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

"What modern cosmogonist could compress within so simple a symbol as the Egyptian serpent in a circle such a world of meaning? Here we have, in this creature, the whole philosophy of the universe: matter vivified by spirit, and the two conjointly evolving out of chaos (Force) everything that was to be. To signify that [...]

"But to return to our Edda-legend. Ymir, the giant, falls asleep, and sweats profusely. This perspiration causes the pit of his left arm to generate out of that place a man and a woman, while his foot produces a son for them. Thus, while the mythic "cow" gives being to a race of superior spiritual [...]

"Now, if we take into consideration that this mineral was unversally regarded by ancient philosophers as one of the chief formative principles in organic creation; by the alchemists as the universal menstrum, which, they said, was to be wrought from water; and by every one else, even as it is regarded now by science as [...]

"In the cosmogonical poem of Voluspa (the song of the prophetess), which contains the Scandinavian legends of the very dawn of ages, the phantom-germ of the universe is represented as lying in the Ginnungagap - or the cup of illusion, a boundless and void abyss. In this world's matrix, formerly a region of night and [...]

"Emepht, the supreme, first principle, produced an egg; by brooding over which, and permeating the substance of it with its own vivifying essence, the germ contained within was developed; and Phtha, the active creative principle proceeded from it, and began his work. From the boundless expanse of cosmic matter, which had formed itself under his [...]

"Our readers will certainly inquire what then is this invisible all? How is it that our scientific methods, however perfected, have never discovered any of the magical properties contained in it? To this we can answer, that it is no reason because modern scientists are ignorant of them that it should not possess all the [...]

"Cabanis speaks of nervous disorders in which the patients easily distinguished with the naked eye infusoria and other microscopical beings which others could only perceive through powerful lenses. "I have met subjects", he says, "who saw in Cimmerian darkness as well as in a lighted room;..." others "who followed persons, tracing them out like dogs, [...]

"Dr. Brierre de Boismont, in his volume on Hallucinations, reviews a wonderful variety of visions, apparitions, and ecstasies, generally termed hallucinations. "We cannot deny", he says, "that in certain diseases we see developed a great surexcitation of sensibilty, which lends to the senses a prodigious acuteness of perception. Thus, some individuals will perceive at considerable [...]

"What is then this inexplicable power of attraction but an atomical portion of that essence that scientists and kabalists equally recognize as the "principle of life" - the akasa? Granted that the attraction exercised by such bodies may be blind; but as we ascend higher the scale of the organic beings in nature, we find [...]

"What is the WILL? Can "exact science" tell? What is the nature of that intelligent, intangible, and powerful something which reigns supreme over all inert matter? The great Universal Idea willed, and the cosmos sprang into existence. I will, and my limbs obey. I will, and, my thought traversing space, which does not exist for [...]