Editor’s Note.— This text forms the second subsection of Section I of the surviving “Würzburg Manuscript,” an early draft of The Secret Doctrine prepared by H. P. Blavatsky principally during 1885–1886, before the work was extensively reorganized into the form published in 1888. It belongs to the historical and introductory material that originally constituted the first volume of the work and was later largely reassigned to the projected third volume.
“Hermetic and Other Books of Antiquity” was first published from the manuscript in The Theosophist, November, 1932, during C. Jinarajadasa’s serial publication of the Würzburg material. Portions of the manuscript were subsequently incorporated into H. P. Blavatsky: Collected Writings, while the complete surviving section was published in The Secret Doctrine Würzburg Manuscript (Eastern School Press, 2014), pp. 27–36.
Most of the present text was later revised and redistributed throughout the posthumous 1897 Secret Doctrine, Volume III. Its principal material reappears in Sections II and III, especially pp. 30–43, while substantial passages concerning Orpheus and the destruction or concealment of ancient records were relocated much later in the volume, around pp. 297–302. The concluding discussion of alternating periods of spiritual perception ultimately reappeared instead in the 1888 Secret Doctrine, vol. II, pp. 74–75. The Würzburg text therefore preserves an earlier continuous arrangement of material that was later divided, revised, and dispersed across several parts of the published work.
2. Hermetic and other Books of Antiquity. — Perfect accord of beliefs and “superstitions” among various nations. What science proclaims false — discoveries and facts show true. — The two Masters of Clemens Alexandrinus
Hardly in the beginning of the present century, the books called Hermetic, Alchemical and Astrological were in the sight of the profane public what they are yet now in the opinion of the average man of science: simply a collection of tales, of fraudulent pretences and ridiculous claims. They [“]never existed before the Christian era[”] — it was said, [“]they were all written with the triple object of speculation, deceiving and pious fraud.” The XVIIIth century had prepared Europe for the XIXth. In the former, everything that did not emanate from the Royal Academies was false, superstitious, foolish belief in a false Hermes, a false Orpheus, a false Zoroaster, in false Oracles, false Sibyls, and a thrice false Mesmer and his ridiculous fluids — were tabo[o]ed all along the line. In our own age, all that has its genesis outside the learned and dogmatic precincts of Oxford and the Salpetriere of Paris is denounced as [“]unscientific” and ridiculous. We think we see the sidereal phantom of the old philosopher and mystic of the Cambridge University, Henry More, moving in the astral light over the antiquated walls of the old town in which he wrote his letter to Glanvil. The “soul” seems restless and indignant as on that day, the 5th May 1678, when he complained so bitterly to the author of Sadducismus Triumphatus, of Scot, Adie and Webster. “Our new inspired Saints” . . . the “Soul” murmurs . . . [“]sworn advocates of the witches . . . who against all sense and reason . . . will have no Samuel, but a confederate knave . . . the inblown buffoons puffed up with . . . ignorance vanity and stupid infidelity.”
Rest in peace, o restless soul. Lately things are somewhat changed; and since that for ever memorable day when the Academical Committee (Franklin included) investigated Mesmer’s phenomena and proclaimed it a clever knavery, every hour brings in some fresh evidence in favour of Mesmerism and phenomena in general. But in the first decades of our century the men of science were blind as bats — as many are still even now — and Hermetic literature was denied, not withstanding the evidence of the most erudite men of all the ages. Father Kircher for one was not even noticed; and his assertions that all the fragments known under the titles of works by Mercury Trismegistus, Berosius, Pherecydes of Scyros, etc. were rolls escaped from the fire that devoured 100,000 volumes of the great Alexandrian Library were simply laughed at. Nevertheless the educated classes of Europe knew then as they do now, that the famous Alexandrian Library — the “marvel of the ages” had been founded and put in order at the desire of Ptolemy Philadelphus by Aristotle, and that most of its MSS. had been carefully copied from hieratic texts and the oldest parchments, Chaldean, Phœnician, Persian etc., which transliterations and copies amounted in their turn to another 100,000 as Josephus and Strabo assert. Moreover there was the additional evidence of Clement Alexandrinus, that ought to be credited to some extent, who testified1 to the existence of 30,000 volumes of the Books of Thoth, placed in the library of the Tomb of Osymandius, on the entrance door of which was the inscription “The Cure for the Soul.”
Since then — as all know — Champollion found on the most ancient monuments of Egypt the entire texts of that Pimander and that Asclepias declared by some to this day apocryphal and FRAUDULENT. After having devoted their whole lives to the study of the records of the old Egyptian wisdom, both Champollion-Figeac and Champollion Junior, publicly declared, notwithstanding many biassed judgments hazarded by certain hasty and unwise critics, that the Books of Hermes “truly contain a mass of Egyptian traditions which are constantly corroborated by the most authentic records and monuments of Egypt of the hoariest antiquity”2 and that they were [“]the faithful echo and expression of the most ancient verities.” Since then also, some of the hymns by the false Orpheus and his apocryphal verses have been found repeated word for word in certain inscriptions of the fourth Dynasty — addressed to certain deities, in hieroglyphics.
Finally Creuzer has rightly pointed out the numerous passages borrowed from the Orphic hymns by Hesiod and Homer, who have hardly understood them correctly, as the great symbologist thinks; and no wonder, as the two Grecian Miltons have anthropomorphized many an abstraction, like the English poet did Satan — thousands of years later. To end, — Aeschylus’ Prometheus (V. ch. VI §2) shows certainly some prescience in the Sibyls of old.
Thus gradually the ancient claims came to be vindicated. The XIXth century had to submit to evidence, and some of its critics to confess that archaic literature can never be dated too far back into the prehistoric ages. Moreover, that the contents of all those ancient books — Henoch included [—] deemed and proclaimed so loudly “apocryphal” are found in the most secret and sacred sanctuaries of Chaldea, India, Phœnicia, Egypt and Central Asia. The merit of Champollion as an Egyptologist none will question. And if he declares that everything demonstrates the accuracy of the writing of the mysterious Hermes Trismegistus, and that his antiquity runs back into the night of time and is corroborated by him in its minutest details.3 No one could ask for a better proof in favour of the Hermetic philosophy.
Egypt gathered the students of all countries before Alexandria was founded. [“]How comes it,[”] asks Ennemoser “that so little has become known of the mysteries? Through so many ages and amongst so many different times and people? The answer is that it is owing to the universally strict silence of the initiated. Another cause may be found in the destruction and total loss of all the written memorials of the secret knowledge of the remotest antiquity.” [“]Numa’s books described by Livy, consisting of treatises upon natural philosophy and magic were found in his tomb; but they were not allowed to be made known lest they should reveal the most secret mysteries of the state religion. The senate and the tribune of the people determined that the books themselves should be burned, which was done[”] in public.4 Cassien mentions a treatise, well known in the fourth and fifth centuries, which was accredited to Ham, the son of Noah, who in his turn was reputed to have received it from Jared, the fourth generation from Seth, the son of Adam.5
Herodotus tells us that the Mysteries were brought by Orpheus from India. Orpheus is called the inventor of letters and writing and placed anterior to both Homer and Hesiod. Nevertheless, till very lately Orphic literature and that of the Argonauts were attributed to a contemporary of Pisistratus, Solon and Pythagoras, one named Onomacritus, who is credited with having compiled them in their actual form, toward the middle of the VIth c. B.C., or 800 years after the days of Orpheus. The latest researches, however, lead the Orientalists to believe that this compilation was simply a very late re-edition of the Orphic Hymns, whether, ideographic or pictographic. In their original texts these Hymns are now shown much older than the VIth c. B.C. In Deser. Graec. [Description of Greece, IX, xxx, 12,] IX, 30 — we are told that in the days of Pausanius there was a sacerdotal family, which like the Brahmins with regard to the Vedas and the Epic poems — had committed to memory those Orphic hymns and that the latter were usually transmitted in that way from one generation to another. As to the poem of the Argonauts, Vivien St. Martin thinks (See Decouvertes geologiques, vol. I, p. 313) “that it really can be traced so far back as the days of Orpheus.”
M. Vivien St. Martin is very impartial and fair and no doubt as learned; but there are some who go still further back than that. It is not the writer’s province to argue upon the dates of the many poems cited above, but only, by showing their indubitably antediluvian — rather, prehistoric origin claim the same for the Occult Sciences. And how these are, aware of the diffidence shown to Asiatic heathen chronologists, a Christian philosopher of the early ages may be asked to express our intimate thought as to the date of — say — MAGIC. “If[”] — argues Clemens Alexandrinus, the ex-pupil of the Neo-Platonist — “if there is a Science, there must necessarily be a professor of it.” And he goes on saying that Cleanthes had Zeno to teach him, Theophrastus — Aristotle, Metrodorus — Epicurus, Plato — Socrates, etc.; and then when he arrived down to Pythagoras, Pherecydes and Thales, he had still to search and enquire who was their master or masters. The same for the Egyptians, the Indians, the Babylonians, and the Magi themselves. He would not cease questioning, to learn who it was they all had for their Masters. And when he, (Clemens) would have forcibly brought down the enquiry to the very cradle of mankind, to the birth of the first man, he should reiterate once more his questioning and ask him [—] Adam no doubt. “Who was his professor? Surely it would prove no man this once . . . and when we have reached the Angels, we shall have to ask even of them who was their Master and doctor of science.”6
Just so but the secret doctrine need not go to such a trouble. Her professors know well who were the first instructors of mankind in the Occult Sciences.
The two Masters traced out by Clemens, are of course God, and his undying enemy and opponent the Devil, the subject of his enquiry relating to the dual aspect of Hermetic Science, as cause and effect. Admitting the moral beauty and virtues preached in every occult book he was acquainted with, Clemens wants to know the cause of the apparent contradiction between doctrine and practice, good and bad magic and comes to the conclusion, it seems, that magic has two origins — divine and diabolical. He perceives its bifurcation into two channels — hence his deduction and inference. We perceive it too, without necessarily dating such a bifurcation — the Right and “Left Path” — we call it, to its very beginning. Otherwise judging also by the effects of his (Clemens’) own religion, and the walk in life of its professors since the death of his Master, the occultists would have a right to come to just the same conclusion, and say that, while Christ, the Master of all true Christians was in every way godly, the Master of those who resorted to the horrors of the Inquisition, to the burning and torture of heretic witches and Occultists by Calvin and pupils, etc., must have been evidently the DEVIL — if the Occultists were silly enough to believe in one. Clemens’ His testimony however, is valuable as it shows (1) the enormous number of works on Occult Sciences during has epoch; and (2) the extraordinary powers acquired owing to these Sciences by certain men.
He devotes the whole of his sixth volume of the Stromates to this research of the first two “Masters” of the true and the false philosophy respectively, both preserved in the sanctuaries of Egypt. And therewith he apostrophies the Greeks asking why they should not believe in the miracles of Moses when their own philosophers claim the same privileges. “It is Eachus, he says, obtaining through his powers a marvelous rain; it is Aristeus who causes the winds to blow, Empedoclus quieting them and forcing them to cease,7 etc., etc.”
The Books of Mercury Trismegistus attracted the most his attention. Their extreme wisdom he remarks, ought to be in every one’s mouth — semper esse in ore — always. He is high in his praise of Hystaspes (or Gushtasp) and of the Sibylene books.
There has been in all ages use and abuse of magic as there is use and abuse of mesmerism or hypnotism in our own. The ancient world had its Apolloniuses and its Pherecydeses, and intellectual people could discriminate then, as they can now. While not one classic or pagan writer has ever found one word of blame for Apollonius of Tyana, not so with regard to Pherecydes. Hesychius of Miletia, Philo of Byblos and Eustathes charge him unstintingly with having built his philosophy and science on demoniacal traditions. Cicero declares that Pherecydes is potens divinus quam medicus, rather a soothsayer than a physician; and Diogenes Laertius has a vast number of stories relating to his predictions to tell us. One day Pherecydes of Scyros prophesies the shipwreck of a vessel hundreds of miles away from him; another time he predicts the capture of the Lacedemonians by the Arcadians; finally he foresees his own wretched end.8 But all such accusations prove very little except the truth of clairvoyance and prevision in every age. Had it not been for the testimony of his own coreligionists and countrymen, there would not be any proof at all against Pherecydes being guilty of sorcery, for those brought forward by Christian writers are of little value indeed. Baronius for instance and de Mirville find an unanswerable proof in the belief of a philosopher “in the coeternity of matter with spirit.” Pherecydes postulating in principle the primordiality of Zeus or Ether and then admitting on the same plane another principle coeternal and co-working with the first one — that he calls the fifth element, or ogenos — shows, we are told, that he gets his powers from Satan. “Ogenos — is Hades[”] de Mirville tells his reader and “Hades is our Christian Hell” — as we all know, without his going to the trouble to explain.
The resumé of the views of the Church — as given out by authors of this character, is, we are told, that the Hermetic Books, their wisdom notwithstanding (admitted even in Rome) — are “the heirloom left by Cain to mankind.” It is thoroughly proved, says the memorialist of Satan in History “that immediately after the Flood, Ham and his descendents had propagated anew the ancient teachings of the accursed Caïnites and of the submerged Race.” This proves at any rate that Magic, or “Sorcery” as he calls it — is a prediluvian art. “The evidence of Berosius [Berosus] is there[”] (Antiq. 1, iii). Berosius he says, “shows Ham identical with the first Zoroaster; the famous founder of Bactria, and the first author of all the magic arts of Babylonia.” “He (Zoroaster) is the Chemesenna or ‘Ham[’] (Cham)9 the infamous of the faithful and loyal Noachians, and the object of the adoration of the Egyptians, who after receiving from him their country’s name Choemia (chemistry!) built in his honour a town called Choemnis or the ‘city of fire.’10 Ham adored it, it is said — whence the name Chammaïm given to the pyramids; which in their turn, having become vulgarised — passed on their name to our modern ‘chimney’11 (cheminée).”
The zealous defender of Satan anthropomorphised is wrong, we believe. Egypt was the cradle of chemistry and its birthplace, this is pretty well known. But Henrick shows the root of the word to be chemi or chem, which is not Cham or Ham.
The irrepressible accuser of every pagan wisdom undertakes also to find a Satanic origin to the now innocent tarot. “As to the means for the propagation of this magic,” he goes on to say — “the bad, diabolical magic — tradition points it out to us in certain runic characters traced on metallic plates (or leaves des lames) which have escaped destruction from the deluge.12 These might have been regarded as legendary had not subsequent discoveries shown it far from being so. Plates were found with other such Runic and Satanic characters traced upon them, which being exhumed were recognized. (?) They were covered with queer signs undecipherable and of undeniable antiquity to which the Hamites of all countries attribute marvelous and terrible powers.[”]
We may have to leave the pious Marquis to his orthodox beliefs, as he any rate is sincere in his views, but we shall have to sap his able arguments at their foundation by showing on mathematical grounds and the evidence of all the ancient world who or rather what Cain really was. De Mirville is only the faithful Son of his Church interested in Cain’s anthropomorphic character and his present place in the Bible. The student of Occultism is interested only in truth. But the age has to follow the natural of evolution. We are at the bottom of a cycle and evidently in a transitory state. Plato divides the intellectual progress of the universe during every cycle into fertile and barren periods. In the sublunary regions, the spheres of the various elements remain eternally in perfect harmony with the divine nature, he says; “but their parts” owing to a too close proximity to earth, and their commingling with the earthly (which is matter, and therefore the realm of evil), “are sometimes according, and sometimes contrary to (divine) nature.” When those circulations — which Eliphas Levi calls “currents of the astral light” — in the universal ether which contains in itself every element, take place in harmony with the divine spirit our earth and everything pertaining to it enjoys a fertile period. The Occult powers of plants, animals, and minerals magically sympathize with the “superior natures,” and the divine soul of man is in perfect intelligence with these “inferior” ones. But during the barren periods, the latter lose their magic sympathy, and the spiritual sight of the majority of mankind is so blinded as to lose every notion of the superior powers of its own divine spirit. We are in a barren period; the eighteenth century, during which the malignant fever of skepticism broke out so irrepressibly, has entailed unbelief as an hereditary disease upon the nineteenth. The divine intellect is veiled in man; his animal brain alone philosophizes.
1. The forty-two Sacred Books of the Egyptians mentioned by Clement of Alexandria as having existed in his time, were but a portion of the Books of Hermes. Iamblichus, on the authority of the Egyptian priest Abammon, attributes 1200 of such books to Hermes, and Manetho 36,000. But the testimony of Iamblichus as a Neo-Platonist and theurgist is of course rejected by modern critics. Manetho who is held by Bunsen in the highest consideration as a “purely historical personage” . . . with whom “none of the later native historians can be compared . . . ” (see “Egypte,” 1, p. 97), suddenly becomes a Pseudo-Manetho, as soon as the ideas propounded by him clash with the scientific prejudices against magic and the occult knowledge claimed by the ancient priests. However none of the archæologists doubt for a moment the almost incredible antiquity of the Hermetic books. Champollion shows the greatest regard for their authenticity and great truthfulness, corroborated as it is by many of the oldest monuments. And Bunsen brings irrefutable proofs of their age. From his researches, for instance, we learn that there was a line of sixty-one kings before the days of Moses, who preceded the Mosaic period by a clearly-traceable civilization of several thousand years. Thus we are warranted in believing that the works of Hermes Trismegistus were extant many ages before the birth of the Jewish law-giver. “Styli and inkstands were found on monuments of the fourth Dynasty, the oldest in the world,” says Bunsen. If the eminent Egyptologist rejects the period of 48,863 years before Alexander, to which Diogenes Laertius carries back the records of the priests, he is evidently more embarrassed with the ten thousand of astronomical observations and remarks that “if they were actual observations, they must have extended over 10,000 years.” (p. 14). “We learn however,” he adds, “from one of their own old chronological works that the genuine Egyptian traditions concerning the mythological period, treated of myriads of years.” (“Egypte,” 1, p. 15.)
2. Egypte, p. 143.
3. Egypte, p. 143.
4. “Hist. of Magic,” Vol. I, p. 9.
5. Cassien: “Conference,” 1, 21. We shall show who or what is Adam.
6. [Stromateis, Bk. VI, ch. vii.]
7. Therefore Empedoclus [Empedocles] is called Κωλυσάνεμοϛ the dominator of the wind! See Strom., I, VI. ch. IV.
8. Diogenes I, 1S, 149.
9. The English people who spell the name of Noah’s wicked son “Ham” have to be reminded that the right spelling ought to be Kham or Cham.
10. Choemnis, the prehistoric city, may or may not have been built by Noah’s son, but it was not his name that was given to the town, but that of the mystery goddess Choeman or Choemnis (Greek form) that was created by the ardent fancy of the neophyte tantalized during his twelve labours of probation before final initiation.
11. This looks like pious philology with a vengeance. It is translated literally in view of its novelty. The reader must feel thankful that leading him from Zoroaster to chimney, the author has not added to it the picture of the traditional witch flying out of that chimney on a broomstick.
12. How could they “escape” from deluge unless God willed it so according to the belief of de Mirville and his coreligionists. Was the Devil once more cleverer than God?