Category: Isis Unveiled, Volume II: H. P. Blavatsky (1877)

“As a last word, the Christian Gnostics sprang into existence toward the beginning of the second century, and just at the time when the Essenes most mysteriously faded away, which indicated that they were the identical Essenes, and moreover pure Christists, viz.: they believed and were those who best understood what one of their own [...]

“The common arguments adduced against the Jaïna claim, of having been the source of the restoration of ancient Buddhism, that the principle tenet of the latter religion is opposed to the belief of the Jaïnas is not a sound one. Buddhists, say our Orientalists, deny the existence of a Supreme Being; that Jaïnas admit one, [...]

““It is the missionaries in China and India, who first started this falsehood about Niepang, or Niepana (Nirvana)”, says Wong-Chin-Fu. Who can deny the truth of this accusation after reading the works of the Abbe Dubois, for instance? A missionary who passes forty years of his life in India, and then writes that the “Buddhists [...]

“It is not true that Gautama never taught anything concerning a future life, or that he denied the immortality of the soul. Ask any intelligent Buddhist his ideas on Nirvana, and he will unquestionably express himself, as the well-known Wong-Chin-Fu, the Chinese orator, now traveling in this country, did in a recent conversation with us [...]

“We cannot attain the “Kingdom of Heaven”, unless we unite ourselves indissolubly with our Rex Lucis, the Lord of Splendor and of Light, our Immortal God. We must first conquer immortality and ‘ take the Kingdom of Heaven by violence”, offered to our material selves. “The first man is of the earth, earthy; the second [...]

"It will not be found without interest to see what Mr. John Yarker, Jr., has to say on some modern secret societies among the Orientals. "The nearest resemblance to the Brahmanical Mysteries, is probably found in the very ancient 'Paths' of the Dervishes, which are usually governed by twelve officers, the oldest ‘Court’ superintending the [...]

“The Druzes remain, even more than the Jews, a peculiar people”, says Colonel Churchill, one of the few fair and strictly impartial writers. "They marry within their own race; they are rarely, if ever converted; they adhere tenaciously to their traditions, and they baffle all efforts to discover their cherished secrets. The bad name of [...]

(continued) ““There is no infidelity, idolatry, or other real bad feature in the system. They have the relics of what was once a grand form of nature worship, which has been contracted under a despotism into a secret order, hidden from the light of day, and exposed only in the smoky glare of a few [...]

“Professor Rawson, with the true devotion of a man of science, noted down every important discovery he made in the Palestinian libraries, and every precious fact orally communicated to him by the mystics he encountered, and some day they will see the light. He has most obligingly sent us the following communication, which, as the [...]

“The morality of the Druzes is strict and uncompromising. Nothing can tempt one of these Lebanon Unitarians to go astray from what he is taught to consider his duty. Their ritual being unknown to outsiders, their would-be historians have hitherto denied them one. Their “Thursday meetings” are open to all, but no interloper has ever [...]