Mystification

“ Whereupon they so strained the imaginative faculty to achieve what they called mystical union with God that their mysticism only resulted in mystification. Science, with its categories, only cast a veil over Truth, over the face of God. Pseudo-mysticism only placed an opaque void between God and the Sons of God called Men. ”

“ It will appear that much of the conflict which the [174] present tale unfolds is the conflict between the rational investigation of intelligible facts and the unwarranted attempts at an explanation of alleged miracles,—a phase of the conflict between science and mysticism. The imperfectly understood is apt to be explained by the still more obscure; totally imaginary forms of energy are called upon to account for poorly observed effects; and so the mystery deepens, superstition spreads, and charlatanism finds a fertile field for its display. ”

“ Fortunately, however, so far as our present research is concerned, we have more than probability to rely upon; not only did these Nature Cults with which we are dealing express themselves in Mystery terms, but as regards these special Mysteries we possess clear and definite information, and we know, moreover, that in the Western world they were, of all the Mystery faiths, the most widely spread, and the most influential. ”

“ Both the temper and the content, the manner and the matter of the occult, should be borne in mind in a survey of its more distinctive examples. It is well, while observing the particular form of occultism or mysticism, or, it may be, merely of superstition and error, which one or another of the occult movements exhibits, to note as well the importance of the intellectual motive or temperament that inclines to the occult. It is important to inquire not only what is believed, but what is the nature of the evidence that induces belief; to observe what attracts and then makes converts ”

“ He who would lift up high the banner of mysticism and proclaim its reign near at hand must give the example to others. He must be the first to change his modes of life, and, regarding the study of the occult mysteries as the upper step in the ladder of knowledge, must loudly proclaim it such, despite
Page 102 exact science and the opposition of society. 'The kingdom of Heaven is obtained by force,' say the Christian mystics. It is but with armed hand, and ready to either conquer or perish, that the modern mystic can hope to achieve his object. ”

“ Albeit, in those orbs to which the demons of my rank have admission, there be greater adumbrations of some transcendent Mystery than here, yet have I never seen that Mystery itself, and know not if it be male or female. Aeons ago, when I was young and incautious, when the world was new and bright, and there were more stars than now, I, too was attracted by this Mystery, and sought after it in all accessible spheres. But failing to find the thing itself, I soon grew weary of embracing its shadows, and took to the pursuit of illusions less insubstantial. ”

“ There was no one to tell them—even I did not know then—that these "coincidences" were constantly happening, every year, perhaps every month; that an intelligent body of men—the Society for Psychical Research—has made a census of such hallucinations, all apparently well attested; that newspapers devoted to occult [Pg 6] matters constantly record these things; that volumes—monthly, weekly, almost—fairly pour from the press detailing, expounding, dissecting, elaborating such evidence; that the theory of coincidence has already been rejected by many men of the first rank of science ”

“ When the report of the original witnesses only reaches us indirectly and through the medium of tradition, the probability of error is further increased. Thus the allegation of miracles is discredited, both positively by the invariability of the order of nature, and negatively by the fallibility of human observation and testimony. The history of miraculous pretension in the world and the circumstances attending the special exhibition of it which we are examining suggest natural explanations of the reported facts which wholly remove them from the region of the supernatural. ”

“ The little mysteries are all embraced in the big Mystery, which would not be mysterious if we had the power to understand it. I was always that kind of a sceptic which believes in there being a reason for everything. When I was a girl I saw ghosts—unmistakably visible ghosts—and even in their presence, certain that they could not be flesh and blood creatures, and paralysed with horror to know it, I was able to keep this attitude of mind. ”

“ Mystery here seems at first to reign supreme. It stands and faces one as a Presence. It hovers and broods, and you feel it even in your sleep. The air is full of it. The very clouds here are mysterious. ”

“ To examine the origin of these tales is not more ‘superstitious’ than to examine the origin of the religious and heroic mythologies of the world. It is, of course, easy to give both mythology, and ‘the science of spectres,’ the go by. But antiquaries will be inquiring, and these pursuits are more than mere ‘antiquarian old womanries’. We follow the stream of fable, as we track a burn to its head, and it leads us into shy, and strange scenes of human life, haunted by very fearful wild-fowl, and rarely visited save by the credulous. ”

“ But when we find (as we do) precisely the same sort of contradictions everywhere recurring among civilised peoples, in Greece, India, Egypt, as well as in Africa, America, and Australia, there seems no longer any reason to distrust the various versions of the myth which are given by various priests or chiefs. Each witness is only telling the legend which he has heard or prefers, and it is precisely the co-existence of all these separate monstrous beliefs which makes the enigma and the attraction of mythology. ”

“ Speculative truth, it may also be noted, means very much the same as what, in special connexion with religious experience and doctrines, used to be called Mysticism. The term Mysticism is at present used, as a rule, to designate what is mysterious and incomprehensible: and in proportion as their general culture and way of thinking vary, the epithet is applied by one class to denote the real and the true, by another to name everything connected with superstition and deception. ”

“ I am more and more impressed that Heraclitus insists on the equation of reason and unreason, or chance, as well as of being and not-being, etc. This throws the secret beyond logic, and makes mysticism outclass philosophy. The insight that mystery,—the Mystery, as such is final, is the hymnic word. If you use reason pragmatically, and deny it absolutely, you can't be beaten; be assured of that. But the Fact remains, and of course the Mystery. ”

“ This is evidence which you are bound to bring into account before you can add up the sum total of possible knowledge; for you will find it impossible to prove that the world as seen by the mystics, ‘unimaginable, formless, dark with excess of bright,’ is less real than that which is expounded by the youngest and most promising demonstrator of a physicochemical universe. ”

“ The first Mystery wherein the Creature consists is the all-essential Mystery, and the other in the forth-going Spirit is its Propriety, and a self-ful Will. Has not every Angel its own peculiar Spirit, which is generated out of its own Mystery, which has its Original out of Eternity? ”

“ So the tendency has been to conceive that occult philosophers of old — Egyptian priests, Chaldean Magi, Essenes, Gnostics, theurgic Neo-Platonists, and the rest — who kept their knowledge secret, must have adopted that policy to conceal the fact that they knew very little. Mystery can only have been loved by charlatans who wished to mystify. ”

“ If such be the truth in the case, where do we find the origin of the myths from which “Bible myths” have descended? Is it found in the true God presiding over the elements of nature and the destinies of men, as well as the events of creation and providence? Or, can it be possible that we have many counterfeits without a genuine? Many myths sustaining no analogy, either near or remote, to anything real? It is an absurdity, destructive of the term employed, because myths cease to be myths without some near or remote relation to realities. They must sustain some analogy to something real. ”

“ And so our little tour into the occult is ended and we return into the glare of common things—things which we know and can touch and find a practical use for. If only a little of this light we hold so cheap were to illumine the tenebrous fastnesses we have just left, then, perhaps we, in our dull worldly way, might be able to assimilate the mystic to the common, the unseen to the seen, the unknown to the known. ”

“ The mystery, called by various names among American tribes, is usually translated “medicine,” for the early missionaries found the people appealing to the mystery to heal disease, for diseases are supposed to be ghosts of animals. As the mystery is something which must act as a word, it must be something which will suggest to the ghost that which is wanted. ”

“ Whereas natural science, in the early and middle ages, with its faulty diagnostico-theoretical method, too frequently had recourse to supernatural factors to explain terrestrial phenomena, and thus created superstition instead of elucidation, the pathology of ancient as well as of medieval medicine avoided as much as possible any recourse to miraculous agencies in explaining the pathological phenomena of the body. ”

“ The projection mechanism, which also bore its part in the re-interpretation of the birth act, as well as certain other characteristics of myth formation, to be discussed presently,—necessitates the uniform characterisation of the myth as a paranoid structure, in view of its resemblance to peculiar processes in the mechanism of certain psychic disturbances. Intimately connected with the paranoid character is the property of separating or dissociating what is fused in the imagination. ”

“ We shall further find that the Lesser Mysteries of mystic interpretation can be traced through the centuries to the beginning of the 19th century, and that though there were no Schools of Mysticism recognised as preparatory to Initiation, after the disappearance of the Mysteries, yet great Mystics, from time to time, reached the lower stages of exstasy, by their own sustained efforts, aided doubtless by invisible Teachers. ”

“ Science with its hammer and chisel may lay bare evidence, [309] may collate material, date man's appearance, call him the most recent of placental mammals, trace his superstitions and his first conceptions of a god from the elemental fears of the savage. But the mystic turns aside with an assumption of superior knowledge; he waves away objective evidence; he has a certainty impressed upon his mind.
"And the mystic is a power. He compels a multitude of followers, because he offers an attraction greater than the facts of science. ”

“ Some of the operations of living bodies are understood,—as the heart's action in the mechanical propulsion of the blood; others, and the greater number, are mysterious, as the whole process of germination and growth. Now the existence of the contrast between things plainly understood, and things not understood, gives one distinct meaning to the term Mystery. In some cases, a mystery is formed by an apparent contradiction, as in the Theological mystery of Free-will and Divine Foreknowledge ”

“ Uneducated as they are, obliged mentally to grasp at protection from supernatural evil, in every way, from the great luminary the sun, as the most powerful, to the smallest atom that may possibly be of some aid, they, through these images or objects, endeavor to excite the interest of the Great Mystery, an Unknown Power, to whose approach no one certain way presents itself. ”

“ It is a plausible opinion that such scenes from the great nature-drama of the conflict of light and darkness are, generally speaking, the simple facts, which in many lands and ages have been told in mythic shape, as legends of a Hero or maiden devoured by a Monster, and hacked out again or disgorged. The myths just displayed show with absolute distinctness, that myth can describe eclipse as the devouring and setting free of the personal sun and moon by a monster. ”

“ Men's attention would never have been surprised into the perpetual study and questioning of mythology if it had been intelligible and dignified, and if its report had been in accordance with the reason of civilised and cultivated races. What mythologists wish to discover is the origin of the countless disgusting, amazing, and incongruous legends which occur in the myths of all known peoples. ”

“ Now, although fully developed mysticism is rare in the West, some tincture of it colours the thoughts of many people, particularly as regards matters on which they have strong convictions not based on evidence. ”

“ Gods, men, monsters and heroes familiarly associated and acted their parts, before man had learned to judge by evidence and to place a limit on probability. The sun, the moon and the earth were living beings filled with demons, and sorcery governed belief. Under these conditions there arose no astronomical or geographical difficulties, for where superstition rules evidence becomes useless. ”

“ The popular belief in supernatural visitations in the form of apparitions and spectres, is fostered and encouraged by the baneful influence of superstition and prejudice. So universal has been the prevalence of the belief that those conversant with history can resort to the era when every village had its ghost or witch, as, in more ancient times, every family had its household gods. ”