AE in the Irish Theosophist Part 22

I am minded to put down some intuitions about brotherhood and trust in persons. A witty friend writes, "Now that I have made up my mind, I intend looking at the evidence." A position like that is not so absurd as at first it seems. It is folly only to those who regard reason alone and deny the value of a deep-seated intuition. The intuitive trust which so many members of the T.S. have in William Q. Judge, to my mind shows that he is a real teacher. In their deepest being they know him as such, and what is knowledge there becomes the intuition of waking hours. When a clamour of many voices arises making accusations, pointing to time, place and circ.u.mstance; to things which we cannot personally investigate, it is only the spirit within us can speak and decide. Others with more knowledge may give answering circ.u.mstances of time, place and act; but, with or without these, I back up my intuition with the reason--where the light breaks through, there the soul is pure.

Says a brother truly:

"The list of his works is endless, monumental; it shows us an untiring soul, an immense and indomitable will, a total ignoring of himself for the benefit of his fellow-members. This is not the conduct of the charlatan, not of the self-seeker. It is that of one of those brave and long-tried souls who have fought their way down through the vistas of time so that they might have strength to battle now for those who may be weaker."

Others may have been more eloquent and learned, but who has been so wise? Others may have written more beautifully, but who with such intimations of the Secret Spirit breathing within? Others have explained intellectually tattvas, principles and what not, but who like him has touched the heart of a hidden n.o.bility? Has he not done it over and over again, as here?

"Do what you find to do. Desire ardently to do it, and even when you shall not have succeeded in carrying out anything but some small duties, some words of warning, your strong desire will strike like Vulcan upon some other hearts in the world, and suddenly you will find that done which you had longed to be the doer of. Then rejoice that another has been so fortunate as to make such a meritorious Karma."

Or he speaks as a hero:

"To fail would be nothing, but to stop working for Humanity and Brotherhood would be awful."

Or as one who loves and justifies it to the end:

"We are not Karma, we are not the law, and it is a species of that hypocrisy so deeply condemned by it for us to condemn any man.

That the law lets a man live is proof that he is not yet judged by that higher power."

To know of these laws is to be them to some extent. "What a man thinks, that he is, that is the old secret." The temple of Spirit is inviolate. It is not grasped by speech or by action. "Whom the Spirit chooses, by him it is gained. The Self chooses his body as its own." When the personal tumult is silence, then arises the meditation of the Wise within. Whoever speaks out of that life has earned the right to be there. No cunning can stimulate its accents. No hypocrisy can voice its wisdom. Whose mind gives out light--it is the haunt of the G.o.ds. Does this seem to slight a guarantee for sincerity, for trust reposed? I know of none weightier.

Look back in memory; of the martyrdom of opposing pa.s.sions, out of the last anguish came forth the light. It was no cheap accomplishment.

If some one meets us and speaks knowing of that law, we say inwardly, "I know you have suffered, brother!" But here is one with a larger wisdom than ours. Here is one whose words today have the same clear ring. "The world knows him not." His own disciples hardly know him: he has fallen like Lucifer. But I would take such teaching as he gives from Lucifer himself, and say, "His old divinity remains with him still."

"After all you may be mistaken," someone says. "The feet of no one are set infallibly on the path." It may be so. Let us take that alternative. Can we reject him or any other as comrades while they offer? Never. Were we not taught to show to those on whom came the reaction from fierce effort, not cold faces, but the face of friendship, waiting for the wave of sure return? If this was a right att.i.tude for us in our lesser groups, it is then right for the whole body to adopt. The Theosophical Society as a whole should not have less than the generous spirit of its units. It must exercise the same brotherly spirit alike to those of good or evil fame. Alike on the just and the unjust shines the Light of It, the Father-Spirit. Deep down in our hearts have we not all longed, longed, for that divine love which rejects none? You who think he has erred, it is yours to give it now. There is an occult law that all things return to their source, their cycles accomplished. The forces we expend in love and anger come back again to us thrilled with the thought which accepted or rejected them. I tell you, if worse things were true of him than what are said, if we did our duty simply, giving back in grat.i.tude and fearlessness the help we had received from him, his own past would overcome the darkness of the moment, would strengthen and bear him on to the light.

"But," some push it further; "it is not of ourselves, but of this Society and its good name, we think. How can it accomplish its high mission in the world if we seem to ignore in our ranks the presence of the insincere person or fraud?"

I wish, my brothers, we could get rid of these old fears. Show, form, appearance and seeming, what force have they? A faulty face matters nothing. The deep inner att.i.tude alone has power. The world's opinion implicates none of us with the Law. Our action many precipitate Karma, may inconvenience us for an hour; but the end of life is not comfort but celestial being; it is not in the good voice of the world today we can have any hope: its evil voice may seem to break us for a little; but love, faith and grat.i.tude shall write our history in flame on the shadowy aura of the world, and the Watchers shall record it. We can lose nothing; the Society can lose nothing. Our only right is in the action, and half the sweetness of life consists in loving much.

While I wrote, I thought I felt for a moment the true spirit of this pioneer body we belong to. Like a diver too long under seas, emerging I inhaled the purer air and saw the yellow sunlight. To think of it! what freedom! what freshness! to sail away from old report and fear and custom, the daring of the adventurer in our hearts, having a reliance only upon the laws of life to justify and sustain us.

--February 1895

The Legends of Ancient Eire

A Reverend and learned professor in Trinity College, Dublin, a cynic and a humorist, is reported once to have wondered "why the old Irish, having a good religion of their own, did not stick to it?"

Living in the "Celtic twilight," and striving to pierce backward into the dawn, reading romance, tradition and history, I have endeavoured to solve something of the mystery of the vast "Celtic phantasmagoria," I can but echoe the professor. In these legends, prodical of enchantment, where G.o.ds, heroes and bright supernatural beings mingle, are at league or war together, I have found not misty but clear traces of that old wisdom-religion once universal. There are indeed no ancient Irish Scriptures I am aware of, but they were not needed. To those who read in the Book of Life, philosophy and scripture are but as blinds over the spiritual vision. But we today-- lost children of the stars--but painfully and indirectly catch glimpses of the bright spheres once our habitations, where we freely came and went. So I will try to tell over again some of these old stories in the light of philosophy spoken later. What was this old wisdom-religion? It was the belief that life is one; that nature is not dead but living; the surface but a veil tremulous with light--lifting that veil hero and sage of old time went outwards into the vast and looked on the original. All that they beheld they once were, and it was again their heritage, for in essence they were one with it--children of Deity. The One gave birth to the many, imagining within itself the heaven of heavens, and the heavens, and spheres more shadowy and dim, growing distant from the light. Through these the Rays ran outward, falling down through many a starry dynasty to dwell in clay. Yet--once G.o.d or Angel-- that past remains, and the Ray, returning on itself, may rea.s.sume its old vesture, remains, entering as a G.o.d into the Ancestral Self.

Every real scripture and every ancient myth, to be understood truly, must be understood in this light. G.o.d, the angelic hierarchies, the powers divine and infernal, are but names for the mightier Adam in whose image man was made and who is the forgotten Self in humanity.

Mystic symbolism is the same the world over, and applying it to the old Celtic romances, phantasy and faeryland are transformed into history and we are reading about the ancient Irish Adepts.

Ireland was known long ago as the Sacred Island. The G.o.ds lived there: for the Tuatha De Dannans who settled in Eire after conquering the gigantic races of Firbolgs and Fomorians (Atlanteans) were called G.o.ds, differing in this respect from the G.o.ds of ancient Greece and India, that they were men who had made themselves G.o.ds by magical or Druidical power. They were preeminently magi become immortal by strength of will and knowledge. Superhuman in power and beauty, they raised themselves above nature; they played with the elements; they moved with ease in the air. We read of one Angus Oge, the master magician of all, sailing invisibly "on the wings of the cool east wind"; the palace of that Angus remains to this day at New Grange, wrought over with symbols of the Astral Fire and the great Serpentine Power. The De Dannans lived in the heart of mountains (crypts for initiation), and today the peasant sometimes sees the enchanted glow from the green hills he believes they still inhabit.

Perhaps he believes not foolishly, for, once truly occult, a place is preserved from pollution until the cycle returns, bringing back with it the ancient G.o.ds again.

The cycles of the G.o.ds is followed in Irish tradition by the cycle of the heroes. The G.o.ds still mingled with them and presumably taught them, for many of these heroes are Druids. Fin, the hero of a hundred legends, Cuchullin, Dairmud, Oisin and others are wielders of magical powers. One of the most beautiful of these stories tells of Oisin in Tir-na-noge. Oisin with his companions journeys along by the water's edge. He is singled out by Niam, daughter of Mannanan, king of Tir-na-noge, the land of the G.o.ds.

She comes on a white horse across the seas, and mounting with her Oisin travels across the ocean; after warring with a giant Fomor he pa.s.ses into Tir-na-noge, where for a hundred years he lives with Niam and has all that heart could wish for. But desire for Eire arises within him and returning, he falls off the magic steed, and becomes an old man weary with years. It is purely occult.

Oisin, Niam, her white steed, Tir-na-noge, the waters they pa.s.s over, are but names which define a little our forgotten being. Within Oisin, the magician, kindles the Ray, the hidden Beauty. Let us call it by what name we will, so that we spare the terms of academic mysticism or psychology. It is the Golden Bird of the Upanishads; the Light that lighteth every man; it is that which the old Hermetists knew as the Fair or the Beautiful--for Niam means beauty; it is the Presence, and when it is upon a man every other tie breaks; he goes alone with It, he is a dying regret, an ever-increasing joy.

And so with Oisin, whose weeping companions behold him no more.

He mounts the white horse with Niam. It is the same as the white horse of the Apocalypse, whereon one sits called Faithful and True.

It is the power on which the Spirit rides. Who is there, thinking, has felt freed for a moment from his prison-house, and looking forth has been blinded by the foam of great seas, or has felt his imagination grow kingly in contemplation--he has known its impelling power; the white horse is impatient of restraint.

As they pa.s.s over the waters "they saw many wonderful things on their journey--islands and cities, lime-white mansions, bright greenans and lofty palaces." It is the mirror of heaven and earth, the astral light, in whose gla.s.s a myriad illusions arise and fleet before the mystic adventures. Haunt of a false beauty--or rather a veil hung dazzling before the true beauty, only the odour or incense of her breath is blown through these alluring forms. The transition from this to a subtler sphere is indicated. A hornless deer, chased by a white hound with red ears, and a maiden tossing a golden lure, vanishes for ever before a phantom lover. The poet whose imagination has renewed for us the legend has caught the true significance of these hurrying forms:

"The immortal desire of immortals we saw in their eyes and sighed."

"Do not heed these forms!" cried Niam. Compare with this from another source: "Flee from the Hall of Learning, it is dangerous in its perfidious beauty. .... Beware, lest dazzled by illusive radiance thy Soul should linger and be caught in its deceptive light.

.... It shines from the jewel of the Great Ensnarer." There are centres in man corresponding to these appearances. They give vision and entrance into a red and dreadful world, where unappeasable desire smites the soul--a dangerous clairvoyence. But in the sphere beyond their power has to be conquered, and here Oisin wars with the giant Fomor. De Dannan and Romorian pa.s.sed from Eire wrestle still in the invisible world, say the legends. We, too-- would-be mystics--are met on the threshold of diviner spheres by terrible forms embodying the sins of a living past when we misused our spiritual powers in old Atlantean days. These forms must be conquered and so Oisin battles with Fomor and releases the power-- a princess in the story. This fight with the demon must be fought by everyone who would enter the land of the G.o.ds, whether in conscious occult adventure or half-consciously after death, when the strange alchemist Nature separates the subtile from the gross in the soul in this region which Oisin pa.s.ses through. Tir-na-noge, the land of Niam, is that region the soul lives in when its grosser energies and desires have been subdued, dominated and brought under the control of light; where the Ray of Beauty kindles and illuminates every form which the imagination conceives, and where every form tends to its archetype. It is a real region which has been approached and described by the poets and sages who, at all times, have endeavoured to express something of the higher realities. It is not distant, but exists in earth as the soul within the body, and may be perceived through and along with the surface forms. In a sense it corresponds with the Tibetan Devachan, and in this region Oisin lives for a hundred years, until desire to see Eire once more arises and he parts from Niam. Nor the details of his return, the drowsy land in which he slumbers; how he fell off the white horse and became an old man with the weariness of his hundreds of years upon him--I must refer the reader to the legends. He will read not alone of Oisin, but of many an old hero, who, hailed by the faery (divine) voice, went away to live in the heart of green hills (to be initiated) or to these strange worlds.

Dear children of Eire, not alone to the past but to today belong such destinies. For if we will we can enter the enchanted land.

The Golden Age is all about us, and heroic forms and imperishable love. In that mystic light rolled round our hills and valleys hang deed and memories which yet live and inspire. The G.o.ds have not deserted us. Hearing our call they will return. A new cycle is dawning and the sweetness of the morning twilight is in the air.

We can breathe it if we will but awaken from our slumber.

II.

In the recently published Story of Early Gaelic Literature, attention is directed to the curious eastern and pantheistic character of some archaic verse. Critics are for ever trying to show how some one particular antique race was the first begetter of religion and mystic symbolism. Perplexed by the ident.i.ty between the myths and traditions of different countries, they look now here, now there, for the original.

But it was not in any land but out of the Christ-Soul of the universe that true wisdom at all times was begotten. Some ignorant peasant, some Jacob Boehme, is pure and aspires, and lo! the G.o.d stirs within him and he knows the things that were taught in elder days and by unknown people. Our own land, long ago, had its Initiates in whom the eye of the seer was open. This eye, concealed in the hollow of the brain, is the straight gate and the narrow way through which alone the mortal may pa.s.s and behold the immortal. It is now closed in most men. Materialism, sensuality and dogmatic belief have so taken the crown and sceptre from their souls that they enter the golden world no more knowingly--they are outcast of Eden. But the Tuatha De Dannans were more than seers or visionaries. They were magicians--G.o.d and man in one. Not alone their thought went out into the vast, but the Power went along with it. This mystic Power is called the Serpentine Fire. It is spiritual, electric, creative. It develops spirally in the ascetic, mounting from centre to centre, from the navel to the heart;* [* "He that believeth on me, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living waters. This spake he of the Spirit."--John, vii, 38] from thence it rises to the head. He is then no more a man but a G.o.d; his vision embraces infinitude.

The action of this Power was symbolized in many ways, notably by the pa.s.sage of the sun through the zodiacal signs * (centres in the psychic body) [* "The twelve signs of the Zodiac are hidden in his body."---Secret Doctrine, II, 619] A stone serpent was found a little while ago in Ireland marked with twelve divisions.

The archaic verses alluded to have the same meaning:

"I am the point of the lance of battle. [The spinal cord, the Sushumna nadi of Indian Psychology.]

I am the G.o.d who creates in the head of man the fire of the thought.

Who is it throws light into the meeting on the mountain? [The meeting of the mortal and the immortal on Mount Meru, the pineal gland.]

Who announces the ages of the moon? [The activity of the inner astral man.]

Who teaches the place where courses the sun?" [Spirit.]

The Serpentine Power is the couch of the sun, the casket of spirit.

Hence the Druids or Magi who had mastered this power were called Serpents. Though St. Patrick is said to have driven the serpents out of Ireland, traces still remain of the serpent wisdom. Lest the interpretation given should seem arbitrary I will trace further explicit references to the third eye. Diarmuid, the hero and darling of so many story-tellers, whose flight with Grania forms one of the most mystic episodes in Celtic romance, is described as having a spot in the centre of his forehead which fascinated whoever gazed. He is called the "Son of the Monarch of Light."

He is the Initiate, the twice-born. This divine parentage has the sense in which the words were spoken. "Marvel not that I said unto thee, ye must be born again." In the same sense a Druid is described as "full of his G.o.d." From the mystic Father descends the Ray, the Child of Light. It is born in man as mind, not reasoning: earthly not sensual, but as the heaven-aspiring, thinking mind. In itself it is of the nature of fire. The man who knows it becomes filled with light, aye, he moves about in light within himself.

The following description of a giant, taken from the story of Diarmuid, refers to still another aspect of our occult nature.

"He has, but one eye only in the fair middle of his black forehead.

.... He is, moreover, so skilled in magic that fire could not burn him, water could not drown him, and weapons would not wound him.

...... He is fated not to die until there be struck upon him three blows of the iron club he has. He sleeps in the top of that Quicken tree by night, and he remains at its foot by day to watch it. ....

The berries of the tree have the virtues of the trees of faeryland."