CHAPTER XI.

TRANSCENDENTAL IDEAS OF THE ROSICRUCIANS. THEIR CABALISTIC PHILOSOPHY AS TO THE OCCULT INTER- CHANGE OF NATURE, AND OF MAGIC,
From a considerable amount of the foregoing matter, in this Book, there may arise, in the unprepared reader’s mind, a feeling, first of surprise, and then of dissent— although we do not think that this sensation of dissent will degenerate—certainly not upon second thoughts— into displeasure. We have introduced particulars of truths; and have grouped truths round about par- ticulars; but in no case have we written except after very deep and doubtful and (we may securely add) very Suspicious and rigorous examination. However ques- tionable, however out-of-the-way, and however hete- rodox, our comment may sometimes appear to shallowly- judging persons, we hope to be generally criticised coolly and sagaciously. Most modern opinion is class opinion,— is narrow-minded opinion; in fact, no opinion whatever. We protest, beforehand, against the assumptions of these classes; who seem to stand upon good presupposed grounds, and to exercise authority, in regard to these peculiar subjects; but who, in reality, do neither. We wish to be judged, in these undoubtedly singular, and seemingly defiantly eccentric, forthcoming passages, with more magnanimity and large-mindedness than we consider prevails with most modern critics. We are aware that we stand very independently (although it is some comfort to know that we have the ancients with us) in the views
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which we entertain upon these mysterious and all-im- portant sexual and theosophical subjects. But we wish to be understood as universally deprecating hasty judg- ment upon them. The opinion which “comes upper- most” is generally wrong, not only upon these topics, but not infrequently upon a// topics in respect of which there may be inquiry. We desire to bespeak a free arena for all our ideas—and they are, in far-prevailing prepon- derance, explanatory in one way or other of the notions of that renowned, and yet carefully and essentially mys- terious succession of men, the much-debated Rosicrucians. The “R.C.” sought resolutely to stand aloof from all mankind, in certain very peculiar respects. They were determined to trample upon the base parts of their nature—to turn from the temptation and to refuse the embraces of women. And yet the object of their adora- tion was the “ Rose,” thence one of their names and the one half of their distinguishing titlk—the “ Rose,” with all the mystical meanings, which, as it were impersonated, follow with the ideas of that flower—the “Queen” of the “ Garden,” most glorious when renewed, and recalled to life, in the “shower.” The “Brothers of the R. C.” were, also, ordained to poverty, yet set aside, as Saints, to effect all the good they could in the world—themselves remaining unseen, unknown, and unhonoured; considered as possessing all the riches of the world in their secret, supernatural powers over the invisible world as the “rulers of the spirits ;” the means of the perpetuation of youth and beauty; all gifts, divine and human, as the «‘Sons of God,” and access to the councils of the angels and archangels—yet bearing the Cross of Christ, and only glorified in the sufferings, and in the sacrifice of the
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Immortal Redeemer, who Himself, although the Son of God, took upon himself all the sins and imperfections of humanity, and submitted to become a servant, and at last to be despised and mocked, and affixed, with the piercing nails (metaphorically and mystically, as Jacob Behmen says, “ struck through both worlds” of the “ visible” and the “ invisible’), upon the accursed “ Tree !”
In all matters brought forward in this Book, and duly (and certainly cautiously) placed before our readers in our successive Chapters, we fall back (quietly, though with confidence,) upon conclusions which have been only arrived at—after much pausing—even suspicious pausing— at the successive stages of acquirement.
However bold and audacious the theory may appear to rose-water philosophers, and to sentimentalists of a certain order, we will lay the moral, and the reasons for the ‘ moral, before the reader in a few words. This theory pre- assumes, in the abstruse sense, that there is no virtue so pure, lofty, and genuine, as that virtue which yields and surrenders when there is no escape for it :—resigning simply when it can do no more; when all means of resistance are exhausted; when force (which is the key to unlock the submission of all the worlds, bodily and spiritual) is master. ‘The unfortunate Lucretia—though her self-sacrifice sprang from a most noble soul—there- fore (in this view) made a mistake in dying, instead of living. Force, which is the master of the world, was present in the form of her ravisher. He might even have acknowledged the authority of the gods, and justified himself—nay, applauded himself—by the example of all the gods. This philosophic view of the case has never yet been admitted, simply because the world has fallen
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into a sudden passion of indignation at Tarquin’s act. It will, here, at once be seen that it was Christianity alone— or the idea of Christianity—which gave to the world that sublime character, the “ Knight-Errant,” and realised all the grand system of championship, pervading throughout, and prevailing in the feudal system, and its perfect chain of obligations and honours, reaching in unbroken corre- sponding and complementary succession from the crown— truly even down to the sense of duty, and of gratitude in the serf, who worked for his own sustainment, protected by his lord, and submissive to the ruling of God. It was only in the abuses of these great and good things that rapine, violence, robbery, and wrong arose. But to pass to our argument. Combating for that which is called sexual virtue to the “ bitter-end,” or to the last, isa mistake and an error of outrage against oneself and ot foolhardiness; a misrendering of true conduct, even in the cause of the most exalted virtue itself. _Hence—how- ever fine and grand in theory—and doubtless so far as the individuality, or the person himself, or herself (the female, particularly) is concerned, it is grand—the folly of such gratuitous heroism—which is surely “ self-murder” if anything be—is clear. This condition of inviolability of the body (mechanism, however exquisite), in face of the very character and nature of the body, which was formed for the enjoyment, in perfection, of the very Act which is thus petulantly and obstinately flung back in the face of the very contriver of it all—which is known as Nature— is, after all, unnatural.
Why should arise this misplaced enthusiasm—this blind, gratuitous defence—this, clinging to the idea of the fighting to the last for the citadel which it is the very
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intention of Nature to throw open to the occupation? Why this destruction of self in this self-assumed_ sup- posed defence of spotlessness and virginity when every- thing depends upon the infraction thereof? There is accepted a universal conviction which all the persuasions of common sense cannot remove, or obliterate, or charm to sleep, or even compel to suspension, that all this rigid, unbargaining defence of virtue means glory and holiness. From this—the saints in heaven! from this—the pro- tests to the all-judging gods—the gods of all time and of all place, who are only to be known by the possibility of a human consciousness or conscience, and therefore only by man (as produced by woman). Nature itself knows nothing of this contradictory appeal. To Nature it is rebellion, for it is the first thing ordained of Nature, and Nature is fullest of contrivances for its plenitude of indulgence. In the face of these truths, in the acknow- ledgment of all philosophy, in the redemption of the civilised times from the onrush of barbarism, and the lowering of the sublimest artistic instincts peopling the world of mind and of matter with beauties, the office of the woman in serving ¢his purpose stands exalted as the most transcendent proof of the intentions of the gods in regard of her and of her exalted honour and beneficence in the carrying out of the resolutions of the councils of the world’s makers. Instead of there being, properly, shame and disgrace in the application of herself to the satisfaction of these instincts, and in the fulfilling of her destiny to the end of the free life, and of the free com- panionship (always in the abstruse sense), when we examine into the realities of things, instead of degradation there is admiration. It is from these reasons that, among
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the ancients, the very name of “ harlot”’* was abstractedly
* Mr. Myles McSweeney, in a letter to the author dated April 4th, 1871, says:—‘¢ The word (an important word) ‘AI’ in Arabic stands for the ‘ Uza,’ Venus—zi.e., the ‘Woman.’ I submit the term ‘ Venus’ is derived from the Chuldaic ‘ Benoth’ (Women). The Greeks changed the B to V and the terminal ‘oth’ to ‘ os,’ hence ‘ Venos,’ or, as we have the word from the Latins, ‘ Venus.’ ‘There is no doubt but that the Arabic ‘ Uza’ is derived from the Hebrew ‘ Aishe, the Woman,’ or, as the Greeks call her, ‘Isis.? Wenus, we know, had two cha- racters. ‘There were two ways of regarding the ‘ Female’ in the old world, and this distinction is maintained through the whole mythology of the Greeks, and therefore, of course, through the whole of the mytho- logy, or the history of the Court of Olympus and of the doings of the gods of the Romans, who adopted and altered (not for the better) the religious ideas and the supereminently beautiful fables of the Greeks. ‘Venus,’ or ‘ Isis,’ or the ‘ Woman,’ or the ‘ Goddess’ of all the ancient religions, ‘ shone’ (or ‘ displayed’ ?) through the myths in two characters —bad and good ; and these characters were continuously interchanging, or, in other words, they were (mystically, of course,) identical. There was the chaste Venus, or, using other expressions, the triumphant, sacred ‘Virgin,’ who shared the characteristics of the unconquered and the invincible Diana, who, when seen in her nakedness, and therefore in her profanation, was cited as a sacred personage with the office of launching the magic penalty by the power of transfixing with the curse, which terror and annihilation (as Man) Diana inflicts on Actzon, who was, in consequence, torn to pieces by the avenging demons in the shape of his own hounds. The chaste Venus—if the idea of Venus is ever that of chastity—was the ‘Venus Urania,’ or the Venus of the stars, or of heaven. The ‘Venus Pandemos’ was the harlot. I am fully convinced, as a result of the most careful consideration of all these purposely confused and incessantly (designedly) evading matters, that from this Arabic word ‘ Uza’ we derive the word ‘ Hussey,’ as applied to ladies who let themselves out to hire or who feel disposed to worship this Venus Pandemos in their own particular—very acceptable, doubt- less—manner. Hence our word ‘whore’ (see Bailey)—ze¢,, ‘ hired women for prostitution.’ The word ‘hire’ in Hebrew is ‘Shaker.’ We know the ‘G’ and ‘ K’ are interchangeable letters, hence ‘ Shagger.’ Whether these coincidences are only accidental or not it is not very easy to declare, but, nevertheless, the fact is very curious, and it seems to prove a good deal that they so closely correspond to each other.”
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esteemed sacred, and the profession looked upon not only as necessary but as grand and praiseworthy. The dignity and defiance (as it were, in the noble sense,) of the in- fraction of virtue was held great under certain circum- stances, The interest and the respect was always the sublimest, the reader may remark, in the cases of enforced violation. ‘The sustainment of this kind of life, from necessity, was honoured by the State, and was sur- rounded by a peculiar sort of sanctification. Hence, in certain aspects, and arising from certain considerations, the stupendous dignity and holiness of the “ Magdalen” —she the mysterious idea of whom (in the occult sense) was commensurate with the trembling of Heaven, of Earth, and of the last member of the “Eternal Tripli- cate’—the Nether Regions—knowing of dole, know- ing of “Fire,” knowing of the “ punishments” for the « Presumption,” which is hinted, in the “ Cabala,” as the cause of having emptied Heaven of “One Third” of its Inhabitants, consequently realising the “Second Fall,” that in which the Human Race is concerned, or the “Fall of Man,” necessitating religion, bringing about, through the Divine Benignity, the offered “‘ Redeemer,” or the Propitiatory Christ, to insure the change in the “ Divine Intentions,” which secured everything, according to the Cabalists.*
* ‘Those. were indeed bold explorers into the wonders of the natural world. Salt and fire have properties in common. Salt, like a subtle. fluid, penetrates all that is corruptible and separates that which is decay- ing and foul, whilst it quickens that which is sound. Fire destroys that which is perishable, and thereby establishes the imperishable in its purest perfection, and leads to new and more beautiful forms of being. Thus both effect a kind of transformation. Now ‘ Every one, our Lord saith, shall be salted with fire,’ by his being involuntarily salted with the fire
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But to pass back to our singular theme in regard to the prevalent though natural error in the consideration of that feeling called female virtue, of course only in the abstract and in the philosophical and transcendental sense. We do not wish to consider this strange and mysterious subject in any other light—we mean from any other point of view—than the philosophical and the merely contro- versial and speculative. Let us reflect for a few moments upon the important part which the “Idea” of the “Magdalen” plays in the results and in the philosophical conclusions of the whole round of the universal Theo- sophy. It lies perdu side by side with the sacred mysticism accompanying the theological reveries or dreams—true, as all dreams in the lesser or the larger extension are “true enough,” although truly so only “in their own world,” which is the world of the mysteries, which again surround and make a mere island, as it were, of the real and the true—according to “man’s truth,” truth that, in reality, out of the commonplace reality—to use a paradox—“is no truth at all.” The idea of the Magdalen is that of the twin sister of Virginity: of the other sister (or twin sister), or the “ White Sister’ to this “Red Sister” (“red with sin”). In this occult and _ Gnostic sense she is the Glorious Counterpart, or “ “Sacred Virgin”’—the Virgin Mary herself—the Mi- raculous Heroine, star-crowned “ lily-invested,” of the «¢ Annunciation”—proclaimed by the “ Chiefest Friend to Man among the Archangels,” the Angel Gabriel, the of condemning judgment (Heb. x. 27, xii. 29), as the victims on the
altar were salted with salt (Levit. ii, 13, Ezek. xlui. 24. See Lange).
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Cab-ala itself, as is seen by a little reflection, “C” and «“G” mean the same thing in all languages, in all their marks or symbols or hieroglyphics.
Thus we arrive at certain mystic conclusions, or arch- conclusions.” Hence, in certain ways, the stupendous dignity and holiness of “The Magdalen”’—she out of whom, as the ‘ Woman-Conqueror” after all—the “‘ female Saint Michael”—were cast “seven devils.” She— this sainted, this deified “ Being’’—be it ever remembered, was “first” at the Tomb of the Redeemer. The mys- ticism of this impressive side of Christianity is the most beautiful in the world. All this view is exhibited most powerfully in the writings of the great mystic, Jacob Behmen. Necessity makes the glory of the loss of virginity, or the supernatural dignity, in the heroic sense, of enforced prostitution. Martyrdom is a mistake in this reading of obligations. For Death in Escape—we are not all martyrs, nor can we be such, nor is it intended by Nature that we be such—Death in Escape, we repeat, is not only the bitterest but it is the mistaken door out of which to fly. There is no virtue so perfectly beautiful, however paradoxical it may seem, as that Virtue which is forced into submission in the instant’s necessity, with its protest and appeal, when Heaven turns away its head, and, obdurate as the rock to the sbriek, seems as if it would not hear !
“Ts there no pity, sitting in the clouds,
To see into the bottom of my grief ?”” Thus Juliet cries in her despair. The outraged one, with the barbarous hands of Hell’s force upon her, figuratively, as it may be said—and it is no irreverence to say so, since it occurs as obyious—seems, in that cry of vain despair,
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to fling back, protesting, the outrage—to speak vividly— indignantly, from “this side Nature,” into the very lap of the gods that permit it,—those very gods, here assumed as the incontestable Divinity, who make and ordain the sacrifice—that destruction to which the Victim succumbs. Ay, the virtue which is prostituted over the face of the whole earth is never in reality touched! Talk not to us of escapes! The world has no escapes. Least of all are there escapes in death.
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