Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1882-02-11
ocCULTIsM.


many aspiring inteligences. Through all
literature there flows stream of hints and
flashes of deeper and more precious knowl-
edge than mankind at large have ever made
their own. Disguised by ignorance, and by
superstition warped aud twisted by the
media through which it has passed now
reduced to thread so slender as almost to
escape the search, now promising to broaden
into noble river; this stream has at least
sutficed to keep alive certain interest in its
source, and has fertilized here and there little
spots along its banks. It has been a hin
drance to the investigation requisite for the
clearing up of the subject that the Middle
Agee interpose dense mass Of fantastic SUI
ancient sources of Occultism. The Alche.
mists were not all dreamers, as every student
knows. They numbered among them many
men whose Investigations were conducted by
sought the Elixir of Immortal Life nor
the Philosophers Stone. But the super
stition of those times catalcgued all that
was unknown as miraculous, and whoever
make his account with the accusation Of
sorcery. Thus Roger Bacon, true scien-
ti6c inquirer, was driven to defend himself
against such charges. and to exclaim IS Be.
''cause these things are beyond your COM
preheusion, you call them the works of the
Devil; your canonists and theologians
"abhor them as the productions of magic,
regarding them as unworthy of Chris
"tian." And the same philosopher was
moved to say. on his death bed, because of
the prosecutions to which he had been sub
jected 81 repent now that l have given
myself so much trouble for the love of
"science." The superstition which thus
crushed Bacon has affected all the in
quirers into physical science of that period
Neo-Platonic and Egyptian and Arabian
learning indeed had together produced very
strange compound in European minds, and
through this chaotic mass of mingled fact
and fiction and transcendental metaphysics
the light of simpler but profourder era
shed its rays very dimly. The Baconian
movement discredited all that had gone be-
fore it. and prejudiced the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries, not only against me.
dieval philosophy, but against all those an
Gent schools from which Medisvalism had
derived the basis of its ideas.
Yet it is fact which impressss itself more
and more strongly upon the scholar who
seeks to divest his mind of bias, that the
worlds literature, philosophy, and science,
owe to Asia the germs of most that is of
value ia them, and must look to Asia yet
for the explanation of much that is still
obscure. Putting aside all consideration of
the pigments of the seventeenth century, the
stories of the Brothers of the Rosy Gross,
the audacious pretence of Cagliostro and St.
German, it remains true that there has been
strongly fortified record of the existence
in Asia Of small body of men devoted to
have attained surprising results. The evil
dence for the existence of such class Of
men, and for the reality of their powers,
must be gathered from casual statements
and narratives in many works of travel in
the Orient. But whoever will follow up this
line of inquiry will find that there really is
a mass of testimony, SIS well attested as any.
thiug in ordinary history, affirming the ex-
istence in these regions of men who, leading
the lives of recluses and aseetics, possess
powers which. because of the ignorance of
the rest of the world, are regarded as super
natural. 1T must bs remembered that the
East has in many respects an unbroken
past 1t has not undergone the cataclysmal
changes which during the last thousand
years have so altered the face of Europe.
When the Roman Empire rose and shed its
splendor over the earth, Asia alone refused
to be metamorphosed
The brooding East with awe beheld
Her impious Younger world.
The Roman tempest sweli'd and swelrd,
And on her head was hurled.
The East how'd low before the blast
In patient deep dsdan;
She let the legiops thunder past
And plunged in thought again.
Aud her passivity and contemplative spirit
have favored the growth and extension of the
referred to.
Now some fsur years ago one who had
passed many years in the pursuit of occult
science, yet who had not attained to the
higher branches of that knowledge, was
brought into contact with some American
and European students who had satisfied
t1o.~ oil h.
impedimenta of medieval superstition and
popular ignorance-behind Simon Magus
and Apollonius of Tyana and Albertus
Magrus and Raymond Lully and the little
Arabian dreams-there lies a solid SUBJ
stratum Of fact; that on the TANKS of the
in the Lamassries of Thibet,
among the Temples of Brahm, in the jungles
of Hindostan, is to be sought and found
science which surpasses the proudest ex-
amples Europe can exhibit which includes
discoveries to which the most important
modern inventions are trivial; which has
learned to conquer Time and Space, to solve
the impenetrability OF matter, to settle the
vexed question of the dimensions, to obtain |
solution to the problem of the nature of Light |
which overthrows the Undulatory Theory,
and to acquire. during the pursuit of these
physical phenomena, indubitable evidence of
the persistence of the human soul after the |
death of the body. And the desire to wrest
this latter secret from Nature is en- i'm
perative necessity in the human mind. The
mystery Of the Universe is not that of its
own cfeation; it is the question OF Mans
origin and destiny. Eight centuries ago the |
Astronomer Poet OF Persia discussed it hope
Iesaly.
Myself when young did eagerly frequent
Doctor and SAINT, and heard great argument
About it and about but evermore
Came out by the same door where in went.
With them the seeds OF Wisdom did sow,
And with my own hand sought TO m Ike it grow |
And this was all the Harvest that reapd-
" came like Water, and like Wind 60"
Into this Universe, an6 Why not knowing,
Nor Whence like Water wiliy-nilly flowing
And out OF it, as Wind along the Waste,
know not Whittier, willy -nilly blowing.
This is the state of mental blankness TO
which Agnosticisn is now driving modern in.
dependent thinkers, and it was doubtless in
part the natural revulsion from SO comfortless
q creed which led the inquirers of whom we
are speaking to determine upon a settled and
organized movement for the better dis
nf sunt acon1e tr,, A. as could ha |