exclusive
application of the Intellect, upon the subtle and
94

India
indivisible nature of the Supreme mind, and on
its existence In the bodies of the highest and
lowest of created things."
"Meditating with joy upon the Supreme Be
ing, having need of nothing. Inaccessible to any
desire of the senses, without other society than
his own soul and the thought of God, let him
live In the constant expectation of eternal bhss."
"For the chiefest of all his obligations is to
acquire knowledge of the Supreme Mind; and
this Is the first of all the sciences, for this alone
confers Immortality upon man."
"Thus the man who discovers the Supreme
Mind In his own mind, and present in all liv
ing creatures, will show himself the same to all,
and will thus assure himself of the happiest
fate, that of being finally absorbed Into the
bosom of Brahma." ^
"Having thus abandoned all pious practices
and acts of austere devotion, applying his In
tellect solely to the contemplation of the great
First Cause, exempt from all evil desires, his
soul Is already on the threshold of Swarga,
while his mortal envelope Is still flickering like
the last glimmer of a dying lamp." ^
31
Almost all the foregoing, let us remember,
i"Manu"; VI, 45, 65, 49; XII, 85, 125.
^Ibid.; VI, 96. 95

The Great Secret
Is long previous to Buddhism, dating from the
origins of Brahmanism, and Is directly related
to the "Vedas." Let us agree that this system
of ethics, of which I have been unable to
give more than the slightest survey, while the
first ever known to man, Is also the loftiest
which he has ever practised. It proceeds from
a principle which we cannot contest even to-day,
with all that we believe ourselves to have
learned; namely, that man, with all that sur^
rounds him, is but a sort of emanation, an
ephemeral materialization, of the unknown
spiritual cause to which It must needs return,
and It merely deduces, with Incomparable
beauty, nobility, and logic, the consequences of
this principle. There Is no extra-terrestrial re-.
velation, no Sinai, no thunder in the heavens,
no god especially sent down upon our planet.
There was no need for him to descend hither,
for he was here already, In the hearts of all
men, since all men are but a part of him and
cannot be otherwise. They question this god,
who seems to dwell In their hearts, their minds ;
in a word, in that Immaterial principle which
gives life to their bodies. He does not tell
them. It Is true — or perhaps he does tell them,
but they cannot understand him — why, for the
time being, he appears to have divorced them
from himself; and we have here a postulate —
the origin of evil and the necessity of suffering
96

India
— as Inaccessible as the mystery of the First
Cause : with this difference, that the mystery of
the First Cause was Inevitable, whereas the nec
essity of evil and suffering Is incomprehensible.
But once the postulate Is granted, all the rest
clears up and unfolds Itself like a syllogism.
Matter Is that which divides us from God;
the spirit Is that which unites us to Him; the
spirit therefore must prevail over matter. But
the spirit Is not merely the understanding; It
is also the heart; It Is emotion; It Is all that
is not material; so that In all Its forms It must
needs purify Itself, reaching forth and uplifting
Itself, to triumph over matter. There never
was and never could be, I believe, a more Im
pressive splrltuallzation than this, nor more
logical, more unassailable, more realistic. In the
sense that it Is founded only on realities; and
never one more divinely human. Certain It
is that after so many centuries, after so many
acquisitions, so many experiences, we find our
selves back at the same point. Starting, like
our predecessors, from the unknowable, we can
come to no other conclusion, and we could not
express It better. Nothing could excel the
stupendous effort of their speech, unless it were
a silent resignation, preferable in theory, but
In practice leading only to an Inert and de
spairing Ignorance.

97

CHAPTER III
EGYPT

WE have already considered. In speaking
of Nu, Tum, and Phtah, the idea
which the Egyptians formed of the First Cause,
and of the creation, or rather, the emanation or
manifestation, of the universe. This Idea —
as we know It, at least, from the translation,
probably Incomplete, of the hieroglyphs, —
though less striking In form, less profound and
less metaphysical. Is analogous to that of the
"Vedas" and reveals a common source.
Immediately following the riddle of the
First Cause they, too. Inevitably encountered
the Insoluble problem of the origin of evil, and
although they did not venture to probe Into It
very deeply, they achieved a solution of It
which, though paler and more evasive. Is at
bottom almost similar to that of the Hindus.
In the cult of Osiris spirit and matter are known
as Light and Darkness, and Set, the antagonist
of Ra, the sun-god, in the myths of Ra, Osiris,
and Horus, Is not a god of evil," says Le Page
Renouf, "but represents a physical reality, a
constant law of nature." ^ He Is a god as
1 op. cit.; p. 115.
98

Egypt
real as his adversaries and his cult is as ancient
as theirs. Like them he has his priests, and is
the offspring of the same unknown Cause. So
little can he be divided from the Power opposed
to him that on certain monuments the heads
of Horus and Set grow upon the same body,
making but one god.
After the same confessions of ignorance,
here, as In India, the myth of Incarnation pro
ceeds to define and control an ethic which,
emerging from the unknowable, could not take
shape and could not be known except In and by
man. Osiris, Horus, and Thoth or Hermes,
who five times put on human form — or so the
occultists tell us — are but the more memora
ble Incarnations of the god who dwells In each
of us. From these incarnations arises, with
less refulgence, less abundance, less power —
for the Egyptian genius has not the spacious
ness, the exaltation, the power of abstraction
that mark the Hindu genius — an ethic of a
more lowly and earthly character, but of the
same nature as that of Manu, Krishna, and
Buddha; or rather of those who In the night
of the ages preceded Manu, Krishna, and Bud
dha. This ethical system Is found In the "Book
of the Dead" and In sepulchral Inscriptions.
Some of the papyri of the "Book of the Dead"
are more than four thousand years old, but some
of the texts from the same book, which were
99

The Great Secret
found on nearly all the tombs and sarcophagi,
are probably still more ancient. They are,
with the cuneiform Inscriptions, the most an
cient writings of known date possessed by man
kind. The most venerable of moral codes, the
work of Phtahotep, still Imperfectly deciph
ered, contemporary with the pyramids, Is
clothed In the authority of an ancestry infi
nitely more remote. "Not one of the Christian
virtues," says F. J. Chapas, one of the first of
the great Egyptologists, "has been forgotten
In the Egyptian system of ethics. Pity, char
ity, kindness, self-control In speech and action,
-chastity, the protection of the weak, benevo
lence toward the lowly, deference toward supe
riors, respect for the property of others, even
to the smallest details, all are expressed In
admirable language."

"I have not Injured a child," says a funeral
inscription, "I have not oppressed a widow,
I have not Ill-treated a herdsman. During my
lifetime no one went a-begging, and when the
years of famine came I tilled all the soil of the
province, feeding all Its Inhabitants, and I
so ordered matters that the widow was as
though she had not lost her husband." ^
^ Inscriptions of Ameni, Denkmdler; II, 121.
100

Egypt
Another Inscription commemorates "the
father of the defenseless, the stay of those who
were motherless, the terror of the evil-doer, the
protector of the poor. He was the avenger of
those who had been despoiled by the mighty.
He was the husband of the widow and the
refuge of the orphan." ^ "He was the pro
tector of the humble, a fruitful palm for the in
digent, the nourishment of the poor, the wealth
of the feeble; and his wisdom was at the service
of the Ignorant." ^ "I was the bread of the
hungry; I was water to the thirsty; I was the
cloak of the naked and the refuge of the dis
tressed. What I did for them God had done
for me," ^ say other Inscriptions, always re
turning to the same theme of kindness, justice,
and charity. "Although I was great I have
always behaved as though I were humble. I
have never barred the way to one who was
worthier than I; I have always repeated what
has been told me exactly as It was spoken. I
have never approved that which was base and
evil, but I have taken pleasure in speaking the
truth. The sincerity and kindness In the heart
of my father and mother were repaid to them
by my love. I was the joy of my brethren
and the friend of my companions, and I have
1 Antuff-tablet, Louvre; C, 26.
2 Borgraann, Hieroglyphische Inschriften; Plate VI, line
8; Plates VIII, IX.
1 British Museum; 581. lOI

The Great Secret
entertained the passing traveler; my doors
were open to those who came from abroad, and
I gave them rest and refreshment. What my
heart dictated to me I did not hesitate to do." ^

In the "Book of the Dead," when, after the
long and terrible crossing of the Duat (which
Is not the Egyptian Hades, as some have said,
but a region intermediate between death and
eternal life), the soul reached the land of
MentI, which later was known as AmentI, it
found Itself confronted by Maat or Mait, the
most mysterious of the Egyptian divinities.
IMaat may be symbolized by a straight line;
she represents the law, and the true or absolute
justice. Each of the high gods claims to be
her master, but she herself admits no master.
By her the gods live, she reigns alone upon the
earth. In the heavens and the world beyond
the tomb ; she Is at once the mother of the god
who created her, his daughter, and the god
himself. Before Osiris, seated upon the
throne of judgment, the heart of the dead
man, symbolizing his moral nature, Is
placed In one of the scales of the balance;
in the other scale is an image of Maat. Forty-
two divinities, who represent the forty-two sins
which they are appointed to punish, are ranked
1 Dumichen, Kalenderinschr'iften; XLXI.
I02

Egypt
behind the balance, whose pointer is watched
by Horus while Tehutin, the god of letters,
writes down the result of the weighing. All
this is obviously merely an allegorical represen
tation, a sort of pictoral interpretation, a pro
jection upon the screen of this world of that
which happens in the other world. In the depths
of a soul or a conscience undergoing judgment
after death.
Then, if the trial Is favorable, an extraor
dinary thing come to pass, which reveals the
secret meaning, profound and unexpected, of
all this mythology: the man becomes god. He
becomes Osiris himself. He stands forth as
Identified with him who judges him. He adds
his name to that of Osiris; he Is Osiris so-and-
so. In short, he discovers himself to be the
unknown god, the god that he was unawares.
Hidden In the depths of his soul, he recog
nizes the Eternal, whom he had sought all his
life long, and who, at length set free by his
good works and his spiritual efforts, reveals
himself as Identical with the god to whom he
had given ear, the god whom he had adored,
seeking to draw closer to him by taking him
for his model.
This, represented by a different Imagery, Is
the absorption of the purified soul Into the bo
som of Brahma, the return to divinity of what
Is divine In man; and here too, beneath the
103

The Great Secret
dramatic allegory, the soul judges Itself and
recognizes itself as worthy to return to its
God.

Rudolph Stelner, who, when he does not
lose himself In visions — plausible, perhaps, but
Incapable of verification — of the prehistoric
ages, of astral negatives, and of life on other
planets. Is a shrewd and accurate thinker, has
thrown a remarkable hght upon the meaning of
this judgment and of the Identification of the
soul with God. "The Osiris Being," he says,
"Is merely the most perfect degree of the hu
man being. It goes without saying that the
Osiris who reigns as a judge over the external
order of the universe Is himself but a perfect
man. Between the human state and the divine
there is but a difference of degree. Man Is In
process of development; at the end of his
course he becomes God. According to this con
ception God Is an eternal becoming, not a God
complete In himself.
"Such being the universal order, it Is evident
that he alone may enter Into the life of Osiris
who has already become an Osiris himself, be
fore knocking at the gate of the eternal temple.
Therefore the highest life of man consists in
transforming himself into Osiris. Man be
comes perfect when he lives as Osiris, when
104

Egypt
he makes the journey that Osiris has made.
The myth of Osiris acquires thereby a pro-
founder meaning. The god becomes the pat
tern for him who seeks to awaken the Eternal
within himself." ^ 5
This deification, this Oslrlficatlon of the soul
of the upright man, has always astonished the
Egyptologists, who have not grasped Its hid
den meaning and have not perceived that the
soul was returning to the Vedic Nirvana of
which It Is merely the dramatized reproduc
tion. But there are the authentic texts, and
even from the esoteric point of view It Is not
possible to attribute another meaning tb them.
The basis of the Egyptian religion, beneath all
the parasitical growths of vegetation that grad
ually became so enormous, is really the same as
that of the Vedic religion. Starting from the
same point of departure In the unknowable, it
Is the worship of and the search for the god
in man and the return of man to the godhead.
The upright man — that Is, the man who all his
life has striven to find the Eternal within him
self, and to give ear to Its voice, — when liber
ated from his body, does not merely become
Osiris; but just as Osiris Is other gods, so he
^ Rudolph Steiner. Le Mystire Chretien et les Mystires
antiques, tr. J. Saurwein; p. 170.
105

The Great Secret
too becomes other gods. He speaks as though
he were Ra, Tum, Set, Chnemu, Horus, and so
forth. "Neither men nor gods, nor the spirits
of the dead, nor men past, present, and future,
whosoever they may be, have any further power
to harm him." He Is "He who goes forward
In security." His name Is "He that Is un
known to men." His name Is "Yesterday, that
sees the Innumerable days passing In triumph
along the ways of heaven." "He Is the lord
of eternity. He Is the master of the royal
crown and each of his limbs Is a god."

But what happens if the sentence is not fav
orable, if the soul is not considered worthy
of returning to the Eternal, of becoming once
more the god that It was? Of this we know
nothing. Of all that has been said in respect
of punishments, expiations, and purifying trans
migration, nothing Is based on any authentic
text. "We find no trace," says Le Page Re
nouf, "of a conception of this kind In any of
the Egyptian texts hitherto discovered. The
transformations after death, we are expressly
Informed, depend solely on the will of the de
ceased, or of his genius." ^ That Is to say, of
his soul. Does this not also expressly tell us
^Le Page Renouf, op. cit.; p. 183.
106

Egypt
that they depend entirely on the soul's judg
ment of itself, and that the soul alone knows
and decides, like the Hindu soul burdened with
its Karma, whether it is worthy or not to re
enter divinity? In other words, that there is
no heaven or hell, except within us?
But what becomes of It if it does not con
sider itself worthy of being a god? Does It
wait, or does It undergo reincarnation? No
Egyptian text enables us to solve the problem;
nor is there any trace of any Intermediate state
between death and eternal beatitude. As to
this point the funeral rites give us no hint.
They seem to forecast for the dead man a life
beyond the tomb, precisely resembling, on an
other plane, the life which he used to lead on
earth. But these rites do not seem to refer
to the soul properly so called, to the divine prin
ciple. The Egyptian religion, like other primi
tive religions, distinguishes three portions In
man: first, the physical body; secondly, a per
ishable spiritual entity, a sort of reflection of
the body which It survived, a shadow, or rather
a double, which could at will confound Itself
with the mummy or detach Itself therefrom;
and, thirdly, a purely spiritual principle, the ver
itable and immortal soul, which, after the judg
ment, became a god.
The double that left the body, but not the
107

The Great Secret
soul, which once more became Osiris, wandered
wretchedly between the visible and the Invisible
worlds — as the discarnate souls of our spiritual
ists appear to do — unless the funeral rites came
to Its aid, leading It back to and keeping it by
the body which It had deserted. The whole of
this ritual sought only to prolong as far as pos
sible the existence of this double, by supplying
Its needs, which resembled those of its earthly
life, by keeping It beside Its incorruptible
mummy, and tying It down to a pleasant
home. The life of this double was believed to be
very long. A tablet In the Louvre tells us, for
example, that Psamtik, son of Ut'ahor, who
lived In the time of the twenty-sixth dynasty,
was a priest under three sovereigns of the Great
Pyramid, who had been dead for more than
two thousand years.
This idea of the double, as Herbert Spencer
remarks, is universal. "Everywhere we find ex
pressed or implied the belief that every man Is
double, and that when he dies his other self,
whether It remains close at hand or goes far
away, may return, and Is capable of injuring
his enemies or helping his friends."
This Egyptian double Is no other than the
Perisprlte, the astral Body, of the occultists,
that discarnate entity, that subconscious being,
io8

Egypt
more or less Independent of the body, that Un
known Guest, with whom our modern meta
psychists are confronted, despite themselves,
when they come to record certain hypnotic or
mediumlstic manifestations, certain phenomena
of telepathy, of action at a distance, of mate
rialization, of posthumous apparition, which
would otherwise be all but inexplicable. Once
again the ancient religions have here forestalled
our science, perhaps because they saw farther
Into the future and with greater accuracy. I
say perhaps ; for If the life of the double, the
astral body of the subconscious entity almost
Independent of the brain, can scarcely be con
tested when the living are concerned, it may
still be disputed in respect of the dead. One
thing is certain, that a number of extremely
perplexing facts are accumulating In confirma
tion of this existence. It Is only their inter
pretation that Is still doubtful. But the an
cient Egyptian hypothesis Is becoming more
and more plausible. It refuted beforehand,
thousands of years ago, the capital objection so
often made to the spiritualists, when we tell
them that their disembodied spirits are merely
poor, incoherent, and bewildered shades, anx
ious before all else to establish their identity
and to cling to their former existence ; miserable
phantoms to whom death has revealed nothing,
109

The Great Secret
and who have nothing to tell us of their life
beyond the tomb, a pale reflection of their pre
vious existence. It Is, after all, quite easy to
explain why the disembodied spirit knows no
more than it knew during Its earthly life. The
Egyptian double, of which It is merely the rep
lica, was not the true soul, the immortal soul,
which, If Amentl's judgment of It were favor
able, returned to the god, or rather once more
became divine. The sepulchral rites did not
seek to concern themselves with this soul,
whose fate was determined by the sentence of
Maat: they sought only to render less precari
ous, less pitiable, and less liable to disintegra
tion the posthumous life of this belated ele
ment, this species of spiritual husk, this ner
vous, magnetic or fluid phantom which was once
a man and was now but a bundle of tenacious
but homeless memories. By surrounding him
with the objects of these memories they sought
to alleviate the passage of the dead man to
eternal forgetfulness. The Egyptians had un
doubtedly examined more exactly than we have
done the evidence for the existence of this dou
ble, which we are barely beginning to suspect;
for their civilization (which was the heir, for
that matter, of long-lived antecedent civiliza
tions) was far more ancient than our own, and
more Inclined toward the spiritual and invisible
sides of life. But they prejudged nothing, just
no

Egypt
as the spiritualistic hypothesis. If It were well
propounded, would not Involve any precon
ceived Ideas of the destiny of the soul properly
so called.
The double was not subjected to any form
of trial. Whether a man had been good or
bad, just or unjust, he had a right to the same
funeral ceremonies and the same life beyond
the tomb. His punishment or reward was In
his own self: It was, to continue to be what be
had been; to pursue the mode of life, whether
noble or Ignoble, narrow or liberal, intelligent
or stupid, generous or selfish, which he had lived
on earth.
Let us note that In our spiritualistic manifes
tations likewise there Is no question of reward
or punishment. Our disembodied spirits, even
when they have been believers during life,
hardly ever allude In any way to a posthumous
trial, a hell, a heaven, or a purgatory; and If by
exception they do refer to them we may almost
certainly suspect some telepathic Interpolation.
They are, or, if you prefer It, they seem to be,
just what they were during their lifetime : more
or less logical, more or less cultivated, more or
less InteUigent, more or less headstrong, ac
cording as their Ideas were more or less logical,
or cultivated, or Intelligent, or headstrong.
They reap only what they have sown In the
spiritual soil of this world. Ill

The Great Secret
But they — and this is the only difference be
tween them — have not been subjected, like
the Egyptian double, to the magic Incantation
which, wrongly or rightly, for weal or woe, and
in violation of the laws of nature, bound the
double to Its physical remains, and prevented
It from drifting like flotsam between a material
:world in which it could live no longer and a
spiritual universe which it seemed it was for
bidden to enter.

7
Thanks to this solicitude, thanks to this cult,
this foresight, was the double happy? I dare
not affirm as much. There is one terrible text
— the funeral Inscription of the wife of Pasher-
enpath — which is the most heart-rending cry of
regret and distress that the dead have ever ad
dressed to life. It is true that this Inscription
is of the time of the Ptolemies; that Is, of the
later Egypt corrupted by Greece, two or three
centuries before our era. It reveals the deca
dence and almost the death of this Egyptian
creed; and — ^what is more serious and more
alarming — in speaking of Amenti It seems to
confound the destiny of the double with that
of the Immortal soul. Here Is this Inscription,
which shows us what uncertainty overtakes the
most firmly established and most positive reli-
112

Egypt
gions, and how, when their course Is run, they
plunge us once more Into the darkness of the
Great Secret, Into the chaos of the unknowable
whence they emerged :
"Oh, my brother, my husband, do not cease
to drink, to eat, to empty the cup of joy, to
live merrily as at a festival! Let thy desires
lead thee, day by day, and may care never enter
thy heart so long as thou llvest upon the earth.
For AmentI Is the country of lifeless sleep and
of darkness, a place of mourning for those who
dwell therein. They sleep In their effigies ; they
no longer wake to behold their brethren; they
recognize neither their fathers nor their moth
ers; their hearts are Indifferent to their wives
and children. On the earth all men enjoy the
water of life, but here thirst encompasses me.
There Is water for all who dwell upon the
earth, but I thirst for the water which Is close
beside me. I know not where I am since I
came hither, and I Implore the running water,
I Implore the breeze upon the river bank, that
It will assuage the soreness of my heart. For
as for the God who is here, his name Is Abso
lute Death. He summons all men, and all
come to him trembling with fear. With him
there Is no respect for men or for gods; with
him the great are as the small. One fears to
pray to him for he does not give ear. None
come hither to invoke him, since he shows no
113

The Great Secret
favor to those who worship him, and pays no
heed to the offerings laid before him." ^

And what of reincarnation? It Is generally
believed that Egypt Is preeminently the land of
palingenesis and metempsychosis. Nothing of
the sort: not a single Egyptian text alludes to
such matters. It is true that on becoming Osi
ris the soul had the power of assuming any
shape; but this Is not reincarnation properly so
called, the expiatory and purifying reincarna
tion of the Hindus. All that we have been
able to learn in this connection Is based princi
pally on a passage of Herodotus, which ob
serves that "the Egyptians were the first to af
firm that the soul of man is immortal. Con
tinually, from one living creature about to die
it passes into another In the act of birth, and
when it has traversed the whole terrestial,
aquatic, and aerial world. It returns once more
to Introduce Itself Into a human body. This cir
cular tour lasts for three thousand years. We
have here a theory which various Greeks, more
or less of our period, have appropriated to
themselves. I know their names, but I will not
place them on record." ^
In the same way, all that touches on the fa-
1 Sharpe, "Egyptian Inscriptions" ; I, Plate 4.
2 Herodotus; II, 123. 114

Egypt
mous mysteries of the Egyptian Initiation Is of
comparatively recent origin, dating from the
time when Alexandria was seething with the
traditions and theories of the Hindus, Chal
deans, Jews, and Neoplatonists. The Egypt
of the Pharaohs has not told us what became
of the soul that was not beatified. It is possi
ble that It was obliged to return to earth in
order to purify itself, and that the secret of this
reincarnation was reserved for the initiates;
just as It also Is possible that texts more accu
rately Interpreted, or others that are as yet un
known to us, will justify and explain the eso
teric tradition. For the rest, it would not be
surprising, as Sedir, one of the most learned of
occultists, has remarked, If some part of the
secrets which cannot be found In those inscrip
tions which we Imagine are completely under
stood, were to come to us by way of Chaldea,
since It was among the Magi, on the banks of
the Tigris and Euphrates, that Cambyses, after
the conquest of Egypt, exiled all the priests of
the latter country, without exception and with
out return. However this may be, I repeat
that the purely Egyptian texts do not, for the
time being, enable us to solve the problem.

"5

CHAPTER IV
PERSIA
PERSIA will not detain us long, for Its relig
ion Is undoubtedly a reflection of Vedism,
or, more probably. It reveals a common origin.
Eugene Burnouf and Spiegel have indeed proved
that certain parts of the "Avesta" are as old as
the "RIg-Veda."
Mazdeism or Zoroastrianism would thus ap
pear to be an adaptation to the Iranian mentality
of Vedism, or of Aryan traditions (Atlantean,
the theosophists would say) even older than
Vedism. During the Babylonian captivity it
permeated Chaldeism and exerted a profound
Influence on the religion of the Jewish nation.
We owe to It, among other things — as they
found their way Into the Judo-Christian tradi
tion, — the conception of the Immortality of the
soul, the judgment of the soul, the last judg
ment, the resurrection of the dead, purgatory,
the belief In the eflicacy of good works as a
means of salvation, the revocabillty of penalties
and rewards, and all our angelology.
Zoroastrianism sought to solve, more exactly
than the other religions of antiquity, the prob-
ii6

Persia
lem of evil, by making evil a separate god, per
petually warring against the good god. But
this dualism Is more apparent than real. Ahura-
Mazda or Ormazd (Ormuz), the absolute
and universal Being, the Word, the omnipotent
and omniscient Spirit, the Reality, precedes and
dominates Agra-Mainyus or Ahrlman, who Is
non-Reality — that Is to say, he Is all that is
bad and deceptive, being In his darkness Ignor
ant of everything; seeming as greatly Inferior
to Ormazd as the devil Is to the God of the
Christians ; appearing, on the whole, merely as
a sort of mimic, aping divinity, clumsily Imita
ting Its creations, but able to produce only
vices, diseases and a few maleficent creatures
who will be annihilated In the tremendous vic
tory of good; for the end of the world, In the
Zoroastrian system. Is but the regeneration of
creation. However, we are not told why Or
mazd, the supreme god, is obliged to tolerate
Ahrlman, who. It is true, does not personify es
sential or absolute evil, but the evil necessary
to good, the darkness indispensable to the mani
festation of light, the reaction which follows
action, the negative principle or pole which Is
opposed to the positive. In order to assure the
life and equilibrium of the universe.
Moreover Ormazd himself. It seems, obeys
necessity, or a natural law that Is stronger than
he; above all he obeys Time, whose decrees
117

The Great Secret
are Destiny, "for excepting Time," says the
"Ulema," "all things are created, and Time Is
the Creator. Time In Itself displays neither
summit nor foundations; It has been always
and will always be. An intelligent person will
not ask. Whence comes Time? nor If there was
ever a time when this power was not." ^
It would be Interesting to examine this reli
gion from the point of view of Its contribu
tions to Christianity, which borrowed as much
from It as from Brahmanism and Buddhism;
perhaps even more. We ought also to consi
der. If only In passing. Its ethical system, which
Is one of the loftiest, purest, and most nobly
human that we know of. But this examination
would exceed the scope of our Inquiry. We
owe to ancient Persia, for example, the won
derful conception of the conscience, a sort of
divine power, existing from all eternity. Inde
pendent of the material body, taking no part
in the errors which It sees committed, remain
ing pure amid the worst aberrations, and ac
companying the soul of man after his death.
And the soul of the upright man, when crossing
the bridge Tchlnvat, or the bridge of Retribu
tion, sees advancing to meet It a young girl of
miraculous beauty. "Who art thou?" demands
the astonished soul; "thou who seemest to me
more beautiful and more magnificent than any
^ J. Darmesteter, Ormazd et Ahriman; p. 320.
118

Persia
of the daughters of earth?" And his con
science replies: "I am thine own works. I am
the incarnation of thy good thoughts, words,
and actions: I am the Incarnation of thy faith
and piety."
On the other hand. If It be a sinner who Is
crossing the bridge of retribution, his con
science comes to meet him In a horrible shape,
although in herself she does not change, but
merely shows herself to man as he deserves to
see her. This allegory, which might well be
drawn from a collection of Christian parables.
Is perhaps 5000 to 6000 years old, and Is
merely a dramatic expression of the Hindu
Karma. Here again, as In the tradition of
Karma and that of the Oslrlficatlon of the soul,
it Is the soul that Is Its own judge.
We owe likewise to Mazdeism the subtle and
mysterious conception of the Fravashls or Fe
rohers which the cabala borrowed from Persia,
and which Hebraic mysticism and Christianity
have made Into angels, and more particularly
guardian angels. This conception Implies the
preexistence of the soul. The Ferohers are the
spiritual form of being. Independent of ma
terial life and preceding It. Ormazd offers to
the Ferohers of men the choice of remaining In
the spiritual world or of descending to earth
to be embodied In human flesh. It was proba
ble from prototypes of this kind that Plato de-
119

The Great Secret
rived his theory of "Ideas," supposing that
everything has a double life, first in thought
and secondly in reality.
Let me add that a phenomenon analogous to
that which we have already found at work In
India is here seen to repeat Itself: what was
public and obvious In Mazdeism gradually be
came secret and was reserved solely for those
initiated Into what the Greeks and the Jews
(especially in their cabala) had borrowed from
it.

1 20

CHAPTER V
CHALDEA
CHALDEA — that Is to say. Babylonia and
Assyria — is, like Persia, the land of the
Magi and Is commonly regarded as the classic
home of occultism; but here again, as we saw In
the case of Egypt, the legend Is hardly In agree
ment with the historic reality.
It seems a priori that Chaldea should pos
sess a peculiar Interest for us; not because It
Is likely to teach us anything that we have not
learned from India, Egypt, or Persia, to which
It was tributary, but because it was probably
the principal source of the cabala, which was
itself the great fountalnhead from which the
occultism of the middle ages, as It has come
down to us, was fed.
It was hoped that the discovery of the key
to the cuneiform Inscriptions — a discovery
scarcely more than fifty years old, — and the
deciphering of the Inscriptions of Nineveh and
Babylon, would result in valuable revelations
concerning the mysteries of the Chaldean reli
gion. But these Inscriptions, which date from
2000, 3750, and in one Instance (preserved in
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The Great Secret
the British Museum) 4000 years before Christ,
and whose Interpretation moreover Is far more
uncertain and controversial than that of the
hieroglyphs or the Sanskrit texts, have yielded
us only royal biographies, inventories of con
quests, Incantatory formulae, litanies, and
psalms which served as models for the Hebrew
psalms. From these we perceive that the
basis of the very primitive religion of the Su-
mirs or Sumerlans and the Accads or Acca-
dlans who peopled lower Chaldea before the
Semitic conquest was one of magic and sorcery.
This was followed by a naturalistic polytheism,
which the conquering Semites, less civilized
than those whom they had conquered, adopted
In part, until, about two thousand years before
our era, having won the upper hand, they grad
ually reduced the primitive gods to the rank
of mere attributes of Baal, the supreme divi
nity, the sun-god.
These inscriptions, then, have taught us noth
ing concerning the secret — If there Is a secret
— of the Chaldean religion, and have not con
tributed anything of any value to the Informa
tion already In our possession, thanks to cer
tain fragments of Berosus, whose accuracy they
have more than once enabled us to verify.
Berosus, as the reader may remember, was a
Chaldean astromer, a priest of Belus In Baby
lon, who about the year 280 B. c. — shortly,
122

Chaldea
that. Is, after the death of Alexander — wrote
In Greek a history of his country. As he could
read cuneiform characters he was able to profit
by the archives of the temple of Babylon. Un
fortunately the work of Berosus Is almost en
tirely lost; all that Is left of It is a few frag
ments collected by Josephus, Eusebius, Tatian,
Pliny, Vltruvlus, and Seneca. This loss Is all
the more regrettable In that Berosus, who seems
to have been a serious and conscientious his
torian, declared that he had had access to doc
uments attributed to the beings who preceded
the appearance of man on the earth; and his
history, according to Eusebius, covered 2,150,-
000 years. We have also lost his cosmogony,
and with It all the astronomical and astrologi
cal science of Chaldea, which was the great
secret of the Babylonian Magi, whose zodiac
dates back 6700 years. We have only the
treatise known as "Observations of Bel," trans
lated Into Greek by Berosus, though the
text that has come down to us Is of much later
date. The few pages that are all that Is left us of
the Chaldean cosmology contain a sort of anti
cipation of the Darwinian theories of the origin
of the world and of man. The first god and
the first man were a fish-god and a fish-man
— which is, by the way, confirmed by embry
ology — ^born of the vast cosmic ocean; and na-
123

The Great Secret
ture, when she attempted to create, produced
at first anomalous monsters unable to repro
duce themselves. As for their astrology, ac
cording to Professor Sayce, the learned profes
sor of Assyriology at Oxford, it seems to be
chiefly based on the axiom, post hoc ergo prop
ter hoc; which is to say that when two events oc
cur In sequence the second Is regarded as the re
sult of the first; hence the care with which the
astrologers used to observe celestial pheno
mena in order that they might empirically fore
tell the future.
To sum up, we are very Imperfectly ac
quainted with the official religion of Assyria
and Babylonia, whose gods appear to be rather
barbaric. This religion does not become more
enhghtened or more Interesting until after the
conquest of Cyrus, which brought Into the coun
try thc Zoroastrian and Hindu doctrines, or
confirmed and completed those that had. In all
probability, already found their way Into the
secrecy of thc temples; for Chaldea had al
ways been thc great crossroads on which the
theologies of India, Egypt, and Persia were
of necessity wont to meet. Thus It was that
these doctrines found their way into the Bible
and thc cabala, and thence Into Christianity.
But as far as the origin of religion Is con
cerned, we must admit that the authentic docu
ments recently discovered teach us virtually
124

Chaldea
nothing, and that all that has been said of the
esoterism and the mysteries of Chaldea Is based
merely upon legends or writings that are no
toriously apocryphal.

135

CHAPTER VI
GREECE BEFORE SOCRATES

TO complete this brief survey of the primi
tive religions — this Inquiry Into the ori
gins of the Great Secret — we must not over
look the pre-SocratIc theogony.
Before the classic period the Greek philoso
phers, of whose works we possess only muti
lated fragments — Pythagoras, Petronius HIp-
pasus, Xenophanes, Anaximander, Anaximenes,
Heraclitus, Alcmaeon, Parmenldes of Elea, Leu-
clppus, Democritus, Empedocles, Anaxagoras,
— were already In the ridiculous and uncomfor
table situation in which the Hebrew cabalists
and the occultists of the middle ages found
themselves about fifteen to twenty centuries
later. They seem, like the latter, to have had
a presentiment of the existence, or the dim tra
dition, of a religion more ancient and of a
nobler character than their own, which had re
plied, or had endeavored to reply, to all the
anxious questions as to divinity, the origin and
the purpose of the world, eternal Becoming
and Impassive Being; the passage from chaos
to the cosmos; the emergence from the vast
126

Greece Before Socrates
sum of things and the return thereto ; spirit and
substance, good and evil; the birth of the uni
verse and Its end; attraction and repulsion;
fate; man's place In the universe and his des
tiny. Above all, this lost tradition, which we found
in India all but Intact, marks once for all the
divorce between the knowable and the unknow
able; and, attributing the lion's share to the
latter. It had the courage to Implant In the very
heart of Its doctrine a tremendous confession
of ignorance.
But the Greeks do not seem to have realized
the existence of this confession, simple, definite,
and profound though It was, albeit It would
have saved them a great deal of vain Inquiry;
or else, their Intellect — subtle, more active,
more enterprising than ours — was unwilling to
admit It; and all their cosmogony, their theog
ony, and their metaphysics are merely an In
cessant endeavor to behttle It, by subdividing
It, by triturating It ad infinitum, as though they
hoped that, by dint of diminishing each separate
particle of the unknowable, they would even
tually succeed in learning all about It.
What a curious spectacle It Is, that of this
contest of the Greek Intellect — lucid, exacting,
fidgety, eager to obtain a clear Idea of every
thing — with the Imposing though often extrav
agant obscurities of the Asiatic religions! It
127

The Great Secret
has been said that the Greeks had no concep
tion of the divine Absolute; and this Is true, but
of a later period. In the beginning their con
ceptions, as yet under the influence of myste
rious traditions, were completely permeated by
this sense of the Absolute, which had often led
them, by the paths of reason alone, far higher,
and perhaps nearer to the truth, than their
more capable successors who had lost it.

But without speaking In detail of their grop-
Ings after a light of which they had some vague
intuition, or which was burled deep In the an
cestral memory or In myths which were no
longer understood; without specifying the con
tribution of each of the Greek philosophers,
which would involve explanations Interesting
enough but of disproportionate length, we shall
merely note the essential points of agreement
with the Vedic and Brahman theories.
Xenophanes the first, unlike the poets, af
firmed the existence of a sole, Immutable, and
eternal god. "God," he said, "Is not born, for
He could not be born save of His like, or of
His contrary; two hypotheses of which the first
Is futile, and the second absurd. One cannot
call Him Infinite, nor yet finite; for If Infinite,
having neither middle nor beginning nor end.
He would be nothing at all; and If finite He
128

Greece Before Socrates
would be encompassed by limitations and would
cease to be One. For like reasons He Is nei
ther at rest nor In movement. In short, one
cannot attribute to Him any characteristics but
negative ones." ^ This Is really tantamount to
admitting. In other words, that He Is as un
knowable as the First Cause of the Hindus.
This acceptance of the Unknowable is more
clearly formulated by Xenophanes in another
passage :
"No one understands, no one ever will under
stand, the truth concerning the gods and the
things which I teach. If any one did happen to
come upon the absolute truth he would never be
aware of the encounter. Nowhere do we find
anything more than probability."
Might we not repeat to-day what the
founder of the Eleatic school affirmed more
than twenty-five centuries ago? Was there,
here, as elsewhere, an Infiltration of the primi
tive tradition? It Is probable; in any case, the
filiation Is clearly proved In other particulars.
The Orphlcs whom we find at the legendary
and prehistoric source of Hellenic poetry and
philosophy were really, according to Herodo
tus, Egyptians.^ We have seen, on the other
hand, that the Egyptian rehgion and the Vedic
religion have probably a common origin, and
1 Albert Rivaud, Le Probleme du Devinir; p. I02.
2 Herodotus; II, 8i. 129

The Great Secret
that it Is for the moment impossible to say
which Is the more ancient. Now the Pythago
reans borrowed from the Orphlcs the wander
ings of the soul and the series of purifications.
Others have taken from them the myth of
Dionysus, with all its consequences; for Diony
sus, the child-god, slain by the Titans, whose
heart Athene saved by hiding It In a basket, and
who was brought to life again by Jupiter, Is
Osiris, Krishna, Buddha; he Is all the divine
incarnations; he Is the god who descends Into
or rather manifests himself. In man; he Is
Death, temporary and Illusory, and rebirth, ac
tual and immortal; he Is the temporary union
with the divine that Is but the prelude to the
final union, the endless cycle of the eternal
Becoming. 3
Heraclitus, who was regarded as the philoso
pher of the mysteries, explains the nature of
this cycle. "On the periphery of the circle
the beginning and the end are one." ^ "Divin
ity is Itself," says Auguste Dies, "the origin
and the end of the Individual life. Unity Is
divided Into plurality and plurality Is resolved
Into unity, but unity and plurality are contem
poraneous, and the emanation from the
bosom of the divine is accompanied by an
^ Heraclitus, 102. 130

Greece Before Socrates
Incessant return to divinity." ^ All comes
from God, all returns to God; all becomes
one, one becomes all. God, or the world, is
one: the divine idea is diffused through every
quarter of the universe. In a word, the sys
tem of Heraclitus, like that of the "Vedas" and
the Egyptians, Is a unitarian pantheism.
In Empedocles, who follows Xenophanes and
Parmenldes, we find. In the province of cos
mology, the Hindu theory of the expansion and
contraction of the universe, of the god who
breathes It In and breathes It out, of alternative
externalizatlon and Internalization.
"In the beginning the elements are Inextri
cably mingled In the absolute Immobility of the
Spheros. But when the force of repulsion, af
ter remaining Inactive on the external circum
ference, has resumed Its movement toward the
center, separation begins. It would proceed to
absolute division and dispersal of the Individ
ual, were it not that an opposing force reas
sembles the scattered elements until the primi
tive unity Is gradually reconstructed." ^
The Greek genius, of which we have here an
Interesting example, seeks as far as possible to
explain the inexplicable, whereas the Hindu gen
ius contents Itself with feeling It as something
majestic and awe-inspiring, calls the force of
1 Auguste Dies, Le Cycle Mystique; p. 62.
^Ibid.; pp. 84-85. 131

The Great Secret
repulsion hatred; the force of attraction, af
fection. These forces exist from all eternity.
"They were, they will be, and never, to my
thinking, will unending time contrive to throw
them off. Now plurality resolves, by the aid
of love. Into unity; and now unity. In hatred
and strife, divides itself into plurality."
But whence comes this duality In unity?
Whence arise the opposing principles of attrac
tion and repulsion, of hatred and love? Em
pedocles and his school do not tell us. They
merely state that In division, repulsion, or ha
tred there Is decadence, but In attraction. In the
return to unity and love, there Is ascent or
reascent; and thus the Hindus referred the Idea
of decadence or downfall to matter, and the
idea of reascension and return to divinity, to
the spirit. The confession of Ignorance Is the
same, and so Is the means of emerging from
hatred and escaping from matter. In the first
place there Is purification during life, a puri
fication entirely spiritual. "Blessed Is he,"
says the philosopher Agrlgentes, "who acquires
a. treasury of divine Ideas ; but woe to him who
has but a hazy conception of the gods."
Here again and above all we have purifica
tion by successive reincarnations. Empedocles
goes further than the Vedic religion, which con
firms Itself — at all events until Manu's time — to
the reincarnation of man In man. He, like the
132

Greece Before Socrates
Pythagoreans, accepts metempsychosis : that Is,
the passing of the soul Into animals, and even
Into plants, whereby It Is led by a series of
ascents, back to the divinity from which it
emerged, and Into which it enters and Is reab
sorbed, as into the Hindu Nirvana.
4
It Is perhaps of Interest In this respect to
note that, as In the Vedic and Egyptian doc
trine, there Is no question of external rewards
and punishments. In the pre-SocratIc metem
psychosis, as in Hindu reincarnation and before
the tribunal of Osiris, the soul judges Itself and
automatically, so to speak, awards Itself the
happiness or the misery which is its right.
There is no enraged and vengeful deity, no
special place of damnation set aside for mis
creants, or for expiation. We do not expiate
our sins after death, because there Is no death.
We expiate them only in our lifetime, by our
lives: or rather there Is no expiation; only the
scales fall from our eyes. The soul Is happy
or unhappy because it does or does not feel
that it is in Its proper place; because It can or
cannot attain the height which it hoped to con
quer. It Is aware of its divinity only In so far
as It has understood or understands God.
Stripped of all that was material, all that had
blinded it, it perceives Itself suddenly on the
133

The Great Secret
farther shore, just as It was, though un
known to Itselif, on the hither side. Of all Its
possessions, of its happiness or Its fame, noth
ing Is left but Its Intellectual and moral ac
quisitions. For In Itself It Is nothing more
than the thoughts which have possessed It and
the virtues which It has practised. It sees It
self as It Is, and catches a glimpse of what it
might have been; and If It Is not satisfied it
tells Itself, "It must all be done over again";
and of Its own free will It returns to life, aim
ing at a higher mark and reemerging happier
and of greater stature.

5
On the whole, in the theology and the myths
of the pre-Socratic period, as In the theologies
and the myths of the religions which preceded
them, there Is no hell and no heaven. In the
underground caverns of hades, as In the mead
ows of the Elysian fields, there are only the
phantoms, the astral manes, the Egyptian dou
bles, the Inconsistent relics of our discarnate
shades. The Instruments of their torment or
the accessories of their pale felicity are but
evidence of identity, by the aid of which, like
the vague Interlocutors of our spiritualists,
they seek to make themselves known. Here,
just as in India, hell Is not a place but a state
134

Greece Before Socrates
of the soul after death. The manes are not
chastised in a place of semi-darkness ; they sim
ply continue to live there by the reflection of
their former lives. There Tantalus is always
thirsty; there Sisyphus rolls his rock; there the
Danai'des exhaust themselves In seeking to fill
their bottomless measure ; there Achilles brand
ishes his lance, Ulysses bears his oar, and Her
cules draws his bow; their vain effigies repeat
to Infinity the memorable or habitual actions of
their lives on earth ; but the Imperishable spirit,
the Immortal soul Is not there; it is purifying
itself elsewhere. In another body; It is advanc
ing upon the long Invisible path which leads It
back to God.
At this stage, as in all remote beginnings,
there Is as yet no fear of death and the be
yond. This fear does not manifest Itself or de
velop In the great religions until the latter be
gin to be corrupted for the benefit of priests
and kings. The Intuition and Intelligence of
mankind have never again reached the height
which they attained when they conceived the
Ideal of divinity of which we find the most
authentic traces in the Vedic traditions. One
might say that In those days man disclosed, at
the topmost height of his stature, and there es
tablished, once for all, that conception of the
divine which he subsequently forgot and fre
quently degraded; but despite oblivion and
135

The Great Secret
ephemeral perversion, Its light was never lost.
And that Is why we feel, beneath all these
myths, behind all these doctrines, which are
sometimes so contradictory, the same optimism,
or at all events the same ignorant confidence;
for the most ancient secret of mankind Is really
a blind, .stupendous confidence in the divinity
from which it emerged without ceasing to
form part of It and to which It will one day re
turn. There are still many points of contact which
might well be singled out; for example, the
atomic theory, which contains some extraordi
nary Instances of intuition. Leucippus and De
mocritus In particular taught that the gyra
tory movement of the spheres exists from all
eternity, and Anaxagoras developed the theory
of elemental vortices which the science of our
own days is rediscovering. But what we have
just recorded will doubtless appear sufficient.
For the rest, in this philosophy, which Is only
too generally regarded as a tissue of absurdities
and puerile speculations, we are dealing with
most of the great mysteries that perplex hu
manity. On examining it more closely we find
in It some of the most wonderful efforts of hu
man reason, which, secretly sustained by the
truth contained In certain cloudy myths, ap
proaches the probable and the plausible more
closely than most of our modern theories.
136

Greece Before Socrates

We may suppose that the most Important
parts of this theosophy and philosophy, namely,
those which treated of the Supreme Cause and
the Unknowable, were gradually neglected and
forgotten by the classic theosophy and philos
ophy, and became, as in Egypt and India, the
secret of the hierophants, forming, together
with more direct oral traditions, the founda
tions of the famous Greek mysteries, and no
tably of the Eleusinlan mysteries, whose veil
has never been pierced.
Here again the last word of the great secret
must have been the confession of an Invincible
and Inviolable ignorance. At all events, what
ever negative and unknowable elements may
already have existed In the myths and the philos
ophy of which he was constantly being re
minded, they were enough to destroy, for the
Initiate, the gods adored by the vulgar, while
at the same time he came to understand why
a doctrine so perilous for those who were not
In a position to realize Its exalted nature had
to remain occult. There was probably no more
than this In the supreme revelation, because
there Is probably no other secret that man
might conceive or possess ; that there never can
have existed, nor ever will exist, a formula that
win give us the key of the universe.
137

The Great Secret
But apart from this confession, which must
have seemed overwhelming, or of the nature of
a release, in accordance with the quality of the
recipient's mind. It Is probable that the neo
phyte was Initiated Into an occult science of a
more positive nature, such as that possessed by
the Egyptian and Hindu priests. Above all, he
must have been taught the methods of attain
ing to union with the divine, or to Immersion In
the divine by means of ecstasy or trance. It Is
permissible to suppose that this ecstasy was ob
tained by the aid of hypnotic methods ; but these
methods were those of a hypnotism far more
expert and more fully developed than our own.
In which hypnotism properly so called, magne
tism, mediumship, spirituaHsm, and all the mys
terious forces — odic and otherwise — of the sub
conscious self, which were then more fully un
derstood than they are to-day, were commingled
and set to work.
The writer whom many persons regard as
the greatest theosophlst of our day — Rudolph
Stelner — professes, as we shall see later on, to
have rediscovered the means, or one of the
means, of producing this ecstasy, and of plac
ing one's self In communication with higher
spheres of existence, and with God.

138

Greece Before Socrates
7
From the foregoing we may, so It seems, con
clude that the higher initiates, or, to speak more
precisely, the adepts of the esoteric religions,
of the colleges of priests or the occult frater
nities, did not know very much more concern
ing the beginning and the end of the universe,
the unknowable nature of the First Cause, the
father of the gods, and the duties and desti
nies of mankind, than that which the great prim
itive religions had taught, openly and to those
who were capable of understanding It. They
did not know more for the reason that as yet
It was not possible to know more, or conse
quently to teach more. If they had known
anything further we too should know it; for It
Is hardly conceivable that the gist of such a se
cret should not have transpired If so many thou
sands of men had known It for so many thou
sands of years. If it were possible to Imagine
that such a secret existed and that we could
understand it, in understanding It we should no
longer be men. There are limits to knowledge
which the brain has not yet passed, and which
it never will be able to pass without ceasing to
be human. At most the confessions of Irredu
cible agnosticism and absolute pantheism,
which are the two poles between which the
loftiest human thought has always hesitated, Is
hesitating now, and In all probability will al-
139

The Great Secret
ways hesitate, might have been more definite,
more clearly expressed, less wrapped In formal
ities, and more complete, and might have put
those who received It on their guard against
the fallacious a.ppearances and the necessary
lies of the oflSicIal theogonies and mythologies.

8
Still, at a certain level there was no esoteric
cosmogony, theogony, or theology, no secret
code of morality. In this connection, as we
have just seen, the primitive religions left noth
ing unexplored; not so much as a shadowy
corner where the lovers of mystery, the inves
tigators of the unknown might take refuge.
Their ethic Is from the first — or seems to be
from the first, for we know nothing of the
thousands of years during which It was elabo
rated — the loftiest and most perfect that any
man could hope to practise. It has passed
through every ordeal, has attempted and
climbed every mountain In its way. Where it
has passed — and It has passed everywhere, and
above all over the most rugged pinnacles —
nothing is left to be gleaned. We are still
hundreds of centuries beneath Its attainments
on the heights of abregation, good-will, pity,
self-sacrifice, and absolute self-devotion; and
most of all In the search for what Novalis
140

Greece Before Socrates
called "our transcendental me" — that Is the
divine and eternal part of our being.
As for the sanctions, they too went to the
extreme, the utmost that the mind can conceive;
for, emanating from the Unknowable, they
could not, without contradiction, attribute to
this Unknowable any sort of will whatever.
They were consequently bound to place within
us the rewards and punishments of a system of
morality which could only have come Into being
within us. Here again there was not the least
room for any occult doctrine.
There remains the riddle of the origin of
evil, the apparent antagonism of spirit and mat
ter, the necessity of sacrifice, pain, and expia
tion. Here again, under pain of contradiction,
the occult tradition could not base anything on
the unknowable. It had simply to admit, pro
visionally, the least material explanation of the
esoteric religions, which regard matter and
darkness, division and separation, not as evil
in themselves, but as transitory states of the
one and eternal substance, a phase of the un
ending flux and reflux of Becoming, from which
one should strive to emerge as quickly as might
be, in order to attain the spiritual state or
phase. In this connection it had not, and of
course, could not have had a more satisfying
doctrine. In any case no echo of such doctrine
has come down to us, and it is probable that it
141

The Great Secret
once more- contented Itself with emphasizing
the confusion of Its Invincible Ignorance.

Here then are the points — and they are the
most important — on which the esoteric doctrine.
If there was In the beginning such a doctrine,
must necessarily be confounded with the public
teaching of the primitive religions If considered
fairly near their origin. It Is probable, as I
have already said, that this teaching did not
assume a secret character until very much later,
when the official religions were extraordinarily
complicated and profoundly corrupted. Eso
terism was then but a return to the original
purity, just as In Greece the pre-SocratIc doc
trines — which were, whatever may have been
said of them, obviously of Asiatic origin — be
came the teachings of the mysteries. It Is
therefore all but certain that the occultists of all
times and nations knew as little of them as we
do. But there are other spheres In which they
seem to have had traditions which the official
religions do not appear to have handed down
to us, and whose secret the successors of the
great adepts of India, Egypt, Persia, Chaldea,
and Greece, with the cabahsts, the Neoplato
nists, the Gnostics, and the Hermetlcs of the
middle ages, have more or less unsuccessfully
sought to recover. 1^2

Greece Before Socrates

IO
This province is that of the unknown forces
of nature. We can hardly dispute the fact that
the priests of India and Egypt, and the Magi
of Persia and Chaldea, had a knowledge of
chemistry, physics, astronomy, and medicine
which we have undoubtedly surpassed In cer
tain respects, but In others we are perhaps very
far from having caught up with them. With
out recalling here the blocks of stone weighing
1500 tons, transported by unknown means over
enormous distances, or the rocking-stones,
masses of rock weighing five hundred tons,
which were never native to the soil upon which
they now rest, and which date from the pre
historic era of the Atlanteans, it Is an un
doubted fact that the great pyramid of Cheops,
for example. Is a sort of stupendous hiero
glyph, which, by its dimensions, its proportions,
its Internal arrangements, and Its astronomical
orientation, propounds a whole series of
riddles of which only the most obvious haVe
hitherto been deciphered. An occult tradition
had always affirmed that this pyramid con
tained essential secrets, but only quite recently
has any one begun to discover them. Abbe
Moreux, the learned director of the Bourges
Observatory, giving a complete summary of the
question In his Enigmes de la &cience,^ shows us
143

The Great Secret
that the m-erldlan of the pyramid — the line run-
ing north and south passing through Its apex —
Is the Ideal meridian; that is. It Is that which
crosses the greatest amount of land and the
smallest amount of sea, and If we calculate ex
actly the area of habitable territories, it will
be found to divide them Into two strictly equal
halves. On the other hand. If we multiply the
height of the pyramid by one million, we obtain
the distance from the earth to the sun, or
198,208,000 kilometers, which Is, within about
one million kilometers, the distance which mod
ern science has finally adopted, after long re
search and dangerous expeditions to distant
lands, and thanks to the progress of celestial
photography. The well-known astronomer Clark has calcu
lated, from recent measurements, the polar ra
dius of the earth. He makes It 6,356,521
meters. Now this Is precisely the cubit of the
pyramid-builders, or 0.6336321 meters, multi
plied by ten millions. Next, on dividing the
side of the pyramid by the cubit used In Its
construction, we have the length of the side
real year; that Is, the time which the sun re
quires to return to the same point In the sky.
Then, if we multiply the pyramid-builders'
inch by one hundred millions, we shall obtain
the distance which the earth travels In its orbit
1 p. 5, et seq.
144

Greece Before Socrates
in one day of twenty-four hours, the approxi
mation being closer than our modern measures
— the yard or the meter — would permit of our
making. Lastly, the entrance-passage of the
pyramid pointed toward the pole star of the
period; It must therefore have been orientated
with reference to the precession of the equi
noxes, according to which phenomenon the
celestial pole returns, coinciding with the same
stars, after the lapse of 25,796 years.
We see, then, that, as Abbe Moreaux tells
us, "all these conquests of modern science are
found in the Great Pyramid In the form of
natural dimensions, measured, and always capa
ble of measurement, needing only opportunity
to shine forth In broad daylight with the met
rical meaning contained In them.
It is Impossible to attribute these extraor
dinary data to mere coincidence. They prove
that the Egyptian priests. In geography, mathe
matics, geometry, and astronomy, possessed
knowledge that we are barely beginning to re
conquer, and there Is nothing to tell us that
this enigmatic pyramid does not contain a host
of other secrets which we have not yet dis
covered. But the strangest, most disconcert
ing fact is that none of the Innumerable hiero
glyphs that have been deciphered, nothing. In
deed, to be found In the whole literature of
ancient Egypt, makes any allusion to this ex-
145

The Great Secret
traordinary knowledge. It is obvious even
that the priests sought to conceal It; the sacred
or pyramidal cubit, the key to all scientific meas
urements and calculations, was not employed
In every-day use ; and all this miraculous knowl
edge, coming whence no one knows, was deliber
ately and systematically burled In a tomb and
propounded as a riddle or a challenge to the
future centuries. Does not the revelation of
such a mystery, due merely to chance, permit
us to suspect that many other mysteries of vari
ous sorts are awaiting the hazard of a similar
revelation. In the same pyramid or in other
monuments or In the sacred writings?
In the meantime It Is, after all, highly prob
able that the Egyptian priests taught the Magi
of Chaldea the secret of what Eliphas Levi
calls "a transcendental pyrotechnics," and that
both were acquainted with electricity and had
means of producing and directing It as yet un
known to us. Pliny, In fact, tells us that
Numa, who was Initiated Into the mysteries of
the Magi, understood the art of creating and
directing the lightning, and that he success
fully employed his terrible battery against a
monster known as Volta, which was devastat
ing the Roman Campagna. Forestalling the
Invention of the telephone, the Egyptian priests
were able, we are told, to send Instantaneous
messages from temple to temple, no matter
146

Greece Before Socrates
what the distance. For that matter, the Bible
testifies to their knowledge and power when It
shows them. In the midst of the ten plagues,
which were only works of magic, fighting Moses
by means of miracles, Moses himself being one
of their initiates.

II
But It Is more especially In connection with
the subconscious, with mysteries of the Un
known Guest, and what we to-day call abnor
mal psychology; with the astral body, hypno
tism, and spirltuahsm; with the properties of
the ether, and of unknown fluids; with odylic
medicine, hyper-chemlstry, survival, and the
knowledge of the future, that they must have
possessed secrets to discover which the Her
metlcs of the middle ages wore themselves out
amid their pentacles, their cryptograms, and
their books of spells, corrupted and incompre
hensible. It is apparently In these regions of
occultism that there Is something left for us to
glean ; and It Is to them that our metaphysics Is
turning back, though by other roads.
It Is likewise in these obscure regions that
the last Initiates of India, the heirs to the eso
teric traditions, excel us so greatly In knowl
edge, producing those strange phenomena
which cannot always be sufficiently explained
H7

The Great Secret
by trickery and conjuring, and which astonish
the most skeptical, the most suspicious of trav
elers. Have they In reserve, as they claim, yet other
secrets, notably those that enable them to
manipulate certain terrible and irresistible
forces, such as the Intra-molecular energy, or
the formidable and inexhaustible forces of
gravitation, or of the ether? This Is possible,
but less certain. It is rather difficult to under
stand why, In cases of urgency, when there
has been a question of life or death, they have
never resorted to them. India, like Egypt,
Persia, and Chaldea, has suffered terrible In
vasions which not only threatened her civiliza
tion, destroyed her wealth, burned her sacred
books, and massacred her inhabitants, but also
attacked her gods, violated her temples, and
exterminated her priests. Yet we do not dis
cover that she ever turned a supernatural
weapon against her aggressors. It may be ob
jected that because of the enormous expanse
of the territories Invaded the Invasions were
never complete ; that the last Initiates might
have fled before them, taking refuge In Inac
cessible mountains; moreover that as their king
dom was not of this world they did not feel
that they had the right to employ their super-
terrestlal powers, for a fundamental axiom of
the highest knowledge forbids Its employment
148

Greece Before Socrates
In pursuit of material profit; and this too is
possible. It Is none the less a fact that the
British domination of Tibet, and above all
the entry into that country of Colonel Young-
husband's expedition, struck a very palpable
blow at the prestige of their occult knowledge.
12
Until 1904, In fact, the occultists had re
garded Tibet as the last refuge of their sci
ence. In Tibet, according to them, there were
vast underground libraries, containing innumer
able books, of which some dated back to the
prehistoric times of the Atlanteans ; and in these
the supreme and Immemorial revelations were
recorded In tongues known only to a few adepts.
In the heart of her lamaseries, swarming with
thousands of monks, Tibet maintained a college
of superior initiates, at the head of which was
the Initiate of initiates, the Incarnation of God
on earth, the dalal-lama.
No European, It was said, had ever violated
the sacred territory of Tibet; which, by the
way, was not quite correct, for In 1661, in
17 1 5, and in 17 19 two or three Jesuits and a
few Capuchins had found their way Into the
country. In 1760 a Dutch traveler made a
stay In Lhasa, and In 18 13 an Englishman.
Then, In 1846, the missionaries Hue and Gobet,
disguised as lamas, contrived to slip Into the
149

The Great Secret
country. But since then, despite many perilous
attempts, of which the latest and best known
was that of Sven Hedin, no explorer had suc
ceeded In reaching the holy city. One may say,
therefore, that of all the countries In the world
Tibet was the most mysterious, the most Illu
sive. On the announcement of the sacrilegious ex
pedition strange happenings were anticipated by
the world of occultists. I remember the con
fidence, the serene certainty with which one
of the sincerest and most learned of them told
me, early In the year 1904: "They do not
know what they are attacking. They are
about to provoke, In this place of refuge, the
most terrible powers. It Is virtually certain
that the last of the trans-Himalayan adepts
possess the secret of the formidable etheric
or sidereal force, the mash-maket of the At
lanteans, the Irresistible vril of which Bulwer-
Lytton speaks: that vibratory force which, ac
cording to Information contained In the 'Astra-
Vldya,' can reduce a hundred thousand men and
elephants to ashes as easily as It would reduce
a dead rat to powder. Extraordinary things
are about to happen. They will never reach
the Inviolable Potala !"
And what happened? Nothing whatever;
at least, nothing of what was anticipated.
After long diplomatic negotiations. In which
150

Greece Before Socrates
the incapacity, unintelligence, senlhty, and bad
faith of the Chinese, and the childish cunning
of the college of lamas were revealed In a
most disconcerting fashion. Colonel Young-
husband's force, consisting chiefly of Sikhs and
Gurkhas, proceeded to enter the country. In
those rugged regions, the most Inhospitable In
the world, on the high frozen plateaus of the
Himalayas, desolate and uninhabitable, they
had to overcome unheard-of difficulties; and
In passes which a handful of men, under good
leadership, would have rendered unassailable,
they were met more than once by the unskil
ful though courageous resistance of the dalal-
lama's soldiery, filled with fanatical valor by
the mantras and spells of their priests, but
armed with match-locks and inferior native
artillery. At length the British force drew
near to Lhasa ; and for five days the distracted
abbots of the great monasteries solemnly
cursed the invaders, set thousands of prayer-
wheels turning, and resorted to the supreme
incantations: all to no avail. On August 9
Colonel Younghusband made his entry Into the
capital of Tibet, and occupied the holy of
holies, the house of God, the Potala; an im
mense and fantastic structure which soars up
wards from the hovels of the city, resembling,
with Its terraces. Its flat roofs, and its but
tresses, a fortress, a piled-up mass of Itahan
151

The Great Secret
villas, a barracks with Innumerable windows,
and certain American sky-scrapers. The dalal-
lama, the thirteenth Incarnation of divinity,
the Buddhist pope, the spiritual father of sixl
hundred millions of souls, had shamefully taken
to flight and made good his escape. The con
vents and sanctuaries, swarming with monks
— there were more than thirty thousand of
them. Indifferent and resigned — were explored;
but nothing was found save the relics of the
noblest religion ever known to mankind, finally
rotting and dwindling Into puerile superstitions,
mechanical prayer-wheels, and the most de
plorable witchcraft. And thus collapsed the
final refuge of mystery; thus were surrendered
to the profane the ultimate secrets of the
earth.

153

CHAPTER VII
THE GNOSTICS AND THE NEOPLATONISTS

LEAVING aside Plato and his school,
whose theories are so well known that
we need not recall them here, we shall now
leave the comparatively limpid waters of the
primitive religions to enter the troubled eddies
which succeed them. As the simple and awe-
inspiring conceptions whose very altitude hid
them from view were lost to sight, those which
followed them, and were but their shattered
or distorted reflections, became more turbid and
increased In number. It will suflUce to pass
them rapidly In review; for to judge by what
we know, or rather by what we know that we
cannot know, they no longer have very much
to teach us, and can but fruitlessly confuse and
complicate the confession of the less knowable
and the consequences which proceed therefrom.
Before the reading of the hieroglyphs, the
discovery of the sacred books of India and
Persia, and the labors of our own scientific
metapsychologlsts, the only sources of occult
ism were the cabala and the writings of the
Gnostics and Neoplatonists of Alexandria.
153

The Great' Secret
It is not very easy to locate the cabala
chronologically. The "Sefer Yezlreh," as we
know It, which Is as It were the entrance to the
cabala, seems to have been written about 829
A. D., and the "Zohar," which Is the temple,
about the end of the thirteenth century. But
many of the doctrines which It teaches go back
very much further: namely, to the Babylonian
captivity, and even to the bondage of the
Israehtes in Egypt. From this point of view,
then, we must place It before the Gnostics and
the Neoplatonists; but on the other hand It
has borrowed so much from the latter and
they have Influenced It so greatly that It Is
almost Impossible to speak of it until we have
said something of those to which It owes the
best and the worst of its theories.

It Is true that these Jewish traditions, for
their part, mingled their abundant streams
with those of the other Oriental religions
which from the first century to the sixth In
vaded the Greek and Roman theosophy and
philosophy, causing men to call in question and
to examine more closely the beliefs and theo
ries by which they had lived. There was In
the Intellectual world, and above all In Alex
andria, whither flowed all races and all doc
trines, a strange force of curiosity, restlessness,
154

The Gnostics and the Neoplatonists
and activity. For the first time — at all events,
so it Is believed — the Hellenic philosophy
found Itself directly In contact with the Orien
tal religions and philosophies — audacious,
grandiose, unfathomable — which until then It
had known only by hearsay or by niggardly
fragments. The Gnostics contributed, among
other doctrines, those of Zoroaster, while the
mysterious Essenes, theosophists and the
urglsts, who came from the shores of the Dead
Sea, and rather mysteriously disappeared (al
though In the days of Phllo they were forty
thousand strong) or were eventually absorbed
by the Gnostics, doubtless represented the Hin
du element more directly; the cabalists, who
existed before the cabala was committed to
writing. Infused fresh life Into the doctrines
of Persia, Chaldea, and Egypt; the Christians
woke up to find themselves between the Bible
and the legends of India; and the Neoplato
nists, who might more correctly be called the
Neo-Orphlcs or Neo-Pythagoreans, returned
to the old philosophers of the sixth century
before our era, striving to find In them truths
too long Ignored, which were suddenly restored
to daylight by the revelations from the East.
We need not here Investigate this efferves
cence, which constitutes one of the most Intense,
and, in some respects, most fruitful crises ever
recorded In the history of human thought. For
155

The Great Secret
our present purposes It Is enough to note that
from the point of view of the Idea of God, of
the First Cause, of the pre-cosmic Spirit, or the
absolute Reality, which precedes all being,
manifest or conditioned, as from the point of
view of the origin, purpose, and economy of
the universe and the nature of good and evil,
it teaches us nothing that we have not found
in previous religions and philosophies. The
manifestations of the Unknowable, the divi
sion of the primordial Unity, and the descent
of spirit Into substance are attributed to the
Logos; they change their name without lessen
ing the surrounding darkness. In the attempt
to find an explanation of the Insoluble contra
dictions Involved by an Impassive god and a
universe In incessant movement, an unknowable
god who is finally known in every detail, a good
god who creates, desires, or permits evil, men
imagined, first, a threefold hypostasis, and
then a host of Intermediate divinities, demi
urges, or reduplications of God, eons, or divine
faculties and attributes personified, angels, and
demons. In the backwaters of these special
izations, distinctions, and subdivisions, subtle.
Ingenious, and inextricable, the simple though
tremendous confession of the Unknowable was
soon submerged by such a tide of words that
it was no longer visible.^ Before long It was
^ The Gnostics taught that the Supreme Being, or Perfect
156

The Gnostics and the Neoplatonists
completely forgotten, was no longer referred
to; and the Supreme Unknown engendered so
many and so familiar secondary divinities that
It no longer dared to remind men that they
could never know It. Of course the greater
the number of phrases and explanations, the
more completely were the primitive verities, on
which all was founded, effaced and obscured;
so that after men had attained, or regained,
in Phllo, and above all In Plotinus, the loftiest
summits of thought, they descended, on the
one hand, to the lucubrations of that Chinese
puzzle, the famous "PIstis-Sophia," attributed
to Valentinian, and on the other to the pre
tended revelations of lamblichus concerning
the Egyptian mysteries — revelations which re
vealed nothing whatever — and the whole Gnos
tic and Neoplatonic movement ended, with the
successors of Valentinian and those who con
tinued the work of Porphyry and Proclus, by
sinking Into the most puerile logomachy and
the most vulgar witchcraft.
We need not, therefore, consider the move
ment any further: not that the study of this
effervescence would be devoid of Interest; on
the contrary, there are few moments of history
Eon, or, as we should say, the Eternal, could be approached
only by a number of emanations or eons. In other words,
these were regarded as eternal Beings who acted as inter
mediaries between the Perfect Eon and mankind, and, being
joined together formed the Perfect Eon. — Trans.
157

The Great Secret
at which the mind has been forced to encounter
problems of so novel, complex, and dlflicult a
nature, or at which it has given proof of
greater power, vitality, and enthusiasm. But
what I have already said of this period Is
enough for my purpose, which Is merely to
show that the occultists of Greece, and, above
all, those of the middle ages, who Interest us
more especially because they are closer to us,
so that our memory of them Is more vivid, have
nothing essential to teach us that we have not
already learned from India, Egypt, and Persia.

158

CHAPTER VIII
THE CABALA

WE come at length to the cabala, which
is In some sort the vital center of oc
cultism as it is commonly understood.
This word, cabala, which covers doctrines
that are in general or very Imperfectly under
stood, Is for some enveloped In mystery and
illusion of a perturbing nature, at which they
all but shudder as though they saw therein a
reflection of Infernal fires; while for others it
evokes merely an unreadable jumble of ab
surd superstitions, of so much sheer nonsense,
of fantastic formulas that lay claim to satanIc
powers; childish riddles and obsolete lucubra
tions which are no longer worthy of serious ex
amination. As a matter of fact the cabala
merits neither this excess of honor nor this
indignity. To begin with, there are two ca
balas: the cabala properly so called, the theo
retical cabala, the only one with which we need
concern ourselves; and the practical cabala,
which is merely a sort of senile dermatosis,
that gradually Invades the less noble parts of
159

The Great Secret
the first, degenerating Into imbecile practices
of black magic and sordid witchcraft. In which
It is impossible to take any interest.
The philosophical, critical, and scientific study
of the cabala, like that of Vedism, of the hiero
glyphs, or of Mazdeism, is a thing only of
yesterday. Before Franck published his works
on the subject, the cabala was known only by
Knorr von Rosenroth's volume, the Kabbala
Denudata, pubhshed In 1677, which. In sur
veying the "Zohar," examines only the "Book
of Mysteries" and the "Great Assembly"; that
Is, Its obscurest portions, neglecting the text,
and giving only imperfectly understood extracts
from the commentators. Franck, in his Kab
bala ou la PhUosophie Religieuse des Hebreux,
which appeared In 1842, reproduced the com
plete and authentic texts for the first time,
translating them and commenting upon them.
Joel and Jellinck continued his researches, dis
cussed his conclusions and corrected his mis
takes, and the latest Interpreter of these mys
terious books, S. Karppe, In his Etude sur les
Origines et la Nature du Zohar, returning to
the problem already propounded, and going
back to the sources of Jewish mysticism, gave
us in 1 90 1 a survey which enables us to ad
venture without fear on this perilous and sus
pect soil.
The cabala, from the Hebrew kaballah,
160

The Cabala
which, as all the dictionaries will tell you,
signifies tradition, claims to be a body of oc
cult doctrine, coincident with or rather com
plementary to the teaching of the Bible, or
the orthodox doctrines of the Torah, that Is
to say, of the Pentateuch, transmitted orally
from the time of Moses, who Is supposed to
have received them directly from God, until
a period which extends from the ninth to the
thirteenth or fourteenth century of our era,
when these secrets, whispered from mouth to
ear, as the initiates used to say, were finally set
down In writing. It is impossible to know how
far this claim is justified, for beyond the first
or second century before Christ the historical
traces which might connect the tradition that we
know with an earlier tradition are absolutely
lacking. We must therefore confine ourselves
to taking the two volumes of the cabala — the
"Sefer Yerizah" and the "Zohar" — as we find
them, and consider what they contained at the
time when they were written.
The "Sefer Yerizah," or "Book of Crea
tion," which was at first attributed, childishly
enough, to the Patriarch Abraham, and then,
without certainty, to the Rabbi Akiba, is briefly
the work of an unknown author who com
piled it in the eighth or ninth century of our
era. To give some Idea of this work. It will
i6i

The Great Secret
suflUce to transcribe a few paragraphs of. the
first chapter:
"By thirty-two voices of marvelous wisdom
Yah, Yehovah Zebaoth, the hving God, God
the All-Highest, abiding forever, whose name Is
holy (He Is sublime and holy), set forth and
created His world In three books; the Book
properly so called, the Number, and the
Word. "Ten Sephlroth unassisted, twenty-two
letters of which three are fundamental letters,
seven double letters and twelve simple letters.
"Ten Sephlroth unassisted, conforming with
the number.of ten fingers, five facing five. And
the alliance of the One Is exactly adapted to
the middle by the circumcision of the tongue
and the circumcision of the flesh.
"Ten Sephlroth unassisted, ten and not nine,
ten and not eleven. Understand with wis
dom and meditate with Intelligence; examine
them, look Into them deeply. Refer the
thing to its light and set Its author in his
place. "Ten Sephlroth unassisted; their measure is
the ten without end: profundity of beginning
and profundity of end; profundity of good
and profundity of evil; profundity of height
and profundity of depth; profundity of east and
profundity of west; profundity of north and
profundity of south; one sole master, God,
1 6^

The Cabala
faithful King, reigns over all from the height
of his holy and eternal dwelling.
"Ten Sephlroth unassisted; their aspect Is
like the lightning, but their end has no end.
His command to them Is that they shall hasten
and come, and according to His word they hurl
themselves forward like the tempest, and pros
trate themselves before His throne.
"Ten Sephlroth unassisted; their end fixed
to their beginning and their beginning to their
end, like a flame attached to the coal. The
Master Is unique and has no helpers. Now
what art thou before the One?"
And so It goes on Interminably, plunging
Into a sort of Incomprehensible superstition of
letters and numbers considered as abstract
powers. It Is certain that one can make such
texts say anything one pleases, and that one
gets out of them anything one wants. We find
here for the first time the conception of the
Sephlroth, which the "Zohar" will unfold more
completely; and we discover In It a system of
creation in which "the Word, that Is, the Word
of God, by expressing the letters Alef, Mem,
Schin," as Is explained by S. Karppe, one of
the most learned commentators of this enig
matic book, "gives birth to the three elements,
and producing with these letters six combina
tions. It gives birth to six directions; that Is,
it gives the elements the power to extend thera-
163

The Great Secret
selves In all directions. Then, Instilling Into
these elements the twenty-two letters of the
alphabet. Including the three letters Alef, Mem,
and Schin (no longer as substantial elements,
but as letters), and expressing the whole variety
of words which result from these letters. It
produces the entire multiplicity of things." ^
All this, as we see, reveals nothing of great
importance; and I should not have lingered
over these solemn tomfooleries were It not that
the "Sefer Yerizah" enjoys a reputation among
occultists which hardly seems deserved when
one looks Into the matter, and serves as a
point of departure and a basis for the "Zohar,"
which constantly refers to It.
The occultists have endeavored to give us
the keys of the "Sefer," but I humbly confess
that for me these keys have opened nothing.
After all. It Is probable enough, as Karppe says,
that this mysterious volume is merely the work
of a pedagogue bent upon concentrating. In a
very brief handbook, all the elementary sci
entific knowledge relating to reading and gram
mar, cosmology and physics, the division of
time and space, anatomy, and Jewish doctrine;
and that Instead of being the work of a mys
tic it Is rather a sort of encyclopedia, a mnemo-
technlcal enchiridion.
1 S. Karppe, Etudes sur les Origines et la Nature du Zo
har; pp. 159 and 163. 164

The Cabala

The "Zohar" — which means "the light," —
hke the "Sefer Yerlzeh," Is the fruit of pro
tracted mystical fermentation which goes back
to a period when the "Talmud" was not yet
completed; that Is, before the sixth century
of our era, and above all during the period
known as Gaonlc. After a somewhat lengthy
eclipse, this mysticism revived about the year
820 A. D., and continued to manifest Itself In
the writings of the great lewlsh theologians;
Ibn Gablrol, Juda ha Levy, Abn-Ezra, and,
principally, In those of Malmonides. Then
directly preparing for the cabala, comes the
school of Isaac the Blind, which is above all
metaphysical — "an abstraction of the Neo
platonic abstractions," as some one has de
scribed It, In which Nachmanides shone with
particular brilliance; then the school of Elea-
zar of Worms, which gave special attention to
the mysteries of letters and numbers; and the
school of Abulafia, which devoted itself to pure
contemplation. This brings us to the "Zohar," properly so
called. Like the Bible, like the "Vedas," the
"Avesta," and the Egyptian "Book of the
Dead," this Is not a homogeneous production
but the result of a slow process of incubation,
the work of numbers of anonymous collabora-
165

The Great Secret
tors. Incoherent, disconnected, often contradic
tory. In which one finds a little of everything,
of the best as well as the worst, the loftiest
speculations being followed by the most child
ish and extravagant irrelevances. It is a col
lection, a storehouse, or rather a bazaar,
heaped pell-mell with everything that could not
find place In the ofliclal rehgion, as being too
audacious, too exalted, too fantastic, or too
alien to the Jewish spirit.
It Is not easy to determine the date of a
work of this kind. Franck, to emphasize Its
antiquity, refers to Its Chaldean form. But a
great many rabbis of the middle ages wrote
Chaldean Aramaic. It was then maintained
that it was the work of a Tanaite, Simon ben
Jochal (about 150 A. D.), but nothing confirm
ing his authorship has come to light. We find
no certain trace of its existence before the end
of the thirteenth century. The most probable
theory — and the learned Karppe reached this
conclusion after a long and minute discussion
of all possible hypotheses — is that Moses de
Leon, who lived at the beginning of the four
teenth century, most assuredly took a part In
the compilation of the "Zohar"; and. If he was
not its principal author, gathered Into a single
whole a number of mystical fragments, com
mentaries on the Scriptures — resulting, like so
many other works of Jewish literature, from
166

The Cabala
the collaboration of a number of writers. In
any case. It Is certain that the "Zohar" as we
know It Is comparatively modern.

For the Jehovah of the Bible, the only God,
personal, anthropomorphic, the direct Creator
of the universe, the "Zohar" substitutes the En-
sof : that Is, the Infinite; or perhaps we should
rather say that It Is superposed upon Jehovah,
or Is presupposed; and the En-sof Is also the
Ayin, that is, the non-existent, the Ancient of
Ancients, the Mystery of Mysteries, the Long
Face. The En-sof Is God In Himself, as un
knowable, as Inconceivable, as the Cause with
out cause or the Supreme Spirit of the "Vedas,"
of which He Is only a replica, modified by the
Jewish genius. He Is even nearer the non
existent than the Supreme Spirit of the Hindus,
for His first manifestation, the first Sephira, the
"Crown," Is still non-existence; It is the Ayin of
the Ayin, the non-existence of non-existence.
He is not even called "That," as In India.
"When all was still contained In Him," says
the "Zohar," "God was the Mystery of Mys
teries. He was then without name. The only
fitting term for Him would have been the in
terrogation: Who?" ^
Of this Deity we can give but negative and
1 "Zohar"; II, 105. 167

The Great Secret
contradictory descriptions. "He is separate,
since He is superior to all; and He Is not sep
arate. He has a shape, and Is shapeless. He
has a shape In so far as He establishes the
universe, and He has no shape in so far as He
Is not contained in it." ^
Before the unfolding of the universe He was
not, or was but a question-mark In the void.
So here we find at the outset the confession of
absolute ignorance, invincible. Irreducible.
The En-sof is but an unhmited enlargement of
the Unknowable; the God of the Bible Is ab
sorbed and disappears In a vast abstraction;
hence the necessity of secrecy.
But It was necessary to make this Inconceiv
able negation — impenetrable. Immobile, and
eternal, like the Supreme Cause of the Indian
religions — emerge from Its non-existence and
Its Immobility and pass from the Infinite to the
finite, from the Invisible to the visible; and It
is here that the difficulties begin. God being
Infinite (that Is, filling all things, how, beside
the En-sof, the Infinite, Is there room for the
Sof, the finite? The "Zohar" Is evidently em
barrassed, and Its explanations lead it far from
the humble and awe-inspiring simplicity of
Hindu theosophy. It Is loath to admit Its Igno
rance ; It wants to account for everything, and,
groping In the Unknowable, it entangles Itself
1 "Zohar"; III, 288-a. 168

The Cabala
In explanations which are often irreconcilable,
and when the ground falls away beneath Its
feet It has recourse to allegories and meta
phors, to mask the Impotence of Its conceptions
or to provide an apparent escape from the
dilemma in which It has placed itself. For a
moment it asks Itself whether It can admit of
creation ex nihilo, extending to this first act the
Incomprehensible character of the divinity;
then It seems to think better of It and rallies
to the doctrine of emanation, which it finds In
India, In Zoroastrianism, and In the Neoplato
nists. It modifies their doctrine, adapting it to
the Jewish genius, and complicates it to the ut
most without succeeding In explaining it.
This theory of emanation as expounded In
the "Zohar" Is Indeed strangely obscure, un
certain, and heteroclite, lapsing every moment
Into anthropomorphism.
To make room for the universe, God, who
filled space, concentrated Himself; and In the
space left free He Irradiated His thought and
exteriorized a portion of Himself. This first
emanation or Irradiation Is the first Sephira,
"the Crown." It represents the Infinite hav
ing moved one step toward the finite, non
existence having taken one step toward exist
ence, the first substance. From this first Se
phira, which is still almost non-existence, but a
non-existence more accessible to our Intelll-
169

The Great Secret
gence, emanate or develop two further Sephl
roth: Wisdom, the male principle, and Intelli
gence, the female principle ; that Is, on proceed
ing from the Crown the contraries appear, the
first differentiation of things. From the union
of Wisdom and Intelligence Is born Knowledge ;
we have thus the pure Idea, Thought exterio
rized, and the Voice or Speech which connects
the first with the second. This first Trinity
of Sephlroth Is followed by another: Grace or
Splendor, Justice or Severity, and their media
trix, Beauty. Lastly the Sephlroth, mingling
In Beauty, develop yet further, and produce a
third group: Victory, Splendor, Foundation;
and then the Sephira Empire or Royalty, which
brings Into existence all the Sephlroth In the
visible universe.
The Sephlroth as a whole, moreover, consti
tute the mysterious Adam Kadmon, the primor
dial super-man, of whom the occultists will
have much to tell us, and who himself repre
sents the universe.
This explanation of the Inexplicable, like all
explanations of the sort, really explains noth
ing whatever, and conceals the incomprehensi
ble beneath a flood of Ingenious metaphors.
Obeying, as previous religions had done, the
necessity of building a bridge between the In
finite and the finite, between the Inconceivable
and conception. Instead of contenting Itself, as
170

The Cabala
did India, with the renewal or the duplication
of the Supreme Cause, or the Egyptian, Persia,
and Neoplatonic Logos, It multiplies the bridges
by multiplying the Intermediaries; but numer
ous though they be, these ladders none the less
end In the same confession of ignorance. At
all events, this explanation, by concealing this
fresh admission beneath a mountain of Images,
has the advantage of relegating to a sort of
Inaccessible in pace the first confession, the prin
cipal and most embarrassing admission, which
places the First Cause and the existence of
God beyond our reach. After the creation of
the Sephlroth and of the universe the En-sof
is generally forgotten ; like the That of India
or the Nu of Egypt, It Is by preference passed
over In silence; and it Is but rarely that ques
tions concerning it are asked. It Is too secret,
too mysterious, too Incomprehensible even for
a secret and mysterious doctrine like that of
the cabala, and the whole attention Is given
solely to the emanations which the Imagination
attributes to It and which one seems to know
because they have been given names, virtues,
functions, and attributes: In a word, because
man himself has created them.
4
When did the En-sof begin to project Its
emanations? To this question, which India
171

The Great Secret
answered by the theory of the nights and days
of Brahma, without beginning or end, the ca
bala does not give a very clear reply. "Before
God created this world," It says, "He had
created a great many worlds, and had caused
them to disappear until the thought came to
him to create this one." ^ What has become
of these vanished worlds? "It Is the privi
lege," replies the cabala, "of the strength of
the Supreme King that these worlds, which
could not take shape, do not perish; that noth
ing perishes, even to the breath of His mouth;
everything has Its place and Its destination, and
God knows what He does with It. Even the
speech of man and the sound of his voice do
not lapse Into non-existence ; everything has its
place and its dwelling." ^
And what of our world ? Whither Is It go
ing? What Is its destiny? The Zohar being
a heteroclite production, a very late compila
tion, its doctrine In this respect is much less
definite than that of Brahmanism; but If de
tached from the Illogical and alien elements
which often cross or divert its course. It like
wise attains the stage of pantheism, and by way
of pantheism It achieves the Inevitable opti
mism. The En-sof, the Infinite, Is everything;
consequently everything Is the En-sof. To man-
1 "Zohar"; III, 6i-b.
2 "Zohar"; II, loo-b. 172

The Cabala
Ifest itself, the pure abstraction develops It
self by means of Intermediaries and. In Its good
ness voluntarily degrading Itself, ends In
thought, and In matter, which Is the last deg
radation of thought; and when the Messianic
era comes "everything will return Into Its root
as It emerged therefrom." ^
Man, who In the "Zohar" is the center of
the world and its microcosm, may from the
moment of his death rejoice in this return to
perfection; and his purified soul will receive
the kiss of peace which "unites It anew and
forever to Its root, Its principle." ^
And evil? Evil, In the "Zohar," as In Brah
manism, Is matter. "Man, by his victory
over evil, triumphs over matter, or rather sub
ordinates the matter within him to a higher
vocation; he ennobles matter, making It ascend
from the extreme point to which It was rele
gated to the place of Its origin. In him, who
is the great consciousness, matter acquires con
sciousness of the distance that separates It
from the Supreme Good, and strives to ap
proach the latter. Through man the darkness
aspires toward the light, the multiple toward
the single. The whole of nature aspires to
ward God.
"Through man God remakes Himself, hav-
1 "Zohar"; III, 296.
2 "Zohar"; I, 68-a. 17,-^

The Great Secret
ing passed through the whole splendid divinity
of living creatures. Since man Is an expression
epitomizing all things, when he has overcome
the evil in himself he has overcome the evil
in all things; he draws with him, as he climbs,
all the lower elements, and his ascent entails
the ascent of the whole cosmos." ^
But why was evil necessary? "Why," asks
the "Zohar," "If the soul Is of heavenly es
sence, does It descend upon the earth?" The
reply to this great problem, which no religion
has given, the "Zohar," In accordance with Its
habit when embarrassed, evades by means of
an allegory: "A king sent his son Into the coun
try that he might grow strong and sound there
and acquire the necessary knowledge. After
some time he was informed that his son was
now grown up; that he was a strong, healthy
youth, and that his education was completed.
He then, because he loved him, sent the queen
herself to fetch him and bring him back to the
palace. In the same way nature bears the
King of the universe a son, the divine Soul, and
the King sends him Into the country, that Is, the
terrestial universe. In order that he may grow
strong, and gain in nobihty and dignity." ^
The disciples of Rabbi Simon ben Zemach
Duran, one of the great scholars of the
1 S. Karppe, op. cit.; p. 478.
2 "Zohar"; I, 245. 174

The Cabala
"Zohar," asked him: "Would It not have
been better if man had never been born,
rather than that he should be born with
the faculty of sinning and angering God?"
And the master replied: "By no means, for the
universe In Its actual form Is the best thing In
existence. Now, the law Is Indispensable to
the maintenance of this universe, otherwise the
universe would be a desert; and man in his
turn Is Indispensable to the law." The disci
ples understood and said: "Assuredly God did
not create the world without cause; the law Is
Indeed the raiment of God; It Is that by which
He is accessible. Without human virtue, God
would be but miserably arrayed. He who does
evil soils In his soul the raiment of God, and
he who does good puts on the divine splen
dor." ^ We should Indeed be gracious were
we more exacting than these obliging and re
spectful disciples.
Another question of the utmost Importance,
that of eternal punishment. Is likewise evaded.
Logically, a pantheistic religion cannot admit
that God could chastise and eternally torture a
portion of Himself. The "Zohar" certainly
says somewhere : "How many souls and spirits
are there eternally wandering, who never again
behold the courts of heaven?"
But in another section it expressly teaches
1 "Zohar"; I, 23-a-b. 175

The Great Secret
the doctrine of transmigration; that is, the
gradual purification of the soul by means of
successive existences; and It bases this doctrine,
obviously borrowed from the great religions of
an earlier period, on certain passages of the
Bible ; among others, on Ecclesiastes, Chap. IV,
V. 2, In which we read: "Wherefore I praised
the dead which are already dead more than the
living which are yet alive." "What Is meant,"
asks the "Zohar," "by the dead which are al
ready dead?" They are those who have al
ready died once before this; that Is, they were
no longer bound on their first pilgrimage
through life. Now, It Is obvious that the doc
trine of a purifying transmigration must nec
essarily exclude eternal punishment.
5
The "Zohar," then, as I have already
stated, is a vast anonymous compilation which,
under the pretext of revealing to the Initiate
the secret meaning of the Bible, and especially
of the Pentateuch, decks out In Jewish clothing
the confessions of Ignorance of the great reli
gions of an earlier period, loading these gar
ments with all the new and complicated adorn
ments provided by the Essenes, the Neoplato
nists, the Gnostics, and even the first few cen
turies of Christianity. Whether It admits the
fact or not. It Is, In respect of the most im-
176

The Cabala
portant points, plainly agnostic, as is Brah
manism. Like Brahmanism, It Is also panthe
istic. For the "Zohar" likewise the creation is
rather an emanation; evil Is matter, division
or multiplicity, and good Is the return to the
spirit and to unity. Lastly, It admits the trans
migration of souls and their purification, and
therefore Karma, as well as the final absorp
tion into the divine ; that is. Nirvana.
It is Interesting to note that we have here for
the first time — for other statements have not
come down to us — an esoteric doctrine pro
claiming Itself as such; and this doctrine has
nothing more to teach us than that which we
were taught, without reticence and without mys
tery — at all events, at the outset, — by the prim
itive religions. Like the latter, with Its
wholesale admissions and Its expedients, differ
ent In form but Identical at heart, for passing
from non-existence to existence, from the In
finite td the finite, from the unknowable to the
known. It follows the same ratlonahstic tra
dition that strives to explain the Inexplicable by
plausible hypotheses and inductions, to which
we might give another shape and other names,
but which, taking them on the whole, we could
not, even to-day, perceptibly improve. At
most we might be tempted to renounce all ex
planation whatsoever and extend our con
fession of Ignorance to include the sum total of
177

The Great Secret
the origins, the manifestations, and the pur
poses of life. Perhaps this would be the wisest
course. It shows us that It Is highly probable that
no secret doctrine ever was or ever could be
other than secret; and that the loftiest revela
tions which we have ever been vouchsafed were
always elicited from man by man himself.
The importance assumed by this secret doc
trine during the middle ages may readily be
Imagined. Known only to a few Initiates,
wrapped up In Incomprehensible formulae and
Images, whispered "from mouth to ear" in the
midst of terrible dangers, It had a subterra
nean radiance, a sort of gloomy and Irresistible
fascination. It surveyed the world from a far
loftier point of view than that of the Bible,
which It regarded as a tissue of allegories be
hind which was hidden a truth known to It
alone; It yielded to mankind, through the
thickets of Its fantastic and parasitical vegeta
tion, the last echoes of the noble precepts, of
human reason at Its dawn.

178

CHAPTER IX
THE ALCHEMISTS

ALL the occultism, alchemy, or hermetism
of the middle ages proceeds from the
cabala and the Alexandrian version of the Bi
ble, with the addition, perhaps, of certain tra
ditions of magical practice which were very
widespread In ancient Egypt and Chaldea.
From the theosophical and philosophical
portion of this occultism we have nothing to
learn. It Is merely a distorted reflection, an
extremely corrupt and often unrecognizable
repetition of what we have already seen and
heard. The mysterious paraphernalia with
which it surrounds itself, which fascinates and
deludes the beholder at the very outset. Is
merely an indispensable precaution to conceal
from the eyes of the church the forbidden
statements, perilous and heretical, of which
It Is full. The occult Iconography, the signs,
stars, triangles, pentagrams, and pentacles,
were at bottom mnemonics, passwords, puns,
or conundrums, which allowed confederates to
179

The Great Secret
recognize one another and to exchange or pub
lish truths which meant the constant threat of
the stake, but which to judge by the explana
tions which have been offered us, do not and
could not conceal anything that does not to
day seem perfectly admissible and Inoffensive.
Alchemy even, which Is still the most Inter
esting department of medieval occultism. Is
after all no more than a camouflage, a sort of
screen, behind which the true Initiates used to
search for the secret of life. "The great
task," says Eliphas Levi, "was not, properly
speaking, the secret of the transmutation of
metals, which was an accessory result, but the
universal arcanum of life, the search for the
central point of tranformation where light be
comes matter and Is condensed Into a world
which contains in itself the principle of move
ment and of life. ... It Is the fixation of as
tral light by a sovereign magic of the will."
And this leads us to the odic or odylic phenom
ena of which we shall speak In a later chap
ter, and puts us on the track of this fixation.
What is more. In the eyes of the higher Ini
tiates, the search for gold was only a symbol,
concealing the search for the divine and the
divine faculties In man ; and It was only the in
ferior alchemists who took literally the cabalis
tic Instructions of their conjuring-books, wore
themselves out in the hope of solving problems,
1 80

The Alchemists
and ruined' themselves In order to make ex
periments which nevertheless resulted In the
progress of chemistry and In discoveries which
in some respects that science has never yet sur
passed.

On the other hand, people are too ready to
suppose that the occultism of the middle ages
was preeminently diabolic. The truth Is that
the Initiates did not and could not believe In
the devil, since they did not accept the Chris
tian revelation as the church presented it to
them. "No demons outside of humanity," was
one of the fundamental axioms of the higher
occultism. "To attribute what we do not un
derstand to the devil," said Van Helmont, "Is
the result of unlimited Idleness." "One must
not give the devil the whole credit," protested
Paracelsus. Devils and evil spirits, fallen angels or the
souls of the damned, surrounded by eternal
flames, will be found crawling only In the dark
corners of black magic or witchcraft. The
phantasmagoria of nocturnal revels have too
often concealed from us the true occultism,
which was, above all, though surrounded by
the incessant peril of death and encompassed
by hostile shadows, a tentative yet passionate
search for truth, or at least for a seeming truth,
i8i

The Great Secret
for there is nothing else in this world; a truth
which had once shone as a beacon through the
darkness, which was possibly still shining else
where, but which was apparently lost, so that
only its precious but shapeless relics were to be
found, mingled with the dense dust of irritating
and disheartening falsehoods, while the highest
talents were wasted In a thankless process of
sifting and selection. 3
To dismiss the question of infernal spirits:
the faithful none the less believed In the exist
ence and intervention of other Invisible beings.
They were convinced that the world which es
capes our senses Is far more densely peopled
than that which we perceive, and that we are
living In the midst of a host of diaphanous yet
attentive and active presences, which as a rule
affect us without our knowledge, but which we
can influence In our turn by a special training
of the will. These invisible beings were not
Inhabitants of hell, since for the Initiates of
the middle ages, almost as certainly as for the
believers In the great religions In the days when
initiation was not yet necessary, hell was not a
place of torture and malediction but a state of
the soul after death. They were either wan
dering, disembodied spirits, worth very much
what they had been worth during their life on
182

The Alchemists
earth, or they were the spirits of beings who
had not as yet been Incarnated. These were
known as elementals ; they were neutral spirits.
Indifferent, morally amorphous, devoid of will,
doing good or evil according to the will of him
who had learned to rule them.
It Is incontestable that certain experiments
carried out by our spiritualists, notably those
In connection with cross-correspondence and
posthumous appearances (of which we have al
most scientific proof) , and certain phenomena
of materialization and levitation, compel us
to reconsider the plausibility of these theo
ries. As for the Instances of evocation, which of
ten fluctuate between "high" magic and sor
cery or black magic, and which In the eyes of
the public, occupy, with alchemy and astrology,
the three culminating pinnacles of occultism:
their solemn paraphernalia, their cabalistic
formulae, and their Impressive ritual excepted,
they precisely correspond with the more famil
iar evocations which are practised daily about
our turning-tables, or the humble "ouija" or
magic mirrors. They correspond also with the
manifestations which were obtained, for exam
ple, by the celebrated Eusapia Paladino, and
which are at the present time being produced,
under the strictest "controls," by Madame BIs-
son's medium ; with this difference, that instead
183

The Great Secret
of the human phantom expected by those pres
ent at a modern seance, the believers of the
middle ages thought to see the devil in person;
and the devil who haunted their minds appeared
to them as they imagined him.
Is autosuggestion responsible for these mani
festations, or collective suggestion, or exuda
tion, or the transference or crystallization of
spiritualized matter borrowed from the specta
tors, with which is Intermingled some extrater
restrial and unknown element? If it Is Impos
sible to distinguish such an element when we
are dealing with facts which occur before our
eyes. It would be all the more audacious to
form a decision in the case of phenomena which
occurred some hundreds of years ago and are
known to us only through a more or less par
tial narrative. 4
Lastly, alchemy and astrology, the two re
maining pinnacles of occultism, were. In the oc
cultism of the middle ages, second-rate sciences
which, from the point of view of the Great Se
cret, do not offer any novel element, their Greek,
Hebrew, and Arab origin being connected with
Egypt and Chaldea only by means of apocry
phal and comparatively recent writings. Pierre
Berthelot, In his work on Les Origines de I'Al-
chimie, has given us a masterly survey of the
184

The Alchemists
alchemist's science. He has exhausted the sub
ject, or at least the chemical aspect of It; but
his work might perhaps be more complete from
the point of view of hyperchemistry or meta-
chemlstry — or of psychochemlstry, which would
seem to be no less Important. It Is likewise
greatly to be desired that some great astrono
mer-philosopher should give us. In a work upon
astrology, the pendant of this admirable vol
ume ; but hitherto the data have been so scanty
that the undertaking would hardly seem to be
possible. As much might be done for hermetic
medicine, which, for that matter. Is connected
with alchemy and astrology.
But It Is possible that alchemy and astrology,
which after all are merely transcendental chem
istry and astronomy (professing to transcend
matter and the stars In order to arrive at those
spiritual and eternal principles which are the
essence of the one and control the others),
would have no surprises or revelations In store
for us If we could go back directly to their
Hindu, Egyptian, and Chaldean origins; which
has not as yet been practicable, for we have
nothing to serve as comparison but the famous
Leyden Papyrus, which is merely the memoran
dum-book of an Egyptian goldsmith, containing
formulae for making alloys, gilding metals, dye
ing stuffs purple, and imitating or adulterating
gold and silver. 185

The Great Secret

5
Among the medieval occultists, almost all
of whom were alchemists, we shall confine our
selves to recalling the names of Raymond Lully
(thirteenth century), doctor illuminatus and
author of the Ars Magna, to-day almost un
readable; Nicolas Flamel (fifteenth century),
who according to Berthelot Is merely a char
latan pure and simple; Reuchlln; Welgel, Boeh-
me's teacher; Bernardo of Trevlso; Basil Val
entin, whose special subject of Investigation
was antimony; the two Isaacs, father and son;
Trithemius, whom Eliphas Levi calls "the
greatest dogmatic magician of the middle
ages," although his famous cryptographlcal-
works — his Polygraphia or his Steganogra-
phia — consist of a rather puerile playing upon
words and letters; and his pupil Cornelius
Agrippa, author of De Occulta Philosophia,
who simply recapitulates the theories of the
Alexandrian school and. In Ehphas Levi's
words. Is no more than "an audacious pro-
faner, fortunately extremely superficial In his
writings." We have still to mention Guil
laume Postel, a sixteenth century occultist, who
was acquainted with Greek, Hebrew, and Ara
bic, was a great traveler, and brought back to
Europe some Important Oriental manuscripts;
among others the works of Aboul-Feda, the
1 86

The Alchemists
Arab historian of the thirteenth century. "The
beloved and upright Guillaume Postel," writes
Eliphas Levi, In a letter to Baron Spedalierl,
"our father In the Sacred Science, since we
owe to him our knowledge of the 'Sepher
Yerizah' and the 'Zohar,' would have been the
greatest Initiate of his century had not ascetic
mysticism and enforced celibacy filled his brain
with the heady fumes of enthusiasm which
sometimes caused his lofty Intellect to wander" ;
a remark, be it said In passing, which might
be applied to other hermetlsts of other times
and nations.
After mention of Heinrich Khunrath, Os
wald Crollins, etc., we come to the seventeenth
century, the earlier years of which were the
great period of alchemy, which began to ap
proximate to science properly so called. Gas
tric juice was discovered by Van Helmont,
sulphate of soda and the heavy oils of tar by
Glauber, who also had a notion of chlorine,
while Kunckel discovered phosphorus.
Were I writing a general history of occult-
Ism, Instead of merely Inquiring what new
things we may learn from the last of the
adepts, whether they were conscious or not of
the occult wisdom whose trial we have fol
lowed through the ages, I should have been
obliged to linger for a moment over the myste
rious Templars, who adopted in part the Jew-
187

The Great Secret
Ish traditions and the narratives of the "Tal
mud," and were followed by the Rosicrucians.
I ought also to single out and consider at
rather greater length two fantastic and enig
matical figures who dominate and summarize
all the occultism of the middle ages; namely,
IParacelsus and lacob Boehme. But when we
consider them closely we discover that what
ever their pretensions, they did not deduce
from an unknown source the revelations which
they published and which so perturbed their
contemporaries. Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastes
Von Hohenhelm, known as Paracelsus (an ap
proximate translation of Hohenhelm), was
born In Switzerland in 1493 and died in Salz
burg In 1 541. He bears the burden of an un
just legend which represents him as a drunkard,
a debauchee, a charlatan, and a lunatic. He
certainly had many faults, and he seems at
times to have been somewhat unbalanced; none
the less he remains one of the most extraordi
nary persons mentioned in history. He was
a Neoplatonlst and consequently was not igno
rant of the Alexandrian writings accessible to
the hermetlcs of his time ; but It is probable that
during his travels In Turkey and Egypt he was
able to obtain a more direct knowledge of cer
tain Asiatic traditions relating to the etheric
or astral body upon which he based the whole

The Alchemists
of his medical theories. He taught, in fact. In
accordance with the ancient Hindu treatises
which have since then been brought to light
by the theosophists, that our maladies are
caused not by the physical body but by the
etheric or astral body, which corresponds pretty
closely with what to-day Is termed the sub
consciousness, and, consequently that It was be
fore all necessary to act upon this subconscious
ness. Certain It Is that many facts in many cir-
circumstances tend to confirm this theory, and it
may be that the therapeutics of to-morrow
will lead us In this direction. According to
Paracelsus, even plants have an etheric body,
and medicaments act not in virtue of their chem
ical properties, but In virtue of their astral
properties ; an hypothesis which would seem to
be corroborated by the comparatively recent
discovery of the "od," which we shall consider
In a later chapter.
His conceptions relating to the existence of a
universal vital fluid, the Akahsa of the Hindus,
which he called the Alkahest, and of the astral
light of the cabalists, are also among those to
which our modern Ideas of the preponderant
functions of the ether are calling our attention.
It Is obvious, on the other hand, that he often
exceeds all bounds, as when he carries to alto
gether excessive lengths a childish systematlza-
tion of purely apparent or verbal concordances
189

The Great Secret
between certain portions of the human body
and those of medicinal plants; while his asser
tions on the subject of the Archai, a species of
special or individual jinnee placed In charge of
the functions of the various organs, and the
fantastic chalatanry of his homunculus are
equally Indefensible. But these errors were
Inherent In the science of his day and are pos
sibly not much more ridiculous than our own.
When all Is said, there remains the memory of
a truly amazing pioneer and a prodigious vis
ionary. As for Jacob Boehme, the famous cobbler of
Goerlltz, his case would be miraculous and ab
solutely Inexplicable if he had really been the
Illiterate that some have called him. But this
legend must decidedly be abandoned. Boehme
had studied the German theosophists, notably
Paracelsus, and was perfectly familiar with the
Neoplatonists, whose doctrines, indeed, he re
produced, recasting them to some extent and
wrapping them up In a more obscure phrase
ology, which none the less was often unexpected
and extremely Impressive; and mingling them
with the elements of the cabala and a certain
amount of mystical mathematics and of al
chemy. I refer those who may be interested
In this strange and assuredly brilliant though
very unequal spirit — for his work Is full of un-
190

The Alchemists
readable rubbish — to an essay which EmIle
Boutroux has devoted to him: Le Philosophe
Allemand Jacob Boehme. They could have
no better guide.

'I9i

CHAPTER X
THE MODERN OCCULTISTS

BEFORE the discoveries of the Indianlsts
and Egyptologists, the modern occultists,
who — with the exception of Swedenborg, a
great Isolated visionary — may be counted as
descending from Martinez Pasqualis, who was
born in 17 15 and died In 1779, had perforce to
study the same texts and the same traditions,
applying themselves, according to taste, to the
cabala or to the Alexandrian theories. Pas
qualis wrote nothing, but left behind him the
legend of an extraordinary magician. His dis
ciple, Claude de Saint-Martin, the "Unknown
Philosopher," was a sort of Intuitive theoso
phlst, who ended by rediscovering Jacob
Boehme. His books, carefully thought out and
admirably written, may still be read with plea
sure and even with advantage. Without lin
gering over the Comte de Saint-Germain, who
claimed to retain the memory of all his pre
vious existences, Cagllostro, the mighty Illu
sionist and formidable charlatan, the Marquis
d'Argens, Dom Pernetty, d'Espremenll, La-
192

The Modern Occultists
vater, Eckartshausen, Delllle de Salle, the
Abbe Terrasson, Bergasse, Clootz, Court de
Gebelin, or all the mystics who toward the end
of the eighteenth century were to be found In
swarms. In aristocratic circles and the masonic
lodges, and were members of the secret socie
ties which were preparing the way for the
French Revolution but have nothing of impor
tance to teach us, we may pause for a moment
at the name of Fabre d'Olivet, a writer of the
first rank, who has given us a new interpreta
tion of the Genesis of Moses, audacious and
Impressive. Being no Hebrew scholar I am
not competent to pronounce upon its value, but
the cabala seems to confirm it; and it presents
Itself surrounded by an Imposing scientific and
philosophical equipment.

And we now come to Eliphas Levi and his
books, with their alarming titles: "A History
of Magic," "The Key to the Great Mysteries,"
"Dogma and Ritual of the Higher Magic,"
"The Great Arcanum, or Occultism Unveiled,"
etc., the last master of occultism properly so
called, of that occultism which immediately pre
cedes that of our metapsychists, who have def
initely renounced the cabala. Gnosticism, and
the Alexa;idrians, relying wholly on scientific
experiment. 193

The Great Secret
Eliphas Levi, whose true name was Alphonse-
Louls-Constant, was born In 1810 and died In
1875. In a certain sense he epitomized the
whole of the occultism of the middle ages, with
Its fumbling progress. Its half-truths. Its def
initely limited knowledge. Its Iritultions, Its Ir
ritating obscurities, its exasperating reticences.
Its errors and prejudices. Writing before he
had the opportunity or the inclination to profit
by the principal discoveries of the Egyptolo
gists and the Indianlsts and the work of con
temporary criticism, and himself devoid of all
critical spirit, he studied only the medieval doc
uments of which we have spoken; and apart
from the "Sepher Yerizah," the "Zohar"
(which, for that matter, he knew only from the
fantastical fragments In the Kabbala Denu
data), the "Talmud," and the Book of Revela
tion, he applied himself by preference? to the
most undeniably apocryphal of these docu
ments. In addition to those which I have
mentioned his three "bedside books" were the
"Trismeglstus," and "The Tarot."
The "Book of Enoch," attributed by legend
to the patriarch Enoch, the son of Jared and
the father of Methuselah, must actually be as
signed to a date not far removed from the be
ginning of the Christian era, since the latest
event with which its author was acquainted was
194

The Modern Occultists
the war of Antiochus SIdetes against John Hyr-
canus. It Is an apocalyptic book, pi;obably
from the pen of an Essene, as Is proved by his
angelology, which exerted a profound Influence
over Jewish mysticism before the advent of
the "Zohar."
The "Writings of Hermes Trismeglstus,"
translated by Louis Menard, who devoted an
authoritative essay to the text, is attributed to
Thoth, the Egyptian Hermes, and reveals some
extremely Interesting analogies with the sacred
books of India, and notably with the "Bhagha-
vat-GIta," demonstrating once again the uni
versal Infiltration of the great primitive reli
gion. But chronologically there Is not the
slightest doubt that the birthplace of the "Pol-
mandres," "The Ascleplus," and the fragments
of the "Sacred Book," was Alexandria. The
Hermetic theology Is full of Neoplatonic and
other expressions and Ideas, borrowed from
Phllo, and whose passages of the "Polmandres"
may be compared with the Revelation of St.
John, which they actually echo, proving that
the two works were written at periods by no
means distant from one another. It Is there
fore not surprising that as far as the religion
of ancient Egypt Is concerned they have no
more to teach us than had lamblichus, since at
the period when the Greeks Investigated It the
195

The Great Secret
symbolism of this religion, as Louis Menard
has observed, was already a dead letter to its
very priests.
As for the "Tarot," It is, according to the
occultists, the first book written by human hand
and earlier than the sacred books of India,
whence It is supposed to have made Its way Into
Egypt. Unfortunately no trace of It has been
discovered In the archaeology of these two coun
tries. It is true that an Italian chronicle in
forms us that the first card game, which was
merely a vulgarized form of the "Tarot," was
Imported Into Viterbo In 1379 by the Saracens,
which betrays its Oriental origin. At all
events. In Its present form It does not go back
further than Jacquemin Gringonneur, an Illum
inator In the reign of Charles VI.
It is obvious that with such data Eliphas
Levi could not have any very important revela
tions to make us. He was moreover embar
rassed by the ungrateful and Impossible task
which he had set himself in endeavoring to rec
oncile occultism with Catholic dogma. But
his scholarship In his own province is remark
able; and he often displays amazing intuition,
in which he seems to have come within sight of
more than one discovery claimed by our meta
psychists, notably in anything relating to me
diums, the odic fluid, the manifestations of the
astral body, etc. Further, when he deals with
196

The Modern Occultists
a subject which Is not purely chimerical and
is connected with profound realities — morality,
for example, or even politics — and when he
does not, as so many occultists do, wrap him
self up in wearisome Implications which seem
afraid of saying too much, though in reality
they betray only the fear of having nothing
at all to say, he sometimes contrives to write
admirable passages, which, after the exagger
ated repute which they used to enjoy, do not
deserve the unjust oblivion to which they are
apparently condemned to-day.
3
Of the school of Eliphas Levi, and following
almost the same track, we may reckon two con
siderable writers ; Stanislas de Guaita and Dr.
Encausse, better known by the name of Papus.
Theirs is a rather special case. Two eminent
scholars, they have a profound knowledge of
cabalistic and Greco-Egyptian literature, and all
the Hermetism of the middle ages. They are
likewise familiar with the works of the Orien
talists, the Egyptologists, and the theosophists
and the purely scientific investigations of our
occultists. They know also that the texts upon
which they rely are apocryphal and of the
most doubtful character; and although they
know this, and from time to time proclaim It,
yet they start from these texts as a basis ; they
197

The Great Secret
hold fast to them; they confine themselves to
them, building their theories upon them, as
though they were dealing with authentic and
unassailable documents. Thus de Guaita
builds up the most Important part of his work
on the "Emerald Table," an apocryphal work
of the apocryphal Trismeglstus, having first de
clared: "We shall not quarrel over the authen
ticity, authorship, or date of one of the most
authoritative Initiatory documents that have
been handed down to us from Greco-Egyptian
antiquity. "Some persist In seeing In It merely the non
sensical work of some Alexandrian dreamer,
while others claim that It Is an apocryphal pro
duction of the fifth century. Some Insist
that It Is four thousand years older.
"But what does that matter? One thing is
certain ; that this page sums up the traditions of
ancient Egypt." ^
It is not by any means certain, seeing that
the authentic monuments of the Egypt of the
Pharaohs offer us absolutely nothing to con
firm this mysterious summary, and the writer's
"What does that matter?" Is rather startling,
referring as It does to the text which he has
made the keystone of his doctrine.
Papus, for his part, devotes a whole volume
of commentary to the "Tarot," in which he sees
^ Stanislas de Guaita, La Clef de la Magie Noire; p. 119.
198

The Modern Occultists
the most ancient monument of esoteric wisdom,
although he knows better than anybody that
no authentic traces of It are to be found before
the fourteenth century.
In calling attention to this fantastic fault at
the base of their work — and it naturally has
many ramifications, — I have no Intention of
questioning the integrity, the evident good
faith of this extremely Interesting work, which
is full of original views, of Ingenious Intuitions,
hypotheses. Interpretations, and comparisons,
of careful research and interesting discoveries.
Both writers know many things which have
been forgotten or neglected but which It Is
well sometimes to recall, and If Papus too of
ten works hastily and carelessly, de Guaita is
always mindful, almost to excess, of his care
ful, dignified, polished, and rather formal
phrasing.

4
The position of the new theosophists Is to
some extent analogous with that of the three
occultists of whom I have just been speaking.
We know that the Theosophical Society was
founded in 1875 by Madame Blavatzky. I
need not here pass judgment on this enigmat
ical woman from the ethical point of view. It
Is undoubtedly the fact that the report of Dr.
199

The Great Secret
Hodgson, who was sent out to India In 1884
by the Society for Psychical Research especially
to conduct an inquiry Into her case, reveals her
In a somewhat unfavorable hght. Neverthe
less, after considering the documentary evi
dence, I must admit that it is after all quite
possible that the highly respectable Dr. Hodg
son may himself have been the victim of trick
ery more diabohcal than that which he be
lieved himself to have unmasked. I know
that extensive plagiarism has been im
puted to Madame Blavatzky and other
theosophists; In particular it is claimed that
Slnnet's "Esoteric Buddhism" and "The
Secret Doctrine" are the work of one Palma,
whose manuscripts are supposed to have been
bought by the founders of the Theosophical
Society, that they contain unacknowledged pas
sages, barely disguised, from works which had
appeared twenty years earlier over the signa
ture of various European occultists, and nota
bly that of Louis Lucas.
I shall not linger over these questions, for
they seem to me far less Important than that
of the secret and prehistoric documents and eso
teric commentaries upon which the whole theo
sophical revelation Is founded. Whoever the
author or authors may be, I shall consider their
work as it Is presented. "Isis Unveiled," "The
Secret Doctrine," and the rest of Madame Bla-
200

The Modern Occultists
vatzky's very numerous works form a stupen
dous and ill-balanced monument, or rather a
sort of colossal builder's yard, into which the
highest wisdom, the widest and most excep
tional scholarship, the most dubious odds and
ends of science, legend and history, the most
Impressive and most unfounded hypotheses, the
most precise and most improbable statements
of fact, the most plausible and most chimerical
Ideas, the noblest dreams, and the most Inco
herent fancies are poured pell-mell by inex
haustible truck-loads. There Is In this accu
mulation of materials a considerable amount of
waste and fantastic assertions which one re
jects a priori; but It must be admitted. If we In
tend to be Impartial, that we also find there
speculations which must rank with the most
Impressive ever conceived. Their basis is evi
dently Vedic, or rather Brahman and Vedan-
tic, and Is to be found In texts that have noth
ing occult about them. But upon the texts of
the ofliclal Indianlsts the Theosophists have
superimposed others, which they claim are
purer and much more ancient, and which were
provided and expounded by Hindu adepts, the
direct Inheritors of the Immemorial and secret
wisdom. It Is certainly a fact that their writ
ings, without revealing anything new as regards
the essential points of that great confession of
ignorance which bounds the horizon of the
201

The Great Secret
ancient religions, none the less provide us with
a host of explanations, commentaries, theories,
and details which would be extremely interesting
If only they had been subjected, before they
were offered to us, to a historical and philolog
ical criticism as strict as that to which those
Indianlsts who do not profess to be Initiates
have subjected their documents. Unfortu
nately this Is not the case. Let us take, for
example, the "Book of Dzyan"; that Is, the
mysterious slocas or stanzas which form the
basis of the whole secret doctrine taught by
Madame Blavatsky. It is represented as be
ing "an archaic manuscript, a collection of split
palm-leaves, rendered, by some unknown pro
cess, invulnerable to water, air, or fire, and
written In a lost language. In Sinzar, earlier
than Sanskrit, and understood only by a few
Hindu adepts" — and that is all. Not a word
to tell us where this manuscript comes from;
how it has been miraculously preserved; what
Sinzar Is; to which of the hundred languages,
which of the five or six hundred Hindu dialects.
It Is related; how It Is written; how It can still
be understood and translated; what Is approxi
mately the period from which It dates, etc. No
attention has been paid to these details. It Is
always so. One must believe a bare statement,
without Investigation. These methods are ob
viously deplorable, for if the texts in question
202

The Modern Occultists
had been sifted by an adequate process of criti
cism they would be among the most Interesting
in Asiatic literature. Such as they are offered
to us, the Cosmogony and the anthropogenesis
of the "Book of Dzyan" appear to be the spec
ulations of Brahmans and might form part of
the "Upanlshads." An ingenious commentary
accompanies them, the work of adepts abso
lutely familiar with the progress of Western
knowledge. If they are really authentic pre
historic documents, their statements as to the
evolution of the worlds and of man, partly con
firmed as they are by our latest discoveries and
scientific theories, are truly sensational. If
they are not what they profess to be, their as
sertions are mere hypotheses, still Impressive
and sometimes plausible, but usually Incredible
and needlessly complicated, and. In any case,
arbitrary and chimerical. 5
This does not alter the fact that "The Se
cret Doctrine" Is a sort of stupendous encyclo
pedia of esoteric knowledge, above all as re
gards its appendices, its commentaries. Its par-
erga, In which we shall find a host of Ingenious
and Interesting comparisons between the teach
ings and the manifestations of occultism
throughout the centuries and in different coun
tries. Sometimes there flashes from It an un-
203

The Great Secret
expected light whose far-spreading rays illumi
nate regions of thought which are rarely fre
quented to-day. In any case, the work would
prove once again, If proof were needed, and
with unexampled lucidity, the common origin
of the conceptions which were formed by the
human race, long before history as we know It,
of the great mysteries which encompassed It.
We also find In It some excellent and compre
hensive tabulations In which occult knowledge
Is confronted by modern science and often
seems, as we must admit, to outstrip or excel
the latter. Many other things, too, we find In
It, thrown together at random, but by no means
deserving the contempt with which we have for
some time professed to regard them.
However, it is not for me to write the his
tory of theosophy, or to judge it. I have
simply noted It in passing, since It Is the penulti
mate form of occultism. It will suffice to add
that the defects of Its original method have
been emphasized and aggravated by Madame
Blavatzky's successors. With Mrs. Annie Be-
sant — a remarkable woman in other respects —
and with Leadbeater, everything is in the air;
they build only in the clouds, and their gratui
tous assertions, incapable of proof, seem to
rain down thicker and thicker on every page.
Moreover, they seem to be leading theosophy
204

The Modern Occultists
into the paths along which their early converts
hesitate to follow them.
These defects are especially aggravated and
revealed in all their ingenuousness by certain
writers of the second ranks, less skilful than
their masters In concealing them; for example.
In the work of Scott-Elliot, the historian of
"Atlantis" and "The Lost Lemurla." Scott-
Elllot begins his history of Atlantis in the most
rational and scientific manner. He refers to
historical texts which scarcely permit us to
doubt that a vast island, one of whose extremi
ties lay not far from the Pillars of Hercules,
sank Into the ocean and was lost forever, carry
ing with It the wonderful civilization of which
it was the home. He corroborates these texts
by carefully chosen proofs derived from sub
marine orography, geology, chorography, the
persistence of the Sargasso Sea, etc. Then
suddenly, almost without warning, referring to
occult documents, to charts drawn on baked
clay and miraculously recovered, to revelations
of unknown origin, and to astral negatives
which he claims were obtained in despite of
time and space, and discusses as though they
were on the same footing as historical and geo
graphical evidence, he describes for us, in all
particulars, as though he were living In their
midst, the cities, temples, and palaces of the
205

The Great Secret
Atlanteans and the whole of their political,
moral, religious, and scientific civilization, in
cluding In his book a series of detailed maps of
fabulous continents — Hyperborean, Lemurlan,
etc. — which disappeared 800,000 or 200,000
or 60,000 years ago, and are here outlined
with as much minuteness and assurance as
though the draftsman were dealing with the
contemporary geography of Brittany or Nor
mandy. 6
The head of an Independent or dissident
branch of theosophy, a scholar, a philosopher,
and a most interesting visionary, of whom I
have already spoken — Rudolph Steiner, — em
ploys almost the same methods; but he does
at least attempt to explain them and justify
them. Unlike the orthodox theosophists, he is by
no means content with revealing, discussing,
and interpreting the secret and sacred books of
the Oriental tradition ; he is able to find in him
self all the truths contained in these books.
"It is In the soul," he declares, "that the mean
ing of the universe Is revealed." The secret
of all things Is within us, since everything Is
within us, and it Is as much In us as It was In
Christ. "The Logos, In unceasing evolution,
in millions of human personalities, was diverted
206

The Modern Occultists
to and concentered by the Christian conception
in the unique personality of Jesus. The di
vine energy dispersed throughout the world
was gathered together In a single individual.
According to this conception Jesus Is the only
man to become God. He takes upon himself
the deification of all humanity. We seek in
Him what we had previously sought in our own
souls." 1
This search, too long interrupted by the sym
bol of Christ, must be resumed. This idea,
quite defensible If we regard It as the search
for the "transcendental ego," of which the sub
consciousness of our metapsychists Is merely
the most accessible portion, becomes much more
debatable in the developments which our au
thor attributes to It. He professes to reveal
to us the means of awakening, infallibly and
almost mechanically, the God that slumbers
within us. According to him, "the difference
between the Oriental initiation and the Occi
dental lies In this, that the first is effected In
the sleeping state and the second in the waking
state. Consequently the separation of the
etheric body from the physical body, always
dangerous. Is avoided." To obtain a state of
trance which enables the Initiate to communi
cate with higher worlds, or with all the worlds
^ Rudolph Steiner. Le Mystere Chretien et les Mystires
Antiques, Trans. Edouard Schure; p. 228.
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The Great Secret
dispersed through space and time, and even
with the divinity, he must, by means of spiritual
exercises, methodically cultivate and develop
certain organs of the astral body by which we
see and hear. In men and In things, entities that
never appear on the physical plane. The prin
ciples of these exercises, at least as regards
their spiritual portions, are evidently borrowed
from the immemorial practices of the Hindu
Yoga, and In particular from the "Sutra of
Patanjall." Thus Steiner tells us that the as
tral organ which Is supposed to lie In the neigh
borhood of the larynx enables us to see the
thoughts of other men and to throw a search
ing glance into the true laws of natural pheno
mena. Similarly an organ supposed to lie near
the heart Is said to be the Instrument which
serves to Inform us of the mental states of
others. Whosoever has developed this will be
enabled to verify the existence of certain deep-
seated energies In plants and animals. In the
same way the sense supposed to have its seat
In the pit of the stomach Is said to perceive the
faculties and talents of men and also to detect
the part which animals, vegetables, stones,
metals, and atmospheric phenomena play In the
economy of nature. All this he explains mi
nutely at great length, with all that relates to
the development, training, and organization of
the etheric body, and the vision of the Higher
208

The Modern Occultists
Self, in a volume entitled "Initiation, or the
Knowledge of the Higher World." ^
When we read this dissertation on the state
of trance, which Is, by the way, a remarkable
work from more than one point of view, we are
tempted to ask whether the author has suc
ceeded In avoiding the danger against which he
warns his disciples : whether he has not found
himself "In a world created In every detail by
his own imagination." Moreover, I do not
know whether experiment confirms his asser
tions. It is possible to test them. His meth
ods are simple enough, and, unlike those of
the Yoga, perfectly Inoffensive. But the spirit
ual training must take place under the direc
tion of a master, who is not always easy to find.
In any case. It Is permissible to conceive of a
sort of "secondary state," possessing advan
tages over that of the hypnotic subject or the
somnambulist or the medium, which would be
productive of visions or intuitions very different
from those afforded us by our senses or our
intelhgence In their normal state. As for
knowing whether these visions or Intuitions cor
respond with realities on another plane or in
other worlds, this Is a question which can be
dealt with only by those who have experienced
them. Most of the great mystics have had
1 Rudolph Steiner, L 'Initiation, Trans. Jules Sauerwein;
pp. i88 et seq. 209

The Great Secret
visions or Intuitions of this kind spontaneously;
but they do not possess any real Interest unless
It can be proved that they are experienced by
mystics who are truly and absolutely Illiterate.
Such, It Is maintained, were Jacob Boehme, the
cobbler theosophlst of Goerlltz, and Ruys-
broeck l' Admirable, the old Flemish monk who
lived in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
If their revelations really contain no uncon
scious reminiscences of what they have read,
we find In them so many analogies with the
teaching, which later become esoteric, of the
great primitive religions, that we should be
compelled to believe that at the very roots
of humanity, or at Its topmost height, this
teaching exists. Identical, latent, and unchange
able, corresponding with some objective and
universal truth. We find, notably. In Ruys-
broeck's "Ornament of the Spiritual Es
pousals," In his "Book of the Supreme Truth,"
and his "Book of the Kingdom of Lovers,"
whole pages which. If we suppress the Christian
phraseology, might have been written by an an
chorite of the early Brahmanic period or a
Neoplatonlst of Alexandria. On the other
hand, the fundamental Idea of Boehme's work
Is the Neoplatonic conception of an unconscious
divinity, or a divine "nothingness," which grad
ually becomes conscious by objectifying itself
and realizing its latent virtuahties. But
2IQ

The Modern Occultists
Boehme, as we have seen, was by no means an
Illiterate. As for Ruysbroeck, although his
work is written In the Flemish patois which Is
still spoken by the peasantry of Brabant and
Flanders, we must not forget that before he
became a hermit In the forest of Solgnes he
had been a vicar In Brussels and had lived in
the mystical atmosphere created. In the thir
teenth and fourteenth centuries, by Albert the
Great, especially by his contemporaries, Johann
Eckhart, whose mystical pantheism Is analogous
with that of the Alexandrian philosophers, and
Jean Tauler, who, according to Surlus, the
translator and biographer of Ruysbroeck,
visited the latter in his solitude at Groenendael.
Now, Jean Tauler likewise spoke of the union
of the soul with the divine and the creation
of God within the soul. It will therefore be
evident that It Is more than a little risky to
assert that his visions were perfectly sponta
neous. 7
As for Stelner, In his case the question does
not arise. Before he found or thought to find
in himself the esoteric truths which he revealed,
he was perfectly familiar with all the literature
of mysticism, so that his visions were provided
merely by the ebb and flow of his conscious
or subconscious memory. After all, he scarcely

The Great Secret
differs from the orthodox theosophists, except
upon one point, which may appear more or less
essential; Instead of making, not Buddha, but
Buddhas — that Is, a succession of revealers or
intermediaries — the centers of spiritual evolu
tion, he attributes the leading part In this evo
lution to Christ, synthesizing in Him all the
divinity distributed among men, thus making
Him the supreme symbol of humanity seeking
the God Who slumbers In Its soul. This is
a defensible opinion If we regard It, as he ap
pears to do, from the allegorical standpoint,
but It would be very difficult to maintain It
from the historical point of view.
Stelner applied his Intuitive methods, which
amount to a species of transcendental psychom-
etry, to reconstituting the history of Atlantis
and revealing to us what Is happening in the
sun, the moon, and the other planets. He de
scribes the successive transformations of the
entities which will become men, and he does
so with such assurance that we ask ourselves,
having followed him with Interest through pre
liminaries which denote an extremely well-
balanced, logical, and comprehensive mind,
whether he has suddenly gone mad, or If we are
dealing with a hoaxer or with a genuine clair
voyant. Doubtfully we remind ourselves that
the subconsciousness, which has already sur
prised us so often, may perhaps have In stgr?
312

The Modern Occultists
for us yet further surprises which may be as
fantastic as those of the Austrian theosophlst;
and, having learned prudence from experience,
we refrain from condemning him without ap
peal. When all Is taken Into account we realize
once more, as we lay his works aside, what we
realized after reading most of the other mys
tics; that what he calls "the great drama of the
knowledge which the ancients used to perform
and to live In their temples," of which the life,
death, and resurrection of Christ, as of Osiris
and Krishna, is only a symbolic interpretation,
should rather be called the great drama of
essential and Invincible Ignorance.

213

CHAPTER XI
THE METAPSYCHISTS

WE come now to the occultists of to-day,
who are no longer hierophants, adepts.
Initiates, or seers, but mere Investigators ap
plying to the study of abnormal phenomena
the methods of experimental science. These
phenomena may be noted on every hand by
any one who displays a little vigilance. Are
they exclusively due to the unknown powers
of the subconsciousness, or to invisible entitles
which are not, are not yet, or are no longer
human? Herein resides the great interest,
one might say the whole Interest, of the prob
lem; but the solution Is still uncertain, although
the tendency to look for it In another world
than ours Is becoming more marked; and the
conversion to spiritualism of scientists pure and
simple, such as Sir Oliver Lodge or, more
recently. Professor W. J. Crawford, is not with
out significance in this respect.
I shall not return in these pages to the spirit
messages, the phantasms of the living and the
214

The Metapsychists
dead, the phenomena of premonition, or the
psychometric and mediumlstic manifestations of
which I gave a brief survey In "Death" and
"The Unknown Guest." What I said In these
volumes will give the reader a summary and
provisional — for In this domain all Is provi
sional — yet a sufficient Idea of the present state
of metapsychlcal knowledge In this connection.
There are, however, other factors, which
did not then fall within the scope of my work,
but with which I must deal to-day: first, be
cause having surveyed, quickly but as completely
as Is possible in a necessarily brief monograph,
the occultism of the past, it Is only fair to
treat the occultism of the present day In a sim
ilar fashion; but also and especially because
the points which I then passed over throw a
somewhat unexpected light on a number of
other factors, and justify us. If not In forming
conclusions, at least In drawing certain infer
ences which will complete this survey.
2
Our modern occultists no longer seek, as
did their more presumptuous predecessors, to
question the unknowable directly, to go back
to the origin of the Cause without a cause, to
explain the Inexplicable transition from the
Infinite to the finite, from the unknowable to
the known, from spirit to matter, from good
215

The Great Secret
to evil, from the absolute to the relative, from
the eternal to the ephemeral, from "the Invisible
to the visible, from Immobility to movement,
and from the virtual to the actual; and to find
In all these Incomprehensible things a theogony,
a cosmogony, a religion, and a morality a little
less hopeless than the obscurity whence man
has striven to draw them.
Having learned wisdom from innumerable
disappointments, they have resigned them
selves to a more modest function. In the
heart of a science which by the very nature of
Its Investigation has almost Inevitably become
materialistic, they have patiently conquered a
little Island on which they give asylum to phe
nomena which the laws, or rather the habits of
matter, as we believe ourselves to know them,
are not sufliclent to explain. They have thus
gradually succeeded. If not In proving, yet in
preparing us to accept the proof, that there is
in man, whom we may regard as a sort of sum
mary of the universe, a spiritual power other
than that which proceeds from his organs or
his material and conscious mind; which does
not entirely depend on the existence of his
body. We must admit that the Island thus
won by our occultists, who are now assuming
the name of metapsychists. Is as yet In consid
erable disorder. One sees upon It all the con-
216

The Metapsychists
fusion of a recent and provisional settlement.
Thither day by day the conquerors bear their
discoveries, great or small, unloading them and
heaping them pell-mell upon the beach. There
the doubtful will be found beside the Indisput
able, the excellent by the worthless, while the
beginning Is confounded with the end. It
would seem to be time to deduce, from this
abundance and confusion of materials, a few
general laws which would introduce a little or
der Into their midst; but it is doubtful whether
this could be attempted at the present moment,
for the Inventory Is not yet complete, and one
feels that an unexpected discovery may call
the whole position in question and upset the
most carefully constructed theories.
In the meanwhile one might try to begin at
the beginning. Since the phenomena recorded
tend to prove that the spiritual power which
emanates from man does not entirely depend
on his brain and his bodily life. It would be
logical to show, in the first place, that thought
may exist without a brain, and did, as a matter
of fact, exist before there was such an organ
as the brain. If one could do this, then sur
vival after death and all the phenomena attrib
uted to the subconsciousness would become al
most natural and, at all events, far more cap
able of explanation. 217

The Great Secret

3
The great objection which the materialists
have always brought against the spIrltuaHsts,
and which they still advance, though to-day
with less assurance than of old, may be
summed up in these words : "No thought with
out a brain." The mind or soul is a secre
tion of the cerebral tissues ; when the brain dies
thought ceases, and nothing Is left.
To this formidable objection, to these state
ments, apparently irrefutable, since our daily
experience of the dead is continually confirming
them, the occultists have not hitherto been able
to oppose any really serious argument.
They were, at bottom, far more defenseless
than they dared to admit. But for some years
now the investigations of our metapsychists,
from which we have not as yet deduced all the
consequences, have provided us. If not with
unanswerable arguments, which It may be we
shall never find, at least with the raw material
which will enable us to hold our own against
the materialists ; no longer amid the clouds of
religion or metaphysics, but on their own terri
tory, whose sole ruler is the goddess — the
highly respectable goddess — of the experimen
tal method. Thus above the centuries we
once more assemble the affirmations and decla
rations bequeathed to us by our prehistoric an-
218

The Metapsychists
cestors as a secret treasure, or one too long
burled In oblivion.
We should be thankful enough to avoid
these rather useless discussions between the
spiritualists and the materialists, but the latter
compel us to return to them by blindly main
taining that matter Is everything; that it Is the
source of everything; that everything begins
and ends in matter and through matter, and
that nothing else exists. It would be more rea
sonable to admit once for all that matter and
spirit are fundamentally merely two different
states of a single substance, or rather of the
same eternal energy. This Is what the primi
tive religion of India has always affirmed, more
definitely than any other cult, adding that the
spirit was the primordial state of this substance
or energy, and that matter Is merely the re
sult of a manifestation, a condensation, or a
degradation of spirit. The whole of its cos
mogony, theosophy, and morality proceed from
this fundamental principle, whose consequences,
even though in appearance they amount to no
more than a verbal dispute, are In actual fact
stupendous. Thus, to begin with, we must know whether
spirit preceded matter, or whether the reverse
was the case; whether matter is a state of
spirit, or whether, on the contrary, spirit is
a state of matter. In the present condition of
219

The Great Secret
science, disregarding the teaching of the great
religions, is It possible to answer this question?
Our materlahsts assert that life Is the Indis
pensable condition without which It Is Impossi
ble for thought to rise and take shape In the
mind. They are right; but what. In their eyes,
Is life. If not a manifestation of matter, which
already Is no longer matter as we understand
It, and which we have a perfect right to call
spirit, soul, or even God, if we so desire? If
they maintain that matter is powerless to pro
duce life unless a germ coming from without
calls It Into existence, they Ipso facto enter our
camp, since they acknowledge that something
more than matter Is needed to produce life.
If, on the other hand, they claim that life Is
an emanation from matter, they are confessing
that It was previously contained in matter, and
again they find themselves in our ranks. For
the rest, they have recently been compelled to
admit — see, among others, the experiments of
Dr. Gustave le Bon — that no such thing exists
as Inert matter, and that a pebble, a lump of
lava, sterilized by the fiercest of infernal fires.
Is endowed with an intramolecular activity
which Is absolutely fantastic, expending, In its
Internal vortices, an energy which would be
capable of hauling whole railway trains round
and round the globe. Now what Is this ac
tivity, this energy. If not an undeniable form
220

The Metapsychists
of the universal life? And here again we are
In agreement. But we are not In agreement
when they claim, without reason, or rather
against all reason, that matter existed before
this energy. We may admit that It has existed
simultaneously, from the beginning of the
world; but mere logic and observation of the
facts compel us to admit that when matter sets
itself in motion, when it proceeds to evolve,
not Internally, as In a pebble, but externally,
as In a crystal, a plant, or an animal, it is
precisely the energy, the motive-power that
was contained In It, that has now determined
this movement or this development. This
same logic, this same observation of the facts,
forces us yet again to acknowledge that when
matter Is transformed or organized It Is not
the matter that begins the process, but the
life contained in it. Now In this case, as In
the disputes that are settled in the courts of
law. It Is extremely Important to know which
side began. If It was matter that began — but
let us ask. In passing, how It could begin, how
It could possibly take the Initiative, without
ceasing to be matter defined by the material
ists ; that Is, a thing that is In itself necessarily
lifeless and motionless — but If, after all, to
admit the Impossible, It was matter that be
gan. It is probable enough our spiritual part
will perish, or rather will be extinguished with
221

The Great Secret
matter, and will revert, contained In matter, to
that elemental intramolecular activity which
marked Its beginning and will mark its end.
If, on the other hand. It was spirit that be
gan, it is no less probable that, having been
able to transform and organize matter. It Is
more powerful than matter, and of a different
nature ; and that having been able to make use
of matter, to profit by It in the process of evo
lution. Improving and uplifting Itself — and the
evolution, which, upon this earth of ours, began
with minerals and ends in man. Is assuredly a
spiritual evolution, — It Is, I repeat, no less prob
able that spirit, having shown Itself able to
make use of matter and being its master, will
refuse to allow matter, when It seems on the
point of disintegration, to Involve It In Its mate
rial dissolution; that spirit will refuse to ac
cept extinction, when matter becomes extinct;
nor will It lapse Into that obscure intramolec
ular activity whence It drew matter in the be
ginning. 4
In any case, the question for us has a pecu
har interest — as to whether thought preceded
the brain, or whether thought is possible with
out a brain — this question is determined by
the facts. Before the appearance of man and
the more intelligent of the animals, nature was
222

The Metapsychists
already far more intelligent than we "are and
had already brought into the world of plants,
fish, lizards, and reptilian birds, and above
all into the world of insects, most of those
marvelous Inventions which even to-day fill
us with an ecstasy of wonder. Where in those
days was the mind of nature? Probably in
matter, and above all outside matter; every
where and nowhere, just as It Is to-day. It
is useless to object that all this was done grad
ually, with Infinite slowness, by means of In-
cessartt groping; that goes without saying, but
time has nothing to do with the matter. It
Is therefore obvious, unless you believe that the
effect may precede the cause, that there was
somewhere, no one knows where, an Intelli
gence which was already at work, although
without organs that could be seen or localized;
thus proving that the organs which we believe
to be Indispensable to the existence of an Idea
are merely the products of a preexisting I-dea,
the results of a previews and a spiritual cause.
5
In the meantime It Is qu:te possible that since
the formation of the human mind nature
thinks better than of old. It is quite possible,
as certain biologists have claimed, that nature
profits by our mental acquisitions, which are
poured Into the common fund of the universal
223

The Great Secret
mind. For my part I see no objection to this,
for It does not In the least mean that nature
depends for her conceptions on the human
mind. She had them all long before we
existed. When man invents, say, the printing-
press or the typewriter to facilitate the diffu
sion of his Ideas, this does not prove that he
needed either Invention In order to think.
It seems, Indeed, that nature, at least on our
little planet, has grown wiser and no longer
permits the stupendous blunders of which she
used to be guilty. In creating thousands
of anomalous monsters incapable of survival.
None the less it Is true that she did not await
our advent before proceeding to think, before
imagining a far greater profusion of things
than we shall ever Imagine. We have not
ceased, nor shall we soon cease, to help ourselves
with overflowing hands from the stupendous
treasury of Intelligence accumulated by her be
fore our coming. Earnest Kapp, In his PhUos
ophie de la Technique, has brilliantly demon
strated that all our inventions, all our machin
ery, are merely organic projections, that Is, un
conscious Imitations, of models provided by
nature. Our pumps are derived from the ani
mal heart; our cranks and connecting-rods are
reproductions of our joints and limbs; our cam
eras are an adaptation of the human eye; our
telegraphic systems, of our nervous system; in
224

The Metapsychists
the X-rays we have that organic property of
somnambulistic clairvoyance which Is able to
see through opaque substances ; which can read,
for example, the contents of a letter that has
been sealed and enclosed In a threefold metal
box. In wireless telegraphy we are following
the hints afforded by telepathy, that Is, the di
rect communication of an Idea by means of
psychic waves analogous to the Hertzian
waves ; and In the phenomena of levitation and
the moving of objects without contact we have
yet another Indication which we have not hith
erto been able to turn to account. It puts us
upon the track of methods which will perhaps
one day enable us to overcome the terrible
laws of gravitation which chain us to the earth,
for it seems as though these laws. Instead of
being, as was supposed, forever Incomprehen
sible and Impenetrable, are principally mag
netic; that Is to say, tractable and utillzable.
6
And I am speaking here only of the re
stricted world of man. What if we were to
enumerate all nature's Inventions In the Insect
world, where she seems to have lavished, long
before our arrival on the earth, a genius more
varied and more abundant than that which she
has expended upon us? Apart from the con
ception of political and social organizations,
225

The Great Secret
which some day we may perhaps imitate, we
find In the world of Insects mechanical miracles
which are beyond our attainments and secret
forces of which we have as yet no conception.
Consider the Languedoclan scorpion: whence
does she draw that mysterious aliment which,
despite her incessant activity, enables her to
live for nine months without any sort of nour
ishment? Where, again, do the young of the
Lycosa of the Clotho spider obtain their
food. They, too, possess a similar capacity.
And by virtue of what alchemy does the egg of
a beetle, the Minotaurus typhoeus, Increase Its
volume tenfold, although nothing can reach it
from the outside world? Fabre, the great
entomologist, without a suspicion that he was
repeating a fundamental theory of Paracelsus —
for science, despite Itself, draws daily closer
to magic, — had a shrewd suspicion "that they
borrow part of their activity from the energies
encompassing them — heat, electricity, light, or
other various modes of a single agent," which
is precisely the universal or astral agent, the
cosmic, etheric, or vital fluid, the Akahsa of
the occultists, or the od of our modern theo
rists. 7
It may be said. In passing, that mindless na
ture has once more plainly shown our minds
226

The Metapsychists
the path to follow should they seek to rid us
of the burdensome and repugnant dependence
upon food, which allows us barely a few hours'
leisure between the three or four meals that we
are obliged to consume daily. It may be that
the time is less remote than we suppose when
we shall cease to be greedy stomachs and In
satiable bellies ; when we in our turn shall have
solved the magnificent secret of these insects;
when we, like them, shall succeed In absorbing
vitality from the universal and invisible fluid
by which not they alone but we ourselves are
surrounded and permeated.
Here Is a field that to our human science
Is unexplored and unbounded. Here, above all
from the point of view of our spiritual life. Is
a transformation which would singularly facili
tate our understanding of our future exist
ence ; for when we no longer have to make the
three or four meals which now, according to
temperament, encumber or brighten the hours
between sunrise and sunset, we shall perhaps
begin to understand that our thoughts and feel
ings will not necessarily be unhappy, unoccupied,
distracted, and a prey to eternal tedium when
our day no longer contains the landmarks or
objectives now furnished by breakfast, lunch,
tea, and dinner. It would be an excellent ini
tiation into the diet which will be ours beyond
the tomb and in eternity. 227

The Great Secret
Returning once more to the problem of
thought without a brain, which Is the key
stone of the whole building: let us suppose that
after a cataclysm, such as the earth must as
suredly have experienced already, and such as
may at any moment be repeated, every living
brain, and even the most elementary, the most
gelatinous attempt at a nervous or cerebral
organization, from that of the amoeba to that
of man, were suddenly destroyed. Do you be
lieve that the earth would remain bare, unin
habited. Inert, and forever lifeless, if the con
ditions of life were once more to become pre
cisely what they had been before the catastro
phe? Such a supposition Is scarcely permissi
ble. On the contrary, It Is all but certain that
life, finding Itself surrounded by the same fa
vorable circumstances, would begin all over
again In almost the same fashion. Mind would
once more gradually come into being; Ideas
and emotions would reappear, would make
themselves new organs, thereby giving us Irre
fragable proof that thought was not dead, that
It cannot die, that somewhere It finds a refuge
and continues to exist. Intangible and Imper
ishable, above the absolute destruction of Its
InstKuments or Its media ; that It is. In a word.
Independent of matter.

228

The Metapsychists

Let us now examine this preexistence of the
mind or spirit In ourselves. Had we already
a brain when, at the moment of our concep
tion, we were still no more than the sperm-
cell which only the microscope renders visible
to the eyes? Yet we were already potentially
all that we are to-day. Not only were we our
selves, with our character, our Innate Ideas, our
virtues and vices, and all that our brain, which
as yet had no existence, would develop a great
deal later; already we held within us all that
our ancestors had been; we bore within us
all that they had acquired during a tale of
centuries whose number no one knows; their
experience, their wisdom, their habits, their
defects and qualities, and the consequences of
their Imperfections and their merits; all this
was packed, struggling and fructifying. Into
one Invisible specL And we likewise bore
within us (which seems to be much more ex
traordinary, although It Is equally Indisputa
ble) the whole of our descendants; the whole
unbroken sequence of our children and our chil
dren's children. In whom we shall live again
through the Infinity of the ages, though already
we hold within us all their aptitudes, all their
destinies, all their future. When matter ac
cumulates so many things in a scrap of filament
229

The Great Secret
so fine that It all but escapes the microscope,
Is it not subtle to the point of bearing a strange
resemblance to a spiritual principle?
We shall disregard for the moment the ac
tion of our descendants upon ourselves, our
characters, and our tendencies; an Influence
which Is probable enough, since they do incon-
testably exist within us, but which it would
take us too long to Investigate: and let us for
a moment lay stress upon the fact that our
ancestors, who to us seemed dead, are continu
ing In a very real sense to live on In us. I shall
not linger over this point, since I wish to con
sider more recent arguments. I shall therefore
content myself with calling your attention to It ;
for the phenomena of heredity are now recog
nized and classified. It is an Indubitable fact
that each of us Is merely a sort of sum total
of his forebears, reproducing more or less
exactly the personality of one or several of
them, who are obviously continuing to think
and act In him. They think with our brains,
you will say. That may be true. They employ
the organs at their disposal; but it Is evident
that they still exist; that they live and think, al
though they have no brain of their own; and
this for the moment Is all that we need estab
lish.

230

The Metapsychists 9
We have just seen, though our survey was
all too brief and too summary, that it is pos
sible for thought to exist without a brain; that
It seems anterior to matter and actually exists
Independent of matter. For the moment I
shall note only one of the objections put for
ward by the materlahsts. "If thought Is In
dependent of matter," they say, "how Is It that
it ceases to function, or functions only In an
Incomplete manner, when the brain Is Injured?"
This objection, which, by the way, does not en
visage the source of thought, but only the state
of Its conductor or condenser, loses some part
of Its value If we oppose to It a sufficient number
of observations which prove precisely the con
trary. I could. If we had the leisure, place
before you a list of cases, vouched for by medi
cal observers, in which thought continued to
function normally though the whole brain al
most was reduced to pulp or was merely a puru
lent abscess. I refer those whom this ques
tion Interests to the works of the specialists ; In
particular they will find In Dr. Geley's authori
tative volume; De I'Inconscient au Conscient, ^
some examples which will convince them.
Fundamentally the objection advanced by the
materallsts is a sophism, which has been ad-
ip. 8 «< seq. 231

The Great Secret
mirably refuted by Dr. Carl du Prel. To say
that every Injury to the brain affects the mind,
that all thought ceases when the brain Is de
stroyed, and that the mind Is consequently a
product of the brain. Is to argue precisely as
who should say that any Injury to a telegraphic
apparatus garbles the message; that if the wire
Is cut the message no longer exists; therefore
the apparatus produces the message, and no
scientist can possibly imagine that there Is an
operator behind the apparatus. IO
We shall now consider the statements which
the scientists have been collecting during the
last few years, collating, over a dividing space
of hundreds and thousands of years, the aflir-
matlons of the ancient religions and those of
the occultists. These throw a new light on the
problem. They corroborate. In short, by ex
periment, the esoteric doctrines In respect of
the astral or etheric body — or the Unknown
Guest, If you prefer it; — In respect of Its ex
traordinary and Incomprehensible faculties. Its
probable survival, and Its Independence of our
physical body.
We all knew that a very considerable portion
of our life, of our personality, lay buried In
the darkness of the unconscious or the sub
conscious. In this darkness we housed the whole
232

The Metapsychists
of our organic life: that of the stomach, the
heart, the lungs, the kidneys, and even the
brain ; and there they did their work. In an ob
scurity never pierced by a ray of conscious
ness save by chance; In illness, for example.
There, too, we lodged our instincts, the lowest
and the highest alike; with all that was mysteri
ous, innate and Irresistible In our knowledge,
our aspirations, our tastes, our capacities, our
temperaments, and many other things which we
have no time to examine.
But for some years now the scientific investi
gation of hypnotism and mediumship has enor
mously enlarged and Illuminated this extraor
dinary and magical domain of the unconscious.
We have come, step by step, to establish
the fact, in an objective, material and indubita
ble fashion, that our little conscious cerebral
life Is as nothing compared with the vast ultra-
cerebral and secret life which we live simulta
neously ; for this unknown life contains the past
and the future, and even In the present can
project Itself to enormous distances from our
physical body. In particular we have ascer
tained that the restricted, unreliable, and un
stable memory which we thought unique is
duplicated In the darkness by another memory
which Is unrestricted, indefatigable, Inexhaus
tible, Incorruptible, unshakable, and Infallible,
recording somewhere, perhaps In the brain, but
233

The Great Secret
In any case not In the brain as we know It and
as It controls our consciousness — for It seems
to be independent of the condition of this
brain, — recording Indelibly the most trivial
events, the slightest emotions, the most fugi
tive thoughts of our lives. Thus, to cite only
one example from among a thousand, a ser
vant who was absolutely illiterate was able, In
the hypnotic state, to repeat without a mis
take whole pages of Sanskrit, having some
years earlier heard her first employer, who was
an Orientalist, reading passages from the "Ve
das." It has thus been proved that every chapter
of every one of the thousands of books that
we have read remains Indelibly photographed
on the tablets of our memory and may, at a
given moment, reappear before our eyes with
out the loss of a period or a comma. Thus
again Colonel de Rochas, in his experiments on
the retrogression of the memory and the per
sonality, made his subjects go back over the
whole course of their lives, down to their very
early childhood, whose least details were re
suscitated with an extraordinary distinctness
and perspective ; details which, when they were
verified, were acknowledged to be absolutely
correct. He did even better than this: he suc
ceeded in arousing the memory of their pre
vious lives. But here, verification being more
234

The Metapsychists
difficult, his experiments are hardly to the point;
and I wish to lead you only on to the firm
ground of established and undisputed facts.
II
Well, then, here Is an enormous part of our
selves which escapes us ; of whose life we know
nothing; of which we make no use; which lives
and records and acts outside our conscious
minds; an ideal memory, which is, practically
speaking, of no use to us; by the side of which
the memory that obeys us Is no more than a
restricted summit, a sort of pinnacle. Inces
santly abraded by time, emerging from the
ocean of oblivion, beneath which spreads away,
downward and outward, a huge mountain of
unchangeable memories, by which the brain Is
unable to profit. Now on what do we base our
personality, the nature of our ego, the identity
which above all things we fear to lose by
death? Entirely on our conscious memory,
for we know no other; and this memory, com
pared with the other, is, as we have seen, pre
carious and insignificant. Is it not time to
ask ourselves where our ego really exists, where
our true personality resides? Is It In the re
stricted, uncertain, precarious memory or in
the spacious. Infallible, and unshakable one?
Which self should we choose after death?
That which consists only of hesitating reminls-
235

The Great Secret
cences, or the other, which represents the
whole man, with no solution of continuity;
which has not let slip a single action or spec
tacle or sensation of our lifetime, and retains,
hving within it, the self of all those who have
died before us? While there Is reason to fear
that the first memory, that of which our brain
makes use, is Impaired or extinguished at the
moment of death, just as It Is Impaired or di
minished by the least Ill-health during life, is it
not, on the other hand, more probable that the
other more capacious memory, which no shock,
no sickness can confuse, will resist the terrific
shock of death; and Is there not a very good
chance that we shall find it Intact beyond the
grave? If this is not so, why this stupendous work
of registration, this Incredible accumulation of
unused photographs — for In ordinary life we
never even wipe the dust from them — ^when
the few landmarks of our cerebral memory are
enough to maintain the essential outlines of our
Identity? It Is admitted that nature has made
nothing useless; we must therefore suppose
that these pictures will be of use later on, that
elsewhere they will be necessary; and where
can this elsewhere be, save In another life?
The inevitable objection will be made that
it Is the brain alone which registers the images
and phrases of this memory, just as It registers
236

The Metapsychists
the Images and phrases of the other memory,
and that when the brain Is dead, etc. There
may be some force In this objection; but would
It not be' more than a little strange were the
brain unaided to perform, with a care which
would completely absorb It, all these opera
tions, which do not concern it, which It disre
gards a moment later, and of which It does
not seem to have any clear conception? In any
case this is not the brain as we commonly un
derstand It, and here already we have a very
important admission. 12
But this hidden memory, this cryptomnesia,
as the specialists have called It, Is only one of
the aspects of cryptopsychlcs, or the hidden psy
chology of the unconscious. I have no time to
recapitulate here all that the scholar, the scien
tist, the artist, and the mathematician owe to
the collaboration of the subconscious. We
have all profited more or less by this mysterious
collaboration. This subconscious self, this unfamiliar per
sonality, which I have elsewhere called the
Unknown Guest, which lives and acts on Its
own Initiative, apart from the conscious life
of the brain, represents not only our entire
past life, which its memory crystallizes as part
of an integral whole; It also has a presenti-
237

The Great Secret
ment of our future, which It often discerns
and reveals; for truthful predictions on the
part of certain specially endowed "sensitives"
or somnambulistic subjects, In respect of per
sonal details, are so plentiful that it Is hardly
possible any longer to deny the existence of this
prophetic faculty. In time accordingly the sub
conscious self enormously overflows our small
conscious ego, which dwells on the narrow
table-land of the present; In space likewise it
overflows it In a no less astonishing degree.
Crossing the oceans and the mountains, cov
ering hundreds of miles In a second, it warns
us of the death or the misfortune which has
befallen or is threatening a friend or rela
tive at the other side of the world.
As to this point, there is no longer the slight
est doubt; and, owing to the verification of
thousands of such instances, we need no longer
make the reservations which have just been
made In respect of predictions of the future.
This unknown and probably colossal guest —
though we need not measure him to-day, having
only to verify his existence — Is, for the rest,
much less a new personality than a personality
which has been forgotten since the recru
descence of our positive sciences. Our various
religions know more of It than we do; and It
matters little whether they call It soul, spirit,
etheric body, astral body, or divine spark; for
238

The Metapsychists
this guest of ours Is always the same transcen
dental entity which includes our brain and our
conscious ego; which probably existed before
this conscious ego, and Is quite as likely to sur
vive It as to precede it; and without which It
would be impossible to explain three fourths
of the essential phenomena of our lives.
13
Passing over for the moment some of the
other properties of this singular personality,
which we believed to be forever relegated to
Invisibility, together with materialization, Ideo-
plasty, levitation, lucidity, bllocation, psychom-
etry, etc.. It remains for me to explain In what
a curious and unexpected fashion a somewhat
recent science has succeeded In recording, In
vestigating, and analyzing some of these physi
cal manifestations, and to Inquire how far these
observations Increase the probabilities of the
survival or the Immortality of the Identical
personality, which after all may very well be
the essential and Imperishable portion of our
ego. I have just explained how far the Investiga
tion of hypnotism and mediumship has en
larged the field of the subconscious. Hitherto,
in accordance with the school to which the
Investigator belonged, the phenomena estab
lished have been attributed either to sugges-
239

The Great Secret
tion, or to a fluid of unknown nature, examIna^
tion having as yet been confined to recording
their amazing results. Matters were in this
position, and the disputes between the "sugges-
tionlsts" and the "mesmerists" were threatening
to become permanent, when about fifty years
ago — to be exact. In 1886 and 1867 — an Aus
trian scientist. Baron von Relchenbach, pub
lished his first papers on "odic emanations."
Dr. Karl von Prel, a German scientist, com
pleted Relchenbach's work, and, being gifted
with a scientific mind of the first order, and
Intuitive powers which often amounted to gen
ius, he was able to deduce all Its consequences.
These two writers have not yet had full jus
tice done to them, and their works have not yet
obtained the reputation which they deserve.
We need not be surprised by this; for the pro
gress of oflicial science, the only science that
permeates the public. Is always a much more
leisurely affair than that of Independent science.
It was more than a century before Volta's elec
tricity became our modern electricity and the
ruler of the Industrial world. More than a
century, too, had passed since the experiments
of Mesmer before hypnotism was finally ac
knowledged by the medical academies. Inves
tigated at the universities, and classed as a
branch of therapeutics. It may be as long be
fore Relchenbach's experiments. Improved by
240

The Metapsychists
von Prel and completed by De Rochas, begin
to bear fruit. In the meantime their Investi
gations throw an abundant light on a whole se
ries of obscure and confused phenomena whose
objective existence they have been the first to
prove, while Indicating their source.
Relchenbach really rediscovered the univer
sal vital fluid, which Is none other than the
Akahsa of the prehistoric religions, the Telesma
of Hermes, the living fire of Zoroaster, the
generative fire of Heraclitus, the astral light
of the cabala, the Alkahest of Paracelsus, the
vital spirit of the occultists, and the vital force
of St. Thomas. He called it "od," from a
Sankrit word whose meaning Is "that which
penetrates everywhere," and he saw in it quite
correctly the extreme limit of our analysis of
man, the point where the line of demarcation
between soul and body disappears, so that it
seems that the secret quintessence of man must
be "odic."
I cannot, of course, describe In these pages
the Innumerable experiments of Relchenbach,
von Prel, and de Rochas. It Is enough to say
that In principle the od Is the magnetic or vital
fluid which at every moment of our existence
emanates from every part of our being In unin
terrupted vibrations. In the normal state these
emanations or effluvia, whose existence was sus
pected, thanks to the phenomena of hypnotism,
241

The Great Secret
are absolutely unknown to us and Invisible.
Relchenbach was the first to discover that "sen
sitives" — that Is to say, subjects In a state of
hypnosis — could see these effluvia quite dis
tinctly in the darkness. As the result of a very
great number of experiments, from which every
possibility of conscious or unconscious sugges
tion was carefully eliminated, he was able to
prove that the strength and volume of these
emanations varied In accordance with the emo
tions, the state of mind, or the health of those
who produced them; that those proceeding from
the right side of the body are always bluish in
color, while those from the left side are of
a reddish yellow. He also states that similar
emanations proceed not only from human be
ings, animals, and plants, but even from miner
als. He succeeded in photographing the od
emanating from rock crystal; the od given off
by human beings ; the od resulting from chemi
cal operations; the od from amorphous lumps
of metal, and that produced by noise or fric
tion; in a word, he proved that magnetism, or
od, exists throughout nature — a doctrine which
has always been taught by the occultists of
all countries and all ages.^
1 Some recent experiments by Mr. W. J. Kilner, described
in his book, "The Human Atmosphere," give positive proof
of the existence of these emanations, these effluvia, this
human "aura," or at least of a similar aura which con
stitutes a true astral or etheric double. It is enough to look
at the subject through a screen formed of a very flat glass
242

The Metapsychists 14
Here then we have the existence of this
universal emanation experimentally demonstra
ted. Now let us Inquire Into Its properties and
effects. I shall confine myself to a few essential
facts. Thanks to these emanations It has been
possible to prove that this fluid is the same as
that which produces the manifestations of table-
turning; In the eyes of a sensitive. Indeed, these
manifestations are accompanied by luminous
phenomena whose synchronism leaves no doubt
that the emission of the fluid Is correlated with
the movements of the table. The latter does
not move until the radiations proceeding from
the hands of those experimenting have become
sufficiently powerful. These radiations con
dense into luminous columns over the center
of the table, and the more Intense they be
come the more lively Is the table. When they
fade away the table falls back motionless.
It Is the same with the displacement of ob-
dish containing an alcoholic solution of dicyanin, a coal-
tar derivative which makes the retina sensitive to the ultra
violet rays; and the aura becomes visible not only to sen
sitives, as in Relchenbach's experiraents, but also in the
eyes of 95 per cent, of persons possessed of normal vision.
it is, however, possible that this aura is not an etheric
double, but a mere nervous radiation. In this connection,
see the excellent summary by Monsieur Rene Sudre in No 3
of the Bulletin de I'lnstitut Metapsychique International
(January-February, 1921). 243

The Great Secret
jects without contact, levitation, and so forth:
manifestations which to-day are so far estab
lished and verified that there Is no need to re
peat their occurrence. It Is therefore an es
tablished fact that this fluid, which Is able to set
In motion a pendulum In a glass vase hermeti
cally sealed with the blow-pipe, just as It Is
capable of hfting a table weighing more than
two hundred pounds, possesses a power which
at times Is enormous and Is Independent of our
muscles. This power may be attributed to our
nerves, our minds, or what not, but Is no less
plainly and purely spiritual In Its nature.
Moreover It Is almost certain, although the
experimental proofs are In this case less com
plete and more difficult, on account of the scar
city of subjects, that It is the same odic or odylic
force that Intervenes In the phenomena of ma
terialization ; notably in those produced by the
celebrated Eusapia Paladino and by Madame
BIsson, which latter are far more conclusive and
far more strictly controlled by the medium. It
probably draws, either from the medium or
from the spectator, the plastic substance with
whose help it fashions and organizes the tan
gible bodies which are called into existence and
disappear In the course of these manifestations,
thereby giving us a very curious glimpse of the
manner In which thought, spirit, or the creative
fluid acts upon matter, concentrating and shap-
244

The Metapsychists
ing It, and how it sets about the business of
creating our own bodies. 15
It has further been experimentally demon
strated that this odic or odylic fluid may be con
veyed from place to place. Any material ob
ject may be filled with It. The object magne
tized, Into which the hypnotist has poured some
porion of his vital energy, all possibility of
suggestion being set aside, will always retain
the same Influence over the sensitive or medium;
that Is, the Influence desired by the hypnotist.
It will make the medium laugh or weep, shiver
or perspire, dance or slumber, according to the
purpose of the hypnotist when he emitted the
vital fluid. Moreover, the fluid appears to be in
destructible. A marble pestle, magnetized and
placed successively in hydrochloric, nitric, and
sulphuric acids and subjected to the corrosive
action of ammonia, loses nothing of Its power.
An Iron bar heated to a white heat, resin melted
and solidified in a different shape, water that
has been boiled, paper burned and reduced to
ashes, all retain their power. Further — to
prove that the detection of this force Is not
dependent on human impressions — It has been
shown that water which has been magnetized
and then boiled causes the needle of a rheostat
— an Instrument for measuring electric cur-
245

The Great Secret
rents — to deviate through an angle of twenty
degrees, just as It did before it was boiled. It
would be Interesting to know whether this vital
force, thus Imprisoned In a material object, can
survive the hypnotist. I do not know whether
any experiments have been made In respect of
this detail. In any case. It has been observed
that more than six months after they were
charged with od, the most miscellaneous sub
stances — Iron, tin, resin, wax, sulphur, and
marble retained their magnetic powers intact.
i6
Not only does the odic fluid thus transferred
contain and reproduce the will of the hypnotist;
it also contains and represents part of the per
sonality of the hypnotic subject and In particu
lar his sensitiveness to impressions. Colonel de
Rochas has conducted. In connection with this
phenomenon, which he calls "the externaliza
tlon of sensibility," a host of experiments, be
wildering yet unassailable and conclusive, which
lead us straight back to the magical practices of
the wizards of antiquity and the sorcerers of
the middle ages, which shows us once more that
the most fantastic beliefs or superstitions, pro
vided they are sufficiently general, almost
always contain a hidden or forgotten truth.
I need not refer the reader of these pages
to experiments whioh are famihar to all those
246

The Metapsychists
who have ever glanced through a volume deal
ing with metapsychlcs. I must keep within cer
tain bounds; and what I have said Is enough
to establish the fact that there is within us a
vital principle which Is not Indlssolubly bound
up with the body, but is able to leave It, to
externalize Itself, or at least in part, and for a
brief period, during our lifetime. It may be
rendered visible; It possesses a power Independ
ent of our muscles; It Is able to condense mat
ter, to shape It, to organize It, to make It live,
not merely In appearance, like phantoms of the
imagination, but like actual tangible bodies,
whose substance evaporates and returns to us In
the most Inexplicable fashion. We have also
seen that this vital principle may be trans
ferred to a given object, and there, despite all
physical and chemical treatment of the object.
It will maintain. Indestructibly, the will of the
hypnotist and the sensibility of the hypnotized
subject. May we not at this point ask our
selves whether, being to this extent separable
from and Independent of the body — ^whether be
ing so far Indestructible, as, for example. In the
ashes of a burned document, which contained
only a very small portion of It — whether this.
vital fluid does not survive the destruction of
the body? In reply to this question we have,
quite apart from logic, the extremely Impressive
evidence of those learned societies which have
247

The Great Secret
devoted themselves to the Investigation of
strictly authenticated cases of survival; and. In
particular, the 500 to 600 apparitions of the
dead verified by the Society for Psychical Re
search. It must be admitted that these appari
tions, which are probably odic manifestations
from beyond thie grave, seem far more credible
when we are acquainted with certain properties
of the mysterious fluid which we have been
considering. 17
Since the death of the leaders of the "odic"
school — Reldhenbach, von Prel, and de Rochas,
— the investigation of the magnetic or odic
fluid has been somewhat neglected; mistakenly,
to our thinking, for It was by no means exhaust
ive; but there are fashions In metapsychlcs as
in everything else. The Society for Psychical
Research, In particular, during the last few
years, has devoted Itself almost exclusively to
the problems of "cross correspondences"; and
while Its Inquiry has not yielded absolutely unas
sailable results. It does at least permit us to be
lieve more and more seriously In the presence
all about us of spiritual entities. Invisible and
Intelligent; disembodied or other spirits, who
amuse themselves — the word is employed ad
visedly — by proving to us that they make noth
ing of space or time and are pursuing some
purpose which we cannot as yet understand. I
248

The Metapsychists
know, of course, that we can, strictly speaking,
attribute these unexpected communications to
the unknown faculties of the subconsciousness;
but this hypothesis becomes daily more precari
ous, and it may be that the time Is not far
distant when we shall be finally compelled to ad
mit the existence of these disembodied entities,
"doubles," wandering spirits, "elementals,"
"Dzyan-Choans," devas, cosmic spirits, which
the occultists of old never doubted.
In this connection, to say nothing for the pre
sent of Sir Oliver Lodge's Raymond, or of the
highly Interesting spiritualistic experiments of
P. E. Cornllller, or of a host of other experi
ments the consideration of which would take us
too far afield, the recent researches of Dr.
W. Crawford, which have made a sensation In
the world of metapsychlcs, have afforded a
remarkable confirmation of the theory of the
"Invisibles." It Is true, however, as we shall
see, that this confirmation proceeds less from
the facts themselves than from the Interpreta
tion which has been placed upon them.

W. J. Crawford, a doctor of science and a
professor In Belfast University, has of late un
dertaken a series of experiments In connection
with "teleklnesla," or movements without con
tact; experiments which were conducted with a
249

The Great Secret
degree of scientific precision that wholly ex
cluded any Idea of fraud, and which absolutely
confirm those which Crookes, the Institut Psy-
chologique, and Ochorovicz carried out with
Home, Eusapia Paladino, and Mademoiselle
Tomscyk as mediums.
The subject of these experiments was that
most peculiar phenomenon which is a sort of
physical externalizatlon; of the duplication,
amorphous at first, and afterward more or less
plastic, of the medium. From the medium's
body proceeds an indefinable substance, which
is sometimes visible, as In the case of Eva,
Madame Bisson's medium, and sometimes in
visible, as In the case of Crawford's medium,
but which, even though invisible, may be
touched and measured, and behaves as though
it possessed an objective reality.
This substance, moist, cold and, sometimes
viscous, which Is known as "ectoplasm" can
be weighed, and its weight exactly corresponds
with the weight lost by the medium; and It
may attain as much as 50 per cent, of the
medium's normal weight.
In these experiments this Invisible substance
behaves as though It emerged from the me
dium's body In the form of a more or less rigid
stem, which lifts a table placed at a certain
distance from the chair in which the medium is
seated. If the table is too heavy to be lifted
250

The Metapsychists
directly at arm's length, so to speak, the psy
chic stem or lever curves Itself, chooses a ful
crum on the floor, and erects Itself to hft the
weight. When this Invisible lever has Its ful
crum In the medium's body the weight of the
latter Is Increased by that of the object lifted:
but when It selects a fulcrum on the floor the
medium's weight Is diminished by the pres
sure exerted on the floor.
These phenomena of levitation were per
fectly well known before Dr. Crawford's In
vestigation; but by his discovery of the invisi
ble lever, sometimes perceptible to the touch
and even capable of being photographed, he Is
the first to reveal the entire material and psychi
cal mechanism. Moreover In the course of
his Innumerable experiments he noted that
everything happened as though invisible enti
ties were watching the experiments, assisting
and even directing him. He communicated with
them by means of typtology, and having re
marked that these mysterious operators did
not seem fully to understand the scientific In
terest of the phenomena, he questioned them,
and concluded from their replies that they
were only laborers of some sort, manipulating
forces which they did not understand, and ac
complishing a task required of them by a
higher order of beings who could not or did
not condescend to do the work themselves.
251

The Great Secret
It may of course be maintained that these in
visible collaborators emanate from the subcon
sciousness of the medium or of other persons
present, so that the problem Is still unsolved.
But a conviction which a scientist who was, to
begin with, as skeptical as Dr. Crawford, was
gradually, and by the very force of things, led
to accept, deserves to be seriously considered.
In any case his experiments, like those in con
nection with" the odic fluid, prove once more
that our being is far more Immaterial, more
psychic, more mysterious, more powerful, and
assuredly more enduring than we believe It to
be; and this was taught us by the primitive re
ligions, as It is taught by the occultists who
have been Inspired thereby. 19
While we do not lose sight of the other
spiritualistic manifestations — the posthumous
apparitions, the phenomena of psychometry
and materialization, the provision of the fu
ture, the mystery of speaking animals, the mir
acles of Lourdes and other places of pilgrim
age, which we mention here only to show that
we have not overlooked them, — here, as com
pared with the prodigious and arrogant affirma
tions of the past, are the half-certainties, the
petty details slowly reconquered by the occult
ists of to-day. At first sight this Is little
252

The Metapsychists
enough, and even if the great central problem
of our metapsychlcs, the problem of survival,
were at length solved, this long and eagerly
anticipated solution would not take us very far;
assuredly not nearly so far as the priests of In
dia and Egypt went. But modest though they
may be, the discoveries of our occultists have
at least the advantage of being founded upon
facts which we can verify, and should therefore
be of far greater value to us than the more Im
pressive hypotheses which have hitherto evaded
verification. 20
Now It Is quite possible that to penetrate
any further Into the regions which they are ex
ploring, the experimental methods which are
the safest In other sciences may prove insufli-
clent. Other elements must be considered
than those which science Is accustomed to en
counter. Forces may perhaps be In question
of a more spiritual nature than those of our
Intellect, and In order to grasp and control them
It may first be necessary to apply ourselves to
our own splritualizatlon. It is an advantage
to possess perfectly organized laboratories, but
the true laboratory whence the ultimate dis
coveries will proceed Is probably within us.
This the priests and Magi of the great reli
gions seem to have understood better than we,
253

The Great Secret
for when they purposed to enter the ultra-
spiritual domains of nature they underwent a
protracted preparation. They felt that It was
not enough that they should be learned, but
that they must before all become saints. They
began by the training of their will, by the sacri
fice of their whole being, by dying to all desire.
They enfolded their Intellectual energies in a
moral force which led them far more directly
to the plane on which the strange phenomena
which they were Investigating had their being.
It Is probable enough that there are In the in
visible, or the Infinite, things that the under
standing cannot grasp, on which It has no hold,
but to which another faculty can attain; and
this faculty Is perhaps what Is known as the
soul, or that higher subconsciousness which the
ancient religions had learned to cultivate by
spiritual exercises, and above all by a renuncia
tion and a spiritual concentration of which we
have forgotten the rules and even the Idea.

254

CHAPTER XII
CONCLUSIONS

WE have already. In the course of this in
quiry, become familiar with most of
the conclusions to be drawn therefrom, and It
will therefore suffice to recall the most Impor
tant In a brief recapitulation.
«At the very beginning of the old religions,
and especially at the beginning of that which
seems to be the most ancient of all and the
source of all the rest, there Is no secret doctrine
and no revelation; there is only the prehistoric
tradition of a metaphysics which we should to
day call purely rationalistic. The confession
of absolute ignorance as regards the nature,
attributes, character, purposes, and existence
even of the First Cause or the God of Gods
Is public and explicit- It Is a vast negation;
we know nothing, we can know nothing, we
never shall know anything, for It may be that
God Himself does not know everything.
This unknown First Cause Is of necessity In
finite, for the infinite alone is unknowable, and
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The Great Secret
the God of Gods would no longer be the God of
Gods, and could not understand Himself, unless
He were all things. His Infinity Inevitably gives
rise to pantheism; for If the First Cause is
everything, everything partakes In the First
Cause, and It Is not possible to Imagine any
thing that can set bounds to It and is not the
Cause Itself, or part of the Cause, or does not
proceed from the Cause. From this panthe
ism proceeds In Its turn the belief In immortal
ity and the ultimate optimism, for, the Cause
being Infinite in space and time, nothing that is
of It or In It can be destroyed without destroy
ing a part of the Cause itself; which Is Impos
sible, since it would still be the nothingness that
sought to circumscribe It, just as nothing could
be eternally unhappy without condemning part
of itself to eternal unhappiness.
Absolute agnosticism, with Its consequences;
the Infinity of the divine, pantheism, universal
immortality, and ultimate optimism — here Is
the point of departure of the great primitive
teachers, pure intellects, and Implacable logi
cians, such as were the mysterious Atlanteans,
If we may believe the traditions of the occult
ists ; and would not the very same point of de
parture Impose Itself to-day upon those who
should seek to found a new religion which
would not be repugnant to the ever-Increasing
exactions of human reason? 256

Conclusions

But If all Is God and necessarily Immortal, it
is none the less certain that men and things
and worlds disappear. From this moment we
bid good-by to the logical consequences of the
great confession of Ignorance to enter the laby
rinth of theories which are no longer unassail
able, and which, for that matter, are not at
the outset put before us as revelations but as
mere metaphysical hypotheses, as speculations
of great antiquity, born of the necessity of rec
onciling the facts with the too abstract and
too rigid deductions of human reason.
As a matter of fact, according to these hy
potheses man, the world and the universe do
not perish; they disappear and reappear alter
nately throughout eternity, in virtue of Maya,
the Illusion of ignorance. When they no lon
ger exist for us or for any one, they still exist
virtually, where no one sees them; and those
who have ceased to see them do not cease to
exist as though they saw them. Similarly,
when God sets bounds to Himself, in order to
manifest Himself and to become conscious of
a portion of Himself, He does not cease to be
Infinite and unknowable to Himself. He
seems for a moment to place Himself at the
point of view or within the comprehension of
those whom He has quickened In His bosom.
257

The Great Secret
This last hypothesis must in the beginning
have been, as it is at present and always will
be, a mere makeshift; but there was a time
when It became a sort of dogma which, eagerly
welcomed by the imagination, soon completely
replaced the great primitive negation. From
that moment, despairing of knowing the un
knowable, man duplicated and subdivided and
multiplied It, relegating the inconceivable First
Cause to the inaccessible Infinite, and hence
forth concerned himself only with those sec
ondary causes by which It manifests itself and
acts. He does not ask himself, or rather he does
not dare to ask, how, the First Cause being
essentially unknowable. Its manifestations could
be considered as known, although It had not
ceased to be unknowable ; and we enter the
vast vicious circle in which mankind must re
sign itself to live under penalty of condemning
Itself to an eternal negation, an eternal immo
bility and Ignorance and silence.
Unable to know God In Himself, man con
tents himself with seeking and questioning Him
In His creatures, and above all In mankind.
He thought to find Him there, and the reli
gions were born, with their gods, their cults,
their sacrifices, their beliefs, their moralities,
their hells and heavens. The relationship
which binds them all to the unknown Cause is
258

Conclusions
more and more forgotten, reappearing only at
certain moments, as It reappeared, for exam
ple, long afterwards. In Buddhism, In the meta
physicians. In the ancient mysteries and occult
traditions. But despite this oblivion, and
thanks to the Idea of this First Cause, neces
sarily one, Invisible, Intangible, and inconceiv
able, which we are consequently compelled to
regard as purely spiritual; two of the great
principles of the primitive religion, which sub
sequently permeated those religions which
sprang from It, have survived, deep-rooted and
tenacious of life, secretly repeating, beneath all
outward appearances, that the essence of all
things Is one and that the spirit is the source
of all, the only certitude, the sole eternal re
ality. 3
From these two principles, which at bottom
are only one, proceeds all that primitive ethic
which became the great ethic of humanity: un
ity being the Ideal and sovereign good, evil
means separation, division, and multiplicity,
and matter Is finally but one result of separa
tion or multiplicity. To return to unity, there
fore, we must strip ourselves, must escape from
matter, which is but an inferior form or deg
radation of the spirit.
It was thus that man found, or believed that
259

The Great Secret
he had found, the purpose of the unknowable,
and the key of all morality without, however,
venturing to ask himself why this rupture of
unity and this degradation of the spirit had
been necessary; as though we had supposed
that the First Cause, which might have kept
all things In the state of unity, in Its undivided,
immobile, and supremely blessed bosom, had
been condemned, by a superior and Irresistible
law, to movement and eternal recommence
ment. These Ideas, too purely metaphysical to
nourish a religion, were soon In India itself
covered by a prodigious vegetation of myths,
and gradually became the secret of the Brah
mans, who cultivated them, developed them,
gave them profundity, and complicated them,
to the verge of Insanity. Thence they spread
over the face of the earth, or returned to the
place whence they had set forth; for while It
Is permissible to attempt the chronological
localization of a central source. It Is Impos
sible for us to determine where they rose to
the surface In the ages before the dawn of
history, unless we refer to the theosophical
legends of the Seven Races, which we might
perhaps accept If we were supplied with docu
ments less open to criticism than those which
have hitherto been offered to us.
260

Conclusions

At all events. It Is easy enough to follow the
progress of these ideas through the world
known to history; whether they went hand In
hand, or one following another, through India,
Egypt, and Persia; or found their way Into
Chaldea and pre-SocratIc Greece by means of
myths or contacts or migrations unknown to us;
or, especially In the case of Hellas, through
the Orphic poems, collected during the Alex
andrian period, but dating from legendary
ages, and containing lines which, as EmIle
Burnouf observes In his Science des Religions,
are translated word for word from the Vedic
hymns. ^
As a result of the Egyptian bondage, the
Babylonian captivity, and the conquest of
Cyrus, they reached the Bible, changing their
shape to harmonize with the Jewish monothe
ism; but In secret they were preserved, almost
undefiled, by oral transmission. In the cabala.
In which the En-Sof, as we have seen. Is the
exact reproduction of the Hindu Unknowable,
and leads to an almost similar agnosticism,
pantheism, optimism, and ethic.
These Ideas, stifled beneath the Bible In the
Jewish world, and in the Greco-Roman world
1 fimile Burnouf, La Science des Religions; p. 105.
261

The Great Secret
beneath the weight of the oflScial religions and
philosophies, survived among the secret sects,
and notably among the Essenes, and also In
the mysteries; reappearing In the light of day
about the beginning of the Christian era, in
the Gnostic and Neoplatonic schools of phil
osophy, and later on In the cabala, when they
were finally put Into writing; whence they
passed, more or less distorted. Into the occult-
Ism of the middle ages, of which they consti
tute the sole foundation. 5
We see, accordingly, that occultism, or
rather the secret doctrine, variable In Its forms,
often extremely obscure, above all during the
middle ages, but almost everywhere Identical
as to Its basis, was always a protest of the
human reason, faithful to its prehistoric tra
ditions, against the arbitrary assertions and
pretended revelations of the public and official
religions. To their baseless dogmas, their
anthropomorphical manifestations of the di
vine, Illogical, petty, and unacceptable, they
opposed the confession of an absolute and
Invincible Ignorance of all essential points.
From this confession, which at first sight seems
to destroy everything, but which leads, almost
of necessity, to a spiritualistic conception of
the universe; It was able to derive a meta-
262

Conclusions
physics, a mysticism, and a morality much
purer, loftier, more disinterested, and above
all more rational than those which were born
of the religions which were stifling it. One
might even prove that all that these religions
still have in common on the heights where all
are united — all that could not be debased to
the level of the material requirements of an
over-long life — all that Is to be found In them
that Is awe-inspiring. Infinite, Imperishable, and
universal — they owe to that Immemorial meta-
physlc Into which they struck their first roots.
It would even seem that in proportion as
time removes them from this metaphysic the
spirit leads them back to It; thus, to value only
the two latest religions, without mention of
all that they borrowed from It more directly,
we find that the God the Father of Christian
ity and the Allah of Islam are much nearer to
the En-Sof of the cabala than to the Jahweh
of the Bible; and that the Word of St. John,
which Is not mentioned In the Old Testament
or the synoptics. Is merely the Logos of the
Gnostics and the Neoplatonists, who them
selves obtained It from India and Egypt.

Is this, then, the great secret of humanity,
which has been hidden with such care beneath
mysterious and sacred formulae, beneath rites
263

The Great Secret
which were sometimes terrifying, beneath
formidable reticences and silences : an unmiti
gated negation, a stupendous void, a hopeless
Ignorance? Yes, It Is only this: and It Is as
well that it Is nothing else; for a God and a
universe small enough for the little brain of
man to circumnavigate them, to understand
their nature and their economy, to discover
their origin, their aims and their limits, would
be so pitiful and so restricted that no one would
resign himself to remain eternally as their
prisoner. Humanity has need of the infinite,
with Its corollary of Invincible Ignorance, If It
Is not to feel Itself the dupe or victim of an
unforgivable experiment or a blunder Impos
sible of evasion. There was no need to call
It Into existence, but since It has been raised
out of nothingness it must needs enjoy the
boundlessness of space and time of which It
has been vouchsafed the conception. It has
the right to participate In all that has given it
life, before It can forgive It for bringing It
Into the world. And It Is not able thus to
participate save on the condition that It can
not understand It. Every certainty — at all
events, until our minds are liberated from the
chains that fetter them — would become an
enclosing wall on which all desire to live would
be shattered. Let us therefore rejoice that
we know of no further certainties beyond au
264

Conclusions
ignorance as Infinite as the world or the God
Who Is Its subject. 7
After so many efforts, so many experiments,
we find ourselves precisely at the point from
which our great teachers set out. They be
queathed to us a wisdom which we are hardly
beginning to clear of the rubbish that the cen
turies have left upon it; and beneath this rub
bish we find Intact the proudest confession of
ignorance that man has ever ventured to pro
nounce. To a lover of Illusion this means but
little; to a lover of truth It Is much Indeed.
We know at last that there has never been
any ultra-human revelation, any direct and
Irrecusable message from divinity, no Ineffable
secret; and that all man believes himself to
know of God, of His origin and His ends, he
has drawn from his own powers of reason.
Before we had interrogated our prehistoric
ancestors we more than suspected that all rev
elations. In the sense of the word understood
by the religious, were and will always be Im
possible ; for we cannot reveal to any one more
than he Is capable of understanding, and God
alone can understand God. But It was easy to
imagine that having, so to speak, been wit
nesses of the birth of the world, they ought to
know more of it than we do, since they were
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The Great Secret
still nearer to God. But they were not nearer
to God; they were simply nearer to the human
reason, which had not as yet been obscured by
the inventions of thousands of years. They
are content with giving us the only landmarks
which this reason has been able to discover in
the unknowable: pantheism, spiritualism, Im
mortality, and final optimism; confiding the rest
to the hypotheses of their successors, and
wisely leaving unanswered, as we should leave
them to-day, all those Insoluble problems which
the succeeding religions blindly attacked, often
In an ingenious manner which was none the
less always arbitrary and sometimes childish.

Need we again recapitulate these problems?
— the passage from the virtual to the actual;
from being to becoming; from non-existence
to existence; and the descent of the spirit Into
matter — that is, the origin of evil and the
ascent from matter to spirit; the necessity of
emerging from a state of eternal bliss, to re
turn thither after purification and ordeals
whose Indispensable nature Is beyond our com
prehension; eternal recommencements, to reach
a goal which has always fled us, since It has
never been attained, although in the past men
had as much leisure to attain It as they will
ever have In the future. 266

Conclusions
I might increase beyond all measures this
balance-sheet of the unknowable. To close
the account It Is enough to add that the ques
tion which rightly or wrongly causes us the
greatest anxiety — that which concerns the fate
of our consciousness and our personality when
absorbed by the divine, is likewise unanswered,
for Nirvana determines nothing and specifies
nothing, and the Buddha, the last Interpreter
of the great esoteric doctrines, himself con
fesses that he does not know whether this
absorption Is absorption Into nothingness or
Into eternal blessedness. "The Sublime has
not revealed It to him."
"The Sublime has not revealed it to him" ;
for nothing has been revealed and nothing has
been solved, because It is probable that nothing
will ever be capable of solution, and because it
is possible that beings whose Intellect must be
a million times more powerful than our own
would still be unable to discover a solution.
To understand the Creation, to tell us whence
It comes and whither it goes, one would have
to be its author; and even then, asks the "RIg-
Veda," at the very source of primordial wis
dom: "and even then, does He know it?"
The Great Secret, the only secret. Is that
all things are secret. Let us at least learn. In
the school of our mysterious ancestors, to make
allowance, as they did, for the unknowable,
267

The Great Secret
and to search only for what Is there: that is,
the certainty that all things are God, that all
things exist In Him and should end In happi
ness, and that the only divinity which we can
hope to understand Is to be found In the depths
of our own souls. The Great Secret has not
changed Its aspect; it remains where and what
It was for our forebears. At the very begin
ning they managed to derive from the unknow
able the purest morality which we have known,
and since we now find ourselves at the same
point of the unknowable. It would be danger
ous, not to say Impossible, to deduce other
lessons therefrom. And these doctrines, of
which the nobler portions have remained the
same, and which differ only In their baser char
acteristics. In all the religions whose various
dogmas are at bottom only mythological trans
lations or Interpretations of these too abstract
truths, would have made man something that
as yet he Is not, had he but had the courage
to follow them. Do not let us forget them:
this Is the last and the best counsel of the
mystical testament whose pages we have just
been turning over.

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