Part 27 (2/2)

”Ah, sahib, we cannot tell. We know of three roads up the hill of endeavour to the gates of Paradise--the way of Mousa [Moses], the way of Issa [Jesus], and the way of Mahmoud, and there may be other roads of which you and I know nothing. I was born in the way of Mahmoud, and I believe it to be the best and the easiest to follow, and you were born in the way of Issa. And of this I am very sure: that if you will follow your guide on your road and I follow my guide on my road, when we have climbed the hill of endeavour, we shall salute one another again at the gates of Paradise.”

If, then, in the following pages I attempt to show the errors of Theosophy, it is not because I do not recognize that there is much that is good and beautiful in the ancient religions from which it professes to derive.

But what is Theosophy? The word, as we have already seen, was used in the eighteenth century to denote the theory of the Martinists; it was known two centuries earlier when Haselmeyer in 1612 wrote of ”the laudable Fraternity of the Theosophists of the Rosy Cross.” According to Colonel Olcott, who with Madame Blavatsky founded the modern Theosophical Society in New York in 1875, the word was discovered by one of the members ”in turning over the leaves of a Dictionary” and forthwith unanimously adopted.[699] Madame Blavatsky had arrived in America two years earlier, before which date she professed to have been initiated into certain esoteric doctrines in Thibet. Monsieur Guenon, who writes with inside knowledge of the movement, indicates, however, the existence of concealed superiors on the Continent of Europe by whom she was in reality directed.

What is very significant ... is that Madame Blavatsky in 1875 wrote this: ”I have been sent from Paris to America in order to verify phenomena and their reality and to show the deception of the Spiritualist theory.” Sent by whom? Later she will say: by the ”Mahatmas”; but then there was no question of them, and besides it was in Paris that she received her mission, and not in India or in Thibet.[700]

Elsewhere Monsieur Guenon observes that it is very doubtful whether Madame Blavatsky was ever in Thibet at all. These obvious attempts at concealment lead Monsieur Guenon therefore to the conclusion that in the background of Theosophy there existed a mysterious centre of direction, that Madame Blavatsky was simply ”an instrument in the hands of individuals or occult groups sheltering behind her personality,” and that ”those who believe she invented everything, that she did everything by herself and on her own initiative, are as much mistaken as those who, on the contrary, believe her affirmations concerning her relations with the pretended Mahatmas.”[701]

There is some reason to believe that the people under whom Madame Blavatsky was working at this date in Paris were Serapis Bey and Tuiti Bey, who belonged to ”the Egyptian Brothers.” This might answer M.

Guenon's question: ”By whom was she sent to America?” But another pa.s.sage from Madame Blavatsky's writings, on the person of Christ, that M. Guenon quotes later, indicates a further source of inspiration: ”For me, Jesus Christ, that is to say the Man-G.o.d of the Christians, copy of the Avatars of all countries, of the Hindu Chrishna as of the Egyptian Horus, was never a _historical_ personage.” Hence the story of His life was merely an allegory founded on the existence of ”a personage named Jehoshua born at Lud.” But elsewhere she a.s.serted that Jesus may have lived during the Christian era or a century earlier ”_as the Sepher Toldoth Jehoshua indicates_” (my italics). And Madame Blavatsky went on to say of the savants who deny the historical value of this legend, that they--

either lie or talk nonsense. _It is our Masters who affirm it_ [my italics]. If the history of Jehoshua or Jesus Ben Pandera is false, then the whole of the Talmud, the whole of the Jewish canon law, is false. It was the disciple of Jehoshua Ben Parachia, the fifth President of the Sanhedrim since Ezra, who re-wrote the Bible....

This story is much truer than that of the New Testament, of which history does not say a word.[702]

Who were the Masters whose authority Madame Blavatsky here invokes?

Clearly not the Trans-Himalayan Brotherhood to whom she habitually refers by this term, and who can certainly not be suspected of affirming the authenticity of the Toldoth Yeshu. It is evident, then, that there were other ”Masters” from whom Madame Blavatsky received this teaching, and that those other masters were Cabalists.

The same Judaic influence appears more strongly in a book published by the Theosophical Society in 1903, where the Talmud and the Toledot Yeshu are quoted at great length and the Christians are derided for resenting the attacks on their faith contained in these books, whilst the Jews are represented as innocent, persecuted victims. One pa.s.sage will suffice to give an idea of the author's point of view:

The Christ [said the mystics] was born ”of a virgin”; the unwitting believer in Jesus as _the_ historical Messiah in the exclusive Jewish sense, and in his being _the_ Son of G.o.d, nay G.o.d Himself, in course of time a.s.serted that Mary was that virgin; whereupon Rabbinical logic, which in this case was simple and common logic, met this extravagance by the natural retort that, seeing that his paternity was unacknowledged, Jesus was therefore illegitimate, a b.a.s.t.a.r.d [_mamzer_].[703]

It is obviously, then, less from Thibetan Mahatmas, Hindu Swamis, Sikh Gurus, or Egyptian Brothers than from Jewish Cabalists that these leaders of Theosophy have borrowed their ideas on Jesus Christ. As the Jewish writer Adolphe Franck has truly observed: ”Des qu'il est question de theosophie, on est sur de voir apparaitre la Kabbale.”[704] And he goes on to show the direct influence of Cabalism on the modern Theosophical Society.

Mrs. Besant, without endorsing the worst blasphemies of the Toledot Yeshu, nevertheless reflected this and other Judaic traditions in her book _Esoteric Christianity_, where she related that Jesus was brought up amongst the Essenes, and that later He went to Egypt, where He became an initiate of the great esoteric lodge--that is to say, the Great White Lodge--from which all great religions derive. It will be seen that this is only a version of the old story of the Talmudists and Cabalists, perpetuated by the Gnostics, the Rosicrucians, and the nineteenth-century _Ordre du Temple_.[705] But according to one of Mrs.

Besant's Theosophical antagonists, her doctrine ”rests on a perpetual equivocation,” and whilst allowing the English public to believe that when she spoke of the coming Christ she referred to the Christ of the Gospels, she stated to her intimates what Mr. Leadbeater taught in his book _The Inner Life_, namely, that the Christ of the Gospels never existed, but was an invention of the monks of the second century.[706]

It should be understood, however, that in the language of the Theosophists, led by Mrs. Besant and Mr. Leadbeater, Jesus and ”the Christ” are two separate and distinct individualities, and that when they now speak of ”the Christ” they refer to someone living in a bungalow in the Himalayas with whom Mr. Leadbeater has interviews to arrange about his approaching advent.[707] Portraits of this person have been distributed amongst the members of ”The Star in the East,” an Order founded at Benares in 1911 by Mr. Leadbeater and J. Krishnamurti for the purpose of preparing the world for the coming of the Great Teacher.

But it is time to return to the alliance between Theosophy and the Maconnerie Mixte. Whether Mrs. Besant, who had begun her career as a Freethinker, retained some lingering belief in her earlier creed at the time she entered into relations with the Order, or whether she saw in this materialistic society a valuable concrete organization for the dissemination of her new esoteric theories, it is impossible to know. At any rate, she rose rapidly through the succeeding degrees and became before long Vice President of the _Supreme Conseil_, which appointed her its national delegate to Great Britain. It was in this capacity that she founded the English branch of the Order under the name of Co-Masonry (that is, admitting both s.e.xes) at the Lodge ”Human Duty” in London, which was consecrated on September 26, 1902, and later founded another lodge at Adyar in India, named ”The Rising Sun.” The number of lodges on the Grand Roll of Co-Masonry, including those abroad, is now said to be no less than 442.

Co-Masonry thus receives a two-fold direction, for whilst remaining in constant correspondence with the _Supreme Conseil Universel Mixte_, situated at 5 Rue Jules-Breton in Paris and presided over by the Grand Master Piron, with Madame Amelie Gedalje, thirty-third degree, as Grand Secretary-General, it receives further instructions from ”the V? Ill?

Bro? Annie Besant 33” at Adyar. In order not to shock the susceptibilities of English adepts who might be repelled by the rationalist tendencies of the Maconnerie Mixte, Mrs. Besant has, however, borrowed the formulas of British Masonry together with its custom of placing the V.S.L. on the table in the lodges. These conflicting doctrines are blended in an amusing manner on the certificates of the Order, where at the top we find the French motto and initials:

Liberte egalite Fraternite a? L? G? D? L'H?

(i.e. a la gloire de l'Humanite)

and below, for the benefit of English members, the initials of the British masonic device, that does not of course appear on the diplomas of the French Order, which, like the Grand Orient, has rejected the Great Architect:

T? T? G? O? T? G? A? O? T? U?

(To the glory of the Great Architect of the Universe).

Our Co-Masons therefore enjoy the advantage of being able to choose whether they shall render glory to G.o.d or to Humanity. That the two devices are somewhat incompatible does not appear to strike the English initiates, nor do they probably realize the imposture practised on them by the further wording of the certificate, which, after announcing in imposing capitals ”To all Masons dispersed over both Hemispheres, Greeting,” goes on to say ”We therefore recommend him (_or_ her) as such to all Freemasons of the Globe, requesting them to recognize him (_or_ her) in all the rights and privileges attached to this Degree, as we will do to all presenting themselves under similar circ.u.mstances.”

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