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

"Among the great mass of peoples plunged deep in the superstitious ignorance of the mediaeval ages, there were but a few students of the Hermetic philosophy of old, who, profiting by what it had taught them, were enabled to forecast discoveries which are the boast of our present age; while at the same time the [...]

"Herodotus was regarded as a lunatic for speaking of a people who he was told slept during a night which lasted six months. If we explain the word "slept" by an easy misunderstanding it will be more than easy to account for the rest as an illusion to the night of the Polar Regions. Pliny [...]

"There was a period of time when the learned Academics made themselves particularly merry at the simple enunciation of some marvels which the ancients gave as having occurred under their own observations. What poor dolts - perhaps liars, these appeared in the eyes of an enlightened century! Did not they actually describe horses and other [...]

"Cut off as they are from the accumulation of facts in one-half of the universe, and that the most important, modern scholars are naturally unable to construct a system of philosophy which will satisfy themselves, let alone others. They are like men in a coal mine, who work all day and emerge only at night, [...]

"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 [...]

"We have heard a French Academician, a man of profound learning, remark, that he would gladly sacrifice his own reputation to have the record of the many ridiculous mistakes and failures of his colleagues obliterated from the public memory. But these failures cannot be recalled too often in considering our claims and the subject we [...]

"But, surely among all these inchoate branches of science, there must be some one at least complete! It seems to us that we heard a great clamor of applause, "as the voice of many waters", over the discovery of protoplasm. But alas! when we turned to read Mr. Huxley, the learned parent of the new-born [...]

"Psychology, according to the greatest authorities on the subject, is a department of science hitherto almost unknown. Physiology, according to Fournie, one of its French authorities, is in so bad a condition as to warrant his saying in the preface to his erudite work Physiologie du Systeme Nerveux, that "we perceive at last that not [...]

"And here we may as well mention the works of Hermes Trismegistus. Who, or how many have had the opportunity to read them as they were in the Egyptian sanctuaries? In his Egyptian Mysteries, Iamblichus attributes to Hermes 1,100 books, and Seleucus reckons no less than 20,000 of his works before the period of Menes. [...]

"A work of Apollonides, surnamed Orapios, is mentioned by Theophilus, patriarch of Antioch, entitled the Divine Book, and giving the secret biography and origin of all the gods of Egypt; and Ammianus Marcellinus speaks of a secret work in which was noted the precise age of the bull Apis - a key to many a [...]