Rosicrucianism was not a sect, is was but one of many branches of the same tree. Rosicrucians no longer exist, the last of that fraternity having departed in the person of Cagliostro. Occultism is a double-edged weapon for one who is unprepared to devote his whole life to it. The theory of it, unaided by serious practice, will always remain a foolish and ignorant speculation. He who rejects the immortality of man’s soul cannot perceive the unity of homogeneity of his Creator through the plurality of heterogeneity, and he therefore condemns himself to live hand-by-hand with death in the “vale of tears.” Any attempt to learn about Occultism by book study alone will always prove insufficient — even to the analytical mind trained to extract the quintessence of truth scattered throughout myriads of contradictory statements — unless supported by practice and experience. As primitive Christianity split into numerous sects, so the science of Occultism gave birth to a variety of doctrines and brotherhoods. For example, the Egyptian Ophites, became the Christian Gnostics, shooting forth the Basilideans of the second century. And the original Rosicrucians, created the Paracelsists or Fire-Philosophers, the European Alchemists, and other branches of their sect. The Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross was not founded until the middle of the thirteenth century, by Christian Rosenkreuz — a reformed sorcerer. The Rosicrucians gave birth to the early Theosophists, at whose head was Paracelsus, and to the Alchemists, one of the most celebrated of whom was Thomas Vaughan who wrote the most practical things on Occultism, under the name of Eugenius Philalethes. The Welsh Alchemist was definitely “made before he became.” Unlike the European Rosicrucians who, in order “to become and not be made,” have struggled alone, violently robbing Nature of her secrets, the Oriental “Rosicrucians” in the serene beatitude of their divine knowledge, are ever ready to help the earnest student struggling “to become” with practical knowledge, which dissipates like a heavenly breeze the darkest clouds of sceptical doubt. Whereas the lofty principles and doctrines of Christ and Buddha were calculated to embrace the whole of humanity, Confucius confined his attention solely to his own countrymen without troubling his head about the rest of mankind. Intensely Chinese in patriotism and views, his philosophical doctrines are as much devoid of the purely poetic element, which characterizes the teachings of Christ and Buddha, as the religious tendencies of his people lack in that spiritual exaltation which we find, for instance, in India. Confucius did not have the depth of feeling and spiritual striving of his contemporary, Lao-tzu. The heavy, childish, cold, sensual nature of the Chinese explains the peculiarities of their history. Marginal are the differences between the Rosicrucian and the Oriental Kabbalah. American Spiritualism, which has proved such a sore in the side of the materialists, will soon become a science of mathematical certitude, instead of being regarded only as the crazy delusion of epileptic monomaniacs. The Zohar is an inexhaustible mine of hidden wisdom and mystery for all subsequent Kabbalists. All recent Kabbalahs are copies of the God’s Splendour. While the Oriental Kabbalah remained in its pure primitive shape, the Mosaic or Jewish one is full of drawbacks, and with the keys to many secrets purposely misinterpreted. If the primitive Rosicrucians learned their first lessons of wisdom from Oriental Masters, that was not so with their direct descendants, the Paracelsists: the Kabbalah of the latter Illuminati degenerated into the twin sister of the Jewish. The custodians of the real Kabbalah of primitive humanity are certain Oriental philosophers. Their location will not be revealed until the day when humanity shall awake from its spiritual lethargy, and open its blind eyes to the dazzling rays of Truth. Thus the light of Truth will finally dissipate the unhealthy mists of the battalions of religious sects which disgrace our times. They will warm up and recall into new life the millions of wretched souls, who shiver and are half frozen under the icy hand of deadly scepticism. Occultism without practice will ever be like the statue of Pygmalion that no one can animate without infusing into it a spark of the Sacred Divine Fire. The Jewish Kabbalah, the only authority of the European Occultist, is based on the secret meanings of the Hebrew scriptures, which afford no hope for the adepts to solve them practically. More! The likelihood of anyone becoming a practical Kabbalist-Rosicrucian through studying the Jewish Kabbalah single-handed, without being initiated and so being “made” such by someone who “knows,” is as foolish as to hope to thread the Cretan labyrinth without a clue, or to open the secret locks of the ingenious inventors of the mediaeval ages, without having possession of the keys. The Seventh Rule of the Rosicrucian “who became but was not made” has its secret meaning, like every other phrase left by the Kabbalists to posterity. The Rosicrucian has to struggle alone and toil long years in the hope of finding out some of the lesser secrets of the great Kabbalah. His mental, moral, and physical fitness will be tested to the extreme. His spirit will have to pass through the ordeal of incarnation and life, and be baptised with matter before he could attain inner knowledge. There is nothing new under the Sun. There is not a science, nor a modern discovery in any section of it, which was not known to the Oriental Occultists of the hoary antiquity. What would not modern physicians, practitioners of their blind and lame science of medicine, give for a part of the knowledge of botany and plants! The hope of finding remnants of such wisdom as Ancient Asia possessed, ought to tempt our conceited modern science to explore that territory assiduously. Religions and sciences, laws and customs, they are all the direct products of Oriental Occultism, disguised by the hand of time, and palmed upon us under new pseudonyms. The time is near when the old superstitions and the errors of centuries will be swept away by the hurricane of Truth. There is scarcely a rite or ceremony of the Christian Church that does not descend from Occultism. When the devout worshippers of the Vatican lift up their eyes in mute adoration upon the head of their God on Earth, their Pontifex Maximus, what they admire the most is the caricatured head-dress, the Amazon-like helmet of Pallas Athene, the heathen goddess Minerva.

Rosicrucians emerged in Europe as an antidote to the material side of alchemy and to stem the tide of the folly. From this point of view, the Rosicrucians are group of Reformers. The spiritual side of man must be awakened and utilised, before the Philosopher’s Stone, or the Elixir of Life, can be discovered. Wonder-seekers then, as now, craving for power and wealth, did not appreciate that higher ethics are prerequisite to real wisdom. The Rosicrucians were alchemists in the spiritual sense and professors of divine magic, which is devoid of selfishness, love of power, ambition, and lucre. Most divergent are the lines of thought between Christian and Occultist.

Evolution is double, physical and spiritual: the physical is visible but the spiritual that animates the physical is invisible, hence non-existent in the mind of the material man. Physical humanity has existed on earth for 18 million years, preceded by 300 million years of mineral and vegetable development. The allegory of Pygmalion, who fails to animate his statue, is far more philosophical and scientific concept than Adam: the human forms have existed in eternity as astral or ethereal prototypes; according to which, the lower angels evolved the protoplasmic forms of the future Egos from their own essence, thus bringing them into objective life on earth. But they would not breathe a spark of Divine Fire into the Adam-Galatea of volcanic dust simply because they could not give that sacred spark, which glows inside and expands into the flower of human reason and self-consciousness — for they had it not to give. There are four Adams, one for each of the preceding Root-Races. All this must be a galvanic shock to the spiritually blind, who pooh-pooh the “Self-born heavenly man,” the first Divine Androgyne viewed as Nature in the abstract, and represented as the ethereal man. Occultism without practice will ever be like the statue of Pygmalion that no one can animate without infusing into it a spark of the Sacred Divine Fire. The Jewish Kabbalah, the only authority of the European Occultist, is based on the secret meanings of the Hebrew scriptures, which afford no hope for the adepts to solve them practically. More! The likelihood of anyone becoming a practical Kabbalist-Rosicrucian through studying the Jewish Kabbalah single-handed, without being initiated and so being “made” by someone who “knows,” is as foolish as to hope to thread the Cretan labyrinth without a clue, or to open the secret locks of the ingenious inventors of the mediaeval ages, without having possession of the keys. The Seventh Rule of the Rosicrucian “who became but was not made” has its secret meaning, like every other phrase left by the Kabbalists to posterity. He has to struggle alone and toil long years in the hope of finding out some of the lesser secrets of the great Kabbalah. His mental, moral, and physical fitness will be tested to the extreme. His spirit will have to pass through the ordeal of incarnation and life, and be baptised with matter before it can reach experience and knowledge. Pivotal attributes of the first four Root-Races.

Western Orientalists keep claiming papal authority over of Buddhist doctrines. Here are four quick and easy steps on how anyone can become an authority on Buddhism. The “authority” is ready and ignorant Mrs. Grundy, “soft on whose lap her laureate sons recline,” will crown the new Pope, and force him upon the acceptance of the ignorant public. For example, a squib review of Sinnett’s “Esoteric Buddhism” called “The Cosmogony of an Artificial Fifth Rounder,” is no review but a totally meaningless ex-cathedra chaff. The witty criticaster reminds us of that naive witness, a tailor, who claimed better acquaintance with the defendant’s murdered father than his son, on the ground that the old coat and hat of the victim had been made and bought at his establishment. Between the diametrically opposed views of Mr. Lillie’s “Buddha and Early Buddhism,” and Mr. Rhys-Davids’ “Buddhism,” “M.A., Oxon.” shows no preference. Both are good as weapons against the Theosophists.

Man is truly the temple of God, for the Divine Principle can only be manifested (objectivised) to our consciousness through our senses, physical and spiritual. The “personal God” of Theosophist can only be perceived by his Higher Self, through his spiritual senses, i.e., the Divine Self is perceived by the self of the virtuous man. With diagram on “Theosophia: Fountain, Perspectives, Practice.”

Dr. George Wyld is grim idol of the Jewish Sinai and fanatical Jesuit, whose perceptive faculties are so dusty as to prevent the entrance of a single ray of occult light — he thought of the moon as a dustbin! He even declared to Buddhist philosophers the grand superiority of his “Esoteric Christianity” over Lord Buddha’s system, which he portrayed as fruitful of selfishness, human blindness, misanthropy, and spiritual death. But his shot at Theosophy and the Masters, being badly aimed, flew wide of the mark. After gaining momentum, the raging torrent of religious intolerance, bigotry, and personal rancour resulting from envy from a member of the Theosophical Society and of the medical fraternity, had run dry and his chickens came home to roost. He who unjustly assails the honour of hundreds of his Asiatic Brothers, slurs their religion, and wounds their most sacred feelings, may be a very “Esoteric Christian,” but certainly is a very disloyal Theosophist. Dr. Wyld has been as disloyal to his own Master and Ideal-Christ, as he is to Theosophy.

A carping critic of heterodoxy cut to size is a response by H.P. Blavatsky to certain attacks by G.W. Foote, exposing his bigotry and “innocent” aberrations. Intellectually, Mr. Foote is on a far lower plane than Mrs. Besant. A noble heart like Mrs. Besant’s listens to no voice, save that of the inner voice of Truth — that of man’s divine nature, to which Mr. Foote is deaf and blind. Since Mr. Foote dares not ventilate his senseless rage upon Mrs. Besant, he turns round and, like a coward, slanders another woman because he hopes to have nothing to fear from her. A noble example of Freethought, indeed! He is a poor imitator of all those Dissenters and Sectarians of the unctuously hypocritical type. They, at least, have the merit of original invention, while he only repeats what he hears others say, and even that he must, of necessity, mix up and confuse! His work is that of an accomplished charlatan. While Mr. Foote regards the ethics of Theosophy as detestable, Theosophists regard the teachings of Materialism as despicable. Materialism, with all its arrogance, can hardly claim possession of the last word of science, its negative views being simply the result of the collective experiences of sceptics in every age. The doctrine of reincarnation, flippantly called metempsychosis, is as old as the world. Our materialistic critic seems quite innocent of the distinction between theoretical and practical altruism but proud to claim kinship with the gorilla. He is a very brutal but not skilful fencer, and his arguments are as blunt as the fencer’s foils which hit but hurt not. Mr. Foote shows himself absurdly ignorant of the subjects of his insane attacks. It is, however, Freethought alone that he injures by such language, Theosophy being too invulnerable to be wounded by such poor logic as seems to be at his disposal. In his philological achievements, Mazzini Wheeler, the other apostle of Freethought, seems unable to recognize one Buddhist name from another, quoting and repeating parrot-like information culled from Schlagintweit and Sarat Chandra.