The Principles of Occult Healing - A Working Hypothesis Which Includes All Cures - Studies by a Group of Theosophical Students. Mary Weeks Burnett
in Egypt and Greece. According to one author* Moses of the Old Testament and Aaron his brother were initiated into the Therapeutæ of Egypt, and were profoundly versed in the mysteries.
In the far-famed school of Pythagoras, 600 B.C., the pupils were required to have great knowledge of Mathematics and Music, preparatory to admission, and also extreme purity of life; the idea being not to make a saint of a man, but that he, having become a saint, with a pure mind and a pure body, and great power of love and knowledge, was permitted to enter the school in order to unfold fully within himself his own God-power, the Divine Life. Pythagoras, who had spent years of his life in India, where such schools had existed since the beginning of the Aryan Race, taught the art of highest healing not only of the physical body, but psychological or soul healing, showing that super-physical health needs existed, which the physician must meet and relieve. In his Golden Verses he says: “The race of Man is divine. Sacred Nature reveals to them the most hidden mysteries. If she impart to thee her secrets, thou wilt easily perform all the things which I have ordained thee. And by the healing of thy soul, thou wilt deliver it from all evils, from all afflictions.”
It is said that it was in one of these Essenic schools that Jesus was trained, a lad whose pure body and pure soul and tender sympathy for the suffering made Him a channel for the highest wisdom, and enabled Him to offer to the Supreme World-Teacher, the Christ of the Western World, the Shri Krishna of India, a body which could be made a perfect exemplar of the power to instantly heal all manner of disease and restore the dead to life.
In the Pistis Sophia, one of the most occult of the early Christian Mystery teachings, given after the resurrection, we read that the Master said: “The rest of the Mysteries which have been committed to the pupils, may be given to others, except the mystery of the resurrection of the dead, and the healing of the blind, for that mystery pertaineth to the Rulers,” or highest order of healers.
In one of these records of the past is a statement concerning Apollonius of Tyana, that illustrates the power with which such purity, such super-knowledge endows its possessor. Apollonius in his conversation with the Babylonian monarch, Vardan, said that he himself was a physician of the soul, and could free the king from the diseases of his mind, not only because he knew what ought to be done according to the discipline in the Pythagorean schools, but also because he knew the nature of the king.* This wisdom was his through his having unfolded the divinity of his whole nature, thus making possible a perpetual state of intuitional clear-seeing of hidden things.
It is a matter of history that Apollonius broke up the plague which was raging at Ephesus, by pointing out the cause of it and ordering the cause to be removed; also that he demonstrated his power to restore the dead to life.
Hippocrates (about 450 B.C.), the Father of Modern Medicine, so-called, held both in his teachings and his practice that there existed a restoring essence in nature, penetrating through all creation; that this intelligence is the agent which is constantly striving to preserve all things in their natural state, and to restore them when they are disarranged, and that in the observation, understanding, and management of this vis medicatrix naturae, the art of the true physician consisted.*
Menander† was especially famed for his healing schools in Samaria. His teachings were on psychological lines; he taught of the seven creative powers of Nature and their Rulers, and the ways whereby these planetary powers could be subjected to the purified, compassionate will.
A century later Hippolytus writes of the healing schools of the Ophites, in which the symbol of the serpent was a marked feature. For the serpent as a symbol of the Health Intelligence played a great part in the mysteries of the wisdom and healing schools in Greece, Egypt and Phoenicia, and can be traced back to Syria, Babylonia and further east to India.
An ascetic sect of Jews existed in the first century after Christ, of whom Milna speaks as the ancestors of the Christian monks and hermits. They resided near Alexandria in Egypt, and bore a striking resemblance in their doctrines of purity, health and compassion for humanity, to the Essenes. Their system of healing pervades some of the high degrees of Masonry.
The great physician, Galen, born 131 A.D., in Asia Minor, looked upon Nature, including planetary intelligences and influences, as the prime mover of everything and upon the physician as one of the chief human administrators of the powers of these planets. He taught the existence of an occult intelligence, hidden in nature, which heals.*
Paracelsus, born in 1492 in Switzerland, was the most noted physician of his own time, holding high civic offices, consulted by royalty, teacher in the Universities. Considered in the light of present day materialism, it is not strange that his teachings should have been gradually discarded by physicians for the less mentally laborious use of patent remedies. He says: “I have discovered a great many secrets in Nature, and I will tell you that he only can be a true physician who has acquired the knowledge of this healing essence, and the power to use it. This Intelligence, being an emanation of the spiritual Life, contains the elements of all cosmic influences, and is therefore the cause by which the action of the stars, the cosmic intelligences, upon the etheric and astral bodies of man may be explained.”
These high orders of Therapeutæ have not wholly disappeared. They work in silence, for the benefit of humanity, with a knowledge the depth and beauty of which the profane world cannot conceive. Under their guidance, brotherhoods of healers are forming in different countries.
It is only too apparent that the requirements of pure body, pure mind, and intimate knowledge of the true healing power in nature, and a profound compassion for humanity, are no longer required in the medical schools of today. As a consequence, only the lower grades of healing are recognized by, taught to or practiced by the medical profession. But if evolution be true, some of those highly trained souls of the past may soon return to earth and re-establish the higher grades once more. Indeed, the greatest healer of the present historic age, the Lord Maitreya of India, the Christ of the Western world, may well return and perform those greater world-healings of which two thousand years ago He said He could not “because of their unbelief.” For, with the power and the methods better understood by the people, and with the scientific demonstrations of it under Nature’s own law of Health, unbelief will speedily be supplanted by knowledge.
* Fragments of a Faith Forgotten, by G. R. S. Mead. p. 66.
* Historie des Sectes Religieuse, by Gregoire (Abbe), Vol. II, p. 292.
* Apollonius of Tyana, by G. R. S. Mead, p. 113.
* Fathers of Biology, by C. McRae, M.A., F.L.S., p. 9.
† Fragments of a Faith Forgotten, by G. R. S. Mead, p. 175.
* Medical Portrait Gallery, by F. J. Pettigrew, F.R.S.
CHAPTER III
HEALTH AND THE HEALING INTELLIGENCE
“THERE is no miracle.” Everything that occurs is the result of eternal, immutable, ever-active law. This is one of the Principles of Occultism, and it has an especial bearing on our study of Health and Healing. There is no case of healing which is outside of the law. The true explanation of every case is to be found under Nature’s laws, if we will look for it in the right way.
Health may be imperfectly described as one aspect of spirit,