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

"What Ibn Batuta, the Moor, saw in China about the year 1348, Colonel Yule shows Edward Melton, "an Anglo-Dutch traveler", witnessing in Batavia about the year 1670: "One of the same gang" (of conjurers), says Melton, "took a small ball of cord, and grasping one end of the cord in his hand, slung the other [...]

"Such feats as the above are nothing in comparison to what is done by professed jugglers; "feats", remarks the above quoted author, "which might be regarded as simply inventions if told by one author only, but which seem to deserve prominent notice from being recounted by a series of authors, certainly independent of one another, [...]

""Sanang Setzen", says Colonel Yule, "enumerates a variety of the wonderful acts which could be performed through the Dharani (mystic Hindu charms). Such were a peg into solid rock; restoring the dead to life; turning a dead body into gold; penetrating everywhere as air does (in astral form); flying; catching wild beasts with the hand; [...]

"We did not ask either the fakir or sorcerer for an explanation of the method by which their respective phenomena were effected. If we had, unquestionably they would have replied as did a fakir to a French traveler, who tells his story in a recent number of a New York newspaper, called the Franco-American, as [...]

"When the fakir had brought his exhibition of white magic to a close, the "sorcerer", or conjurer, as they are called, prepared to display his power. We were treated to a succession of the wonders that the accounts of travelers have made familiar to the public; showing, among other things, the fact that animals naturally [...]

"In India, "spiritual" seances are not held in the dark, as in America; and no conditions, but perfect silence and harmony, are required. It was in the full glare of daylight streaming through the opened doors and windows, with a far-away buzz of life from the neighboring forests, and jungles sending us the echo of [...]

"Every animal is more or less endowed with the faculty of perceiving, if not spirits, at least something which remains for the time being invisible to common men, and can only be discerned by a clairvoyant. We have made hundreds of experiments with cats, dogs, monkeys of various kinds, and, once, with a tame tiger. [...]

"The claims of the friends of esoteric science, that Paracelsus produced, chemically, homunculi from certain combinations as yet unknown to exact science, are, as a matter of course, relegated to the storehouse of exploded humbugs. But why should they? If the homunculi were not made by Paracelsus they were developed by other adepts, and that [...]

"Such an exhibition as this of the potency of the will to effect even objective physical results, will prepare the student to comprehend its efficacy in the cure of disease by imparting the desired virtue to inanimate objects which are placed in contact with the patient. When we see such psychologists as Maudsley quoting, without [...]

"Breeders tell us that young animals should not be herded with old ones; and intelligent physicians forbid parents to have young children occupy their own beds. When David was old and feeble his vital forces were recruited by having a young person brought in close contact with him so that he could absorb her strength. [...]