Theos-Talk Archives (March 2002 Message tt00489)

Dallas: "Briefly, then, for several years, in the presence of certain
mediums in America and Europe, there have been seen, often under
good test conditions, apparitions of the dead, which in every
respect seem like living human beings. They walk about, write
messages to present and absent friends, speak audibly in the
languages familiar to them in life, even though the medium may be
unacquainted with them, and are dressed in the garb they wore
when alive".

The above is a clear case of spiritualistic belief from around
1850/60 
and sprouted out of the Mesmerist movement. These ideas are as 
evidenced by Dallas's presentation indeed the basis of the "science" 
and "FACTS OF NATURE" as Dallas mostly presents it. But today this is 
called pseudo-science. And of course anybody can call it a 
religious "belief", in the sense of imaginative worldview which 
Theosophy is, that is fine, but it is not a fact of nature. (see 
Blavatsky referring to even "evil magnetisms", as a clear case of neo-
mesmerist superstition, even Mesmer himself didn't mention this as far I 
have read.

Reg. Dallas presentation reg. "the dead that walk about speak audibly 
and are dressed int he garb they wore when alive" for evidence of
this belief these have shown to be later stagings of the spiritualists.
As Blavatsky also had a doll (Called Christophorus by Damodar or 
something like that) that supposed to have personified a Mahatma 
according to Steve Stubbs who had lengthy arguments about that with 
Daniel Caldwell last spring.

The idea of "Elementals" as Blavatsky believed in (note until
recently theTS Quest publishing co. printed fraudulent "fotos" of 
elementals as "fact", comes straight from Renaissance "magic" and the 
grimoires of the 16th century. The above is a clear case of spiritualistic =
 
belief from around 1850/60 and sprouted out of the Mesmerist 
movement. These ideas are as evidenced by Dallas's presentation 
indeed the basis of the "science" and "FACTS OF NATURE" as Dallas 
mostly presents it. But today this is called pseudo-science. And of course =

anybody can call it a religious "belief", in the sense of an imaginative 
worldview as Blavatskyan Theosophy is, that is fine, but the ideas of 
glose rounds, undestructable monads 7 planes of existence with dead 
people dressed up the way they where during life and walking around 
shaking hands in seance rooms, are not "facts of nature", including
reincarnation which is a purely religious belief and not common the 
same way in all the various religious beliefs in the world.


=
Bri.


--- In theos-talk@y..., <dalval14@e...> wrote:
> Thursday, March 28, 2002
> 
> Re: Psychology and the Astral Body of Man.
> Elementaries (Part II, below)
> 
> Dear Friends:
> 
> Continuing studies in the nature of the Astral Realm and the
> Astral Body of Man, the following article by H P B will be found
> significant.
> 
> ----------------------------------
> Part I
> 
> A CASE OF OBSESSION
> 
> 
> [Extracts from an Article by H. P. Blavatsky.]
> 
> [ U L T -- H P B Articles II 486; THEOSOPHIST, May 1880 ]
> 
> THE particulars of the case of "obsession," alluded to in the
> April number of this magazine, are given in the following letter
> from a respectable English medical man who is in attendance upon
> the victim:--
> 
> "I take the liberty of addressing you in the cause of humanity,
> with the intention of exciting your sympathies and obtaining all
> the aid in your power to afford, in a case of "control." You will
> understand that the gentleman is being made a medium against his
> wish, through having attended a few séances for the purpose of
> witnessing "materialization."
> 
> Ever since, he has been more or less subject to a series of
> persecutions by the "controlling" spirit and, in spite of every
> effort of his to throw off the influence, he has been made to
> suffer most shamefully and painfully in very many ways and under
> most trying and aggravating circumstances, especially by his
> thoughts being forced into forbidden channels without external
> causes being present--the bodily functions overruled, even being
> caused to bite his tongue and cheeks severely whilst eating, &c.,
> and subjected to every species of petty annoyances which will
> serve as a means for the "control" (unknown) to sustain and
> establish the connection. The details are in their most painful
> features not such as I can write to you; but if there be any
> means known to you whereby the influence can be diverted, and it
> is thought necessary to be more particular in my description of
> this case, I will send you all the information I possess. "
> 
> 
> So little is known in India of the latest and most startling
> phase of Western mediumistic phenomena--"materialization,"--that
> a few words of explanation are needed to make this case
> understood.
> 
> Briefly, then, for several years, in the presence of certain
> mediums in America and Europe, there have been seen, often under
> good test conditions, apparitions of the dead, which in every
> respect seem like living human beings. They walk about, write
> messages to present and absent friends, speak audibly in the
> languages familiar to them in life, even though the medium may be
> unacquainted with them, and are dressed in the garb they wore
> when alive.
> 
> Many cases of fraudulent personation of the dead have been
> detected, pretended mediums have sometimes gone on for years
> deceiving the credulous, and real ones, whose psychical powers
> have been apparently proved beyond doubt, have been caught
> playing tricks in some evil hour when they have yielded to either
> the love of money or notoriety. Still, making every allowance for
> all these, there is a residuum of veritable cases of the
> materialization, or the making visible, tangible and audible of
> portrait figures of dead people.
> 
> These wonderful phenomena have been variously regarded by
> investigators.
> 
> Most Spiritualists have looked upon them as the most precious
> proofs of the soul-survival; while Theosophists, acquainted with
> the views of the ancient Theurgists, and the still more ancient
> Aryan philosophers, have viewed them as at best misleading
> deceptions of the senses, fraught with danger to the physical and
> moral natures of both medium and spectator--if the latter chances
> to be susceptible to certain psychical influences.
> 
> These students of Occultism have noticed that the mediums for
> materializations have too often been ruined in health by the
> drain upon their systems, and wrecked in morals. They have over
> and again warned the Spiritualistic public that mediumship was a
> most dangerous gift, one only to be tolerated under great
> precautions. And for this they have received much abuse and few
> thanks. Still one's duty must be done at every cost, and the case
> now before us affords a valuable text for one more bit of
> friendly counsel.
> 
> We need not stop to discuss the question whether the so-called
> materialized forms above described are or are not those of the
> deceased they look like. That may be held in reserve until the
> bottom facts of Oriental psychical science are better understood.
> Nor need we argue as to whether there has ever been an authentic
> materialization.
> 
> The London experiences of Mr. William Crookes, F.R.S., and the
> American ones of Colonel Olcott, both so widely known and of so
> convincing a character, give us a sufficient basis of fact to
> argue upon. We assume the reality of materializations, and shall
> take the instance cited by the English physician as a subject for
> diagnosis.
> 
> The patient then is described as having been "controlled" since
> attending "circles" where there were materializations, and as
> having become the bond-slave of some evil powers which force him
> to say and do painful and even disgusting things, despite his
> resistance.
> 
> 
> OBSESSION
> 
> Why is this? How can a man be compelled to so act against his
> will? What is Obsession?
> 
> Three brief questions these are, but most difficult to explain to
> an uninitiated public. The laws of Obsession can only be well
> understood by him who has sounded the depths of Indian
> philosophy.
> 
> The only clue to the secret, which the West possesses, is
> contained in that most beneficent science, Magnetism or
> Mesmerism. That does teach the existence of a vital fluid within
> and about the human being; the fact of different human
> polarities; and the possibility of one person projecting this
> fluid or force at will, to and upon another person differently
> polarized.
> 
> Baron Reichenbach's theory of Odyle or Odic force shows us the
> existence of this same fluid in the mineral and vegetable as well
> as the animal kingdoms. To complete the chain of evidence,
> Buchanan's discovery of the psychometrical faculty in man enables
> us to prove, by the help of this faculty, that a subtle influence
> is exerted by people upon the houses and even the localities they
> live in, the paper they write upon, the clothing they wear, the
> portion of the Universal Ether (the Aryan Akása) they exist
> in--and that this is a permanent influence, perceptible even at
> the most distant epochs from the time when the individual lived
> and exerted this influence. In one word, we may say that the
> discoveries of Western science corroborate most fully the hints
> thrown out by Greek sages and the more defined theories of
> certain Indian philosophers.
> 
> Indians and Buddhists believe alike that thought and deed are
> both material, that they survive, that the evil desires and the
> good ones of a man environ him in a world of his own making, that
> these desires and thoughts take on shapes that become real to him
> after death, and that Moksha [Liberation] in the one case, and
> Nirvana, in the other, cannot be attained until the disembodied
> soul has passed quite through this shadow-world of the haunting
> thoughts, and become divested of the last spot of its earthly
> taint.
> 
> The progress of Western discovery in this direction has been and
> must ever be very gradual. From the phenomena of gross to those
> of more sublimated matter, and thence on towards the mysteries of
> spirit is the hard road made necessary by the precepts of
> Aristotle. Western Science first ascertained that [ 1. ] our
> outcoming breath is charged with carbonic acid and, in excess,
> becomes fatal to human life; then, [ 2. ] that certain dangerous
> diseases are passed from person to person in the sporules thrown
> off into the air from the sick body; then, [ 3. ] that man
> projects upon every body and every thing he encounters a magnetic
> aura, peculiar to himself; and, finally, [ 4. ] the physical
> disturbance set up in the Ether in the process of
> thought-evolution is now postulated.
> 
> Another step in advance will be [ 5. ] to realize the magical
> creative power of the human mind, and the fact that [ 6. ] moral
> taint is just as transmissible as physical. The "influence" of
> bad companions will then be understood to imply a degrading
> personal magnetism, more subtle than the impressions conveyed to
> the eye or the ear by the sights and sounds of a vicious company.
> The latter may be repelled by resolutely avoiding to see or hear
> what is bad; but the former enwraps the sensitive and penetrates
> his very being if he but stop where the moral poison is floating
> in the air.
> 
> Gregory's "Animal Magnetism," Reichenbach's "Researches," and
> Denton's "Soul of Things" will make much of this plain to the
> Western inquirer, though neither of those authors traces the
> connection of his favourite branch of science with the
> parent-stock--Indian Psychology.
> 
> 
> MAGNETIC IMPRESSION
> 
> 
> Keeping the present case in view, we see a man highly susceptible
> to magnetic impressions, ignorant of the nature of the
> "materializations" and, therefore, unable to protect himself
> against bad influences, brought in contact with promiscuous
> circles where the impressionable medium has long been the
> unwitting nucleus of evil magnetisms, his system, saturated with
> the emanations of the surviving thoughts and desires of those who
> are living and those who are dead.
> 
> The reader is referred to an interesting paper by Judge Gadgil of
> Baroda (see our December number), on "Hindu Ideas about 
Communion
> with the Dead," for a plain exposition of this question of
> earth-tied souls, or Pisachas. "It is considered," says that
> writer, "that in this state, the soul, being deprived of the
> means of enjoyment of sensual pleasures through its own physical
> body, is perpetually tormented by hunger, appetite and other
> bodily desires, and can have only vicarious enjoyment by entering
> into the living physical bodies of others, or by absorbing the
> subtlest essences of libations and oblations offered for their
> own sake." [Shraddha and Pinda -- see Thst, Vol. III, p. 119-20]
> 
> What is there to surprise us in the fact that a negatively
> polarized man, a man of a susceptible temperament, being suddenly
> brought into a current of foul emanations from some vicious
> person, perhaps still living or perhaps dead, absorbs the
> insidious poison as rapidly as quicklime does moisture, until he
> is saturated with it? Thus, a susceptible body will absorb the
> virus of small-pox, or cholera, or typhus, and we need only
> recall this to draw the analogy which Occult Science affirms to
> be warranted.
> 
> Near the Earth's surface there hangs over us--to use a convenient
> simile--a steamy moral fog, composed of the undispersed
> exhalations of human vice and passion. This fog penetrates the
> sensitive to the very soul's core; his psychic self absorbs it as
> the sponge does water, or as fresh milk effluvia. It benumbs his
> moral sense, spurs his baser instincts into activity, overpowers
> his good resolutions. As the fumes of a wine-vault make the
> brain reel, or as the choke-damp stifles one's breath in a mine,
> so this heavy cloud of immoral influences carries away the
> sensitive beyond the limits of self-control, and he becomes
> "obsessed," like our English patient.
> 
> What remedy is there to suggest? Does not our very diagnosis
> indicate that? The sensitive must have his sensitiveness
> destroyed; the negative polarity must be changed to a positive;
> he must become active instead of passive. He can be helped by a
> magnetizer who understands the nature of the obsession, and who
> is morally pure and physically healthy; it must be a powerful
> magnetizer, a man of commanding will-force.
> But the fight for freedom will, after all, have to be fought by
> the patient himself. His will-power must be aroused. He must
> expel the poison from his system. Inch by inch he must win back
> the lost ground. He must realise that it is a question of life
> or death, salvation or ruin, and strive for victory, like one who
> makes a last and heroic effort to save his life. His diet must be
> of the simplest, he must neither eat animal food, nor touch any
> stimulant, nor put himself in any company where there is the
> smallest chance for unclean thoughts to be provoked. He should
> be alone as little as possible, but his companions should be care
> fully chosen. He should take exercise and be much in the open
> air; use wood-fire, instead of coals. Every indication that the
> bad influence was still working within him should be taken as a
> challenge to control his thoughts and compel them to dwell upon
> pure, elevating, spiritual things, at every hazard and with a
> determination to suffer anything rather than give way. If this
> man can have such a spirit infused into him, and his physician
> can secure the benevolent help of a strong healthy magnetizer of
> pure character, he may be saved. A case almost exactly like this
> one, except that the patient was a lady, came under our notice in
> America; the same advice as the above was given and followed,
> and the obsessing "devil" was driven out and has been kept out
> ever since.	-- H. P. Blavatsky
> 
> THEOSOPHIST, May 1880
> 
> 
> 
> ================================
> Some References:
> 
> See also:	THEOSOPHICAL GLOSSARY p. 378-9 -- "Anganta 
Yene";
> 364;
> ISIS UNVEILED I 487-8, 355,
> I U	I 276, 351-6, 363-5, 374, 459-60, 
490; II 16, 589
> INSANITY	I U II 7, 589
> LUCIFER, III, p. 131-3
> THEOSOPHICAL MOVEMENT Vol. 15, p. 55; 24 
p. 94;
> MODERN PANARION p. 60, 79-80, 146, 150 (top)
> MADAN	I U I p. 495-6
> Succubi / Incubi	H. P. Blavatsky Articles,  
Vol. II, p. 167
> INCUBI THEOSOPHICAL GLOSSARY p. 154;  
336;
> PISACHAS THEOSOPHICAL GLOSSARY 
p. 254, 364,
> MAHATMA LETTERS p. 103, 109 (suicides), 110;
> THEOSOPHY, Vol. I 425-6; II 425;
> RAJA-YOGA	pp 78-9, 82
> VIDHYADHARA	THEOSOPHICAL 
GLOSSARY . p. 364;
> H P B Articles, Vol. II p., 486, 242  
[THEOSOPHIST May
> 1880]
> 
> 
> -------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Thursday, March 28, 2002
> 
> Re: Denizens of the astral Plane: ELEMENTALS
> 
> Dear Friends:
> 
> In our studies in the nature of the astral plane and the effect
> they may have interactively on the human "astral body" let us
> review together an article written y H P B on the "Elementals,"
> 
> -----------------------------
> 
> [Note: The text below has been extracted from a letter by H P B
> . D T B]
> 
> -----------------------------
> Part II
> 
> ELEMENTARIES
> 
> By H. P. Blavatsky
> 
> From The Religio-Philosophical Journal, Nov. 17th, 1877.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I PERCEIVE that of late the ostracized subject of the Kabalistic
> "Elementaries" is beginning to appear in the orthodox
> spiritualistic papers pretty often.
> 
> No wonder; Spiritualism and its Philosophy are progressing, and
> they will progress despite the opposition of some very learned
> ignoramuses, who imagine the Cosmos rotates within the academic
> brain.
> 
> But if a new term is once admitted for discussion, the least we
> can do is to first clearly ascertain what that term means. We
> students of the Oriental Philosophy count it a clear gain that
> spiritualistic journals on both sides of the Atlantic are
> beginning to discuss the subject of sub-human and earth-bound
> beings, even though they ridicule the idea. But do those who
> ridicule know what they are talking about, having never studied
> the Kabalistic writers?
> 
> It is evident to me that they are confounding the
> "Elementaries"-disembodied, vicious, and earth-bound, yet human
> Spirits-with the "Elementals," or Nature Spirits.
> 
> With your permission, then, I will answer an article by Dr.
> Woldrich which appeared in your Journal of the 27th inst., and to
> which the author gives the title of "Elementaries." I freely
> admit that, owing to my imperfect knowledge of English at the
> time I first wrote upon the Elementaries, I may have myself
> contributed to the present confusion, and thus brought upon my
> doomed head the wrath of Spiritualists, mediums, and their
> "guides" into the bargain. But now I will attempt to make my
> meaning clear.
> 
> Éliphas Lévi applies the term " Elementary" equally to
> earth-bound human Spirits and to the creatures of the elements.
> This carelessness on his part is due to the fact that as the
> human Elementaries are considered by the Kabalists as having
> irretrievably lost every chance of immortality, they therefore,
> after a certain period of time, become no better than the
> "Elementals," who never had any souls at all. To disentangle the
> subject, I have, in my Isis Unveiled, shown that the former
> should, alone, be called "Elementaries" and the latter
> "Elementals" (vol. i. p. xxx. "Before the Veil").
> 
> Dr. Woldrich, in imitation of Herbert Spencer, attempts to
> explain the existence of a popular belief in Nature Spirits,
> demons and mythological deities, as the effect of an imagination
> untutored by Science, and wrought upon by misunderstood natural
> phenomena. He attributes the legendary Sylphs, Undines,
> Salamanders and Gnomes-four great families, which include
> numberless sub-divisions-to mere fancy; going however to the
> extreme of affirming that by long practice one can acquire.
> 
> That power which disembodied spirits have of materializing
> apparitions by the will.
> Granted that "disembodied Spirits" have sometimes that power; but
> if disembodied why not embodied Spirits also, i.e., a yet living
> person who has become an Adept in Occultism through study?
> According to Dr. Woldrich's theory, an embodied Spirit or
> Magician can create only subjectively, or to quote his words:
> 
> "He is in the habit of summoning, that is, bringing up to his
> imagination, his familiar spirits, which, having responded to his
> will, he considers as real existences."
> 
> I will not stop to enquire for the proofs of this assertion, for
> it would only lead to an endless discussion.
> 
> If many thousands of Spiritualists in Europe and America have
> seen materialized objective forms which assure them they were the
> Spirits of once living persons, millions of Eastern people
> throughout the past ages have seen the Hierophants of the
> Temples, and even now see them in India, without being in the
> least mediums, also evoking objective and tangible forms, which
> display no pretensions to being the souls of disembodied men. But
> I will only remark that, though subjective and invisible to
> others, as Dr. Woldrich tells us, these forms are palpable, hence
> objective to the clairvoyant; no scientist has yet mastered the
> mysteries of even the physical sciences sufficiently to enable
> him to contradict, with anything like plausible or
> incontrovertible proofs, the assumption that because the
> clairvoyant sees a form remaining subjective to others, this form
> is nevertheless neither a "hallucination" nor a fiction of the
> imagination.
> 
> Were the persons present endowed with the same clairvoyant
> faculty, they would every one of them see this creature of
> "hallucination" as well; hence there would be sufficient proof
> that it had an objective existence.
> 
> And this is how the experiments are conducted in certain
> psychological training schools, as I call such establishments in
> the East. One clairvoyant is never trusted. The person may be
> honest, truthful, and have the greatest desire to learn only that
> which is real, and yet mix the truth unconsciously and accept an
> Elemental for a disembodied Spirit, and vice versâ.
> 
> For instance, what guarantee can Dr. Woldrich give us that "Hoki"
> and "Thalla," the guides of Miss May Shaw, were not simply
> creatures produced by the power of the imagination? This
> gentleman may have the word of his clairvoyant for this; he may
> implicitly and very deservedly trust her honesty when in her
> normal state; but the fact alone that a medium is a passive and
> docile instrument in the hands of some invisible and mysterious
> powers, ought to make her irresponsible in the eyes of every
> serious investigator.
> 
> It is the Spirit, or these invisible powers, he has to test, not
> the clairvoyant; and what proof has he of their trustworthiness
> that he should think himself warranted in coming out as the
> opponent of a Philosophy based on thousands of years of practical
> experience, the iconoclast of experiments performed by whole
> generations of learned Egyptians, Hierophants, Gurus, Brâhmans,
> Adepts of the Sanctuaries, and a whole host of more or less
> learned Kabalists, who were all trained Seers?
> 
> Such an accusation, moreover, is dangerous ground for the
> Spiritualists themselves. Admit once that a Magician creates his
> forms only in fancy, and as a result of hallucination, and what
> becomes of all the guides, spirit friends and the tutti quanti
> from the sweet "Summer Land," crowding around the trance mediums
> and Seers? Why these would-be disembodied entities are to be
> considered more identified with humanity than the Elementals, or
> as Dr. Woldrich terms them, "Elementaries," of the Magician, is
> something which would scarcely bear investigation.
> 
> From the standpoint of certain Buddhist Schools, your
> correspondent may be right. Their Philosophy teaches that even
> our visible Universe assumed an objective form as a result of the
> fancy followed by the volition or the will of the Unknown and
> Supreme Adept, differing, however, from Christian theology,
> inasmuch as they teach that instead of calling out our Universe
> from nothingness, He had to exercise His will upon preëxisting
> Matter, eternal and indestructible as to invisible Substance,
> though temporary and ever-changing as to forms.
> 
> Some higher and still more subtle metaphysical Schools of Nepaul
> even go so far as to affirm-on very reasonable grounds, too-that
> this preexisting and self-existent Substance or Matter
> (Svabhâvat) is itself without any other creator or ruler; when in
> the state of activity it is Pravritti, a universal creating
> principle; when latent and passive they call this force
> Nirvritti.
> 
> As for something eternal and infinite, for that which had neither
> beginning nor end there can be neither past nor future, but
> everything that was and will be, IS; therefore there never was an
> action or even thought, however simple, that is not impressed in
> imperishable records on this Substance, called by the Buddhists
> Svabhâvat, by the Kabalists Astral Light.
> 
> As in a faithful mirror, this Light reflects every image, and no
> human imagination could see anything outside that which exists
> impressed somewhere on the eternal Substance. To imagine that a
> human brain can conceive of anything that was never conceived of
> before by the "universal brain," is a fallacy and a conceited
> presumption. At best, the former can catch now and then stray
> glimpses of the "Eternal Thought" after this has assumed some
> objective form, either in the world of the invisible, or visible,
> Universe.
> 
> Hence the unanimous testimony of trained Seers goes to prove that
> there are such creatures as the Elementals; and that though the
> Elementaries have been at some time human Spirits, they, having
> lost every connection with the purer immortal world, must be
> recognized by some special term which would draw a distinct line
> of demarcation between them and the true and genuine disembodied
> souls, which have henceforth to remain immortal. To the Kabalists
> and the Adepts, especially in India, the difference between the
> two is all-important, and their tutored minds will never allow
> them to mistake the one for the other; to the untutored medium
> they are all one.
> 
> Spiritualists have never accepted the suggestion and sound advice
> of certain of their seers and mediums. They have regarded Dr.
> Peebles' "Gadarenes" with indifference; they have shrugged their
> shoulders at the "Rosicrucian" fantasies of P. B. Randolph, and
> his Ravalette has made none of them the wiser; they have frowned
> and grumbled at A. Jackson Davis' "Diakka"; and finally, lifting
> high the banner, have declared a murderous war of extermination
> against the Theosophists and Kabalists. What are now the results?
> 
> FRAUDS
> 
> A series of exposures of fraudulent mediums that have brought
> mortification to their endorsers and dishonour upon the cause;
> identification by genuine seers and mediums of pretended
> Spirit-forms that were afterwards found to be mere personations
> by lying cheats, go to prove that in such instances at least,
> outside of clear cases of confederacy, the identifications were
> due to illusion on the part of the said seers; spirit-babes
> discovered to be battered masks and bundles of rags; obsessed
> mediums driven by their guides to drunkenness and immortality of
> conduct; the practices of free-love endorsed and even prompted by
> alleged immortal Spirits; sensitive believers forced to the
> commission of murder, suicide, forgery, embezzlement and other
> crimes; the over-credulous led to waste their substance in
> foolish investments and the search after hidden treasures;
> mediums fostering ruinous speculations in stocks; free-loveites
> parted from their wives in search of other female affinities;
> two continents flooded with the vilest slanders, spoken and
> sometimes printed by mediums against other mediums; incubi and
> succubi entertained as returning angel-husbands or wives;
> mountebanks and jugglers protected by scientists and the clergy,
> and gathering large audiences to witness imitations of the
> phenomena of cabinets, the reality of which genuine mediums
> themselves -- and Spirits are powerless to vindicate by giving
> the necessary test conditions; séances still held in Stygian
> darkness, where even genuine phenomena can readily be mistaken
> for the false, and false for the real; mediums left helpless by
> their angel guides, tried, convicted, and sent to prison, and no
> attempt made to save them from their fate by those who, if they
> are Spirits having the power of controlling mortal affairs, ought
> to have enlisted the sympathy of the heavenly hosts on behalf of
> their mediums in the face of such crying injustice; other
> faithful spiritualistic lecturers and mediums broken down in
> health and left unsupported by those calling themselves their
> patrons and protectors-such are some of the features of the
> present situation; the black spots of what ought to become the
> grandest and noblest of all religious Philosophies freely thrown
> by the unbelievers and Materialists into the teeth of every
> Spiritualist. No intelligent person of the latter class need go
> outside of his own personal experience to find examples like the
> above. Spiritualism has not progressed and is not progressing
> and will not progress, until its facts are viewed in the light of
> the Oriental Philosophy.
> 
> Thus, Mr. Editor, your esteemed correspondent, Dr. Woldrich, may
> be found guilty of an erroneous proposition. In the concluding
> sentence of his article he says:
> 
> "I know not whether I have succeeded in proving the Elementary a
> myth, but at least I hope that I have thrown some more light upon
> the subject to some of the readers of the journal."
> 
> To this I would answer: (1) He has not proved at all the
> "Elementary a myth," since the Elementaries are, with a few
> exceptions, the earth-bound guides and Spirits in which he
> believes, together with every other Spiritualist. (2) Instead
> of throwing light upon the subject, the Doctor has but darkened
> it the more. (3) Such explanations and careless exposures do
> the greatest harm to the future of Spiritualism, and greatly
> serve to retard its progress by teaching its adherents that they
> have nothing more to learn.
> 
> Sincerely hoping that I have not trespassed too much on the
> columns of your esteemed journal, allow me to sign myself, dear
> sir,
> 
> Yours respectfully,
> 
> H. P. BLAVATSKY,
> Corresponding Secretary of the Theosophical Society.
> New York.
> 
> [Reprinted in: MODERN PANARION p. 146, 152.]
> 
> ============================
> 
> Offered by:
> 
> Dallas
> 
> 
> 
> Dallas