Category: Isis Unveiled: H. P. Blavatsky (1877)

"The most ancient Egyptians cultivated the musical arts and understood well the effect of musical harmony and its influence on the human spirit. We can find on the oldest sculptures and carvings scenes in which musicians play on various instruments. Music was used in the Healing Department of the temples for the cure of nervous [...]

"Sir David Brewster gives a glowing description of several automata; and the eighteenth century takes pride in that masterpiece of mechanical art, the "flute-player of Vaucanson." The little we can glean of positive information on that subject, from ancient writers, warrants the belief that the learned mechanicians in the days of Archimedes, and some of [...]

"If now we turn to navigation, we will find ourselves able to prove, on good authorities, that Necho II., fitted out a fleet on the Red Sea and dispatched it for exploration. The fleet was absent above two years and instead of returning through the Straits of Babelmandeb, as was wont, sailed back through the [...]

"Egypt is the birthplace and the cradle of chemistry. Kenrick shows the root of the word to be chemi or chem, which was the name of the country (Psalms cv. 27). The chemistry of colors seems to have been thoroughly well known in that country. Facts are facts. Where among our painters are we to [...]

"From time immemorial, the Brahmans have had in their possession secrets quite as valuable. The widow, bent on the self-sacrifice of concremation, called Sahamaranya, has no dread of suffering the least pain, for the fiercest flames will consume her, without one pang of agony being experienced by her. The holy plants which crown her brow, [...]

"Who but well remembers the excitement produced some twenty-five years ago by the discovery of anesthesia? The nitrous oxide gas, sulphuric and chloric ether, chloroform, "laughing gas", besides various other combinations of these, were welcomed as so many heavenly blessings to the suffering portion of humanity. Poor Dr. Horace Wells, of Hartford, in 1844, was [...]

"Professor Albrecht Muller says: "We may ascribe the introduction of bronze manufacture into Europe to a great race immigrant from Asia some 6,000 years ago, called Aryas or Aryans. ...Civilization of the East preceded that of the West by many centuries. ...There are many proofs that a considerable degree of culture existed at its very [...]

"In a lecture delivered in 1873, on the Cave-Men of Devonshire, Mr. W. Pengelly, F.R.S., stated on the authority of some Egyptologists that the first iron used in Egypt was meteoric iron, as the earliest mention of this metal is found in an Egyptian document, in which it is called the "stone from heaven." This [...]

"In Pompei, says Wendell Phillips, they discovered a room full of glass; there was ground-glass, window-glass, cut-glass, and colored-glass of every variety. Catholic priests who broke into China 200 years ago, were shown a glass, transparent and colorless, which was filled with liquor made by the Chinese, and which appeared to be colorless like water. [...]

"We have but to refer to Exodus to discover how skillful was the workmanship of the Israelitish pupils of the Egyptians, upon their tabernacle and sacred ark. The sacerdotal vestments, with their decorations of "pomegranates and golden bells", and the thummim, or jeweled breastplate of the high priest, are described by Josephus as being of [...]