Occult Wisdom Is as Old as Humanity
Helena P. Blavatsky

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Editorial Note:
The following paragraphs
are reproduced
from the book “Isis Unveiled”, by Helena P.
Blavatsky, published
by J. W. Bouton in New
York in 1877,
and also published by Theosophy
Co., Los
Angeles. See volume I, pages 17-19.
Longer paragraphs
were divided into smaller
ones, in order
to facilitate a contemplative reading.
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Maimonides, the
great Jewish theologian and historian, who at one time was almost deified by
his countrymen and afterward treated as a heretic, remarks, that the more
absurd and void of sense the Talmud seems
the more sublime is the secret meaning. This learned man has successfully
demonstrated that the Chaldean Magic, the science of Moses and other learned
thaumaturgists was wholly based on an extensive knowledge of the various and
now forgotten branches of natural science.
Thoroughly acquainted with all the resources of the
vegetable, animal, and mineral kingdoms, experts in occult chemistry and
physics, psychologists as well as physiologists, why wonder that the graduates
or adepts instructed in the mysterious sanctuaries of the temples, could
perform wonders, which even in our days of enlightenment would appear
super-natural? It is an insult to human nature to brand magic and the occult
science with the name of imposture. To believe that for so many thousands of
years, one-half of mankind practiced deception and fraud on the other half, is
equivalent to saying that the human race was composed only of knaves and
incurable idiots. Where is the country in which magic was not practised? At
what age was it wholly forgotten?
In the oldest documents now in our possession - the Vedas and the older laws of Manu - we
find many magical rites practiced and permitted by the Brahmans. [1] Thibet, Japan and China teach in
the present age that which was taught by the oldest Chaldeans. The clergy of
these respective countries, prove moreover what they teach, namely: that the practice
of moral and physical purity, and of certain austerities, develops the vital
soul-power of self-illumination. Affording to man the control over his own
immortal spirit, it gives him truly magical powers over the elementary spirits
inferior to himself.
In the West we find magic of as high an antiquity as
in the East.
The Druids of Great Britain practised it in the silent
crypts of their deep caves; and Pliny devotes many a chapter to the “wisdom” [2] of the leaders of the Celts. The
Semothees, - the Druids of the Gauls, expounded the physical as well as the
spiritual sciences. They taught the secrets of the universe, the harmonious
progress of the heavenly bodies, the formation of the earth, and above all -
the immortality of the soul. [3]
Into their sacred groves - natural academies built by
the hand of the Invisible Architect - the initiates assembled at the still hour
of midnight to learn about what man once was and what he will be. [4]
They needed no artificial illumination, nor
life-drawing gas, to light up their temples, for the chaste goddess of night
beamed her most silvery rays on their oak-crowned heads; and their white-robed
sacred bards knew how to converse with the solitary queen of the starry vault. [5]
On the dead soil of the long by-gone past stand their
sacred oaks, now dried up and stripped of their spiritual meaning by the
venomous breath of materialism. But for the student of occult learning, their
vegetation is still as verdant and luxuriant, and as full of deep and sacred
truths, as at that hour when the arch-druid performed his magical cures, and
waving the branch of mistletoe, severed with his golden sickle the green bough
from its mother oak-tree. Magic is as old
as man.
It is as impossible to name the time when it sprang
into existence as to indicate on what day the first man himself was born.
Whenever a writer has started with the idea of connecting its first foundation
in a country with some historical character, further research has proved his
views groundless.
Odin, the Scandinavian priest and monarch, was thought
by many to have originated the practice of magic some seventy years B.C. But it
was easily demonstrated that the mysterious rites of the priestesses called Voilers, Valas, were greatly anterior to his age. [6]
Some modern authors were bent on proving that
Zoroaster was the founder of magic, because he was the founder of the Magian
religion. Ammianus Marcellinus, Arnobius, Pliny, and other ancient historians
demonstrated conclusively that he was but a reformer of Magic as practiced by
the Chaldeans and Egyptians. [7]
NOTES BY HPB:
[1] See the Code published by
Sir William Jones, chap. ix, p. 11.
[2] Pliny: “Hist. Nat.”, xxx. I: Ib., xvi, 14; xxv, 9,
etc.
[3] Pomponius ascribes to them the knowledge of the
highest sciences.
[4] Cæsar, iii, 14.
[5] Pliny, xxx.
[6] Munter, on the most ancient
religion of the North before the time of Odin. Mémoires de la Société des Antiquaires de France. Tome ii, p. 230.
[7] Ammianus Marcellinus, xxvi,
6.
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Click to see the
book “Isis Unveiled” in PDF in our websites.
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The text “The Celtic Druids and Magic Tradition”
was published in our associated websites as an independent article on the 15th
of November, 2018. Part of it is included
in the May 2017 edition of “The Aquarian
Theosophist”, pp. 7-8, under the title “On the Celtic Druids”.
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Regarding the
Druids, see in our associated websites the article “An Old Celtic Legend of Atlantis”.
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