isis unveiled: xi (magical history)

“If men of science would confine themselves to the discrediting of new discoveries, there might be some little excuse for them on the score of their tendency to a conservatism begotten of long habits of patient scrutiny; but they not only set up claims to originality not warranted by fact, but contemptuously dismiss all allegations that the people of ancient times knew as much and even more than themselves.

Pity that in each of their laboratories there is not suspended this text from Ecclesiastes: “Is there anything whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us.” In the verse which follows the one here quoted, the wise man says, “There is no remembrance of former things”; so that this utterance may account for every new denial.

Mr. Meldrum may exact praise for his meteorological observation of Cyclones in the Mauritius, and Mr. Baxendell, of Manchester, talk learnedly of the convection-currents of the earth, and Dr. Carpenter and Commander Maury map out for us the equatorial current, and Professor Henry show us how the moist wind deposits its burden to form rivulets and rivers, only to be again rescued from the ocean and returned to the hilltops – but hear what Koheleth says: “The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits.”

“All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full: unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again.”

The philosophy of the distribution of heat and moisture by means of ascending and descending currents between the equator and the poles, has a very recent origin; but here has the hint been lying unnoticed in our most familiar book, for nearly three thousand years. And even now, in quoting it, we are obliged to recall the fact that Solomon was a kabalist, and in the above texts, simply repeats what was written thousands of years before his time.”

H. P. Blavatsky