The Story of Anna Kingsford and Edward Maitland and of the new Gospel of Interpretation Part 12

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

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

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

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

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

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

FOOTNOTES:

[49] The occasion of the receipt by A.K. and E.M. of the above was one of peculiar interest. It was given in reference to a visit from the late Laurence Oliphant, an account of which will be found in "The Life of A.K." It will suffice to say here that, having heard of their work, Oliphant came to them as an emissary from his chief in America, Thomas Lake Harris, to summon them to place themselves and all that they were and had, at his disposal as the king and Christ of the new dispensation.

The above instruction was given to them in direct reference to this incident. It was followed by others fully exposing the delusive source and nature of the doctrine and practice of Laurence Oliphant and Thomas Lake Harris. The above Exhortation of Hermes to his Neophytes is now given in full in this book for the first time. It is taken from "The Life of A.K." Vol. I. pp. 282-283. S.H.H.

[50] See note p. 7

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

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

p. 318.) S.H.H.

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

[54] The Hymn to the Planet-G.o.d has been referred to on p. 79. It is given in full in the P.W. pp. 341-349: a portion of it concerning the pa.s.sage of the Soul, and concerning the Mystic Exodus, are given on pp.

169-173 post. The method of the recovery by A.K. of this most important Hymn "was such as to const.i.tute it a proof positive of the great doctrine set forth in it, the doctrine of Reincarnation; for it was as one of a band of initiates, making solemn procession through the aisles of a vast Egyptian temple, chanting it in chorus, that 'Mary,' being asleep, recollected it." (Life A.K. Vol. I. p. 456.) S.H.H.

[55] That is, the "strained conditions" under which their a.s.sociation was then maintained and their work carried on. (Life A.K. Vol. I. p.

374.) S.H.H.

[56] See p. 130.

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

376-377.) S.H.H.

[58] Some of A.K.'s illuminations have thus been lost to the world.

(Life A.K. Vol. I. p. 374.) S.H.H.

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

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

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

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

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

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

285-385.)

CHAPTER V.

THE RECAPITULATION.

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

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

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

In the course of the following day, "Mary"--who knew nothing either of my need or of my adjuration of the preceding night, and could not of herself have helped me--found herself under an access of exaltation of faculty which she described as resembling what might be produced by a draught of spiritual champagne. For she felt herself at her very best, having all her knowledge at her finger-ends. The expression recurred to my mind some time afterwards on our receiving an explanation of the "New Wine of Dionysos" in the ancient mysteries. In this state she went down to the schools, where an examination in her subjects was being held, in order to see how the candidates comported themselves, and to compare them with herself; for it was an oral examination. From this she returned home in high delight, declaring that she could have answered every question asked, and far better than any of the students had done.

I hoped that her state might be an indication of the renewal of her illuminations. But the events of the evening put all thoughts in this direction entirely out of my mind. For, as if poisoned by the atmosphere of the schools, she was seized with an attack of sickness so intense and prolonged as seriously to endanger her life through the exhaustion induced. And it was a late hour--past midnight--before she could be left alone.

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

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

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

"It is, then, pretty well established and accepted of most authors, that the legend of Adam and Eve, and of the miraculous tree and the fruit which was the occasion of death, is, like the story of Eros and Psyche, and so many others of all religions, a parable with a hidden, that is, with a mystic meaning. But so also is the legend which follows concerning the sons of these mystical parents, the story of Cain and Abel his brother, the story of the Flood, of the Ark, of the saving of the clean and unclean beasts, of the rainbow, of the twelve sons of Jacob, and, not stopping there, of the whole relation concerning the flight out of Egypt. For it is not to be supposed that the two sacrifices offered to G.o.d by the sons of Adam, were real sacrifices, any more than it is to be supposed that the apple which caused the doom of mankind, was a real apple. It ought to be known, indeed, for the right understanding of the mystical books, that in their esoteric sense they deal, not with material things, but with spiritual realities; and that as Adam is not a man, nor Eve a woman, nor the tree a plant in its true signification, so also are not the beasts named in the same books real beasts, but that the mystic intention of them is implied.

When, therefore, it is written that Abel took of the firstlings of his flock to offer unto the Lord, it is signified that he offered that which a lamb implies, and which is the holiest and highest of spiritual gifts. Nor is Abel himself a real person, but the type and spiritual presentation of the race of the prophets; of whom, also, Moses was a member, together with the Patriarchs. Were the prophets, then, shedders of blood? G.o.d forbid; they dwelt not with things material, but with spiritual significations. Their lambs without spot, their white doves, their goats, their rams, and other sacred creatures, are so many signs and symbols of the various graces and gifts which a mystic people should offer to Heaven.

Without such sacrifices is no remission of sin. But when the mystic sense was lost, then carnage followed, the prophets ceased out of the land, and the priests bore rule over the people. Then, when again the voice of the prophets arose, they were constrained to speak plainly, and declared in a tongue foreign to their method, that the sacrifices of G.o.d are not the flesh of bulls or the blood of goats, but holy vows and sacred thanksgivings, their mystical counterparts. As G.o.d is a spirit, so also are His sacrifices spiritual. What folly, what ignorance, to offer material flesh and drink to pure power and essential being! Surely in vain have the prophets spoken, and in vain have the Christs been manifested!

"Why will you have Adam to be spirit, and Eve matter, since the mystic books deal only with spiritual ent.i.ties? The tempter himself even is not matter, but that which gives matter the precedence.

Adam is, rather, intellectual force: he is of earth. Eve is the moral conscience: she is the mother of the living. Intellect, then, is the male, and Intuition the female principle. And the sons of Intuition, herself fallen, shall at last recover Truth, and redeem all things. By her fault, indeed, is the moral conscience of humanity made subject to the intellectual force, and thereby all manner of evil and confusion abounds, since her desire is unto him, and he rules over her until now. But the end foretold by the seer is not far off. Then shall the Woman be exalted, clothed with the Sun, and carried to the throne of G.o.d. And her sons shall make war with the dragon, and have victory over him. Intuition, therefore, pure and a virgin, shall be the mother and redemptress of her fallen sons, whom she bore under bondage to her husband the intellectual force."

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

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

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

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

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

"They also are idolaters who understand the things of sense where the things of the spirit are alone implied, and who conceal the true features of the G.o.ds with material and spurious presentations.

Idolatry is materialism, the common and original sin of men, which replaces spirit by appearance, substance by illusion, and leads both the moral and intellectual being into error, so that they subst.i.tute the nether for the upper, and the depth for the height.

It is that false fruit which attracts the outer senses, the bait of the serpent in the beginning of the world. Until the mystic man and woman had eaten of this fruit, they knew only the things of the spirit, and found them suffice. But after their fall, they began to apprehend matter also, and gave it the preference, making themselves idolaters. And their sin, and the taint begotten of that false fruit, have corrupted the blood of the whole race of men, from which corruption the sons of G.o.d would have redeemed them."

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