Part 12 (1/2)

A New Earth

”Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims within his ken.”

I who had sought afar from earth The faery land to greet, Now find content within its girth, And wonder nigh my feet.

To-day a nearer love I choose And seek no distant sphere, For aureoled by faery dews The dear brown b.r.e.a.s.t.s appear.

With rainbow radiance come and go The airy breaths of day, And eve is all a pearly glow With moonlit winds a-play.

The lips of twilight burn my brow, The arms of night caress: Glimmer her white eyes drooping now With grave old tenderness.

I close mine eyes from dream to be The diamond-rayed again, As in the ancient hours ere we Forgot ourselves to men.

And all I thought of heaven before I find in earth below, A sunlight in the hidden core To dim the noon-day glow.

And with the Earth my heart is glad, I move as one of old, With mists of silver I am clad And bright with burning gold.

--February 1896

Duality

”From me spring good and evil.”

Who gave thee such a ruby flaming heart, And such a pure cold spirit? Side by side I know these must eternally abide In intimate war, and each to each impart Life from their pain, with every joy a dart To wound with grief or death the self-allied.

Red life within the spirit crucified, The eyes eternal pity thee, thou art Fated with deathless powers at war to be, Not less the martyr of the world than he Whose thorn-crowned brow usurps the due of tears We would pay to thee, ever ruddy life, Whose pa.s.sionate peace is still to be at strife, O'erthrown but in the unconflicting spheres.

--March 15, 1896 (This is unsigned, but in AE's ”Collected Poems”)

The Element Language

In a chapter in the Secret Doctrine dealing with the origin of language, H.P. Blavatsky makes some statements which are quoted here and which should be borne well in mind in considering what follows. ”The Second Race had a 'Sound Language,' to wit, chant-like sounds composed of vowels alone.” From this developed ”monosyllabic speech which was the vowel parent, so to speak, of the monosyllabic languages mixed with hard consonants still in use among the yellow races which are known to the anthropologist. The linguistic characteristics developed into the agglutinative languages....

The inflectional speech, the root of the Sanskrit, was the first language (now the mystery tongue of the Initiates) of the Fifth Race.”

The nature of that language has not been disclosed along with other teaching concerning the evolution of the race, but like many other secrets the details of which are still preserved by the Initiates, it is implied in what has already been revealed. The application to speech of the abstract formula of evolution which they have put forward should result in its discovery, for the clue lies in correspondences; know the nature of any one thing perfectly, learn its genesis, development and consummation, and you have the key to all the mysteries of nature. The microcosm mirrors the macrocosm.

But, before applying this key, it is well to glean whatever hints have been given, so that there may be less chance of going astray in our application. First, we gather from the Secret Doctrine that the sounds of the human voice are correlated with the forces, colours, numbers and forms. ”Every letter has its occult meaning, the vowels especially contain the most occult and formidable potencies.”

(S.D., I, 94) and again it is said ”The magic of the ancient priests consisted in those days in addressing their G.o.ds in their own language.

The speech of the men of earth cannot reach the Lords, each must be addressed in the language of his respective element”---is a sentence which will be shown pregnant with meaning. ”The book of rules” cited adds as an explanation of the nature of that element- language: ”It is composed of Sounds, not words; of sounds, numbers and figures. He who knows how to blend the three, will call forth the response of the superintending Power” (the regent-G.o.d of the specific element needed). Thus this ”language is that of incantations or of Mantras, as they are called in India, sound being the most potent and effectual magic agent, and the first of the keys which opens the door of communication between mortals and immortals.”

(S.D. I, 464)

From these quotations it will be seen that the occult teachings as to speech are directly at variance with the theories of many philologists and evolutionists. A first speech which was like song-- another and more developed speech which is held sacred--an esoteric side to speech in which the elements of our conventional languages (i.e. the letters) are so arranged that speech becomes potent enough to guide the elements, and human speech becomes the speech of the G.o.ds--there is no kins.h.i.+p between this ideal language and the e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns and mimicry which so many hold to be the root and beginning of it. Yet those who wish to defend their right to hold the occult teaching have little to fear from the champions of these theories; they need not at all possess any deep scholars.h.i.+p or linguistic attainment; the most cursory view of the roots of primitive speech, so far as they have been collected, will show that they contain few or no sounds of a character which would bear out either the onomatopoetic or interjectional theories. The vast majority of the roots of the Aryan language express abstract ideas, they rarely indicate the particular actions which would be capable of being suggested by any mimicry possible to the human voice.

I have selected at random from a list of roots their English equivalents, in order to show the character of the roots and to make clearer the difficulty of holding such views. The abstract nature of the ideas, relating to actions and things which often have no attendant sound in nature, will indicate what I mean.

What possible sounds could mimic the sense of ”to move, to s.h.i.+ne, to gain, to flow, to burn, to blow, to live, to possess, to cover, to fall, to praise, to think”? In fact the most abstract of all seem the most primitive for we find them most fruitful in combination to for other words. I hope to show this clearly later on. It is unnecessary to discuss the claims of the interjectional theory, as it is only a theory, and there are few roots for which we could infer even a remote origin of this nature. The great objection to the theory that speech was originally a matter of convention and mutual agreement, is the scarcity of words among the roots which express the wants of primitive man. As it is, a wisdom within or beyond the Aryan led him to construct in these roots with their abstract significance an ideal foundation from which a great language could be developed. However as the exponents of rival theories have demolished each other's arguments, without anyone having established a clear case for himself, it is not necessary here to do more than indicate these theories and how they may be met.

In putting forward a hypothesis more in accord with the doctrine of the spiritual origin of man, and in harmony with those occult ideas concerning speech already quoted, I stand in a rather unusual position, as I have to confess my ignorance of any of these primitive languages. I am rather inclined however, to regard this on the whole as an advantage for the following reasons. I think primitive man (the early Aryan) chose his words by a certain intuition which recognised an innate correspondence between the thought and the symbol.