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

"In addition to these freaks played on human credulity by "psychic force", Mr. Crookes gives another class of phenomena, which he terms "special instances", which seem (?) to point to the agency of an exterior intelligence. "I have been, says Mr. Crookes, "with Miss Fox when she has been writing a message automatically to one [...]

"We fully agree with Mr. Cox as to the lack of proof that the agency is that of the spirits of the dead; as for the rest, it is a very extraordinary deduction from "a wealth of facts" according to the expression of Mr. Crookes, who remarks further, "On going over my notes, I find...such [...]

"In continuation of his argument, Mr. Cox says: "The most ardent spiritualists practically admit the existence of psychic force, under the very inappropriate name of magnetism (to which it has no affinity whatever), for they assert that the spirits of the dead can only do the acts attributed to them by using the magnetism (that [...]

"All the prophets of old - inspired sensitives - were said to be uttering their prophecies under the same conditions, either by the direct outward efflux of the astral emanation, or a sort of damp fluxion, rising from the earth. It is this astral matter which serves as a temporary clothing of the souls who [...]

"The ancients were at no loss to discriminate between a blind force acting spontaneously and the same force when directed by an intelligence. Plutarch, the priest of Apollo, when speaking of the oracular vapors which were but a subterranean gas, imbued with intoxicating magnetic properties, shows its nature to be dual, when he addresses it [...]

"As we have said before, the modern psychic force, and the ancient oracular fluids, whether terrestrial or sidereal, are identical in essence - simply a blind force. So is air. And while in dialogue the sound-waves produced by a conversation of the speakers affect the same body of air, that does not imply any doubt [...]

"And now we may ask, how can a will manifest itself intelligently and unconsciously at the same time? It is difficult, if not impossible, to conceive of intellection apart from consciousness. By consciousness we do not necessarily imply physical or corporeal consciousness. Consciousness is a quality of the sentient principle, or, in other words, the [...]

"Every objective manifestation, whether it be the motion of a living limb, or the movement of some inorganic body, requires two conditions: will and force - plus matter, or that which makes the object so moved visible to our eye; and these three are all convertible forces, or the force-correlation of the scientists. In their [...]

"The philosophers, and especially those who were initiated into the Mysteries, held that the astral soul is the impalpable duplicate of the gross external form which we call body. It is the perisprit of the Kardecists and the spirit-form of the spiritualists. Above this internal duplicate, and illuminating it as the warm ray of the [...]

"Mr. Cox's first point seems, therefore, not well taken; it is based upon an hypothesis mechanically untenable. Of course our argument proceeds upon the supposition that levitation is an observed fact. The theory of psychic force, to be perfect, must account for all "visible motions...in solid substances", and among these is levitation. As to his [...]