Books: AE in the Irish Theosophist
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George William Russell >> AE in the Irish Theosophist
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"I don't think I would get much wisdom out of my dreams," said Willie.
"I had a dream last night; a lot of little goblin fellows dancing a
jig on the plains of twilight. Perhaps you could tell us a real dream?"
"I remember one dream of a kind I mean, which I will tell you. It
left a deep impression upon me. I will call it a dream of
The Northern Lights
I awoke from sleep with a cry. I was hurled up from the great
deep and rejected of the darkness. But out of the clouds and
dreams I built up a symbol of the going forth of the spirit--a
symbol, not a memory--for if I could remember, I could return
again at will and be free of the unknown land. But in slumber I
was free. I sped forth like an arrow. I followed a secret hope,
breasting the currents of life flowing all about me. I tracked
these streams winding in secretness far away. I said, "I am going
to myself. I will bathe in the Fountain of Life;" and so on and
on I sped northwards, with dark waters flowing beneath me and stars
companioning my flight. Then a radiance illumined the heavens,
the icy peaks and caves, and I saw the Northern Lights. Out of
the diamond breast of the air I looked forth. Below the dim world
shone all with pale and wintry green; the icy crests flickered
with a light reflect from the shadowy auras streaming over the
horizon. Then these auras broke out in fire, and the plains of
ice were illumined. The light flashed through the goblin caves,
and lit up their frosty hearts and the fantastic minarets drooping
above them. Light above in solemn array went forth and conquered
the night. Light below with a myriad flashing spears pursued the
gloom. Its dazzling lances shivered in the heart of the ice:
they sped along the ghostly hollows; the hues of the orient seemed
to laugh through winter; the peaks blossomed with starry and
crystalline flowers, lilac and white and blue; they faded away,
pearl, opal and pink in shimmering evanescence; then gleams of
rose and amethyst traveled slowly from spar to spar, lightened
and departed; there was silence before my eyes; the world once
more was all a pale and wintry green. I thought of them no more,
but of the mighty and unseen tides going by me with billowy motion.
"Oh, Fountain I seek, thy waters are all about me, but where shall
I find a path to Thee?" Something answered my cry, "Look in thy
heart!" and, obeying the voice, the seer in me looked forth no
more through the eyes of the shadowy form, but sank deep within
itself. I knew then the nature of these mystic streams; they
were life, joy, love, ardour, light. From these came the breath
of life which the heart drew in with every beat, and from thence
it was flashed up in illumination through the cloudy hollows of
the brain. They poured forth unceasingly; they were life in
everyone; they were joy in everyone; they stirred an incommunicable
love which was fulfilled only in yielding to and adoration of the
vast. But the Fountain I could not draw nigh unto; I was borne
backwards from its unimaginable centre, then an arm seized me, and
I was stayed. I could see no one, but I grew quiet, full of deep
quiet, out of which memory breathes only shadowiest symbols, images
of power and Holy Sages, their grand faces turned to the world,
as if in the benediction of universal love, pity, sympathy, and peace,
ordained by Buddha; the faces of the Fathers, ancient with eternal
youth, looking forth as in the imagination of the mystic Blake,
the Morning Stars looked forth and sang together. A sound as of
an "OM" unceasing welled up and made an auriole of peace around them.
I would have joined in the song, but could not attain to them.
I knew if I had a deeper love I could have entered with them into
unending labours amid peace; but I could only stand and gaze;
in my heart a longing that was worship, in my thought a wonder
that was praise. "Who are these?" I murmured? The Voice answered,
"They are the servants of the Nameless One. They do his bidding
among men. They awaken the old heroic fire of sacrifice in forgetful
hearts." Then the forms of elder life appeared in my vision. I
saw the old earth, a fairy shadow ere it yet had hardened, peopled
with ethereal races unknowing of themselves or their destinies and
lulled with inward dreams; above and far away I saw how many
glittering hosts, their struggle ended, moved onward to the Sabbath
of Eternity. Out of these hosts, one dropped as a star from their
heart, and overshadowed the olden earth with its love. Where ever
it rested I saw each man awakening from his dreams turned away with
the thought of sacrifice in his heart, a fire that might be forgotten,
but could never die. This was the continual secret whisper of the
Fathers in the inmost being of humanity. "Why do they not listen?"
I marveled. Then I heard another cry from the lower pole, the pit;
a voice of old despair and protest, the appeal of passion seeking
its own fulfilment. Alternate with the dawn of Light was the breath
of the expanding Dark where powers of evil were gathered together.
"It is the strife between light and darkness which are the world's
eternal ways," said the Voice, "but the light shall overcome and
the fire in the heart be rekindled; men shall regain their old
angelic being, and though the dark powers may war upon them, the
angels with their love shall slay them. Be thou ready for the battle,
and see thou use only love in the fight. Then I was hurried backward
with swift speed, and awoke. All I knew was but a symbol, but I
had the peace of the mystic Fathers in my heart, and the jeweled
glory of the Northern Lights all dazzling about my eyes.
"Well, after a dream like that," said Willie, "the only thing one
can do is to try and dream another like it."
--Oct. 15, 1894-Jan. 15, 1895
On the Spur of the Moment
I am minded to put down some intuitions about brotherhood and trust
in persons. A witty friend writes, "Now that I have made up my mind,
I intend looking at the evidence." A position like that is not so
absurd as at first it seems. It is folly only to those who regard
reason alone and deny the value of a deep-seated intuition. The
intuitive trust which so many members of the T.S. have in William
Q. Judge, to my mind shows that he is a real teacher. In their
deepest being they know him as such, and what is knowledge there
becomes the intuition of waking hours. When a clamour of many
voices arises making accusations, pointing to time, place and
circumstance; to things which we cannot personally investigate,
it is only the spirit within us can speak and decide. Others with
more knowledge may give answering circumstances of time, place
and act; but, with or without these, I back up my intuition with
the reason--where the light breaks through, there the soul is pure.
Says a brother truly:
"The list of his works is endless, monumental; it shows us an
untiring soul, an immense and indomitable will, a total ignoring
of himself for the benefit of his fellow-members. This is not the
conduct of the charlatan, not of the self-seeker. It is that of
one of those brave and long-tried souls who have fought their way
down through the vistas of time so that they might have strength
to battle now for those who may be weaker."
Others may have been more eloquent and learned, but who has been
so wise? Others may have written more beautifully, but who with
such intimations of the Secret Spirit breathing within? Others
have explained intellectually tattvas, principles and what not,
but who like him has touched the heart of a hidden nobility? Has
he not done it over and over again, as here?
"Do what you find to do. Desire ardently to do it, and even when
you shall not have succeeded in carrying out anything but some
small duties, some words of warning, your strong desire will strike
like Vulcan upon some other hearts in the world, and suddenly you
will find that done which you had longed to be the doer of. Then
rejoice that another has been so fortunate as to make such a
meritorious Karma."
Or he speaks as a hero:
"To fail would be nothing, but to stop working for Humanity and
Brotherhood would be awful."
Or as one who loves and justifies it to the end:
"We are not Karma, we are not the law, and it is a species of that
hypocrisy so deeply condemned by it for us to condemn any man.
That the law lets a man live is proof that he is not yet judged
by that higher power."
To know of these laws is to be them to some extent. "What a man
thinks, that he is, that is the old secret." The temple of Spirit
is inviolate. It is not grasped by speech or by action. "Whom
the Spirit chooses, by him it is gained. The Self chooses his body
as its own." When the personal tumult is silence, then arises the
meditation of the Wise within. Whoever speaks out of that life
has earned the right to be there. No cunning can stimulate its
accents. No hypocrisy can voice its wisdom. Whose mind gives out
light--it is the haunt of the Gods. Does this seem to slight a
guarantee for sincerity, for trust reposed? I know of none weightier.
Look back in memory; of the martyrdom of opposing passions, out of
the last anguish came forth the light. It was no cheap accomplishment.
If some one meets us and speaks knowing of that law, we say inwardly,
"I know you have suffered, brother!" But here is one with a larger
wisdom than ours. Here is one whose words today have the same clear
ring. "The world knows him not." His own disciples hardly know
him: he has fallen like Lucifer. But I would take such teaching
as he gives from Lucifer himself, and say, "His old divinity remains
with him still."
"After all you may be mistaken," someone says. "The feet of no
one are set infallibly on the path." It may be so. Let us take
that alternative. Can we reject him or any other as comrades while
they offer? Never. Were we not taught to show to those on whom
came the reaction from fierce effort, not cold faces, but the face
of friendship, waiting for the wave of sure return? If this was
a right attitude for us in our lesser groups, it is then right
for the whole body to adopt. The Theosophical Society as a whole
should not have less than the generous spirit of its units. It
must exercise the same brotherly spirit alike to those of good
or evil fame. Alike on the just and the unjust shines the Light
of It, the Father-Spirit. Deep down in our hearts have we not
all longed, longed, for that divine love which rejects none? You
who think he has erred, it is yours to give it now. There is an
occult law that all things return to their source, their cycles
accomplished. The forces we expend in love and anger come back
again to us thrilled with the thought which accepted or rejected
them. I tell you, if worse things were true of him than what are
said, if we did our duty simply, giving back in gratitude and
fearlessness the help we had received from him, his own past would
overcome the darkness of the moment, would strengthen and bear him
on to the light.
"But," some push it further; "it is not of ourselves, but of this
Society and its good name, we think. How can it accomplish its
high mission in the world if we seem to ignore in our ranks the
presence of the insincere person or fraud?"
I wish, my brothers, we could get rid of these old fears. Show,
form, appearance and seeming, what force have they? A faulty face
matters nothing. The deep inner attitude alone has power. The
world's opinion implicates none of us with the Law. Our action
many precipitate Karma, may inconvenience us for an hour; but the
end of life is not comfort but celestial being; it is not in the
good voice of the world today we can have any hope: its evil voice
may seem to break us for a little; but love, faith and gratitude
shall write our history in flame on the shadowy aura of the world,
and the Watchers shall record it. We can lose nothing; the
Society can lose nothing. Our only right is in the action, and
half the sweetness of life consists in loving much.
While I wrote, I thought I felt for a moment the true spirit of
this pioneer body we belong to. Like a diver too long under seas,
emerging I inhaled the purer air and saw the yellow sunlight. To
think of it! what freedom! what freshness! to sail away from old
report and fear and custom, the daring of the adventurer in our
hearts, having a reliance only upon the laws of life to justify
and sustain us.
--February 1895
The Legends of Ancient Eire
A Reverend and learned professor in Trinity College, Dublin, a
cynic and a humorist, is reported once to have wondered "why the
old Irish, having a good religion of their own, did not stick to it?"
Living in the "Celtic twilight," and striving to pierce backward
into the dawn, reading romance, tradition and history, I have
endeavoured to solve something of the mystery of the vast "Celtic
phantasmagoria," I can but echoe the professor. In these legends,
prodical of enchantment, where Gods, heroes and bright supernatural
beings mingle, are at league or war together, I have found not misty
but clear traces of that old wisdom-religion once universal. There
are indeed no ancient Irish Scriptures I am aware of, but they were
not needed. To those who read in the Book of Life, philosophy and
scripture are but as blinds over the spiritual vision. But we today--
lost children of the stars--but painfully and indirectly catch
glimpses of the bright spheres once our habitations, where we freely
came and went. So I will try to tell over again some of these old
stories in the light of philosophy spoken later. What was this
old wisdom-religion? It was the belief that life is one; that
nature is not dead but living; the surface but a veil tremulous
with light--lifting that veil hero and sage of old time went outwards
into the vast and looked on the original. All that they beheld
they once were, and it was again their heritage, for in essence
they were one with it--children of Deity. The One gave birth to
the many, imagining within itself the heaven of heavens, and the
heavens, and spheres more shadowy and dim, growing distant from
the light. Through these the Rays ran outward, falling down through
many a starry dynasty to dwell in clay. Yet--once God or Angel--
that past remains, and the Ray, returning on itself, may reassume
its old vesture, remains, entering as a God into the Ancestral Self.
Every real scripture and every ancient myth, to be understood truly,
must be understood in this light. God, the angelic hierarchies,
the powers divine and infernal, are but names for the mightier Adam
in whose image man was made and who is the forgotten Self in humanity.
Mystic symbolism is the same the world over, and applying it to
the old Celtic romances, phantasy and faeryland are transformed
into history and we are reading about the ancient Irish Adepts.
Ireland was known long ago as the Sacred Island. The Gods lived
there: for the Tuatha De Dannans who settled in Eire after conquering
the gigantic races of Firbolgs and Fomorians (Atlanteans) were called
Gods, differing in this respect from the Gods of ancient Greece and
India, that they were men who had made themselves Gods by magical
or Druidical power. They were preeminently magi become immortal
by strength of will and knowledge. Superhuman in power and beauty,
they raised themselves above nature; they played with the elements;
they moved with ease in the air. We read of one Angus Oge, the
master magician of all, sailing invisibly "on the wings of the cool
east wind"; the palace of that Angus remains to this day at New
Grange, wrought over with symbols of the Astral Fire and the great
Serpentine Power. The De Dannans lived in the heart of mountains
(crypts for initiation), and today the peasant sometimes sees the
enchanted glow from the green hills he believes they still inhabit.
Perhaps he believes not foolishly, for, once truly occult, a place
is preserved from pollution until the cycle returns, bringing back
with it the ancient Gods again.
The cycles of the Gods is followed in Irish tradition by the cycle
of the heroes. The Gods still mingled with them and presumably
taught them, for many of these heroes are Druids. Fin, the hero
of a hundred legends, Cuchullin, Dairmud, Oisin and others are
wielders of magical powers. One of the most beautiful of these
stories tells of Oisin in Tir-na-noge. Oisin with his companions
journeys along by the water's edge. He is singled out by Niam,
daughter of Mannanan, king of Tir-na-noge, the land of the Gods.
She comes on a white horse across the seas, and mounting with her
Oisin travels across the ocean; after warring with a giant Fomor
he passes into Tir-na-noge, where for a hundred years he lives
with Niam and has all that heart could wish for. But desire for
Eire arises within him and returning, he falls off the magic steed,
and becomes an old man weary with years. It is purely occult.
Oisin, Niam, her white steed, Tir-na-noge, the waters they pass over,
are but names which define a little our forgotten being. Within
Oisin, the magician, kindles the Ray, the hidden Beauty. Let us
call it by what name we will, so that we spare the terms of academic
mysticism or psychology. It is the Golden Bird of the Upanishads;
the Light that lighteth every man; it is that which the old
Hermetists knew as the Fair or the Beautiful--for Niam means beauty;
it is the Presence, and when it is upon a man every other tie breaks;
he goes alone with It, he is a dying regret, an ever-increasing joy.
And so with Oisin, whose weeping companions behold him no more.
He mounts the white horse with Niam. It is the same as the white
horse of the Apocalypse, whereon one sits called Faithful and True.
It is the power on which the Spirit rides. Who is there, thinking,
has felt freed for a moment from his prison-house, and looking
forth has been blinded by the foam of great seas, or has felt his
imagination grow kingly in contemplation--he has known its impelling
power; the white horse is impatient of restraint.
As they pass over the waters "they saw many wonderful things on
their journey--islands and cities, lime-white mansions, bright
greenans and lofty palaces." It is the mirror of heaven and earth,
the astral light, in whose glass a myriad illusions arise and fleet
before the mystic adventures. Haunt of a false beauty--or rather
a veil hung dazzling before the true beauty, only the odour or
incense of her breath is blown through these alluring forms. The
transition from this to a subtler sphere is indicated. A hornless
deer, chased by a white hound with red ears, and a maiden tossing
a golden lure, vanishes for ever before a phantom lover. The poet
whose imagination has renewed for us the legend has caught the true
significance of these hurrying forms:
"The immortal desire of immortals we saw in their eyes and sighed."
"Do not heed these forms!" cried Niam. Compare with this from
another source: "Flee from the Hall of Learning, it is dangerous
in its perfidious beauty. .... Beware, lest dazzled by illusive
radiance thy Soul should linger and be caught in its deceptive light.
.... It shines from the jewel of the Great Ensnarer." There are
centres in man corresponding to these appearances. They give vision
and entrance into a red and dreadful world, where unappeasable
desire smites the soul--a dangerous clairvoyence. But in the
sphere beyond their power has to be conquered, and here Oisin wars
with the giant Fomor. De Dannan and Romorian passed from Eire
wrestle still in the invisible world, say the legends. We, too--
would-be mystics--are met on the threshold of diviner spheres by
terrible forms embodying the sins of a living past when we misused
our spiritual powers in old Atlantean days. These forms must be
conquered and so Oisin battles with Fomor and releases the power--
a princess in the story. This fight with the demon must be fought
by everyone who would enter the land of the Gods, whether in
conscious occult adventure or half-consciously after death, when
the strange alchemist Nature separates the subtile from the gross
in the soul in this region which Oisin passes through. Tir-na-noge,
the land of Niam, is that region the soul lives in when its grosser
energies and desires have been subdued, dominated and brought under
the control of light; where the Ray of Beauty kindles and illuminates
every form which the imagination conceives, and where every form
tends to its archetype. It is a real region which has been approached
and described by the poets and sages who, at all times, have
endeavoured to express something of the higher realities. It is
not distant, but exists in earth as the soul within the body, and
may be perceived through and along with the surface forms. In a
sense it corresponds with the Tibetan Devachan, and in this region
Oisin lives for a hundred years, until desire to see Eire once more
arises and he parts from Niam. Nor the details of his return, the
drowsy land in which he slumbers; how he fell off the white horse
and became an old man with the weariness of his hundreds of years
upon him--I must refer the reader to the legends. He will read
not alone of Oisin, but of many an old hero, who, hailed by the
faery (divine) voice, went away to live in the heart of green hills
(to be initiated) or to these strange worlds.
Dear children of Eire, not alone to the past but to today belong
such destinies. For if we will we can enter the enchanted land.
The Golden Age is all about us, and heroic forms and imperishable
love. In that mystic light rolled round our hills and valleys hang
deed and memories which yet live and inspire. The Gods have not
deserted us. Hearing our call they will return. A new cycle is
dawning and the sweetness of the morning twilight is in the air.
We can breathe it if we will but awaken from our slumber.
II.
In the recently published Story of Early Gaelic Literature, attention
is directed to the curious eastern and pantheistic character of some
archaic verse. Critics are for ever trying to show how some one
particular antique race was the first begetter of religion and mystic
symbolism. Perplexed by the identity between the myths and traditions
of different countries, they look now here, now there, for the original.
But it was not in any land but out of the Christ-Soul of the universe
that true wisdom at all times was begotten. Some ignorant peasant,
some Jacob Boehme, is pure and aspires, and lo! the God stirs within
him and he knows the things that were taught in elder days and by
unknown people. Our own land, long ago, had its Initiates in whom
the eye of the seer was open. This eye, concealed in the hollow
of the brain, is the straight gate and the narrow way through which
alone the mortal may pass and behold the immortal. It is now
closed in most men. Materialism, sensuality and dogmatic belief
have so taken the crown and sceptre from their souls that they enter
the golden world no more knowingly--they are outcast of Eden. But
the Tuatha De Dannans were more than seers or visionaries. They
were magicians--God and man in one. Not alone their thought went
out into the vast, but the Power went along with it. This mystic
Power is called the Serpentine Fire. It is spiritual, electric,
creative. It develops spirally in the ascetic, mounting from centre
to centre, from the navel to the heart;* [* "He that believeth
on me, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living waters. This
spake he of the Spirit."--John, vii, 38] from thence it rises to
the head. He is then no more a man but a God; his vision embraces
infinitude.
The action of this Power was symbolized in many ways, notably by
the passage of the sun through the zodiacal signs * (centres in
the psychic body) [* "The twelve signs of the Zodiac are hidden
in his body."---Secret Doctrine, II, 619] A stone serpent was
found a little while ago in Ireland marked with twelve divisions.
The archaic verses alluded to have the same meaning:
"I am the point of the lance of battle. [The spinal cord, the
Sushumna nadi of Indian Psychology.]
I am the God who creates in the head of man the fire of the thought.
Who is it throws light into the meeting on the mountain? [The
meeting of the mortal and the immortal on Mount Meru, the
pineal gland.]
Who announces the ages of the moon? [The activity of the inner
astral man.]
Who teaches the place where courses the sun?" [Spirit.]
The Serpentine Power is the couch of the sun, the casket of spirit.
Hence the Druids or Magi who had mastered this power were called
Serpents. Though St. Patrick is said to have driven the serpents
out of Ireland, traces still remain of the serpent wisdom. Lest
the interpretation given should seem arbitrary I will trace further
explicit references to the third eye. Diarmuid, the hero and
darling of so many story-tellers, whose flight with Grania forms
one of the most mystic episodes in Celtic romance, is described
as having a spot in the centre of his forehead which fascinated
whoever gazed. He is called the "Son of the Monarch of Light."
He is the Initiate, the twice-born. This divine parentage has
the sense in which the words were spoken. "Marvel not that I said
unto thee, ye must be born again." In the same sense a Druid is
described as "full of his God." From the mystic Father descends
the Ray, the Child of Light. It is born in man as mind, not
reasoning: earthly not sensual, but as the heaven-aspiring,
thinking mind. In itself it is of the nature of fire. The man
who knows it becomes filled with light, aye, he moves about in
light within himself.
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