Do not they, moreover, sacrifice to this day, to the same " God of Wind and Water?
" They do; because special prayers for rain, dry weather, trade-winds and the calming of storms on the seas exist to this hour in the prayer-books of the three Christian churches; and the several hundred sects of the Protestant religion [[Vol.
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offer them to their God upon every threat of calamity?
The fact that they are no more answered by Jehovah, than they were, probably, by Jupiter Pluvius , does not alter the fact of these prayers being addressed to the Power or Powers supposed to rule over the Elements, or of these Powers being identical in Paganism and Christianity; or have we to believe that such prayers are crass idolatry and absurd "superstition" only when addressed by a Pagan to his idol , and that the same superstition is suddenly transformed into praiseworthy piety and religion whenever the name of the celestial addressee is changed?
But the tree is known by its fruit.
And the fruit of the Christian tree being no better than that of the tree of Paganism, why should the former command more reverence than the latter.
Thus, when we are told by the Chevalier Drach, a converted Jew, and the Marquis de Mirville, a Roman Catholic fanatic of the French aristocracy, that in Hebrew lightning is a synonym of fury , and is always handled by an evil Spirit; that Jupiter Fulgur or Fulgurans is also called by the Christians oelicius , and denounced as the soul of lightning , its daemon*; we have either to apply the same explanation and definitions to the "Lord God of Israel," under the same circumstances, or renounce our right of abusing the gods and creeds of other nations.
The foregoing statements emanating as they do from two ardent and learned Roman Catholics, are, to say the least, dangerous , in the presence of the Bible and its prophets.
Indeed, if Jupiter, the "chief Daemon of the Pagan Greeks," hurled his deadly thunder-bolts and lightnings at those who excited his wrath, so did the Lord God of Abraham and Jacob.
We find in I.
Samuel, that "the Lord thundered from heaven, and the most High uttered his voice, and he sent out arrows (thunder bolts) and scattered them (Saul's armies) with lightning, and discomforted them." ( Chap.
xxii.
14, 15.) The Athenians are accused of having sacrificed to Boreas; and this "Demon" is charged with having submerged and wrecked 400 ships of the Persian fleet on the rocks of Mount Pelion, and of having become so furious "that all the Magi of Xerxes could hardly counteract it by offering contra-sacrifices to Tethys" [ Herodotus "Polym." cxc].
Very fortunately, no authenticated instance is on the records of Christian wars showing a like catastrophe on the same scale happening to one Christian fleet owing to the "prayers" of its enemy -- another Christian nation.
But this is from no fault of theirs, for each prays as ardently to Jehovah for the destruction of the other, as the Athenians prayed to Boreas.
Both resorted to a neat little piece of black magic con amore.
Such abstinence from divine interference being hardly due to lack of [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * Cosmolatry, p.
415.
[[Vol.
1, Page]] 468 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
prayers, sent to a common Almighty God for mutual destruction, where, then, shall we draw the line between Pagan and Christian?
And who can doubt that all Protestant England would rejoice and offer thanks to the Lord, if, during some future war, 400 ships of the hostile fleet were to be wrecked owing to such holy prayers.
What is, then, the difference, we ask again, between a Jupiter, a Boreas, and a Jehovah?
No more than this: The crime of one's own next-of-kin -- say of one's "father" -- is always excused and often exalted, whereas the crime of our neighbour's parent is ever gladly punished by hanging.
Yet the crime is the same.
So far the "blessings of Christianity" do not seem to have made any appreciable advance on the morals of the converted Pagans.
The above is not a defence of Pagan gods, nor is it an attack on the Christian deity, nor does it mean belief in either.
The writer is quite impartial, and rejects the testimony in favour of either, neither praying to, believing in, nor dreading any such "personal" and anthropomorphic God.
The parallels are brought forward simply as one more curious exhibition of the illogical and blind fanaticism of the civilized theologian.
For, so far, there is not a very great difference between the two beliefs, and there is none in their respective effects upon morality , or spiritual nature.
The "light of Christ" shines upon as hideous features of the animal-man now, as the "light of Lucifer" did in days of old.
"Those unfortunate heathens in their superstition regard even the Elements as something that has comprehension!
.
.
.
.
They still have faith in their idol Vayu -- the god or, rather, Demon of the Wind and Air .
.
.
they firmly believe in the efficacy of their prayers, and in the powers of their Brahmins over the winds and storms.
.
.
.
." (The Missionary Lavoisier, of Cochin, in the Journal des Colonies.
) In reply to this, we may quote from Luke viii.
, 24: "And he (Jesus) arose and rebuked the Wind and the raging of the Water , and they ceased and there was a calm ." And here is another quotation from a prayer book: .
.
.
"Oh, Virgin of the Sea, blessed Mother and Lady of the Waters, stay thy waves .
.
." etc., etc.
(prayer of the Neapolitan and Provencal sailors, copied textually from that of the Phoenician mariners to their Virgingoddess Astarte.) The logical and irrepressible conclusion arising from the parallels brought forward, and the denunciation of the Missionary is this: The commands of the Brahmins to their element-gods not remaining " ineffectual, " the power of the Brahmins is thus placed on a par with that of Jesus.
Moreover, Astarte is shown not a whit weaker in potency than the "Virgin of the Sea" of Christian sailors.
It is not enough to give a dog a bad name, and then hang him; the dog has to be proven guilty.
Boreas and Astarte may be devils in theological [[Vol.
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fancy, but, as just remarked, the tree has to be judged by its fruit.
And once the Christians are shown as immoral and wicked as the pagans ever were, what benefit has humanity derived from its change of gods and idols?
The doctrine and worldview that natural phenomena, places, and objects possess inherent spirit, soul, or personality — and that the cosmos is populated by countless local, plural, embodied divine agents: kami in mountain and tree, sidhe in cairn and well, landwights in field and stone, nymphs in spring and grove, haltija in forest and lake, lares and penates in household and threshold, Iamblichean daemons in element and place. Distinct from monotheism (single transcendent God), pantheism (one underlying substance), and emanation_hierarchy (cascading single source); animism's signature is the plurality, locality, and embodied-in-landscape character of the divine.
The passage's entire argument rests on showing that both pagans and Christians attribute agency, comprehension, and personal response to natural elements (wind, water, lightning, storms), which is the signature of animistic thought.
Attributing human characteristics, emotions, or form to the divine; embodied divine imagery.
The passage explicitly names and rejects the 'personal and anthropomorphic God,' describing gods as having human emotions (fury, wrath), human actions (hurling bolts), and human social relations (father vs. neighbour's parent).
Naturally-existing, non-human intelligences native to a single element — earth, air, fire, or water — rather than the fourfold-composite human nature: Paracelsus's gnomes, sylphs, salamanders, and undines; the Deva Kingdom or fairy kingdom of Western occultism, forming their own parallel kingdom capable of incarnating in or forming relationships with humans. Distinct from artificial_elemental (a manufactured thought-entity deliberately created by a single operator, not a naturally-occurring species) and animism (the general doctrine that nature-places host indwelling spirits, of which this is one specific taxonomic system organised around the four elements rather than locality).
Boreas (wind), Astarte (sea), Jupiter Pluvius (rain), and Jupiter Fulgur (lightning) are presented as element-specific divine beings to whom prayers are addressed and whose agency is invoked over particular natural phenomena.
Using apparent contradiction, reversal, or riddle to destabilise ordinary understanding and induce insight.
The rhetorical strategy of demonstrating that the 'superior' religion is functionally identical to the 'inferior' one, and that the only difference is arbitrary double-standard, uses reversal to destabilise the reader's assumed hierarchy.
Direct address to the divine, whether petitionary, contemplative, or liturgical; speech and silence offered upward.
The passage is structured around numerous examples of petitionary prayer addressed to elemental powers — for rain, trade-winds, calm seas, destruction of enemy fleets — and argues that pagan and Christian prayers are functionally identical.
The doctrine and practice of one person deliberately inflicting harm on another through trained will, mind-power, or occult technique alone, without physical contact — producing exhaustion, illness, breakdown, or death in the victim; recognised cross-culturally as witchcraft, hexing, or the evil eye, and treated in Western esotericism as a genuine occult hazard requiring diagnosis and defence rather than dismissed as superstition. Distinct from magical_will (the general doctrine that trained volition has causal power, of which this is one malevolent application) and from spirit_conjuration (which subordinates an already-existing summoned spirit, rather than directing the operator's own power at a person).
The mutual prayers for the destruction of enemy fleets are called 'a neat little piece of black magic con amore,' framing directed prayer for another's destruction as a form of psychic or magical assault.
Critique of outward religious observance that lacks inner transformation; form without substance.
The central polemic is that Christians excuse the same 'crimes' (anthropomorphic worship, prayers for elemental destruction) in their own tradition while condemning them in pagans, making the distinction arbitrary and hypocritical.