Masonic, Occult and Esoteric Online Library
Compassion - The Spirit of Truth
By Helena Petrovna Blavatsky
Hymn to a Voice Divine in Intellects Retreats
The only God we must recognise and pray to, or rather act in unison with, is that spirit of God of which our body is the temple,1 and in which it dwelleth.
— Helena Petrovna Blavatsky 2
He prayeth best who loveth best All things both great and small; For the dear God who loveth us, He made and loveth all.
— Samuel Taylor Coleridge 3
Insights to Divine Wisdom may only be gathered by a pure mind when invigorated by study and edified by altruism. “By studying and assimilating its eternal verities,” 4 the transmutation of ardent aspirations into philosopher’s gold begins in earnest and ideals begin to be made real here and now. For the staunch servants of LAW nothing is impossible.
Asked whether apart from “the outward petition to an unknown God as the addressee” there is any other kind of prayer, HP Blavatsky affirmed:
Most decidedly; we call it Will-Prayer, and it is rather an internal command than a petition.
In the following selections, Master KH, Blavatsky, and WQ Judge describe key features of this interior, silent development:
. . . for a clearer comprehension of the extremely abstruse and at first incomprehensible theories of our occult doctrine, never allow the serenity of your mind to be disturbed during your hours of literary labour, nor before you set to work. It is upon the serene and placid surface of the unruffled mind that the visions gathered from the invisible find a representation in the visible world. Otherwise you would vainly seek those visions, those flashes of sudden light which have already helped to solve so many of the minor problems and which alone can bring the truth before the eye of the soul. It is with jealous care that we have to guard our mind-plane from all the adverse influences which daily arise in our passage through earth-life.
Meditation is silent and unuttered prayer, or, as Plato expressed it, “the ardent turning of the soul toward the divine; not to ask any particular good (as in the common meaning of prayer), but for good itself — for the universal Supreme Good” of which we are a part on earth, and out of the essence of which we have all emerged.7 . . . Nor . . . prayer is a petition.1 It is a mystery rather; an occult process by which finite and conditioned thoughts and desires, unable to be assimilated by the absolute spirit which is unconditioned, are translated into spiritual wills and the will; such process being called “spiritual transmutation.” The intensity of our ardent aspirations changes prayer into the “philosopher’s stone,” or that which transmutes lead into pure gold. The only homogeneous essence, our “will-prayer” becomes the active or creative force, producing effects according to our desire.
The very instant a high aspiration is entertained, that instant the spiritual fire begins to work, and if the aspiration is made permanent by action inside and outside, then, the heat being constantly thus applied to the heavy lead-like material of the lower nature, the melting and refining process goes on silently but surely, adding power to the inner body which acts again on the outer body, and giving to all a strength and consistency which will lead to the gradual acquirement of true wisdom. This is what is meant by the alchemical and Rosicrucian saying or theory that lead or base metal may be turned into gold by the use of the “red powder.” The opposite saying is also true, that by the use of the black powder the precious metal may be turned into lead.
Heart-stirring is the birth of Divine Thought, a Cosmos, and its progressive expansion and enrichment through differentiation and specialisation. How can such lofty concepts be cold and irrelevant abstractions? Even faint insights of the “bright ruler of the stars and sacred arbiter of pious souls” 4 are awesome, enlightening, and heart-warming. Metaphysics is the heart of Occultism, says Blavatsky:
For, outside of metaphysics no occult philosophy, no esotericism is possible. It is like trying to explain the aspirations and affections, the love and hatred, the most private and sacred workings in the soul and mind of the living man, by an anatomical description of the chest and brain of his dead body.5
For the benefit of those who, doing justice to a book by reading it from cover to cover, have just reached this page, there now follows a pause for thought. This heart-stirring adoration of the Pure Intellectual Essence was included by Thomas Taylor in his 1795 translation of Apuleius’ Fable of Cupid and Psyche, at the request of a friend with “thirst after knowledge and elegant taste.” 6 The zeal of this learned Platonist in polishing the Gems of Occultism is truly inspiring; and his passionate and fluent utterance, magnificent:
To the Whole of a Pure Intellectual Essence, Considered as forming One Intelligible World
O Fairest offspring of a fire unknown! Splendour immense, all-comprehending god; Thy blest intelligible world I’ll sing, And celebrate the beauty it contains. Witness, ye shining stars, that nightly roll With ever wakeful and rejoicing fires: Witness, thou moon, whose ever changing orb Gives due perfection to material forms: And thou, O sun! bright ruler of the stars And sacred arbiter of pious souls Witness the constant tribute of my praise; Witness the mystic ardour of my soul. To thee my wings, From Hyle’s dire abode I stretch, impatient of a speedy flight: That rapid to the palace I may rise, And in the good’s bright vestibule exult. For there the great intelligible gods, Like daz’ling lamps, in spheres of crystal shine; Ineffably announcing by their light Th’abode of deity’s o’erflowing fount. All perfect father, may thy piercing eye Shine on my soul with sacred hymns replete, And rouse conceptions bright with mental fire! Now from the barriers of the race divine, Urg’d by the Muse’s vivid fire, I start; And rapid to the goal of sacred verse, To gain the soul’s Olympic honours, run. A voice divine in intellect’s retreats. Now gently murmurs with inspiring sound. O blessed father, deity sublime! Propitious listen to my suppliant prayer, And haste my union with thy beauteous world: Thy world with ev’ry excellence endu’d, And with ideas omniform replete. There shines the sun with intellectual light, And ev’ry star is there a mental sun. Each contains all; yet sep’rate and distinct Particulars their proper character preserve. There all is truly all, immensely great, Motion is pure, abiding without change; And ev’ry part exists a perfect whole.
O grant my soul the lynx’s piercing eye, That I may penetrate the depth divine Thy blest intelligible world contains. There each inhabitant, with boundless view, Light within light perpetually perceives; Nor finds in ought vacuity to check Th’ unweary’d energies of mental sight. But all things there with pow’r untam’d subsist, And each by seeing more abundant sees. Now in my phantasy from sense refin’d, A lucid image of a globe appears, Throughout diaphanous; whose orb contains The sun, and stars, and ev’ry mundane form, And all things shine in each divinely fair. And while this lucid spectacle remains, My soul attempts to frame a brighter sphere: Devoid of bulk, subsisting without place, And from the images of matter free. Come then, blest parent of that sphere divine, Whose mental image anxious I explore; Come with thy own intelligible world, And all the gods its beauteous realms contain. With all things come conspiring into one: That thus with thee, in perfect union join’d, My soul may recognise thy matchless fire; May vig’rous rise to his occult retreats, And fly alone to solitary good.
