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

"More than one pathologist, chemist, homoeopathist, and magnetist has quenched his thirst for knowledge in the books of Paracelsus. Frederick Hufeland got his theoretical doctrines on infection from this mediaeval "quack", as Sprengel delights in calling one who was immeasurably higher than himself.   Hemman, who endeavors to vindicate this great philosopher, and nobly tries [...]

"As the dawn of physical science broke into a glaring day-light, the spiritual sciences merged deeper and deeper into night, and in their turn they were denied.   So, now, these greatest masters in psychology are looked upon as "ignorant and superstitious ancestors"; as mountebanks and jugglers, because, forsooth, the sun of modern learning shines [...]

"We have a ready and palpable proof of such possibilities. A foreign correspondent of the Theosophical Society, a well-known medical practitioner, and one who has studied the occult sciences for upward of thirty years, has succeeded in obtaining what he terms the "true oil of gold", i.e., the primal element. Chemists and physicists have seen [...]

"There seems to be very little absurdity to believe in a "universal ens that resolves all bodies into their ens genitale." Van Helmont calls it "the highest and most successful of all salts; which having obtained the supreme degree of simplicity, purity, subtlety, enjoys alone the faculty of remaining unchanged and unimpaired by the subjects [...]

"The fabrication of a cup of glass which was brought by an exile to Rome in the reign of Tiberius - a cup "which he dashed upon the marvel pavement, and it was not crushed nor broken by the fall", and which, as it got "dented some" was easily brought into shape again with a [...]

"The ancients were always distinguished - especially the Chaldean astrologers and Magians - for their ardent love and pursuit of knowledge in every branch of science. They tried to penetrate the secrets of nature in the same way as our modern naturalists, and by the only method by which this object can be obtained, namely: [...]

"The recognized laws of physical science account for but a few of the more objective of the so-called spiritual phenomena. While proving the reality of certain visible effects of an unknown force, they have not thus far enabled scientists to control at will even this portion of the phenomena.   The truth is that the [...]

"And thus, after having written, in 1870, his severe sentence against spiritualism and magic; after saying that even at that moment he believed "the whole affair a superstition, or, at least, an unexplained trick - a delusion of the senses"; Mr. Crookes, in 1875, closes his letter with the following memorable words: "To imagine, I [...]

"How subject even a scientific opinion is to error, we may see, if we only compare the several articles on spiritual phenomena from the able pen of that gentleman, which appeared from 1870 to 1875. In one of the first we read: ... "the increased employment of scientific methods will promote exact observations and greater [...]

"In the Researches on the Phenomena of Spiritualism, Mr. Crookes submits to the option of the reader eight theories "to account for the phenomena observed." These theories runs as follows:   "First Theory - The phenomena are all the result of tricks, clever mechanical arrangements, or legerdemain; the mediums are imposters, and the rest of [...]