The Secret Doctrine Volume 3.pdf

in what modern criticism is pleased to regard as myth. It is some time since Strauss
proclaimed that:
What is a Myth -
(Page 33) The presence of a supernatural element or miracle in a
narrative is an infallible sign of the presence in it of a myth;
and such is the canon of criticism tacitly adopted by every modern critic. But what is a
myth - μυθος- to begin with Are we not told distinctly by ancient writers that the word
means tradition Was not the Latin term fabula, a fable, synonymous with something
told, as having happened in pre-historic times, and not necessarily an invention. With
such autocrats of criticism and despotic rulers as are most of the French, English,
and German Orientalists, there may, then, be no end of historical, geographical,
ethnological and philological surprises in store for the century to come. Travesties in
Philosophy have become so common of late, that the public can be startled by
nothing in this direction. It has already been stated by one learned speculator that
Homer was simply "a mythical personification of the épopée"; [ See Alfred Maury's
Histoire des Religions de la Grèce. i. 248: and the speculations of Holzmann in
Zeitschriftfur Vergleichende Sprach forschung, ann. 1882, p.487. sq.] by another,
that Hippocrates, son of Esculapius, "could only be a chimera"; that the Asclepiades,
their seven hundred years of duration notwithstanding, might after all prove simply a
"fiction"; that "the city of Troy (Dr. Schliemann to the contrary) existed only on the
maps." etc. Why should not the world be invited after this to regard every hitherto
historical character of days of old as a myth Were not Alexander the Great needed
by Philology as a sledge-hammer wherewith to break the heads of Brahmanical
chronological pretensions, he would have become long ago simply "a symbol for
annexation," or "a genius of conquest," as has been already suggested by some
French writer.
Blank denial is the only refuge left to the critics. It is the most secure asylum for some
time to come in which to shelter the last of the sceptics. For one who denies
unconditionally, the trouble of arguing is unnecessary, and he also thus avoids what
is worse, having to yield occasionally a point or two before the irrefutable arguments
and facts of his opponent. Creuzer, the greatest of all the modern Symbologists, the
most learned among the masses of erudite German Mythologists, must have envied
the placid self-confidence of certain sceptics, when he found himself forced in a
moment of desperate perplexity to admit that:
We are compelled to return to the theories of trolls and genii, as they
were understood by the ancients; [it is a doctrine] without which it
becomes absolutely impossible to explain to oneself anything with
regard to the Mysteries. [ Creuzer's Introduction des Mystères,iii, 456.]
of the Ancients, which Mysteries are undeniable.
(Page 34) Roman Catholics, who are guilty of precisely the same worship, and to the
very letter - having borrowed it from the later Chaldaeans, the Lebanon
Nabathaeans, and the baptized Sabaeans, [ The later Nabathaeans adhered to the
same belief as the Nazarenes and the Sabaeans, honoured John the Baptist, and
used Baptistm. (See Isis Unveiled, ii.127: Munck, Palestine, p.525; Dunlap, Sid, the
Son of Man. etc.) ] and not from the learned Astronomers and Initiates of the days of
old - would now, by anathematizing it, hide the source from which it came. Theology
and Churchianism would fain trouble the clear fountain that fed them from the first, to
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