Editor’s Note: This text forms the second subsection of Section IV of the surviving “Würzburg Manuscript,” occupying pp. 123–133 of the original manuscript pagination (pp. 67–71 of the extant text in the 2014 Eastern School Press edition). It was first published by C. Jinarajadasa in The Theosophist, May 1933, pp. 142–143, and June 1933, pp. 263–266, and subsequently revised into the concluding portion of Section XVII of the posthumous third volume of The Secret Doctrine (1897), “Apollonius of Tyana,” pp. 133–137. The correspondence is throughout very close, particularly in the long sequence drawn from and commenting upon the writings of the Marquis de Mirville.
The surviving manuscript, however, breaks off before the subsection is complete, at the passage corresponding to p. 136 of the later volume, after the reference to Alexander Severus. The remainder of the text printed on pp. 71–72 of the 2014 edition was supplied by the editors from the 1897 Secret Doctrine and therefore does not constitute surviving Würzburg manuscript evidence. Although the continuation on pp. 136–137 of the later volume almost certainly belongs to the same developing Apollonius dossier, its precise relationship to the lost continuation of the manuscript can no longer be directly established.
2.—The Roman Church dreads the publication of the real life of Apollonius.
Whatever school he belonged to, one fact is evident. Apollonius left an imperishable name behind him. Hundreds of works were written upon this wonderful man, historians have seriously discussed him—pretentious fools unable to come to any conclusion about this sage have denied his very existence. As to the Roman Church as said already, she has ever feared him and dreads his name to this day. Her policy seems to direct the impression left by Apollonius into another channel—a well known stratagem and a very old one. Indeed, while admitting every one of his “miracles” and calling them by the name, the Jesuits have set afloat a double-current of thought. One party seeks to show Apollonius as a Medium of Satan, surrounding his theurgical powers by a most wonderful and dazzing light, while the other pretends to regard the whole as a clever romance written with a predetermined object in view.
In his voluminous Memoirs on Satan, the Marquis de Mirville in the course of his pleading for the recognition of the enemy of God in Spiritual phenomena devotes a whole chapter to the great Adept. The following verbatim translation of passages in his book unveils the whole plot. The reader is asked to bear in mind that the Marquis wrote every one of his works under the auspices and authorization of the Holy See of Rome.
“It would be leaving the first century incomplete and to offer an insult to the memory of St. John, to pass in silence the name of one, who had the honour of being his special antagonist, as Simon was that of St. Peter, Elymas that of Paul, etc., etc.”
“In the first years of the Christian era, there appeared at Tyana in Capadocia one of those extraordinary men of whom the Pythagorean School was so very lavish. As great a traveler as his [this] master was, initiated in all the secret doctrines of India, Egypt and Chaldea, endowed therefore, with all the theurgic powers of the ancient Magi, he bewildered, each in its turn, all the countries he visited and which, we are obliged to admit it, seem all to have blessed his memory. We could not doubt this fact without repudiating real historical records. The details of his life are transmitted to us by an historian of the 18th [4th] century, himself the translator (Philostratus) of a diary that recorded day by day the life of the philosopher, and was written by Damis a disciple and intimate friend of Apollonius of Tyana.”1
De Mirville admits the possibility of some exaggerations in both recorder and translator; but he does not believe they hold a very wide space in the narrative. “Therefore he regrets to find the Abbé Freppel” in his eloquent Essays,2 calling the diary of Damis a romance. Why?—Because the orator bases his opinion on the perfect similitude, calculated as he imagines (!!) [of] that legend with the life of the Saviour. But in studying the subject more profoundly, he (the Abbé Freppel), can convince himself that neither Apollonius or Damis, or again Philostratus, ever pretended to a greater honour than an assimilation to St. John. This programme was in itself sufficiently fascinating and the travesty as sufficiently scandalous; for owing to magic arts (prestiges et de magie), Apollonius had succeeded in counter balancing in appearance (?) several of the miracles at Ephesus (produced by St. John), “etc., etc.” (p. 63.)
The Anguis in herba has shown its head. It is the perfect, the wonderful similitude of the life of Apollonius with that of the Saviour that places the Church between Scylla and Charybdis. To deny the life and the miracles of the former, would be to deny the trustworthiness of the same Apostles and patriotic writers on whose evidence is built the life of Jesus himself. To father the Adept and his beneficent deeds, his resurrections, acts of charity, healing powers, etc., on the “old Enemy”—would be rather dangerous at this time. Hence the stratagem to confuse the ideas of those who rely upon authorities and criticisms. The Church is far more clearsighted than any of our great Historians. The Church knows that to deny the existence of that adept would lead her to denying the Emperor Vespasian and his historians, the Emperors Alexander Severus and Aurelianus and their historians and finally to deny Jesus and every evidence about him, and thus preparing the way to her flock of denying herself finally. It becomes interesting to learn what she says through her mouth-piece, de Mirville in this emergency.
“What is there so new and so impossible in the (Damis) narrative concerning their voyages to the countries of the Chaldees and the Gymnosophists” he asks. “Try and recall, before denying, what were in those days those countries of marvels par excellence, as also the testimony of such men as Pythagoras, Empedocles and Democritus who ought to be allowed to have known what they were writing about. What have we to reproach Apollonius with?[”]
“Is it of having made, as the oracles did, a series of prophecies and predictions wonderfully verified? No; because studied better now, the oracles are no more for us what they were for every one (in the past century) from Van Dale to Fonteville.”3
“Is it of having been endowed with second sight and having had visions at a distance?4—No; for this phenomenon is at the present day endemical in half of Europe.[”]
[“]Is it of having boasted of the knowledge of every existing language without having learned any of them? But who is there that does not know, that such is one of the criteriums [criterions/criteria] of the presence and assistance of a Spirit, of whatever nature.”5
[“]Of having believed in transmigration (reincarnation)[?] It is still believed in (by millions) in our day.[”] (No one has any idea of the number of men of science who long for the reestablishment of the Druidical religion and the transformations of Pythagoras.[ )]6
“Of having exorcised the demons and the plague?—The Egyptians, the Etruscans and all the Roman Pontifs had done it, long before him.”
“To have conversed with the Dead?—We do the same today, or believe we do so,—which is all the same.”
“To have believed in the Empuses . . . ? Where is the demonologist that does not know that the Empuse is the South Demon signaled in David’s Psalms and dreaded then as it is feared even now in all northern Europe.[”]7
“To have made himself invisible at will.” It is one of the achievements of mesmerism.
“To have appeared after his (supposed) death to the Emperor Aurelian above the city walls of Tyana and to have compelled him thereby to raise the siege of that town. Such was the (rolê) mission of every hero beyond the tomb and the reason of the worship vowed to the Manes.”8
“To have descended into the famous den of Trophonius, and to have redeemed from it an old book preserved for years after by the Emperor Adrian in his Antium library?—The trustworthy and sober Pausanias [had descended there before him] and came back no less a believer than he had been before going.”
“Of having suddenly disappeared?—Yes; like Romulus, like Votan, like Lycurgus, like Pythagoras,9 that is to say, always under most mysterious circumstances, ever attended by apparitions and revelations, etc.”
[“]Let us stop here, and repeat once more: had the life of Apollonius been a simple romance, never would that man have obtained such a celebrity during his life time or created such a numerous sect, so true and so enthusiastic, after his death.”
And to add to this—never would a Carracala have raised a heroon to his memory,10 or Alexander Severus [. . .]
[Note: The extant manuscript ends here. The continutation of this text can be found in The Secret Doctrine, Volume III, p. 136.]
1. Pneumatologie, art., Magician Théurge, p. 62.
2. Les Apologistes Chrétiens au second Siècle, p. 106.
3. Many are they who do not know; hence they do not believe in them. (Ed.)
4. Just so; and if Apollonius perceived from Ephesus, during a lecture he was delivering before an audience of many thousands, the murder of the Emperor Domitian in Rome and notified it, at the very moment it was taking place to the whole town, then again Swedenborg who saw in the same manner from Gothemburg the great fire at Stockholm and told it to his friends, no telegraph being in use in those days.
5. No criterium [criterion] at all. The Hindu Saddhus and Adepts acquire the gift by the holiness of their lives. The Yog-Vidya teaches it, and no “Spirits” required for it.
6. The Theosophists and their list of Secret Members can testify to the truth of it.
7. Psalm XC.—But this is no reason why people should believe in that kind of Spirits. There are better authorities for it.
8. De Mirville’s aim is to show that all such apparitions of the Manes or disembodied Spirits are the work of the Devil, Satan’s simulacra.
9. He might have added: like the great Sankarâcharya, Tsong Khapa and so many other real adepts—even his own Master, Jesus; for this is indeed a criterium [criterion] of true adeptship, though to disappear “one need not fly up in the clouds.”
10. Lampridius “Adrian” XXIX. 2.