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

"If we now turn to architecture, we find displayed before our eyes, wonders which baffle all description. Referring to the temples of Philae, Abu Simbel, Dendera, Edfu, and Karnak, Professor Carpenter remarks that "these stupendous and beautiful erections, these gigantic pyramids and temples" have a "vastness and beauty" which are "still impressive after the lapse [...]

"The alluvial deposits of the Nile, during the past thirty centuries, have completely altered the area of the Delta, so that it is continually growing seaward, and adding to the territory of the Khedive. In ancient times, the principal mouth of the river was called Pelusian; and the canal cut by one of the kings [...]

"As far back as we can glance into history, to the reign of Menes, the most ancient of the kings that we know anything about, we find proofs that the Egyptians were far better acquainted with hydrostatics and hydraulic engineering than ourselves. The gigantic work of turning the course of the Nile - - - [...]

"The transactions of this our city of Sais, are recorded in our sacred writings during a period of 8,000 years." - - - PLATO: Timaeus. "The Egyptians assert that from the reign of Heracles to that of Amasis, 17,000 years elapsed." - - - HERODOTUS, lib. ii., c. 43. "Can the theologian derive no light [...]

"It may be found, perhaps, that one of the last sparkles of modern science, the beautiful green spectrum of silver, is nothing new, but was, notwithstanding the paucity "and great inferiority of their optical instruments", well-known to the ancient chemists and physicists. Silver and green were associated together as far back as the days of [...]

"The nineteenth century seems positively doomed to humiliating confessions. Feltre, (Italy), erects a public statue "to Panfilo Castaldi, the illustrious inventor of movable printing types", and adds in its inscription the generous confession that Italy renders to him "this tribute of honor too long deferred." But no sooner is the statue placed, than the Fetreians [...]

""Demokritus", says Lucian, "believed in no (miracles), he applied himself to discover the method by which the theurgists could produce them; in a word, his philosophy brought him to the conclusion that magic was entirely confined to the application and the imitation of the laws and the works of nature."" Now, the opinion of the [...]

""The great energies of Nature are known to us only by their effects", said Paley. Paraphrasing the sentence, we will say that the great achievements of the days of old are known to posterity only by their effects. If one takes a book on alchemy, and sees in it the speculations on gold and light [...]

"The whole of the present work is a protest against such a loose way of judging the ancients. To be thoroughly competent to criticize their ideas, and assure one's self whether their ideas were distinct and "appropriate to the facts", one must have sifted these ideas to the very bottom. It is idle to repeat [...]

"Professor Balfour Stewart, whom no one would think of classing among illiberal minds; who, with far more fairness and more frequently than any of his colleagues admits the failings of modern science, shows himself, nevertheless, as biased as other scientists on this question. Perpetual light being only another name for perpetual motion, he tells us, [...]