Rosicrucianism was not a sect, is was but one of many branches of the same tree. Rosicrucians no longer exist, the last of that fraternity having departed in the person of Cagliostro. Occultism is a double-edged weapon for one who is unprepared to devote his whole life to it. The theory of it, unaided by serious practice, will always remain a foolish and ignorant speculation. He who rejects the immortality of man’s soul cannot perceive the unity of homogeneity of his Creator through the plurality of heterogeneity, and he therefore condemns himself to live hand-by-hand with death in the “vale of tears.” Any attempt to learn about Occultism by book study alone will always prove insufficient — even to the analytical mind trained to extract the quintessence of truth scattered throughout myriads of contradictory statements — unless supported by practice and experience. As primitive Christianity split into numerous sects, so the science of Occultism gave birth to a variety of doctrines and brotherhoods. For example, the Egyptian Ophites, became the Christian Gnostics, shooting forth the Basilideans of the second century. And the original Rosicrucians, created the Paracelsists or Fire-Philosophers, the European Alchemists, and other branches of their sect. The Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross was not founded until the middle of the thirteenth century, by Christian Rosenkreuz — a reformed sorcerer. The Rosicrucians gave birth to the early Theosophists, at whose head was Paracelsus, and to the Alchemists, one of the most celebrated of whom was Thomas Vaughan who wrote the most practical things on Occultism, under the name of Eugenius Philalethes. The Welsh Alchemist was definitely “made before he became.” Unlike the European Rosicrucians who, in order “to become and not be made,” have struggled alone, violently robbing Nature of her secrets, the Oriental “Rosicrucians” in the serene beatitude of their divine knowledge, are ever ready to help the earnest student struggling “to become” with practical knowledge, which dissipates like a heavenly breeze the darkest clouds of sceptical doubt. Whereas the lofty principles and doctrines of Christ and Buddha were calculated to embrace the whole of humanity, Confucius confined his attention solely to his own countrymen without troubling his head about the rest of mankind. Intensely Chinese in patriotism and views, his philosophical doctrines are as much devoid of the purely poetic element, which characterizes the teachings of Christ and Buddha, as the religious tendencies of his people lack in that spiritual exaltation which we find, for instance, in India. Confucius did not have the depth of feeling and spiritual striving of his contemporary, Lao-tzu. The heavy, childish, cold, sensual nature of the Chinese explains the peculiarities of their history. Marginal are the differences between the Rosicrucian and the Oriental Kabbalah. American Spiritualism, which has proved such a sore in the side of the materialists, will soon become a science of mathematical certitude, instead of being regarded only as the crazy delusion of epileptic monomaniacs. The Zohar is an inexhaustible mine of hidden wisdom and mystery for all subsequent Kabbalists. All recent Kabbalahs are copies of the God’s Splendour. While the Oriental Kabbalah remained in its pure primitive shape, the Mosaic or Jewish one is full of drawbacks, and with the keys to many secrets purposely misinterpreted. If the primitive Rosicrucians learned their first lessons of wisdom from Oriental Masters, that was not so with their direct descendants, the Paracelsists: the Kabbalah of the latter Illuminati degenerated into the twin sister of the Jewish. The custodians of the real Kabbalah of primitive humanity are certain Oriental philosophers. Their location will not be revealed until the day when humanity shall awake from its spiritual lethargy, and open its blind eyes to the dazzling rays of Truth. Thus the light of Truth will finally dissipate the unhealthy mists of the battalions of religious sects which disgrace our times. They will warm up and recall into new life the millions of wretched souls, who shiver and are half frozen under the icy hand of deadly scepticism. Occultism without practice will ever be like the statue of Pygmalion that no one can animate without infusing into it a spark of the Sacred Divine Fire. The Jewish Kabbalah, the only authority of the European Occultist, is based on the secret meanings of the Hebrew scriptures, which afford no hope for the adepts to solve them practically. More! The likelihood of anyone becoming a practical Kabbalist-Rosicrucian through studying the Jewish Kabbalah single-handed, without being initiated and so being “made” such by someone who “knows,” is as foolish as to hope to thread the Cretan labyrinth without a clue, or to open the secret locks of the ingenious inventors of the mediaeval ages, without having possession of the keys. The Seventh Rule of the Rosicrucian “who became but was not made” has its secret meaning, like every other phrase left by the Kabbalists to posterity. The Rosicrucian has to struggle alone and toil long years in the hope of finding out some of the lesser secrets of the great Kabbalah. His mental, moral, and physical fitness will be tested to the extreme. His spirit will have to pass through the ordeal of incarnation and life, and be baptised with matter before he could attain inner knowledge. There is nothing new under the Sun. There is not a science, nor a modern discovery in any section of it, which was not known to the Oriental Occultists of the hoary antiquity. What would not modern physicians, practitioners of their blind and lame science of medicine, give for a part of the knowledge of botany and plants! The hope of finding remnants of such wisdom as Ancient Asia possessed, ought to tempt our conceited modern science to explore that territory assiduously. Religions and sciences, laws and customs, they are all the direct products of Oriental Occultism, disguised by the hand of time, and palmed upon us under new pseudonyms. The time is near when the old superstitions and the errors of centuries will be swept away by the hurricane of Truth. There is scarcely a rite or ceremony of the Christian Church that does not descend from Occultism. When the devout worshippers of the Vatican lift up their eyes in mute adoration upon the head of their God on Earth, their Pontifex Maximus, what they admire the most is the caricatured head-dress, the Amazon-like helmet of Pallas Athene, the heathen goddess Minerva.

Rosicrucians emerged in Europe as an antidote to the material side of alchemy and to stem the tide of the folly. From this point of view, the Rosicrucians are group of Reformers. The spiritual side of man must be awakened and utilised, before the Philosopher’s Stone, or the Elixir of Life, can be discovered. Wonder-seekers then, as now, craving for power and wealth, did not appreciate that higher ethics are prerequisite to real wisdom. The Rosicrucians were alchemists in the spiritual sense and professors of divine magic, which is devoid of selfishness, love of power, ambition, and lucre. Most divergent are the lines of thought between Christian and Occultist.

Evolution is double, physical and spiritual: the physical is visible but the spiritual that animates the physical is invisible, hence non-existent in the mind of the material man. Physical humanity has existed on earth for 18 million years, preceded by 300 million years of mineral and vegetable development. The allegory of Pygmalion, who fails to animate his statue, is far more philosophical and scientific concept than Adam: the human forms have existed in eternity as astral or ethereal prototypes; according to which, the lower angels evolved the protoplasmic forms of the future Egos from their own essence, thus bringing them into objective life on earth. But they would not breathe a spark of Divine Fire into the Adam-Galatea of volcanic dust simply because they could not give that sacred spark, which glows inside and expands into the flower of human reason and self-consciousness — for they had it not to give. There are four Adams, one for each of the preceding Root-Races. All this must be a galvanic shock to the spiritually blind, who pooh-pooh the “Self-born heavenly man,” the first Divine Androgyne viewed as Nature in the abstract, and represented as the ethereal man. Occultism without practice will ever be like the statue of Pygmalion that no one can animate without infusing into it a spark of the Sacred Divine Fire. The Jewish Kabbalah, the only authority of the European Occultist, is based on the secret meanings of the Hebrew scriptures, which afford no hope for the adepts to solve them practically. More! The likelihood of anyone becoming a practical Kabbalist-Rosicrucian through studying the Jewish Kabbalah single-handed, without being initiated and so being “made” by someone who “knows,” is as foolish as to hope to thread the Cretan labyrinth without a clue, or to open the secret locks of the ingenious inventors of the mediaeval ages, without having possession of the keys. The Seventh Rule of the Rosicrucian “who became but was not made” has its secret meaning, like every other phrase left by the Kabbalists to posterity. He has to struggle alone and toil long years in the hope of finding out some of the lesser secrets of the great Kabbalah. His mental, moral, and physical fitness will be tested to the extreme. His spirit will have to pass through the ordeal of incarnation and life, and be baptised with matter before it can reach experience and knowledge. Pivotal attributes of the first four Root-Races.

This is an illustrated collection of 14 essays on a variety of occult-themed topics, covering the full spectrum of classic esoteric and related subjects, which include hermeticism, alchemy, magic, the Kabbalah, ancient wisdom and philosophy, the Tarot, Rosicrucianism, Freemasonry, Theosophy and spiritualism, by some of the most notable and prominent names in the history of those subjects. Compiled specifically with the student in mind. Writers include Manly P. Hall, Arthur Edward Waite, Helena P. Blavatsky, Roger Bacon, Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, G. R. S. Mead, W. N. Neill, Mohini M. Chatterji, Jessie Horne, William Q. Judge, Albert G. Mackey, and P. W. Bullock.

With the Kabbalists, Fire and Motion were instrumental in the formation of the world out of pre-existing Matter. Aditi, the primordial Water of Space, is the original of Sephirah, and crown of the Sephiroth. The AUM of the Hindus had become the Aion with the Greeks, and the Ævum with the Romans — the Pan or All. With Moses, Elohim and Jehovah were numerical indices of geometrical relations, and stood for a diameter and a circumference value, respectively. When Shimon ben-Yohai’s heavenly light gave place to the darkness of the gloomy cave, then only the disciples of Israel perceived that the lamp of Israel was extinguished. The key of things concealed is the key of the sanctuary. Mount Sumeru is the father of the Greek Parnassos and Tomaros. The Hindu Kailasa (Heaven), too, is the father of the Greek Heaven (Koilon). Even the German Heaven (Himmel) was inspired by the Heavenly Himalaya. From where the Greeks obtained their Parnassos, thence proceeded most of the biblical personages. Abram was one of them, a Chaldæan Brahman, transformed later into A-brahm (A-braham), i.e., no-Brahman, who emigrated westward and became the “father of many nations.” Every God and hero in ancient Pantheons, including those of the Bible, has three biographies in the narrative, running parallel with each other, and each connected with one of three aspects of the hero — historical, astronomical, and perfectly mythical — the last serving to link the other two together and smooth away the asperities and discordances in the narrative, and gathering into one or more symbols the verities of the first two. Moreover, localities are made to correspond with astronomical and even with psychic events. History was thus made captive by ancient Mystery, to become later on the great Sphinx of the age we live in. Not only is everything in Western religion is related to measures, geometrical figures, and time calculations, the principal periods being founded on historical personages, but the latter are also connected with heaven and earth truly, but only with the Indo-Aryan heaven and earth, not with those of Palestine. The Old Testament was milked out of the most ingenious brains of Hebrew Kabbalists, partly in Egypt and partly in Babylonia. Astronomically, Abraham is the sun-measure and a portion of the sun, while Enoch is the solar year, as much as is Thoth-Hermes. Equally Thoth, numerically, is the equivalent of Moses and Hermes, Lord of the lower realms and a teacher of wisdom. More! Abram and Brahmā are equivalent in numerical value! Neither the Book of Enoch, nor the Zohar, nor any other kabbalistic volume, contains merely Jewish wisdom. It was only in the Third Root-Race that the “wheel” of Enoch was invented as a first attempt at symbology, though Enoch No. 1 had naught to do with it.

This title represents pioneering research into an important but under-researched current. The three sections in the book are devoted to the Theosophical Society, Theosophically influenced religious currents, and the interaction between Theosophy and surrounding culture.

This is a reprint of the 1989 cult classic involving connections between UFOs, Secret Societies and Ancient Gods.

At the age of 17, rejecting nineteenth-century materialism, Helena Blavatsky (1831-1891) left her native Russia and traveled through India, Tibet, Egypt, Europe, and the Americas seeking out the sources of ancient wisdom as a key to spiritual truth. In 1875 in New York, she co-founded the Theosophical Society for the study of occult traditions. Many popular ideas of rediscovered ancient wisdom, including reincarnation and karma, trace their origin to Helena Blavatsky and Theosophy. This anthology includes material on her life and travels, as well as excerpts from her major works.