Art Magic

When we trace the early conceptions of the Hindoos - that most ancient of contemplative men, those children of the Spirit, who communed with Nature's God through the profoundest study of Nature herself - we find they cherished ideas so exalted of the First Great Cause, that they ventured not to embody their thought of Him in any form, symbol, or even to assign Him a name.

The Supreme Being was with them, the Unknowable, and only became typified as Brahm, which, interpreted, signifies The Void, The Silent Region which cannot be pierced - the unfathomable which cannot be gauged or understood. That the human mind might rest on a Providential scheme, the Sages of India taught that there were three Subordinate emanations from the First Great Cause, who embodied the Grand Trinity of his Deific attributes. This primordial Trinity consisted of Brahma, the Creator; Vishnu, the Preserver; and Siva, the Destroyer and Reproducer.

Each of these Deific emanations were so intimately connected in the Hindoo mind with the attributes of heat and light, that the earliest Hindostanee worship may with truth, be assumed to have laid the foundation of that stupendous systems known, in later ages, as the astronomical religion. A large proportion of the Vedas - the oldest of the Hindoo Scriptures - consist of epics in praise of Light; accounts of the miracles outwrought by the mighty Sun-God; invocations to the spirits of the air, moon, stars, and sacred fire, and different elements. Many are the prayers addressed to Indra, the starry-robed Ruler of the constellated heavens, as well as to the spirits of different departments of the Universe. Fire was held sacred in every household, and employed in all sacerdotal rites. The very shape of the pyramidal Temples, or the blunted pylons, signified the all-pervading reverence of the Hindoo mind for the symbol of the tapering flame

In one of the most ancient of the Vedic hymns, addressed to the Heranyagarbha, occurs the following passage:

"In the beginning there arose the Source of golden light, He was the only born Lord of all that is. He established the earth and the sky. To what other God shall we offer sacrifice? He through whom the sky is bright, and the earth is firm; who measured out the light in the air. To what other God, etc., etc.

"Wherever the mighty water clouds went; where they placed the seed and lit the fire; thence arose He who is the only life of the bright Gods. To what other God, etc., etc.

There was neither entity, nor non-entity then - neither atmosphere nor sky beyond. Death was not, nor therefore immortality; nor day nor night. That One breathed breathless by itself. There was nothing different from it, nor beyond it. The covered germ burst forth by mental heat; then first came Love upon it, the Spring of mind. The rays shot across, and there were mighty powers producing all things. Nature beneath, and Energy above.

The Vedic hymns are nearly all invocations to the Solar and Astral sources of light and heat; the Vedic philosophy, speculations on the origins of Being, ever re-affirming the influence of Solar and Astral agency in Creation.

The following passage, descriptive of the Hindoo's God, will convey an idea of his sublime conceptions of Deity:

"Heaven is his head; the sun and moon are his eyes; the earth his feet; space his ears; air his breath. He is the Soul of the Universe. The Sun of all luminaries. All Creation derives light from him alone. The wise call him the Supreme Light-giving Spirit."

In the Egyptian and Persian Theogony, the direct acknowledgment of one Supreme Being corresponding to the Sun and its attributes, is as marked as in the Aryan and Indian records. The elaborate woof of Grecian and Roman Mythology partake of the same golden threads of belief, and whilst ramifying into a complete system of Polytheism, still refer back to the Indian and Egyptian idea of Creation springing from one Supreme Source, and this a spiritual centre of heat or creative energy, and light or creative wisdom.

In the Orphic Songs, the one first Great Cause celebrated as Zeus is more completely associated with the Egyptian idea of a Sun-God, a spirit "without parts of passion, sex or nature," than in the theories of later philosophers. Orpheus, the Sage, to whom the introduction of Egyptian Theogony into Greece is mainly due, chants thus of the Supreme Being:

"Zeus is male, Zeus is female. Zeus is the spirit of all things. Zeus is the rushing of uncreated fire. Zeus is the king; he is the sun and moon. Zeus is the mighty power, the demon, the one mighty frame in which this universe revolves. He is fire and water, earth and ether, day and night. All things unite in the body of Zeus"

Pythagoras, Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, and other of the most distinguished Grecian sages, taught more directly of God as a Spirit, and as the source from which all subordinate gods proceeded.

Passing on to the mediaeval, and still later ages, we find the most illuminated of the Mystics either reaffirming the ancient beliefs of India and Egypt in the Great Central Sun, or claiming to receive confirmation of this truth from spiritual inspiration, direct revelations, or intercourse with superior orders of being.

Cornelius Agrippa, Paracelus, Jacob Behmen, and Swedenborg, taught this idea of Deity with more of less distinctness. Swedenborg, in particular, who elevates his conception of Jesus Christ into the Lord, from whom, and to whom, all the activities of the Created Universe proceed and return - clearly teaches that "The Lord" is only seen as a Sun. In his essay on "Creation by Two Suns," he affirms that, "The Sun of Heaven is the Lord, the light there is Divine truth, and the heat there is Divine good, which proceed from the Lord as a Sun. From that origin are all things which exist and appear in the heavens." Again he says: That the Lord actually appears in heaven as a Sun, has not only been told me by the angels, but has also been given me to see several times, wherefore what I have seen and heard concerning the Lord as a Sun, I would here describe, etc., etc.

Of still more recent date are the teachings of certain spirits claiming to have had a mortal existence, many thousands of years ago, but who found themselves impelled to return to earth during the great spiritual outpouring of the last quarter of a century, in the United States of America. We shall quote from those who manifested their presence at the spirit house of Jonathan Koons, a farmer residing in the remotest wilds of Athens County, Ohio, and who gave their testimony, speaking through trumpets, with an audible voice, under circumstances which defied the probability of collusion or imposture, and with a power and spirituality of tone and presence acknowledged by all who heard them to have been truly sublime and authoritative.

The communications given by these spirits orally were transcribed by those present, and subsequently corrected by themselves - others were written by spirit hands in the presence of many witnesses, or found in locked drawers. From the MSS. preserved of these wonderful writings, the history of the Athens County manifestations are elaborately described in "Hardinge's Twenty Years' History of Modern American Spiritualism," and it is from the pages of this highly authentic work that we submit the following excerpt.

The author says:

"These spirits declare that 'there is an electric element, divided through space by another element, which bears no affinity to it; that spirits, at least such as communicate with earth, cannot themselves penetrate this interior element; in fact, to their apprehension, no one in the universe can do so, save only God; and this mysterious innermost, with all its hidden and impenetrable glories, is called by the spirits the 'subter fluid.' They declare that the electric element forms the various paths in which planets and all other known bodies in space travel and move in their respective orbits, but that nothing visible to spirits, or comprehensible to them as of an organic nature, can penetrate the realms of the 'subter fluid,' yet it divides and permeates all space, and seems to hold in control the infinite realms of the electric element. 'Rays of light,' however, they say, 'can and do penetrate the 'subter fluid,' as they appear to issue from and return to it incessantly.' Also, 'There is a grand central territory in the universe, known to exist by all spirits, and in all worlds. It embraces illimitable though unknown realms; yet its position as a vast central point is defined, from the fact that from thence, and to thence, seem to strand all the illimitable lines of attraction, gravitation, and force, which connect terrestrial bodies, and link together firmaments teeming with lives and systems. All the innumerable firmaments, spangled with an infinitude of solar and astral systems, seem to revolve around, and derive attractive and living forces from this unknown centre. Sometimes it is called 'the Celestial Realm.' Again 'The Central Sun,' 'Heaven,' 'God,' 'The Infinite Realm,' 'The Eternal Life!' While firmaments thickly sown with suns and revolving satellites, appear but as specks of light in comparison with the inconceivable vastness of this celestial laboratory, invisible and boundless as it is, from which flows out, through all universes, the centrifugal and centripetal forces of being."

In Cahagnet's "Celestial Telegraph," several spirits, communicating through celebrated Somnambules, startled their hearers' preconceived opinions on the subject of Deity by affirming positively that he was seen and known by highly exalted angels as a Grand Central Spiritual Sun.

Through the ecstatic Bruno it was asked; "Do angels, such as you describe your Guardian Gabriel to be, see God?" A. "Yes." Q. "In what form?" A. "In that of the Sun." Q. "Is it our terrestrial Sun?" A. "No; there is in the heaven of heavens but one Sun, which is the Spiritual Sun, the form in which God appears. Our terrestrial sun is but the reflection of the rays dispensed from the Great Central Spiritual Sun, which is God."

The Hindoo child seeress Sanoma, heretofore referred to also affirmed, when in ecstatico, at the tender age of five years, when her infant mind had never been impressed with one single idea of theology, that the God of the universe was a Spiritual Sun, whilst all the suns and stars, visible or invisible to the naked eye, derived their light and heat only from Him. When questioned by Sir James Mackintosh, the eminent astronomer, whether the sun of our solar system was not an incandescent body, and the originator of all light and heat received by his satellites, she emphatically denied that it was so, and exposed, with wonderful acumen, in her lisping, child-like tone, but with penetrating scientific arguments, the fallacies of those astronomers who endeavor to defend the incandescent theory of the sun's body.

This youthful ecstatic affirmed that all the light and heat in the universe proceeded from the great Central Spiritual Sun, and was reflected from thence to every body in space, according to its size, situation, and the energy of the centrifugal and centripetal forces operating between suns, satellites, and systems.

During an unbroken system of communication, extending over a period of nearly half a century, between the author of these pages and spirits of various degrees - during perceptions of angelic spheres observed by his liberated spirit amongst the realms of the wise and blest, similar testimony to the existence of a Deity who is no mystery to His creatures, has been rendered.

It seems strange, and not in the order of the Providential scheme, that the one sole mystery of the universe would be the Being most capable of originating revelation, namely a First Great Cause. But has this Supreme One been a mystery from the beginning? or would He have continued so, if man, in his egotism and pride, had not flattered himself with the assumption that subordinate beings, tutelary spirits, and even specially inspired men, were the real Gods of the Universe, condescending to come and minister in person to humanity? Did not the first men of the earth, fresh in their primitive inspiration from Deity, rightly apprehend Him in the beginning? Have not the Prophets, Seers, Magians, Mystics, and modern Ecstatics, ever perceived and known God in gleams of the original brightness, dimmed by ages of materialism, and perverted by gloomy, earth-made theologies? Wherever the voices of the angels find reverberating echoes in human inspiration, there this Great Mystery of God is solved in the revealment of the uncreated, self-existent, infinite, and eternal Spiritual Sun, from which emanate, and to which return, all rays of light, light, heat, germinative, creative, and sustaining power.

Wherever we see the people of earth straying away in search of human idols, striving to discover in their God man-made, man-shaped, and man-like personalities; wherever we see an interested ignorant and selfish priesthood, enslaved by their own passions and prejudices, aiming to keep the people enslaved to their opinions - there look to find the face of the Infinite veiled in mystery; the truths of Godhead, natural science and spiritual inspiration crowded back into the realms of mystery; and mystery, the mother of all abominations, setting up idols for human worship, which change with the customs of the age, and the fashion of the hour. To drown the voice of Spiritual science, and that reason which insists that the most obvious existence in Creation must be Creation's Author, the epithets of "Pagan, Heathen, Infidel, Heretic, Fire Worshiper and Blasphemer" have been shouted through the highways of life's common places, and still echo in our ears even in this analytical nineteenth century' for the rule of Mystery, Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots and Abominations of the Earth, is not yet broken, and until it is, her votaries will fight for her and perish soul and body for her, and all the while the light will be "shining in the darkness, though the darkness comprehendeth it not."

Man, in his primitive appearance on earth, came only as a poor, untutored savage, the mere form of the being he was to become - only a prophecy of the Lord of Creation he should be. As he emerged from savagism to the dawn of an intellectual morning, the perception of his descent from an antecedent sphere of spiritual existence possessed his memory, and a perception of his return to that blest state of purity and happiness inspired his power of prevision.

His gradually awakening intellect taught him to analyze and understand himself. Casting about for the causes of existence, that supports on which it rested and the aims for which he lived, man dedicated all his earliest powers of mind to religion. Even his earliest triumphs in the arts of civilization were but used as means to the one end. His superb temples of worship, his solemn preparations for another life, and his colossal monumental records of his religious beliefs, remain almost imperishable evidences of his deep and undivided interest in the problems of religion; whilst of his social and commercial pursuits, only the most fragmentary and unimportant vestiges can be found. India, Egypt, Arabia, the recesses of the mighty Himalayas and the giant Koh Kas, the lovely vales and smiling plains of Asia - vales blooming like glimpses of the fabled Eden, and savage wilds, deserted now, desolate and ruined - all bear witness to the unquenchable devotion of the early man to his religious belief; all are thickly strewn over with colossal remains of that stupendous system in which that belief found expression. The burning lands of the Orient are one vast bible overwritten with distinct asseverations that to the early man God was not the Unknowable, and religious faith was no mystery. Whence came this faith if not from man's intuitive knowledge and the obvious facts of creation? Sun, moon, stars, the constellated glories of the heavens, their eternal order and their majestic march through infinity - these were scriptures in which the natural instincts of an unspoiled nature recognized God's own writing, and interpreted it without failure or effort.

The ancient man did not vainly exhaust his intellect to discover God. Untrammeled by creeds, unfettered by priestcraft and unbiased by inherited prejudices, he did not seek God, he simply found Him - knew Him in the love which engenders life; the wisdom that sustains it; the power that upholds it - knew Him in the sacred flame, which is heat; the splendor of light, which is revelation. He discovered the reflection of his dwelling-place in the majesty of the blazing sun, and perceived his own destiny - God's Providence and Nature's profoundest harmonies - in the constellated paths of the starry heavens and the movements of the fiery legions of space.

Priestcraft, Kingcraft, Artificial Civilization, with their long train of crime and disease, want and woe - an over-strained devotion to the idols of ecclesiasticism and physical science, have alienated the soul of man from pure, natural, spiritual religion, interrupted the precious communication which pure, spiritual natures alone can enjoy with angelic spheres of existence, and driven the soul off into the baneful mysticisms of idolatrous faiths or blank materialism.

It is a hopeful and significant sign to behold the spiritual standards once more set up on earth. It is a hopeful and significant fact to note how the best of the modern Seers tend towards ancient faith in the Divine Spiritual Law as the Author and Centre of being, and the prophecy of a better, more truthful, just and reasonable theology is continually renewing itself in the air, as the lips of the most inspired teachers of the time re-affirm the sublime utterances of old: "God is a Spirit, and they who worship Him, must worship Him in spirit and in truth."