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

"The lotus, the sacred flower of the Egyptians, as well as the Hindus, is the symbol of Horus as it is that of Brahma. No temples in Tibet or Nepal are found without it; and the meaning of this symbol is extremely suggestive.   The sprig of lilies placed in the hand of the archangel, [...]

""In the primordiate state of the creation", says Polier's Mythologie des Indous, "the rudimental universe, submerged in water, reposed in the bosom of the Eternal. Sprang from this chaos and darkness, Brahma, the architect of the world, poised on a lotus-leaf floated (moved?) upon the waters, unable to discern anything but water and darkness."   [...]

"While the miracles recorded in the Bible have become accepted facts with the Christians, to disbelieve which is regarded as infidelity, the narratives of wonders and prodigies found in the Atharva-Veda, either provoke their contempt or are viewed as evidences of diabolism.   And yet, in more than one respect, and notwithstanding the unwillingness of [...]

"Numerous are the volumes preserved in Hindu convents, in which are recorded the proofs of their learning. To attempt to say whether these Gymnosophists were the real founders of magic in India, or whether they only practiced what had passed to them as an inheritance from the earliest Rishis - the seven primeval sages - [...]

"It is admitted on all hands that from time immemorial the distant East was the land of knowledge. Not even in Egypt were botany and mineralogy so extensively studied as by the savants of archaic Middle Asia.   Sprengel, unjust and prejudiced as he shows himself in everything else, confesses this much in his Histoire [...]

"Even the great Magendie, the wise physiologist, was not above discovering that which had already been discovered and found good by the oldest physicians.   He proposed a remedy against consumption, namely, the use of prussic acid, may be found in the works of Linnaeus, Amenitates Academicae, vol. iv., in which he shows distilled laurel [...]

"In an old book entitled Demonologia, the author cites many instances of important remedies which being neglected at first afterward rose into notice through mere accident. He also shows that most of the new discoveries in medicine have turned out to be more than "the revival and readoption of very ancient practices."   During the [...]

"Theoretically the most benignant, at the same time no other school of science exhibits so many instances or petty prejudice, materialism, atheism, and malicious stubbornness as medicine. The predilections and patronage of the leading physicians are scarcely ever measured by the usefulness of a discovery.   Bleeding, by leeching, cupping, and the lancet, had its [...]

"Toward science as a whole, as a divine goal, the whole civilized world ought to look with respect and veneration; for science alone can enable man to understand the Deity by the true appreciation of his works.   "Science is the understanding of truth or facts", says Webster; "it is an investigation of truth for [...]

"Since history recorded the first laws established by man, there never was yet a people, whose code did not hang the issues of the life and death of its citizens upon the testimony of two or three credible witnesses.   "At the mouth of two witnesses, or three witnesses, shall he that is worthy of [...]