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

"If the above is looked upon as an anecdote unworthy of credence, we will inquire of the reader what we must think of some modern "mediums", who perform the same while entranced. The testimony of several highly respectable and trustworthy witnesses, such as Lord Adair and Mr. S. C. Hall, is unimpeachable. "Spirits", the spiritualists [...]

"Origen writes that Brahmans were always famous for the wonderful cures which they performed by certain words; and in our own age we find Orioli, a learned corresponding member of the French Institute, corroborating the statement of Origen in the third century, and that of Leonard de Vair of the sixteenth, in which the latter [...]

"It was Ammonius who first taught that every religion was based on one and the same truth; which is the wisdom found in the Books of Thoth (Hermes Trismegistus), from which books Pythagoras and Plato had learned all their philosophy. And the doctrines of the former he affirmed to have been identical with the earliest [...]

"As an illustration of how little even the generation which directly preceded our own was competent to judge the religions and beliefs of the several hundred million Buddhists, Brahmans, and Parsees, let the student consult the advertisement of a scientific work published in 1828 by a Professor Dunbar, the first scholar who has undertaken to [...]

"From the days of the earliest antiquity, the Brahmans were known to be possessed of wonderful knowledge in every kind of magic arts. From Pythagoras, the first philosopher who studied wisdom with the Gymnosophists, and Plotinus, who was initiated into the mystery of uniting one's self with the Deity through abstract contemplation, down to the [...]

"Speaking of pictures, the one described by Huc as hanging in a certain Lamasery may fairly be regarded as one of the most wonderful in existence. It is a simple canvas without the slightest mechanical apparatus attached, as the visitor may prove by examining it at his leisure. It represents a moon-lit landscape, but the [...]

"In addition to other travelers, the Abbe Huc gives us an account of that wonderful tree of Tibet called the Kounboum; that is to say, the tree of the 10,000 images and characters. It will grow in no other latitude, although the experiment has sometimes been tried; and it cannot even be multiplied from cuttings. [...]

"The year 1876, just passed (we write in February, 1877) was emphatically, and, from the standpoint of March, 1875, unexpectedly - a year of blood. In the Danubian principalities was written one of the bloodiest chapters of the history of war and rapine - a chapter of outrages of Moslem upon Christian that has scarcely [...]

"The poor Abbe Huc, whose works of travel in Tibet and China are so well-known, relates the same fact of the resuscitation of Buddha. He adds, furthermore, the curious circumstance that the baby-oracle makes good his claim to being an old mind in a young body by giving to those who ask him, "and who [...]

"And now, encouraged by these words from a scholar who is neither a fanatic nor a conservative, we will recall a few things reported by travelers as having been seen by them in Tibet and India, and which are treasured by the natives as practical proofs of the truth of the philosophy and science handed [...]