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

"Spirit photography, spirit-rapping, writing, moving, talking, and even spirit-materializations can be simulated; there is hardly a physical phenomenon now in Europe and America but could be imitated - with apparatus - by a clever juggler. The wonders of mesmerism and subjective phenomena alone defy tricksters, skepticism, stern science, and dishonest mediums; the cataleptic state it [...]

"Notwithstanding the recent sentence of Leymarie, the scoffs of the skeptics and of a vast majority of physicians and scientists, the unpopularity of the subject, and, above all, the indefatigable persecutions of the Roman Catholic clergy, fighting in mesmerism woman's traditional enemy, so evident and unconquerable is the truth of its phenomena that even the [...]

"To assert so dogmatically that mesmerism and animal magnetism are but hallucinations, implies that it can be improved. But where are these proofs, which alone ought to have authority in science? Thousands of times the chance was given to the academicians to assure themselves of its truth; but, they have invariably declined. Vainly do mesmerists [...]

"A work upon upon magico-spiritual philosophy and occult science would be incomplete without a particular notice of the history of animal magnetism, as it stands since Paracelsus staggered with it the schoolmen of the latter half of the sixteenth century. We will observe briefly its appearance in Paris when imported from Germany by Anton Mesmer. [...]

"This utter scorn for established laws and scientific formulas, this aspiration of mortal clay to commingle with the spirit of nature, and look to it alone for health, and help, and the light of truth, was the cause of the inveterate hatred shown by the contemporary pigmies to the fire-philosopher and alchemist. No wonder that [...]

"The primal causes of the diseases afflicting mankind; the secret relations between physiology and psychology, vainly tortured by men of modern science for some clew to base their speculations upon; the specifics and remedies for every ailment of the human body - all are described and accounted for in his voluminous works. Electro-magnetism, the so-called [...]

"ONE of the truest things ever said by a man of science is the remark made by Professor Cooke in his New Chemistry. "The history of Science shows that the age must be prepared before scientific truths can take root and grow. The barren premonitions of science have been barren because these seeds of truth [...]

"Hermes, who is of my ordinances ever the bearer...then taking his staff, with which he the eyelids of mortals closes at will, and the sleeper, at will reawakens." - Odyssey, Book V "I saw the Samothracian rings leap, and steel-filings boil in a brass dish; so soon as underneath it there was placed the magnet-stone; [...]

"The meaning of the Urdar-fountain, that Thor is afraid to make boil, and the cause of his reluctance, will only be comprehended by our physicists when the reciprocal electro-magnetic relations of the innumerable members of the planetary system, now just suspected, shall be thoroughly determined. Glimpses of the truth are given in the recent scientific [...]

"Rendered into plain English, how can this myth be interrupted but as showing that the Norse legend-makers were thoroughly acquainted with electricity? Thor, the euhmerization of electricity, handles his peculiar element only when protected by gloves of iron, which it its natural conductor. His belt of strength is a closed circuit, around which the isolated [...]