shakespeare in light of theosophy

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Shakespeare in Light of Theosophy - A Collection of Essays

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Contents

- Hidden Lessons in Shakespeare - Morris- The Tempest - Morris- A Midsummer Night's Dream - Morris- Theosophy in Shakespeare - Sawtell

Essays on Shakespeare (Theosophical Movement )- I. Othello - The Tale of a Hypnotized Soldier - II. Macbeth - A Study in Witchcraft- III. King Lear - A Study in Karma

- IV. The Theosophy of Shakespeare's Tempest - V. Hamlet - A Story of Psychic Unbalance- VI. Julius Caesar - A Study in Violence and Bloodshed- VII. Shakespeare and the Adepts- VIII. Shakespeare's Views on Death

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Hidden Lessons in Shakespeare- Kenneth Morris

"Let the stage manager concentrate his attention and that of his audience on thethings seen which are temporal, and such a play is robbed of half its majesty and all itssignificance. But let him.... raise the action from the merely material to the psychological,and render audible to the ears of the soul if not of the body 'the solemn uninterruptedwhisperings of man and destiny,' point out 'the uncertain dolorous footsteps of the beingas he approaches or wanders from, his truth, his beauty, or his God,' and show how,underlying King Lear, Macbeth, and Hamlet , is 'the murmur of Eternity on the horizon,' andhe will be fulfilling the poet's intention instead of turning his majestic spirits into sepulchral-voiced gentlemen with whitened faces and robes of gauze."

Now the above, we take it, is a very beautifully worded expression of a profoundartistic truth; but when we find such a gloss put upon it as a certain journalist puts in thefollowing sentence:

"The play, in short, should make man realize that he is an embodied ghost in thepresence of ghosts not embodied, more potent, more masterful than he - "

we begin to feel that it is time to exercise a little caution.



Some one wrote an essay on Hamlet , and devoted the bulk of it to proving thatShakespeare, like himself, was a spiritualist. He did not see that thus he had onlysucceeded in proving himself, at least, a very thorough-paced materialist, one insistingupon the letter and letting the spirit go. That almost goes without saying. It does not matter to us, and it did not matter to Shakespeare, what views might be held on this matter or that.

For example, in some of the plays the whole machinery of old Paganism is taken for granted; in others, the whole machinery of medieval Christianity. It is profitless to assigndogmas to Shakespeare on the strength of the scheme of things made use of in this dramaor that; because he makes use of whatever scheme of things is suitable to the local color of the play in hand.

He had to say his mighty say, and proclaim the things that are true in all ages. Menmay be Buddhist, Christian, or Muslim, Jews, Turks, Infidels, or Heretics; but still the Lawworks. Truth and art stand superior to all religion and all creeds; and so with the artistthere may be this set of personal beliefs or that; but the moment he ascends into the realregion of art, those beliefs are lost sight of, and he handles the eternal verities.

Half the world is worried that we can get no clue to Shakespeare the man. We deny

his existence; we prove that he was Bacon; we write biographies of him, mainly relyingon imagination for our facts. What is not sufficiently realized is that this very illusivenessis what makes him so uniquely great. Impersonality is the secret of him; "self-emptiness,"as the Chinese say. "Cursed be the man that moves my bones," says Shakespeare fromhis tomb; in other words simply, Let my personality be; that which is of account came not from it, but from universal and spiritual sources.

He could take any belief, any system, and twist the paraphernalia of it into a symbolfor world-wide stable truth. No religion specifically denies such facts as that the nature of man is dual, good and evil; that he may follow the evil side of him to destruction, or thebright side to high summits of being; that "whatsoever a man soweth, that also shall hereap." The trouble is that most religions have skilfully overlaid these truths with a tangle

of dogmatic perversities, so that they remain concealed and forgotten. But if a man mightproclaim them so the truth of them should "bite," as we say; should lay hold upon theminds of men, and force itself insistently into memory - that man would be among theteachers and benefactors of the race.

Shakespeare certainly did that. He does not care whether it is Jove that is wieldingthe thunderbolts, or whether they fall driven by no visible or ascribed hand; fall they shall,it is certain, to smite, not the unbeliever, but the unrighteous. It is true, indeed, that heshowed a certain leaning to Pagan symbology, rather than Christian; he does bring inPagan Gods as agents in the working of his plots, but not ever, I think, a Christian angelor saint. But that was, one may say, because paganism lends itself more readily to theuses of the symbolic treatment of realities. It was more lifted out of the field of dogma,

presented a more dispassionate, impersonal arena; and so there was and is more chanceof Truth striking home through it. So Shakespeare the Artist, either with or without theconscious design of Shakespeare the personality, used it more often and more intrinsicallyin the structure of his plays than he used the Christian scheme. But that does not provethat Shakespeare believed in Juno, Iris, Jove, Ceres, etc., in the old exoteric pagan way.No doubt he went to church and conformed outwardly to the religion of his day. Indeed,had he not done so, the results might have been unpleasant for him. It does not matter.What of Truth there is in a man will live after him; it will shout through all his acts and



writings, a voice not to be silenced, a light unquenchable; his creed, on the other hand, is"oft interred with his bones."

Not that we can believe that even the man Shakespeare was much hampered withsuch a thing as a creed; he could put by and rise above it too easily, if it existed at all, for it to have sat otherwise than very lightly upon him. But what we are concerned with is not

the creed of him, but the manner in which he handled any creed or material for the purposeof symbolizing his teachings."The solemn uninterrupted whisperings of man and his destiny": but if Shakespeare

proclaims one thing with no shadow of uncertainty, it is that that destiny is made by manhimself. All its ministrants are the reflections of man's own acts and character; the spiritsof good and evil are whisperings within his own mind. Eternity does "murmur on thehorizon"; this deep eternal truth of Karma sounds forever through the tragedies, like thesea-sound in a shell. Nothing could be farther from the spirit of this man and his work thanthe clammy atmosphere of Spookology. Which of his characters was the victim or creatureof any other power, except in so far as some internal weakness made him so? Certainlynot the hero of any play, not one of those archetypal figures that represent embodied Man.

Rash and ungovernable Lear, without any fixed anchorage or stedfast point within hisbeing, comes to no harm until he has deliberately given himself up into the power of hisown evil progeny. Here Shakespeare uses no ghost or "supernatural" figure; but Regan,Goneril, and Cordelia serve him in the same stead as the spirits in certain other plays.They stand for the principles of good and evil; they are the children of Lear, the fruitageof his own acts, the accumulations of his own history. The "Moment of Choice" havingcome for him, he has to choose in accordance with his character - rashly, seizing theseeming sweetness of the moment; turning from the stern honorable words of Cordelia,who is symbol of the Higher Life; and flinging himself upon the greater promise of ease,delight, and honor held forth by the life of the personality and senses, Regan and Goneril.Says the Bhagavad-Gita:

"Those who thus desire riches and enjoyment have no certainty of soul and leasthold on meditation."

And again:

"The uncontrolled heart, following the dictates of the moving passions, snatchethaway his spiritual knowledge, as the storm the bark upon the raging ocean."

And does not Shakespeare intend to symbolize the choice between "that which inthe beginning is as poison and in the end as the waters of life, and which ariseth from a

purified understanding" - Cordelia; and "that arising from the connexion of the senses withtheir objects which in the beginning is sweet as the waters of life but at the end like poison"- the two elder sisters? It is when he has made the choice, and chosen wrongly, thatdestiny begins to overwhelm King Lear. In the death of Cordelia we have another mysticteaching foreshadowed, that of sacrifice; on which there is no space to enlarge here.

Now there in King Lear we find the pattern of the tragedies, and the main purposeand current of them. The absence of any ghost there, or in Othello; the absence of anyso-called "supernatural" figure; shows that supernaturalism was incidental and a mere



convenient method of symbolization, to be made use of when required, but quite apart fromthe grand purpose. But in every one of the great tragedies, the work of the years whenShakespeare had come to his own, we do find the same insistence upon spiritual, notpsychic, things: we do find Karma, not fate, at work; man, not the plaything of ghosts notembodied, more potent, more masterful than he; "but the maker of his own destiny, the

victim of his own acts."

II.

It is claimed that man is

"an embodied ghost in the presence of ghosts not embodied, more potent, moremasterful than he."

Now three plays stand out pre-eminently as depending upon "supernatural"

machinery; and it will be well to examine these briefly, in order to find out how and why thiskind of machinery is used. These plays are, of course, Hamlet, Macbeth, and JuliusCaesar ; and the point to be decided is: Were these plays written to preach spiritualism,or for some other purpose?

To take first the least important of the three, Julius Caesar . The story could havebeen told without introducing Caesar's ghost at all. The conspirators, centering aboutBrutus and Cassius, constitute the hero. They kill Caesar, whereafter (and wherefore) fateslowly weaves its web around them, and brings them to doom. You have there theelements of a tragedy; a moving, terrible tale. Such a drama would have been tragicenough, and great enough, for the ordinary playwright and for the ordinary audience.There is man at war with fate, and man defeated; all that exoteric drama asks in a tragedy,

so it be properly handled. From that standpoint the ghost seems unessential; you mightcut the scenes in which it appears, and still have a presentable, and even a great drama.Not so from the deeper standpoint; not so for the great art; not so for Shakespeare.

Brutus, let us say, is the embodied ghost; Brutus, symbolically, is that much of the soul of man which is incarnate in the personality and brain-mind. Mark his position, standing ashe does between the all-evil Cassius, Envy impersonate, and the impersonal, dominant,superman principle, Caesar. Noble he was essentially; but, as soon as the Cassius ideagains the ear and heart of him, clouded, ineffectual, befogged, worthless. His participationin the murder of Caesar foredooms his own pitiful end as clearly as Macbeth's murder of Duncan foredoomed his. In both cases, the man by a definite act on his own part, puthimself in the power of fate.

True, Brutus does not lose all his nobility. His is the fate of those whose very goodqualities are turned against them, because of some lack of intuition on their part. They willnot see clearly; they turn against the Law, the Higher Self, that which is inevitably destinedto win; but they are honest in their blindness, and their crime is that they have allowedcircumstances and the evil-minded to deceive them. Why did he not see through Cassius?The answer is, that Cassius found a weak spot in him to play upon; there was buriedambition there, ready to be fanned into a potent and destroying flame. He must emulatehis ancestor; he must liberate Rome. But clearly Rome was moving in the nature of things



towards that principle which Caesar stood for, and needed Caesar above all things. LetCaesar be taken for the symbol of the dominant Soul in man. Brutus-brain-mind has lovedand been loved by him. And yet this Brutus fears the complete submission, cannot takethe step, holds back, dreading the curtailment of liberties. On that indecision, allied as italways is, to ambition, the evil forces play. So the blow is struck, Brutus becomes traitor,

and Caesar is killed. They could never have done it without Brutus, and would not havedared the attempt. Even materially, in the action of the play, it is the Brutus-stab that kills:"Et tu, Brute! Then fall Caesar!" Which indicates that Cassius in a sense knew what hewas doing, and that all blows would be powerless unless Brutus struck too.

Now follow the play from that point, and note why art, which is one thing with Truth,when you have reached such a plane as this, demands that the Ghost be brought in.Without it, you have merely the failure of a plot; merely the greater skill of Antony andOctavius overcoming the chaotic counsels of the conspirators. With it, you have theindestructibleness of a Principle. Caesar is more potent, more masterful than Brutus,whether embodied or not. You may turn against that principle, you may stab it; but youcannot kill. Rather, and only, it is your end that you are fashioning. He who fell in the

Senate house is yet inevitably victor on the plains of Philippi. He will have another embodiment - we treat these figures symbolically, and do not here imply the reincarnationof a human soul - as Octavius. You kill Julius, but the Caesar is not to be killed. So it mustbe indicated that he whom Brutus is to meet at Philippi, when he falls, when he runs uponhis own sword, defeated - is the same Caesar whom he stabbed at Rome. No other symbol would have told the tale. In effect, the Ghost does not terrorize Brutus, raises noremorse or mental confusion; it appears for only one purpose, to symbolize theindestructibleness of the principle that Caesar stands for.

Let it be said that there are many interpretations for a play such as this, accordingto the plane on which you choose to read it. The thing is as true if you understand it merelyfrom a politico-social standpoint, as an allegory of the awful results of assassination in that

sphere. Killing of a personality is the wrongest and most fatuous method; for the principlethat was incarnate in the slain one immediately will find some other personality to embodyand express it. But whether we take it as referring to the history of an individual or to thatof a community; whether we find in the impersonal Caesar a good or a bad force, thelesson remains that it is not a personality, but an indestructible principle; and in order tosymbolize this vividly, the Ghost has to appear.

But to recur to the interpretation that has been attempted above. There are menwho make such fateful mistakes as Brutus made, and remain honorable in spite of it, upto the point of their deaths. We might indeed read the Ghost's warning to Brutus in another way: "Thou shalt see me at Philippi"; the breach between thee and Me is not so completebut that it shall be healed over when thou art dead. We shall meet again. I do not see why

it should not be interpreted thus, as a forewarning of forgiveness and reunion when theKarma of the great blunder is worked out on the field of ruin. This would be of a piece, too,with the words of Octavius, the new incarnation of the Caesar, on the battlefield:

Within my tent his bones tonight shall lie.With all respect and rites of burial.

According to his virtue let us use him,



True, the Ghost's announcement that he is "Thy evil spirit, Brutus," would seem tomilitate against this; but then to Brutus, persistent in his error, the Caesar would be "hisevil spirit." And it is not claimed that there was verbal inspiration throughout the play; or that Shakespeare the personality necessarily fully understood the symbolism of what hewas writing. And the Ghost made no appearance to Cassius, which it might have done,

had it merely been intended to represent the spiritualistic idea of a dead man's personality,seeking to inspire terror and reap revenge. There is no talk whatever of meeting Cassiusagain; and yet Cassius was as courageous as a soldier as Brutus was, and it would havebeen as profitable to endeavor to terrorize him. The point is that the person who errs to anextent honorably, who blunders into such blindness and desertion without becomingaltogether base, does meet his Higher Self again, does have another opportunity, either in this or another life, when he has paid the Karma of his crime; but there are those whoare altogether base, and they do but with difficulty.

III.

Macbeth is steeped in ghost-life; it represents that pole among the tragedies. Aghost walks here and does strike terror, is most ghostlike, a mere haunting, dreadful thing;and beside the ghost there are the Three Weird Sisters. There is more of the ghostly inHamlet than in Julius Caesar , and more in Macbeth than in either. And let it be said atonce that there is this psychic region in the universe; there is such a thing as the AstralPlane. If Shakespeare did not personally know about it, at least he served it up to us in asymbol. But he had to do so. There would have been a type left out, a warning unuttered,if he had failed to devote one tragedy to the exploitation of this thing. But to say thatMacbeth (the drama, not the man) preaches ghostology! Why, it is the most fearful warningagainst it, probably, that ever was crammed into a drama.

There are those three types of dreamers: Brutus on his plane, the politico-philanthropic, ruined by personal ambition, even though it was what many would call anoble form of ambition - the old sin under a great disguise of nobility; Hamlet on his plane,the speculative, free from ambition, but marred by indecision and the inability to do; andMacbeth on his plane, the psychic-emotional. And which of these three was irretrievablylost? Only one, Macbeth. And why?

Let us remember that each of the three stands for that principle which is the ordinaryconsciousness in man; the "I" of everyday life. It links the animal and the divine nature;and is the field and instrument of conflict between these two. Thus Hamlet stands betweenhis father's ghost and his uncle; Brutus between Caesar and Cassius; Lear betweenGoneril-Regan and Cordelia. Hamlet stands highest of them; he is in sharp, if ineffective,

antagonism against Claudius; ineffective for long, because of his indecision; yet he doeswin a kind of victory in the end. We feel that with the entry of Fortinbras, for whom Hamlethimself has prepared the way, the "something rotten" is purged out from the state of Denmark; Hamlet, dying, is victorious and receives the crown. The dead Brutus too is notwithout honor; Shakespeare preserves for him our sympathy and pity. As for Lear, he hasgone far; and yet he too in a sense is redeemed by Cordelia: he stands on the side of theangels at the end: Cordelia returns from France to meet her death, but pays by it, we maysay, for the deaths of Goneril and Regan, and Edgar. So also Desdemona dying redeems



Othello from Iago; the Moor at last turns upon his tempter and stabs him, and though hedoes not kill, leaves him to a worse fate. Of all these the death is not utter loss, nor withoutsome feature and hue of hope; but the case of Macbeth is different.

We are not to suppose that he was altogether a bad man, this Gaelic chieftain.Duncan praised and honored him as deserving beyond the possibility of recompense: from

Lady Macbeth we have a revelation of his character. Full of the milk of human kindnesshe was; ambitious, but without the illness that should attend ambition; what he wouldhighly, that he would holily. Each of the tragedy heroes has much that is splendid in him;each has to contend with some weakness or passion; in each play there is some humanfigure that represents the hero's lower nature, actively evil. Lady Macbeth of course takesthat place here.

Now up to a certain point, all her workings had failed to destroy his nobility. She hadbeen with him, we presume, for some years; yet still there was that "milk of humankindness;" still he "would holily;" still "would not play false." Then came the change andsudden breakdown. He comes into contact with the psychic world; that is the meaning of the Weird Sisters. "Metaphysical aid" is suddenly poured like naphtha on the smouldering

fire of his ambition; and all that was good in the man is burned away.We cannot doubt that those three witches represent astralism. Those who dabblein it should read what H. P. Blavatsky taught on the subject. The lower astral light, shesaid, is the storehouse wherein are all the seeds of human vice and crime; once open thedoor of one's nature to it, and one is flooded with the whole mass of the accumulated foulthought of mankind. She quotes Eliphas Levi, who called it "Satan" and the "GreatSerpent." It is bad enough for a man to contend with his own personal devil, his own lower,animal nature; yet one might contend with that to the end of life, and die respectable,without being a great hero; even falling under its power, one might part with life without theutter loss of hope, the utter severance of the link with his divinity. So Shakespeare teachesin these tragedies. He confronts Brutus, Hamlet, Lear, and Othello, only with their own

passions and weaknesses, symbolized by the "villains" of the plays; and leaves us assuredthat they will do better in their next incarnations; they die penitent, or still retainingsomething of nobility. But not Macbeth. He has not only Lady Macbeth to tempt him, hisown lower self; but also that supernatural astral world; and so his ruin is complete andwithout hope of redemption. He kills Duncan, as Brutus killed Caesar; and then he turnsand kills Banquo likewise; as if Cassius should out of sheer malice and devilry have killedBrutus. Lady Macbeth dies before him; that is, even the inspiration of his lower self, evenhis personal potency for evil vanishes; and at the end he is the mere semblance of a man,a wreck, a remnant, a shell; a hollow thing through which surges unadulterated hate andpassion.

It is that touch with the "supernatural," that "metaphysical aid," which breaks him.

Note that after the interview with the witches all restraint ebbs away from him: it is exactlyso in real life. The evil of the world, stored there in the lower reaches of the Astral Light,seizes upon the weak spot in the nature of the "fool who treads" there, and inflames thatuntil the whole being is burned away. So we see that Shakespeare taught the danger of Psychism. At this present time what warning could be of greater importance?

Now it will be well to look at the ghost of Banquo; the third of Shakespeare'simportant ghosts; the other two being, of course, those of the elder Hamlet and JuliusCaesar. These represent , in the case of King Hamlet obviously, and in the case of Caesar



but little less obviously, the Higher Self. If Macbeth had been no worse than Hamlet or even Brutus; if the slaying of Duncan had been of no deeper damnation and finality thanthe slaying of Caesar; it is the ghost of Duncan, and not that of mere Banquo, that wouldhave walked: but we hear nothing of such a "spirit." The separation of the Higher Self andpersonality is, in this instance, absolutely complete. Caesar, being dead, yet lives, as

Brutus' innate nobility yet lives. Duncan, being dead, is as dead as Macbeth's own better qualities. All that remains is Banquo; and he only for a little while.Banquo, I would say, represents personal soundness, sanity, and respectable

outward showing. As a character apart, we note that he too meets the witches; but he isnot ambitious, and neither begs nor fears their favor nor their hate. In all things we find himlevel and composed, a man of balance. While he remains with Macbeth, he is, if the latter but knew it, a protection to him; being a trustworthy man, and one of good-seeming, uponhis side. His murder is the throwing off the mask of respectability; and is the second greatstep downward in the career of Macbeth. His ghost must be introduced, to fill the king withpublic terror. Until then, Macbeth has carried things well enough, wearing his maskefficiently; he retains the respect and loyalty of his court, at least to a degree, and has not

been driven to foregather further with the witches. But he is obliged to murder Banquo; just as the votaries of evil may walk well in the eyes of the world for a time, but sooner or later are compelled to come forth without disguise, to some action which proclaims themand murders their good name and outward respectability. The appearance of Banquo'sghost is not set there for its surface value; if we think so, we rob it of its whole worth anddepth of teaching. It is, no doubt, a psychic possibility; but it has its place in the play tosymbolize a spiritual fact. It means the unveiling of the monster before the world; after which he can no more keep up appearances, but must race and riot down into perdition.Now Lennox understands him, and with Lennox the others: now he must go straight againfor courage and appeasement to the witches; now comes the useless murder of the familyof Macduff; and - Macduff and Malcolm in England begin the work of his undoing.

"The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life."

(Theosophical Path, vol. 3, no. 4, Oct., 1912)

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The Tempest - Kenneth Morris

The Tempest , with Cymbeline, Pericles, and the Winter's Tale, belongs to the fourthand last group of Shakespeare's plays. Its first recorded performance was at Whitehallbefore King James on November 1, 1611; probably it had already been acted at his ownGlobe Theater in Southwark earlier in the same year. It is probably not the last play hewrote; but almost certainly when he wrote it he intended it to be the last, and wasconsciously giving in it his farewell message to the world. "When I have required someheavenly music (which even now I do)," says Prospero who is Shakespeare - "I'll break my"[magician's] "staff, Bury it certain fathoms in the earth, And deeper than did ever plummet



sound I'll drown my book" [of magic. It is the last of the plays in which he records his ownspiritual life and adventures; in this respect following Hamlet , the representative or centralplay of the third period, as this is of the fourth.

The crux of both is that a king, a rightful king, has been ousted from his throne byfoul means: a wrong has been done that must be righted. This is a reflexion, or a symbol,

of the whole wrongness of life, - the evil in the world and in man. When he wrote Hamlet ,say in 1602, Shakespeare saw no means of righting this wrong except through disastrousexpiations - deaths and deaths and deaths: by 1610, when he wrote The Tempest , he haddiscovered that there was another means. Man was not the helpless creature of fortune,doomed to ruin by his own weakness, or to be saved only by sacrifice; instead, there wasin him a magician, a being of power, who can command his destiny. So for Hamlet the'hesitating Dane' we have Prospero the Master of the Elements; and for the old redemptionby sacrifice, we have redemption by power and peace: a power and a peace that Prosperohas found within himself and imposes upon his surroundings, natural, elemental, andhuman.

Externally, the play was suggested by certain current events; there was much in it

of topical interest. In 1609, Sir George Somers sailed with nine ships for Virginia; the fleetwas scattered by a storm; some of the ships reached their destination; others returned toEngland with news of the probable loss of the admiral's ship the Sea-Venture,which,however, had, in reality, been driven to the Bermudas and there put in in safety.

In the following year a pamphlet was published in London giving an account of thewhole affair. The Sea-Venture had sprung a leak; the sailors, exhausted with working thepumps, had given up all hope, taken leave of each other, and fallen asleep at their work:to wake in calm seas, under salubrious skies, within a stone's throw of land. The ship hadbeen jammed between two rocks close inshore; and all hands were brought off with perfectease, on to an island uninhabited but delightful, with air mild and delicious, and soilteemingly fruitful.

The title of the pamphlet is indicative: The Discovery of Bermuda or Devil's Island.The Bermudas had been supposed to be enchanted; Sir Walter Raleigh in 1596 had giventhem a bad name on account of the storms that infested them; Shakespeare in this sameplay alludes to the "still-vext Bermoothes." Here then he found his material nexus, hisexternal suggestion: here was a tempest; an enchanted island; a ship despaired of andwrecked, and as if by magic unharmed after all; and a part of the fleet (or crew) returnedhome lamenting the supposed loss of their leader. All of these incidents we findreproduced in the play. He used them as a scaffolding for, or a means of setting forth, inits final perfection, his profound philosophy of life.

Through a number of plays he had been haunted by the duality of Nature, humanand otherwise. He sensed constantly a Hidden Divinity: at his very bitterest - and he did

fall to great bitterness - he would have gone to the stake for it that this God in Man didexist, or had existed, or ought to exist; but he also saw clearly that it was in defeat andretirement, obscured by the forces of evil which in this world have it mainly their own way.

In his late thirties, realization of these things had begun to oppress him; and grewthrough seven years or so, creating an internal agony in whose white heat the grandtragedies were forged. Undoubtedly his understanding of the matter - which was intense,burning-clear, and personal - came of the fact that he could watch the contest primarily inhis own life; in which, somewhere about 1600, some dark shadow seems to have loomed



up to be conquered or to destroy him. That he did conquer it: that he arrived at a perfectserenity of wisdom, a clear insight at last, The Tempest is there to prove.

It was in about his thirty-eighth year, when he wrote Julius Caesar , that he beganto notice this usurpation by evil of the sovereignty of good. He was not at first greatlytroubled by it. He shared the general view of his age: which saw in the king the head and

heart of the nation, a kind of link between it and the Divine Ruling of the universe, - and so,the symbol of Good always as opposed to evil. In Julius Caesar it is Caesar himself, of course, who holds this symbolic position; we see certain of the lower human elements, andparticularly envy (impersonated as Cassius) rise against him, involving in their conspiracythe not ignoble qualities that are in Brutus; but we feel that Shakespeare has no doubt of the issue. The conspirators might kill Caesar, but they were powerless against Caesarism:Octavian is Caesar as soon as Julius is dead, and his return and triumph are inevitable asfate. Shakespeare had not yet realized the power of evil.

Next came Hamlet ; and here the result is far more uncertain. For Octaviansweeping to his revenge, we have Hamlet groping and hesitating after it: when weremember that these two characters have to play the same part, it becomes clear to us how

far more deeply Shakespeare had become involved in the struggle with evil in the latter than in the former play; though probably not a year had passed between the writing of them. Still he foresees a final righting of the great wrong: the usurping evil (King Claudius)is to be killed; the murdered good (King Hamlet) is to be avenged; there will be peace atlast, he is assured; but at what cost! All is doubt and uncertainty. He was himself hismodel for Hamlet, and Hamlet's dead father, and Claudius; he foresaw that, before theatonement could be made, Hamlet - his own superb intelligence - would be sacrificed.

Measure for Measure, Othello, Macbeth, and King Lear followed: each more gloomythan the last. In each he struggles towards the righting of the great wrong, the undoing of the great usurpation; in each foresees atonement; but the price to be paid for it is alwaysgreater; until in King Lear it is Cordelia, the divine Soul in man itself, that must be

immolated: as if he had said, To undo the evil that humanity is, humanity, with the god inits heart and all, must be blotted out and a new race created. Then came two bitter scourgings of the falsity of women, Troilus and Cressida and Antony and Cleopatra; thenthe savage Timon of Athens, in which the tortured soul of Shakespeare proclaims itsdisgust with and despair of mankind; and then, seven years after Julius Caesar , hereached the lowest depths he ever did reach in Pericles; and there, in deep hell, turned,looked upward, and once more saw the light.

If he did not write the parts we dislike of Pericles - and very likely he did not - still itis noteworthy, still indicative of his inward history, that he should have turned from thebitterness of Troilus and Timon to take a play by another man, far fouler and bitterer thaneither, and redeem it into sweet serenity; - come so quickly from the creation of Cressida

and Cleopatra, to that of Marina. What is positive is this: a new day had dawned for him;a new sun shone; the bitterness is gone; the tortured soul is at peace; he believes in thedivine within himself again, and consequently he believes in the divine in humanity; wherea year before he was hating, now he is pitying and forgiving.

Then came The Tempest : in which it is the Dethroned Divinity who holds all thepower in his hands. A glance at the story will serve to show what a marvelous change hadtaken place in Shakespeare's outlook:



Prospero, Duke of Milan, in order to get time for his studies, principally of magic, hadcommitted the charge of his duchy into the hands of his brother Antonio; who grewambitious, and at the price of making Milan tributary to her traditional enemy, Alonso Kingof Naples, called in the latter's aid; and with it, dethroned Prospero and set him adrift withhis infant daughter Miranda in a crazy boat in mid-sea. But fortune or Prospero's art guided

the boat safely to an island; where, reigning through his magic over a world of spirits, hebrought up Miranda and bided his time.The play opens twelve years later; when, all his enemies being upon a voyage in

those parts, Prospero raises a storm which produces on them the illusion of shipwreck, andall are cast ashore on the island. There the heir of Naples, Ferdinand, Alonso's son,separated from the rest, falls in with Prospero and in love with Miranda - as her father intended he should; Alonso, imagining Ferdinand lost, and despondent on that account,is prepared upon the denouement to restore to Prospero his dukedom; Ferdinand andMiranda are betrothed; it transpires that the ship is in perfectly sound condition after all;and the whole party returns in it to Italy: Prospero thus out of the whole adventure havingwon for his daughter not only his own Milan, but queenship in Naples as well.

Here then Shakespeare sees the fearful struggle, which has been life-wreck, ruin,and desolation in the previous plays, as but an illusionary storm raised by the greatdethroned magician - the Divine Soul in man, really - in order to bring all the factors in thedrama of life, all the principles represented, into his power; and this Prospero does, not for revenge's sake, but that the universal wrong may be righted: that "earthly things madeeven" may "atone together"; that the hereditary antagonism, Naples versus Milan, mayvanish changed into union; that Miranda may be queen in both.

He had tried the same theme years before in Romeo and Juliet; but then, withoutphilosophy, with no deep truth in mind to tell, he had found no solution to his problemexcept that of conventional tragedy. Montagues and Capulets had stood for nothing: theyhad been, simply, two Italian houses at feud. But Milan and Naples in The Tempest

proclaim themselves the eternal duality of evolution: matter that rises, spirit that descendsand informs; and when the child of Milan weds the heir of Naples, that atonement takesplace which Shakespeare groped after so often half-blindly in the early plays; which hadtaken place in himself when he wrote The Tempest ; which he had always sensed as a far-off bright event, the most tremendous in the history of a human soul. Ferdinand, the heir of Naples, is the highest point of material evolution upwards; that is to say, he is theintellectualized animal-man. Miranda, heiress of Milan, who weds or redeems him, is theultimate expression of descending spirit, the point of it, so to say, that contacts matter andbecomes the redeemer of human life.

This then is the core and last word of Shakespearean philosophy: Miranda - theprinciple she represents - is to be mistress of both worlds; the whole epopee has taken

place: Prospero lost Milan at first: that she might possess not only Milan, but Naples too.That accomplished, Prospero will lay by his powers and turn his face graveward. Whatthen, in plain human terms, is Miranda?

Shakespeare leaves you in no doubt. The first words she utters tell you: she is Pity,Compassion, the Will to Serve and Save, the Refusal, ever, to Condemn or to allow a harshsolution for any problem. Miranda is the knowledge that you have solved nothing when youhave hanged the criminal; that you have gained nothing by your victory at war; that he



who condemns another is himself condemned - self-condemned. It is the last word of human wisdom, said Shakespeare; and, certainly, Jesus thought so too.

The mushy-minded and thought-shirking, or thought-incapable, delight to call thissentimentalism; they will have none of it at any price. When a man is down and outmorally it is easier to hang him than to cure him; because to cure him calls for stiff

fundamental brain-work, and illuminated brain-work at that; but to condemn him, we needbut to be befuddled. In just the same way, it is much easier in case of plague andepidemic, to parade your fetish in gala-toggery through town and incense your Mumbo-

jumbo and the like, than to attend to sanitation and science.Shakespeare, however, who by this time knew life inside and out, clearly, sanely,

and wholly, leaves this as the sum and finality of his doctrine, his last message to the agesthat should follow him: all this grand agonization, life, (he says), exists solely to teach us -even the silliest advocate of brute-force and legalized murder among us - that compassionwhich will not and cannot turn away in condemnation from any living being; thecompassion which is the supremest wisdom and enlightenment that can come to man,because it is recognition of the unity of all life.

At this point one might take a glance at the Bacon theory; because all this does soforcibly, violently indeed, not remind one of Bacon. The uncritical and ignorant of humannature are fond of arguing that Bacon wrote the plays; it could as easily be true thatDisraeli wrote Dickens. Men are naturally divided, it has been reasonably said, intoPlatonists and Aristotelians: Bacon out-Aristotled Aristotle, and by much; but Shakespearein the Elysium sitteth on the right hand of Plato himself. Or Mr. Shaw somewhere dividesminds into those that look into the past and say, Why? and those that look into the futureand say, Why not? Of that latter diviner group is the man that wrote the plays; his lassowas always whizzing about the neck of Perfection; it is a wonder it has not more beennoticed, how passionately he asserted the Divine in Man. But Bacon.... No.... Oh dear meno!

No two minds could be more unlike. Indeed, though Shakespeare was the very childof his age, and will fit into no niche in European history, except his own niche in Elizabeth'sEngland, there is no other Elizabethan, among the known names, whom we could think of as the author of the plays. Fletcher, perhaps, was the likeliest man; but I think Fletcher took Shakespeare consciously for his model; and at that was spiritually and intellectuallya frightfully poor imitation. So if William Shakespeare of Stratford-on-Avon and the Globein Southwark was not the man, it must have been someone else still more obscure, andmuch less probable.

Bacon's was a very great mind: strong, daring, and ambitious. He seems to havenourished ambitions towards the throne itself; there was a good deal of the paranoiac inhim; it is said, I am not sure on what authority, he thought himself the great Queen's son.

He never doubted himself or his powers. His weaknesses - ambition, avarice, and aproneness to peculation, he never recognised as weaknesses at all; and when the downfallcame, and he was convicted of bribe-taking, he took it all with a sort of solemn grandeur,as "scorning" (says Ben Jonson) "to go out in a snuff." Pride made him strong against theworld. An intellectual giant, spiritually he was a kind of embryo, - he had not rightly begunto be.

But Shakespeare knew his weaknesses very well. He suffered terribly from them;being of the type that scourges itself unmercifully for every slip. He was highly strung,



sensitive; where Bacon was all masculinity, he had very much, in a good sense, of thewoman in him: it has been said that he never drew a really heroic man; but he certainlydid draw many ideal women. He fought his way to a divine self-realization, throughboundless elations and limitless despairs. Bacon, the strong man, would probably havedespised him utterly: Ben, who was something Baconian in masculinity of intellect, but who

had - as Bacon had not - a great heart as well - loved Shakespeare "this side of idolatry"as much as any man: loved him really nobly, and could appreciate his genius as well: buteven in Ben's admiration for him there was a garlic-soupcon of affectionate contempt.

Shakespeare's life came near to being a tragedy: he saw the depths: he descendedinto hell: but The Tempest is there to tell us that, having escaped final tragedy by a hair's-breadth, he reached serene undreamable spiritual success. The man who wrote the playshad done that by 1608: Bacon was a peculator until 1621. Bacon's life, proceeding fromachievement to achievement statelily, came near topping the last heights of mundanetriumph; and missing them by a narrow margin, toppled into infamy and ruin. - But to returnto The Tempest :

Prospero's power in the island comes of his control of non-human beings; and

chiefly of the monster Caliban and the delicate spirit Ariel, both of whom were there whenhe came. Indeed, Caliban must be called half-human: though his maker is at pains to tellus he is soul-less - incapable of soul - without that inward divinity which makes man man.He is the animal-elemental in man. Prospero holds him strictly enslaved; keeps him busyas hewer of wood and drawer of water: and therein Shakespeare the Life-Teacher tells uswhat to do with those baser parts of our minds which make all our trouble for us. Put them,he says, to work; keep them concentrated on the common duty of the moment and theday; thus they are in your power, under your control; otherwise they will be attemptingwrong against the divinity within you - as Caliban did against Miranda at first, and does inthe play against Prospero.

Yet there is this curious thing to note about Caliban: he speaks no line of prose, as

all Shakespeare's clowns do. Every word he says is in verse; and much of it uncommonlybeautiful. The reason is, that he is a part of the great Nature: the inchoate, rudimentary,undeveloped part. The human mind does not work in him at all; and it is a truth that hasmany times been repeated, that poetry and rhythm are the language of Nature, as proseis of that only part of Nature which is so to say exiled from Nature and unnatural,- our human brain-consciousness.

Caliban held down as a slave is useful enough; he becomes dangerous when youlend him a share of your human mind. He falls in, in the play, with a couple of drunkensailors: vulgarians, beside whom he is a kind of gentleman in the comparison;nevertheless they are human beings, - and instantly Caliban becomes dangerous; he plotswith them against the life of his master. In vain of course; because Prospero is the lord-

enchanter of the island, and nothing can succeed against his magical powers. But evenProspero, in the midst of his magic, is perturbed by this revolt, and must take quick action.Through Ariel of course, his other chief servant; and here again profundities of

wisdom are concealed. Ariel is one of the Life-Master's most wonderful creations: anintelligence unhuman and immaculate; that craves human love as a child craves the loveof its parents, and yet whose own place, always longed for, is the sunlit solitudes of Nature.He is the principle agent of Prospero's power; there is nothing but beauty, delight, and



wonder in him; and yet he must be controlled as firmly as Caliban must; to him, as toCaliban, Prospero seems wholly a tyrant though to him a tyrant beloved.

Ariel's songs are little miracles of poetry. There is no more human cerebration inthem than in the drowsing of a dumbledar on a summer's noon from blossom to blossom,or the whisper of a distant lazy sea. They do not make any sense at all, as we say; and

yet they have perhaps as much as any lyric in the language that supreme power of poetrywhich is its ability to lead our human consciousness out of itself and into the greatconsciousness of Nature. This power of suggesting infinity is the highest magic there is inart.

By Ariel, then, Shakespeare means the imagination that sees out beyond self intothe vast magical universe of non-self: this is the instrument of the universal Prospero'striumph - the means whereby the hidden divinity in man may come into its own and reign.Sympathy is one word of it, or the first letter of it; it is the power to step into other people'sshoes, as we say; and not into people's merely, but things' as well.

Ariel may be contrasted with the jolly merry mischievous Puck of A Midsummer Night's Dream; whose business there is chiefly to try confusions with the clowns. So here

is Ariel's with Caliban and the drunken sailors; but all to a much more serious end, so thatwe feel that the writing of the earlier play was mere practice for the writing of this. Invisible Ariel is to upset their conspiracies; and to do so, he needs but negate their ill suggestionswith the sharp denial Thou liest! And this too is practical wisdom, which who hath ears tohear, let him hear! The truth and beauty of Nature, says Shakespeare, are a magicalpower which can give the lie decisively to every prompting of the beast in man.

Speaking, of the Midsummer Night's Dream, - that of course is the play with whichThe Tempest most instantly challenges comparison. These are the two in which the Life-teacher leads us into the realms of Faerie. Hazlitt says that the former is the greater poem,the latter the greater play; but this judgment, especially the second dictum of it, is verydisputable. Midsummer Night is the fresh adventure of the Boy-Poet into Fairyland (near

Athens-on-Avon in Warwickshire); he riots there irresponsible in company with a pack of hempen homespuns whose antics keep his sides gloriously shaking; - but The Tempest isthe stately voyage of mellow perfection and maturity, through magical seas beyond thesunset. For irresponsibility you have a grave and tender wisdom; and the fairies, that werebefore but petulant poetic children, are now right fairies: - lovely apparitionsincomprehensible, - beneficent and exquisite spirits of the vasty deep.

There are perhaps, as Hazlitt argues, fewer quotable passages of exiguous beauty;but that is because the whole play is such a passage. In none other is there so glowing,

jewel-like, rainbow-like, an effect of color. In Midsummer Night the hues are the flickeringgreens and browns of an English woodside, blue-flecked above with sky-glimpses, or thestaidness of an English dusk, faintly rippled through with elf-lights. Or in Romeo and Juliet

we have the burning color of human passion; so too in Antony and Cleopatra, but therewith pomp and magnificent opulence, imperial Rome and Egypt, added.But through The Tempest one senses an effect of subtropical sunsets: the

splendors and sapphires of a Mediterranean or Caribbean evening, the cloud-cappedtowers and gorgeous palaces of the Islands of the Blessed. Like the dying dolphin of mythology, Shakespeare would go out in a glory of color; but there is no riot or wilddisordered excess in it: he is all serene Prospero here: master-enchanter - lord of everyhue and shadow. It is as if the grandest sweetest music of Nature herself were the



accompaniment played to his exit, because he had achieved perfection and majesticharmony at the last, and went out her peer.

(Theosophical Path, vol. 30, no. 5, May, 1926)

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A Midsummer Night's Dream- Kenneth Morris

(Professor of History and Literature at Theosophical University, Point Loma,California)

The announcement that the Raja-Yoga Players of Point Loma are to give AMidsummer Night's Dream again on May 11th and 12th gives us an excuse for looking alittle into this earliest of Shakespeare's masterpieces; the one in which he discovered his

poethood and, perhaps more than in any other, was content to exercise the purely poeticfunction of 'making beauty' and setting fairy lanterns in the twilight world of fancy.It is one of the earliest of his plays; written, probably, in 1590 or '91, when he was

about twenty-six years old; he wrote into it memories of his childhood, and from it we getperhaps the only glimpse we do get of what he saw and did as a child.

For, in 1575, Queen Elizabeth came to Kenilworth, Leicester's seat in Warwickshire,and Leicester, aspiring to her hand, entertained her royally and made love to her upon thefinest scale that the gorgeous imagination of the England of that time could devise.

We get an account of the festivities in a letter written by Master Laneham (a madwag, so please you!), who was a mercer of London in attendance in some kind of domesticcapacity upon one of the noble lords present; he wrote the letter to a fellow-tradesman in

London, his countryman born and good friend withal; and excellent reading it is.He tells how, on the evening of 14th of August, a fairy masque was given for thequeen's entertainment in the park; ladies riding upon dolphins over the waters of the lake,sang greetings to her highness, all of which eleven-year-old William Shakespeare had, itis supposed, been brought over from Stratford-on-Avon to see, since his family was wellconnected by marriage, and such a privilege was extended to the neighboring gentry. Thesight lived in his memory, it seems, and now, fifteen years or so afterwards, he turned backto it for some fairy coloring for his fairy play, and wrote:

"Since once I sat upon a promontory And heard a mermaid, on a dolphin's back,

Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath,That the rude sea grew civil at her song; And certain stars shot madly from their spheresTo hear the seamaid's musick."

And then he minds him of Leicester's bootless wooing of the queen, the occasionfor all those pageantries, and writes:



"That very time I saw (but thou couldst not)Flying between the cold moon and the earth.Cupid all armed: a certain aim he took

At a fair vestal, throned by the west; And loosed his love-shaft smartly from his bow,

As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts;But I might see young Cupid's fiery shaftQuenched in the chaste beams of the watery moon:

And the imperial votaress passed onIn maiden meditation fancy-free."

- Which is precisely what Elizabeth did.Here Shakespeare takes you out of the hard and solid world of things and facts, and

gives you freedom of a world beyond the borders of our common consciousness. Is it aworld that exists, or has he indeed given

"to airy nothing A local habitation and a name?"

- Oh, most certainly it exists! Popular belief - popular intuition, let us say - hasalways divined in Nature a life, a consciousness half guessable; and so populatedpinewoods and gardens and mountainsides with aerial-flamey beings that dance anddance, and whose life is all to wild music. Let the robust of imagination think of Nature aslifeless if they can; poets and peasants and whoever could share her life at all, have, itwould appear, caught glimpses from time to time.

But here the great poet of humanity invades the fairy world under the standards of the Human Spirit; annexes it, and makes it a province of the Empire of Man. See how he

has made his fairies:Oberon is from the French romance,Huon of Bordeaux ; he has a fine internationalgenealogy. He was the son of the Welsh Morgan le Fay, King Arthur's sister, and of Roman Julius Caesar; but then before that he was Auberon, Alberon, Alberich - which isa Teutonic name probably of remote Celtic origin, meaning 'king of the elves.' He figuresas the guardian of the Rhine-gold in Wagner's Ring of the Nibelungs.

Titania, it would seem is taken from Ovid; Puck is the Welsh Pwca, the Irish Puca;a very familiar spirit in those countries. Perhaps Shakespeare found this fairy in its nativehaunts; for there is a valley in Wales where local tradition says he wrote the play; and thisis not impossible; he certainly had Welsh blood and connexions. Still, Puck survived inplaces in England from Celtic days; witness the wood called Puckpits in the New Forest.

But what Shakespeare did was what his predecessors (such as Spenser), who hadalso drawn upon fairyland, did not do. He gives us a picture of fairy life, which is humanlife dehumanized. We have that life in us; only all that is nobly human or basely animal inus obscures and militates against its manifestation.

There is no conscience in the court of King Oberon; nor is there any real baseness.What will Titania do for her lover? Feed him with 'apricocks' and dewberries, or from thehoney-bags of bees. The things they treasure are blossoms and forest-music; their enemies and abhorrences, spiders, bats, and the like. They are gay, sensuous, beauty-



loving, mischievous; they play no part in the eternal warfare of good and evil; but a humanbeing, if he is rightly human, must take one side or the other.

And yet, truth to say, there are many of us that do not: who are irresponsible, andlive for the enjoyment of the moment; whose actions and motives cannot be accounted for;who think with their senses alone, and whose passing whims and feelings serve them for

a human soul. There are many who are like this, and with many more, it enters as acomponent element in their being; so it is a phase of that conglomeration of many kindsof consciousness which we call human.

Then he contrasts with these whose nature is to be aesthetic and who need beautyas we need air to breathe, sweet bully Bottom and his companions, who advance from their native rawness with the conscious intent to produce a play - to make a work, you may say,of art "for the duke and duchess on his wedding-day at night."

The fairies' real life is a little frivolous tragi-comedy of exquisite sensuous beauty;these mechanics' art is a piece of clownish, foolish, ridiculously unreal realism, withoutbeauty or imagination, or higher raison d'etre than the chance of sixpence a day for life.

And among them we find a really great man - great in that curious rude fashion of

greatness which belongs to him - the serious Bottom, puffed up, as much as ever Caesar was, with the vaunting vastness of his dreams. "Let me play the lion, too!" says he; or apart "in Ercles' vein, a tyrant's vein"; or one "to tear a cat in." He is fully aware of hishuman dignity, is Nick Bottom, and they must treat him with due respect, or let them lookto it.

And then, between these two poles, there are the lovers. They are not greatlycharacterized; and for a very good reason. In this business of love you are verging uponthe fairy world (this is the teaching of the play); you do not act humanly, upon motions of reason and the human soul; but upon fancy, the witchcraft of eyes; there is somethingirresponsible in it; you are the victim of external and fairy forces: Cupid's arrow, or themischief and magic of Puck. This so far as these four lovers, Lysander and Hermia,

Demetrius and Helena, are concerned. All for their feelings' sake, Helena will betray the pair of them to Demetrius;Demetrius, flitting from flower to flower, from Helena to Hermia, is the fairiest and leastresponsible of them all. So of course, they drift upon currents rising within themselves intothe fairy-world, the Midsummer Night's Dream; and are chastened by tricks played uponthem, and spend a night of fears amidst bog and briar and are at last brought into their sane senses.

As for the clowns, they drift in there upon their quest of art: they are going to dogreat things; perform a tragedy, nothing less; step out of their own sphere of hempenhomespuns, and figure as artists and tragedians. Very well; into fairyland they must go,and their chief must have an ass's head clapped on him.

But you will note that that fairy-world has a world of significance of its own: it is theplace where poetic justice is done, and where each one comes to his own. You fall into itwhen, upon a whim of your own and personal feelings, you set out to break the laws - of

Athens, or say of life; you fall into it when, for such a motive as a probable sixpence a day,you play the vulgarian parvenu and would-be-artist, or strike into spheres higher than thoseto which you belong.



And once fallen into it, you do not come out without getting some taste of your deserts; and, perhaps, through a measure of suffering, the disentanglement of your problems, the adjustment of your being to its place in the scheme of things.

We shall not begin to understand Shakespeare, until we see him throwing floods of light on the hidden places of the inner nature of man. "Our true intent is all for your delight"

is often quoted as if it were his own motto and motive; but remember the words are not somuch Shakespeare's as Peter Quince's who, with them, introduces the tedious-brief clown-comedy of Pyramus and Thisbe to Duke Theseus and his court. Had Shakespeare spokenfor himself, he might have put it: "Our true intent is that you shall know yourselves" - lookin a mirror held up to (your own) nature, and see that which escapes you in common life.

The play, as given by the Raja-Yoga Players, is excellent throughout, and the fairyparts are especially fascinating: the dancing, the singing, the forest-beauty and magic -these things carry you away into another world, the enchanted world of Faerie to the verylife. Cobweb and Peaseblossom, Moth and Mustardseed, capture all hearts. The clowns'parts, too, are well done - have been, in past presentations; "excellent good fooling i' faith,"well calculated to keep you not much this side of hysterics.

(Theosophical Path, vol. 34, no. 6, June, 1928)

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Theosophy in Shakespeare- Michael Sawtell

(From a Radio Broadcast)

A good knowledge of Shakespeare is indispensable to any English speaking personaspiring to achieve culture. You might think that during the last 300 years or so the playsof Shakespeare have been so often acted and commented upon that there is now very littleleft to say about the works of Shakespeare. Do not be deceived, for until you are able tosee the Theosophical and occult teachings in the plays, your true education inShakespeare has not yet really begun.

The word Theosophy really means "Divine Wisdom", or, as I sometimes call it, "The Ageless Wisdom". Now, if Theosophy is "Divine Wisdom", it must be everything in life. Itmust be the background to all things in life from the every day facts of life, to the greatScriptures of the world. I also wish to explain that whoever wrote the plays of Shakespearewas a Master Occultist, one who performed the great work of setting the standard of the

English language, and of weaving into the plays all the occult facts of life, and many of theteachings of modern Theosophy - such as the twin doctrines of Karma and Reincarnation.True, the author did not use these names, but, if you read the works of Shakespearediscerningly, you will find stated the law of Karma and Reincarnation.

Let us, first of all, examine the popular play Henry the 5th. Now, what are theoutstanding features of the play? Are they not that the king, Henry, is a wise, patriotic andreligious soldier king? These are just the qualities that a wise ruler ought to have. It is avery ancient teaching, that the King ought to be one of the wisest men in the nation. In fact,



the Theosophical teaching behind the very ancient science of politics, is that the firstessential to a high state of civilization is a philosopher king.

In the very first Act, Scene 1, of Henry the 5th, in the conversation between the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of Ely, the Master Occultist who wrote the playsof Shakespeare lost no time in describing Henry as a philosopher king. The Archbishop

of Canterbury says, in speaking of the young king:

"Hear him but reason in Divinity And, all admiring with an inward wish,You would desire the king were made a prelate."

And so on, then later in the same speech, again he says of the king, Henry:

"The Gordian knot of it he will unlooseFamiliar as his garter, and that when he speaksThe air, a chartered libertine is still,

And the mute wonder lurketh in men's ears,To steal his sweet and honeyed sentences."

What a description of a philosopher king!Now, turn to Scene 2, still in Act 1, and you will find more occult teaching about what

we now call the three estates of the Realm. In this speech the Archbishop of Canterburylikens a properly organized state to the various functions performed by a hive of bees. Hesays:

"Therefore doth heaven divideThe state of man in divers functions,

Setting endeavor in continual motion,To which is tied, as an aim or buttObedience, first so work the honey bees.Creatures that by a rule in Nature, teachThe act of order to a peopled kingdom."

And so the Archbishop speaks on, drawing an analogy between the work and function of a hive of bees, and the different functions that should be performed by the various classesin a highly organized human civilization. All this Platonic teaching is well understood bystudents of the Ageless Wisdom. And until our modern, so called, democracy learns thatonly philosophers are fitted to rule, we will continue to have unintelligent discontent and

confusion.When I heard and saw the actor, Lawrence Olivier, act and speak those words of Henry, before Harfleur, "Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more", I thoughthow different was that swelling scene, to the one that we used to act and declaim in our school days. Also, what great opportunities the modern school children have of beingtaught to understand the plays of Shakespeare. All through the play Henry is always tellinghis soldiers: "We are in God's hand, brother." In Act 4, Scene 1, Henry tells Bedford andGloucester:



"God Almighty,There is some soul of goodness in things evil,Would men observingly distil it out."

Only a philosopher king could say that. Later, in the same Act, Henry visits his camp on

the night before Agincourt, and speaks, unknown as the King, to some of his soldiers. Inthis scene, Henry soliloquizes upon the fate, the duties, and the Divinity of a King, whichwas a favorite theme with the occult author of Shakespeare. After the soldiers are gone,Henry says:

"Upon the King, let our lives, our souls,Our debts, our careful wives, our children,

And our sins lay on the king. He must bear all.O hard condition, twin-born with greatness,Subjects to the breath of every fool,Whose sense no more can feel but his own wringing,

What infinite heart's ease must kings neglect,That private men enjoy."

All this - "Uneasy lies the head, that wears a crown," is pure Theosophy, for the teachingof the Ageless Wisdom is that with the power of a philosopher king must also go the greattask of being responsible for the welfare of all his subjects. Henry ends this dawnmeditation of his with a prayer, "O God of battle, steel my soldiers' hearts." Prayer isanother favorite practice of the author of Shakespeare. You will remember that almost thevery first Act of Hamlet , after he had seen the Ghost, was to pray. Notice also, that after the victory of Agincourt, that Henry, the wise, brave and patriotic king, is most careful to saythat "God fought for us."

Tomorrow is Victory Day, and those who have to speak, what better can they dothan remember Henry's speech on Saint Crispin's Day, and remember "Harry, the King,Bedford, the Exeter," and all those who fought for England on Saint Crispin's Day. Thatspeech is one of the most gloriously patriotic in the English language.

I again suggest that in this play, Henry 5th, the occult author used the play to holdup to the people the true picture and type of what a King should be. He could only do thatby being a Master of the Ageless Wisdom. This same golden thread of Theosophy runsthrough all the plays and sonnets of Shakespeare. In Sonnet 59, you will read of the lawof Reincarnation. In Macbeth Shakespeare refers to the law of Karma when he makesMacbeth say:

"Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return to plague the inventor, this even-handed justice commends the ingredients of our poisoned chalice to our own lips."

There is no better phrase than calling the law of Karma "this even-handed justice,"for that is what the law really means. Shakespeare also knew well that the world is ruledby law, when he made Hamlet say:

"There is a divinity which shapes our ends, rough hew them how we will."



In the play Hamlet Shakespeare makes the greatest statement any man can makeabout life. He affirms the true spiritual nature of man. Shakespeare revealed his realunderstanding when he makes Hamlet say:

"What a piece of work is man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculty, in form

and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension howlike a god, the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals."

This is the occult author proclaiming that the real man is a Soul. This quotation isfit to be included in the Scriptures of the world.

For those who wish to study more about the Theosophy in the works of Shakespeare, I courteously recommend you to read: "The Occultism in Shakespeare," byF.L. Rogers.

There is not one of the 37 plays of Shakespeare that does not contain some aspectof Theosophy. The play the Tempest is perhaps the most occult of all the plays. In it I aminclined to think that the author would like us to think of him as Prospero, the Master

Occultist. In The Tempest Prospero-Shakespeare is careful to refer to the "art", and beingrapt in secret studies, and who also has the power to command the invisible forces of Nature.

(From Canadian Theosophist , vol. 27, no. 8, Oct. 16, 1946, reprinted fromTheosophy in Australia, Sept.-November, 1946)

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Essays on Shakespeare

- A Theosophical Interpretation

[The following eight essays were first published in The Theosophical Movement ,Bombay, in Vol. 13, 1942-43, and reprinted by the London, Ontario, Canada United Lodgeof Theosophists.]

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Contents

I. Othello - The Tale of a Hypnotized Soldier

II. Macbeth - A Study in WitchcraftIII. King Lear - A Study in KarmaIV. The Theosophy of Shakespeare's Tempest V. Hamlet - A Story of Psychic UnbalanceVI. Julius Caesar - A Study in Violence and BloodshedVII. Shakespeare and the AdeptsVIII. Shakespeare's Views on Death



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"We Theosophists, therefore, distinguish between this bundle of 'experiences,' whichwe call the false (because so finite and evanescent) personality , and that element in man

to which the feeling of 'I am I' is due. It is this 'I am I' which we call the true individuality;and we say that this "Ego" or individuality plays, like an actor, many parts on the stage of life. Let us call every new life on earth of the same Ego a night on the stage of a theatre.One night the actor, or 'Ego,' appears as 'Macbeth,' the next as 'Shylock,' the third as'Romeo,' the fourth as 'Hamlet' or 'King Lear,' and so on, until he has run through the wholecycle of incarnations. The Ego begins his life-pilgrimage as a sprite, an 'Ariel,' or a 'Puck';he plays the part of a super , is a soldier, a servant, one of the chorus; rises then to'speaking parts,' plays leading roles, interspersed with insignificant parts, till he finallyretires from the stage as 'Prospero,' the magician."

- From The Key to Theosophy , p. 34

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Othello - The Tale of a Hypnotized Soldier

"The Adepts assert that Shakespeare was unconsciously to himself, inspired by oneof their own number." - Echoes from the Orient , Wm. Q. Judge.

Adepts cherishing always the purpose to bring enlightenment and reformationamong men, and having always to deal with the mind of the race as they find it, arenaturally interested in all men and movements, including the literary and the theatrical, that

can aid their purpose.Human evils have certain great taproots from which spring many branches. If thenone tries to view European life at and shortly before Shakespeare's time with even a trifleof the insight that an Adept must direct to it, he finds prominent several grievous vices,some standing out with horrid clearness. Among them were overweening ambition,egregious self-pride, much ignorance and fear concerning the spiritual, undueintellectualism with lack of ethical balance and clear judgment, weakness of will or passivity, resulting in openness to many forms of degenerating influences, and mostexcessive, perhaps, sex corruptions.

It was (and still is, of course) impossible to give in fiction and drama broad accuratepictures of life and omit these evils. What the Adepts must therefore have wished to do

was, first, to lessen the wickedness in actual life; and second, through the inspiring of Shakespeare, to augment the moral goodness by such theatrical presentments as wouldstimulate interest in the triumph of the virtues rather than in a display of the vices. Hereinaccordingly lies one of the differences between Shakespeare's plays and most of those of his contemporaries. And even though in his own life he yielded in a measure, there musthave been, native to Shakespeare's deeper character, a degree of superiority to all thesevicious habits. If his nature had leaned down into the depravities instead of struggling to



rise out of them, he never could have been a focus for Adept Influence. Nor could he haveused it.

Chivalry was a blend of idealization of war and idealization of sex, intended to lessenthe evils of both. Wherever people sincerely followed in each direction the chivalrictraining, much benefit was experienced. But when in sex life they became Lancelots and

Guineveres, their example was all the worse for the idealized cover. Beneath that fair outside, there came to be a social rottenness that "smelled to heaven." So prevalent wassensuality, both open and concealed, that no woman was trusted without secretreservations. The moment calumny smirched her, she was almost automaticallycondemned as false. Only the most startling proofs of innocence could reinstate her.

Thus there resulted from chivalry a very double sided attitude toward women, - onethat exalted them as nearly impossible paragons of virtue and beauty, and the other thrusting them like filthy beasts beneath the feet of those deceived. With warriors and inthose war-filled ages, the relations of sex and marriage often gained a peculiar intensity.The necessary absence from home of the husband and father, with his consequent fearsand quick jealousies, the physical inability of women to be soldiers and the corresponding

self-importance of men, the brutal treatment of women prisoners, the degenerating effectsof degraded women camp-followers, all these helped to create and intensify that doubleattitude toward women of idealization and of their debasement. Social customs, too, of thechivalric period and later were extremely ambiguous - as they are today - often permittingpersonal and bodily familiarities that could and did both suggest evil and yet excusinglyshield it.

Besides the chivalric traditions, and fusing with them, were the new and equallypowerful thought-currents of the Renaissance. The revival of Greek and Roman learning,customs and ideals brought to Europe a great fresh vitality, an eagerness to break awayfrom mediaeval fetters and a determination to develop to the fullest the individual humanself. The period was a magnificent outburst of an intellectual energy that had been lying

dormant, of a physical energy that was seeking other expressions than war, and of anemotional energy that had been twisted away from its natural outlets both in domestic lifeand in perception of the truly spiritual. Yet though the Renaissance forces were liberatingand enlightening, they were also confusing and disorganizing. Determined not to berestricted, the mind of the time became guilty of great excesses. Although there wasrefinement and growth, in art and literature, these no more than chivalry could put effectivechecks on brutal lusts and savage passions. This was especially true in Italy, which set thefashions and moral standards, and produced some particular characters which historianshave for convenience called "Italianated." The craving for unrestricted self-developmentled Italianated men and women to commit the worst crimes without conscience, or even to

justify them by a kind of conscience, for self. The crime was little if the individual end was

reached. Again, since education and social freedom existed alike for men and for women,and since both were breaking away from accepted standards, including the ethical, avariation of the type was produced which brought about an increase, even over precedingperiods, of open sex immorality and disbelief in loyal marriage.

Hence, as true domestic and sex life are the foundation and nursery of all other forms of morality, it is not strange that Shakespeare, following the lines of general thought,and also following unaware the guidance of the Higher Influence on him, made several of his plays hinge on that double attitude toward women of unwise exaltation and equally



erring debasement. By his day the attitude had engendered in men a disbelief in womenthat was inherent, almost instinctive. In A Winter's Tale, for example, the husband,Leontes, turns violently against his wife for no reason except those ambiguous socialcustoms. With Leontes, that disbelief in women becomes an insanity, nothing less. Hisplan to have the supposedly guilty friend poisoned is frustrated, but he sends away his wife

and her just-born daughter. Swift reaction comes upon him by the pining unto death of thelittle son through grief for his mother. Only gradually and because of the adverse judgmentof an oracle, does the husband come to see correctly his terrible and baseless folly.

In three other important plays the man is fooled by skillful lies intensifying very slightvisible evidence (supposed) of the woman's infidelity. The motive of the deceiver is selfishgain. The psychological reason for the quick credulity is that same deeply inherent distrustof women's loyalty. Shakespeare, by showing the injustice and folly of the man's distrust,by revealing the woman's faithfulness and prompt forgiveness, must have done much tobreak down that common disbelief.

Of those three plays one is a comedy, as its title indicates, Much Ado About Nothing,the poet evidently wishing to show the absurdity of what just escaped being tragic. In each

of the three appear the same elements, - the Italianated intriguer working for self-interest,his foolishly credulous victim dominated by palpable lies, and the innocent, loyal,persecuted, yet forgiving woman. All the chief persons have been bred in the chivalroussocial thought and exhibit its virtues as well as its grossness.

In Cymbeline the young Briton, Posthumus, having received all possible exhibitionsof loving loyalty from his self-sacrificing wife, makes a wager - with an Italian - that her faithwill stand against any temptations. Why does Posthumus not see that his shrewddesigning opponent, delighting in his self-superiority as an Italian compared with a Briton,will do anything at all to win his wager? The answer is that Posthumus too, unknown tohimself, is infected with the poisonous distrust of a wife's faithfulness. It is worth noting thatof the four plays on this theme, three end in peace and the establishment of proper family

life, the possibility being thus emphasized. As for Othello, the disbelief in women and the situations arising out of it here reachtheir climax of heavy tragedy. There is added, however, in this drama another plot elementwhich greatly intensifies the evil conditions, - that is, the use of hypnotic power.

Hypnotism is the compulsive influence exerted and the effects produced by a manconsciously entering someone else's mental life and transforming it. When not directed tohealing physical disease (and at times even when it is), hypnotism is usually a misuse of the tremendous and mysterious power in Nature called will, - a misuse because the effortis intended to change or destroy another's individual will and make it follow the hypnotizer'sselfish purposes. The one hypnotized may or may not remain wakingly conscious, or maynot even be aware of the extraneous influence. Hypnotism for selfish ends was certainly

one of the crimes of that earlier day (as of this), which Adepts most strongly rebuked, for it is Black Magic. There is, however, an important element in hypnotism that often is notacknowledged, - that is, the victim's own responsibility. For if he remains able to choose his thoughts and acts, and if then his behaviour under thehypnotic influence is quickly and markedly different from what it has been before and fromwhat is expected, there must be reasons in the mind of the victim himself why thattransforming influence can operate. In other words, since man is a chooser and a self-



governor, no one's mind can be transformed by another unless he, even though in partunknowingly, permits it to be.

Hence when one sees Othello's mind change from loving gentleness to blind fury,the questions arise why, psychologically, can this happen? What forms are taken by thatinherent distrust of women? Further, what are the inmost reasons and the innermost

character of the hypnotizer - why is Iago at work on Othello and with such mercilessmethods?Perhaps some light may be thrown on these questions by regarding this play as a

complex picture of militarists, one of them being the hypnotizer. Othello, Cassio, and Iagoare soldiers of fortune who have pledged their services for a time to the City of Venice. Thehypnotism exerted on Othello and Cassio concerned their private lives, but throughcharacteristics common to soldiers, they were easily open to the particular kinds of influence forced upon them by Iago. Cassio was a soldier rather because of the customsof the times. Othello could hardly have been anything else than a warrior.

The mass belief in the human consciousness of the need of physical war, of thebreaking of one will, individual or national, in order that another individual or national will

may rule, the belief in the need and inevitableness of destruction and death, in order thatthere may be an expansion or a defence of national life, - these beliefs are primitive,prehistoric, racial. What, then, may be expected in the mentality of professional soldiersbut the impulses that create war and the effects of war?

It is important to see that the war impulses - the tendency to iron-handed breakingof other wills, and the belief in the necessity of destruction, murder and death - do not liftaway from a warrior's mind, as mists do from hills, when he leaves war-conditions to passinto private life. They remain with him, somewhat dulling his reason while putting sharpedges on his emotions. Discipline at one end, slaughter at the other, - these nearly makethe swing of his mental pendulum. When, therefore, he is angered in the family life, hisnatural first impulse is to fight. For he expects implicit obedience, and if he does not get

it, he often enforces it with severity. All these attitudes and effects may be called part of the race-hypnotism by war. Closely intermingled with these are those attitudes alreadymentioned toward sex and marriage, which too make a kind of race-hypnotism - that of sex.

What is called sex exists only on the lower planes of being. There is no sex in theUpper Triad. Yet it does have its ultimate origin in the very highest planes of manifestation,where appear the active creative principle, Spirit, the Moulder, the Ideation; and with this,its necessary complement, the receptive coordinative principle, the Moulded, the ideatedForm and Forms. As the Manasic Beings descended into the lower planes of their evolution, carrying along these essential and opposite principles, and as they became moreforgetful of the higher duties and purposes of their long manvantaric experience, and morecommingled with the ignorant selfism of animal mind and matter, their active Male principle

became clouded with selfish domineering animal lusts; while the recipient Female principlein them grew less able to resist such domination.Therein is the root of man's claim of woman as his property , - a conjoined root of

self-aggrandizement on the one side, and on the other of self-passivity becomingweakness. Yet according to the law of Spirit it is impossible for one man to be another man's property. And this individual self-ownership is a thing that sex does not touch -cannot give and cannot take away.



But recorded history belies this fact. In earlier history, as the brute type of manseized upon a wife-property with brutal hands, and the higher type of man received her bound with stringent human laws, so either type defended her with a sword, often for nobetter reason than that she was his. All individuality was claimed by the man, the womanhaving none recognized as her own. And if she stained that thing called his honour, - which

was always partly his privilege of escaping ridicule from his fellows, - he felt justified inholding her to account with her very life because she - his property! - had dared to breakhis armour of self-esteem. In more recent centuries, if he did not murder her also, hepoured his deadly vengeance on the one implicated with her. Few indeed among men andwomen even today have entirely moved above this traditional deeply entrenched falsity.Divorce and separation do not solve the problem. They only bring postponement.

For reasons mentioned the thought of wife as property is very strong in the soldier type of man. In Othello it is intense. His modest doubt at first of his ability to win such awoman as Desdemona leads him, after he has won her, to put her on a pedestal whichunconsciously is based and supported by all his own secret, deep, turbulent self-valuations.She is his - she is the apotheosis of HIMSELF. Most gentle toward her he is, full of an

adoring wonder, as long as she remains all compliance; so that to Desdemona's earlyobservation the broad river of his nature seems placid enough. Iago, - having seen him inthe passions of war, knows or suspects all the other kinds of violence.

Iago's nature has been somewhat forecast by the preceding remarks on theRenaissance. If Iago is not seen against the background of his particular time and country,he can hardly be understood, for he is one of the characteristic Italianated men of thatperiod. Students of Italian biography can probably match Iago point by point with menhistorically authenticated. The steely intellectualism of the time, the excessive egregiousvices in self-seeking, produced such men; determined to advance themselves over anyobstacles, snatching away another's success and happiness without a qualm, tricking aman out of money, position or good name for the sport of doing it, and then stepping into

his vacant place as justly won by shrewdness, suavity and lack of sentimentalism, - selfismtowering to the very heavens! Such is Iago. Such were Italianated persons.Iago from the beginning of the play is full of hate, skilfully covered; - revengeful hate

toward Othello for unfairly (as he thinks) raising Cassio to a rank over his, and envious hatetoward Cassio for having been so raised. To undo them both is his fierce purpose. To him,as the typical Self-Seeker, the injury is the worst possible; his revenge must match thatinexpressible unforgettable wrong.

Cassio, like many soldiers, is a victim of drink, and despite his better judgment, heis open to temptation. Another flaw in him is the ordinary soldier-type of sex-looseness.To the highly placed woman he is respectful; to the camp-follower, a tyrannical master.

Also, when he is displaced for causing disorder through his drunkenness (all of which Iago

has skilfully planned), he depends on chance and on intercession by another for hisrestoration to position. Throughout he is flabby instead of manful.Of these weaknesses Iago makes instruments - they are the traits and habits on

which he centers his evil deceptive influence. Thus, Cassio's function in the drama is thatof a convenience, a middleman, at once a screen, a repository and an unconscious motor of the forces working between the two great protagonists, Othello and Iago.

Desdemona has a somewhat similar function. The supposed love affair in whichthese two are involved is wholly created by Iago as an aid to his revengeful purposes. Both



have fineness of nature and good or harmless intentions. But Desdemona foolishlybecomes Cassio's intercessor; and since neither is quite honest in the tangled net thrownaround them each unwittingly draws it tighter.

Iago is quite without kindly feeling, but he can beautifully sham fine sentiments; aswhen in apparently virtuous indignation and loyalty to his superior, he kneels and pledges

himself to "wronged Othello's service." Or again when he comforts Desdemona after Othello has openly blamed her for infidelity. Throughout the play he misleads his wife, andin fact makes her also his tool. He uses chance in a truly masterly way, as when he learnsfrom Desdemona's playful reproach to Othello that Cassio had come a-wooing with him.This he carefully cements into his structure of lies. He has no hesitation about stabbing thefoolish youth whose wealth he had wasted, because he "ever thus makes his fool hispurse." He says:

For I mine own gained knowledge should profane,If I would time expend with such a snipeBut for my sport and profit.

This sentence expresses Iago's conscience, his deepest purpose in life, - everythingis for his own sport and profit. As for women, there is nothing to respect in any of them.Love is nothing but lust, and reputation an idle bubble. Religion, if he ever thought of thesubject, would be only a "thing of nothing." His mind is as limited and one-sided - thoughat the opposite pole in keenness - as an imbecile's mind is one-sided. He is what issometimes called a moral idiot.

To theosophists Iago may bring a peculiarly impressive lesson, for he is an exampleof the soulless being. Said H. P. Blavatsky: "We elbow soulless men and women at everystep in life." Such a being is one in whom the lower mind is so gorged with sin andselfishness that it can neither assimilate instruction from its Higher Manas nor produce any

thought or action worthy to be assimilated by that High Mind. In this way, the lower portionof Manas which could have been uplifted, is instead thoroughly animalized and lost bybeing separated from the Higher. True, the intellect, working in the lower fields andsharpened for its own self-interest, may play the part of Beneficence; but it is in fact bloodywith its immolated victims. This is the theosophical doctrine of soulless beings stillembodied in earth-life, and becoming the dwelling-places of the worst Black Magicians.Only this doctrine can really explain Iago.

Othello, in the last part of the play is a wounded giant, led into snare after snare,which Iago has purposefully created, yet always trusting that same "honest" Iago to guidehim through the tangles. The word "honest" is applied many times to Iago, who certainlyused his power of suggestion to create such faith in him. The word thus comes to be an

index of the degree of hypnosis effected. Othello has become incapable of using his own judgment and good sense - they are silent and inert under the magnetic fire of Iago'sthoughts and plans and eyes. Iago's eyes are vibrant with power; Othello's, though rollingwith fury, are inwardly dulled and impotent, without thought. Iago's mind is all alert andsharp. The mind of Othello is by contrast almost asleep, obeying and acting out withhypnotic passiveness the hints and dictations of Iago. H. P. Blavatsky remarked:



"The eye - the chief agent of the Will of the active operator [the subduing agent], buta slave and traitor when this Will is dormant ....produces the required unison between [thetwo personal wills] ....unless entirely free from any selfish motive, a suggestion by thought is an act of black magic still more pregnant with evil consequences than a spokensuggestion." *

-----------* Raja-Yoga or Occultism, pp. 129, 131.

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Pitiable indeed is it to watch Othello's downfall, to compare him now with what hewas as the high-minded chivalrous gentleman answering the Duke's questions and beingacquitted concerning the honourableness of his marriage; as the confiding gratefulhusband; as the one who gained even from Iago the praise of having "a constant, loving,noble nature."

Scrutiny into his past reveals him as trusted servitor of the city of Venice visiting

among the aristocracy, yet as a Moor, however cultivated, remaining socially an alien. Hehas held his own in the intrigues of the "tented field," but says he is "little blest with the softphrase of peace." As a warrior, he has been either superior, as officer in command; or inferior, as a lower officer. When in command, he could not be a comrade with anybody.Hence he has lacked social contact with his equals, and he is inexperienced in readingothers' minds except as inferior or superior. In his relations with Desdemona, if comraderywith her occurred to him, his instincts would be against it. He is her ardent lover, and sheis his. But when that love relationship is disturbed, neither of them knows how to steadyand save it. Thus social ignorance renders him helpless against the wiles of such a super-subtle intriguer as Iago.

Besides, military discipline sometimes leads a man to trust a brother officer who is

bound to him and has been loyal (as Iago has in the past) almost as much as he trusts hisown senses. Also, Othello is not a thinker, he analyzes nothing; but he feels so intenselythat his sufferings cause him to fall down in a faint. The cold poison that Iago pours intohis mind acts like ice-water in a heated boiler - while the quick manipulator is interestedonly in catching the energy from the explosion to turn the engines of his own advancement.In the very extremes of his torture Othello shows glimpses of his better self, - he wouldforget about the handkerchief; Iago carefully and three times recalls it to him. Heremembers Desdemona's gentleness, her fine needlework, her beautiful singing, "her highand plenteous wit and invention." Iago answers merely, "Nay, that's not your way. She'sthe worse for all this."

In the scene of the actual murder, when bending over his sleeping wife before

"putting out the light," - at that last critical moment he is almost shaken out of his purposeby an inner perception, received from his Higher Self, of her child-like innocence. But hefears her deceptiveness, and decides against the inner monition - so purblind is he throughthe hypnotic influence, so fixed in his conviction of the wife's fault, of Iago's being "honest."

After she has wakened, he is angered by her protests of innocence, by her tears of helpless pity for herself, for him, for Cassio, and the whole situation; and at last he fearshe may turn into murder the death he has been justifying to himself as a "sacrifice, lest shepollute other men." Yet even then an observer, facing in full the terrible moral



vanquishment, and because of it, feels the profoundest pity for this man so sinning and sosinned against.

In the powerful closing scene, where Justice balances her scales, where theintrigues are uncovered, where the hypnotizer and his victim are forced to see what theyhave been and done, then Othello is finally roused out of his trance of blindness, then he

is puzzled and indeed "wrought in the extreme" by the why of it all. Too great of soul tomake excuses, he tries by the human codes to even things by wounding if not killing hisopposer, and then to punish his own deeds by stabbing himself. Meanwhile, there inbonds, stands the arch deceiver, the soulless man, facing the devastation he has caused.For this he cares little; but he is also facing and in grim silence his own self-wrought inner destruction. He is recognizing those who have been "his companions by affinity of evil," -"companions, alas! no longer; Masters now, inhuman, pitiless; ....the fiends that have allalong incited him to laugh at the miseries of his fellow man, and trample under his feetevery kindly impulse, every tender sympathy, now make the measureless hells within hisown soul resound with their laughter at him, the poor deluded fool whose selfish pride andambition have stifled and at last obliterated his humanity." *

-----------* W. Q. Judge, "Considerations on Magic;" The Path, March 1887.

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Sex evils, war debasements, and hypnotism were the chief causes of tragedy inOthello's and Iago's lives. Perhaps a few observers of the play, when new and since, havebeen roused by it to a better perception of the generous true relations of men and women.

Also, it may be that the domestic peculiarities of warrior types indicated in it have quickenedresistance to the demoralizing effects of war. As for hypnotism, supposedly rather new, itis at present a popular subject of investigation and a sanctioned mode of practice. But far

too little attention is paid to the motives behind it. For by the learned it is handled with their prevalent cool disregard of any moral quality, and by the money seekers it iscommercialized as an added source of income.

But the mills of the gods grind on, even if slowly. Perhaps this old play, with its stillfresh pictures of life, may yet stir in a few thinkers more seriousness about the intentionalselfish manipulation of men's minds and show the need of preventing indiscriminate useof hypnotic methods. Some may even realize the untold possibilities in themselves of wrongly influencing and being influenced; and will perceive that such selfish power as Iagoexerted is now called "personality" and "applied psychology." Seeing this, they will rejectit as the destructive vicious thing it is, and will do their duty in making this knowledge moregeneral. All men are susceptible to influence. Life is sustained in part by "influences."

What men need is to distinguish, for themselves and others, between the life-giving and thedeath-bringing. If there is aroused some such understanding of the devastating havocdepicted in Othello, the Adepts' purpose has not failed.

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Macbeth - A Study in Witchcraft



"The Adepts assert that Shakespeare was unconsciously to himself, inspired by oneof their own number." - Echoes from the Orient , Wm. Q. Judge.

Macbeth is a drama of what is usually called the supernatural, - more strictly, the

abnormal or the psychic. This manifests in several phases, the most important being theWitches, their action and their influence. The others of special interest are Macbeth'svisions and Lady Macbeth's somnambulism, which are in fact closely related to the Witchelements.

The drama is also a tragedy of Envy - not merely the general envy by the less highof those above them, but the sharper, bitterer envy sometimes felt by members of a familytoward another member. The ties of family are so magnetic that when envy is allowed tobecome operative, hardly anything can be more deadly . With the Envy is interwovenVanity, the particular type of vanity associated with kingly position - with royalty as stronglyconcentrated personal power, self-display and grandeur.

It is likewise a drama of conscience, which works on two minds with subtle exact

analysis before and especially after the committing of murders. It is thus a most complexpresentation of these three, - the ravages of vain, envious, impassioned desires,intermingled with the psychic activities of abnormal beings and with the afflictions, inner andouter, brought by conscience and Karma. The Witches are the dynamic unifying force inthe action, and the field of their activity and harvest is found in those particular evils of excessive self-esteem and covetous longings.

In recent times the Witches have been explained as mere symbols of thetemptations that assail men from outside - as scarcely more than figures of speechdramatically embodied. But such explanations can come only from those who regard allmysterious beings as no more than superstitions. Witches were and are actualities. Their nature and strange powers have to be accounted for partly by realizing that the Witch-lore

carried through thousands of generations of men is not all silly fancy; and partly also bya little explanation derived from the ancient philosophy of the East.Witch-lore gives the facts, the beliefs, the customs and the results of the witch-cult

and of witch-craft. The cult, as it gradually formed, was a degraded jumble of old religionsand nature-theories, and the craft was the application of these. Both were abominableperversions and almost incredible befoulings of what was in origin true philosophy andscience. H. P. Blavatsky,* citing several authorities, shows that witch and wizard firstmeant a woman and a man of wisdom. (Isis Unveiled , I, 352-356) Usage limited thismeaning for a time to those who possessed knowledge unusual but not unlawful; and thenfurther limited it to those who gained their knowledge by some "express or implicit sociationor confederacy with some bad spirits." Thus witch came to be "the name of such as raise

magical spectres to deceive men's sight.... [the name] women and men who have a bad spirit in them." To explain what was meant by "bad spirit" she says:

"When, through vice, fearful crimes and animal passions, a disembodied spirit hasfallen to the eighth sphere - the allegorical Hades ....a strong aspiration to retrieve hiscalamities ....will draw him once more into the earth's atmosphere.... His instincts will makehim seek with avidity contact with living persons.... These spirits are the invisible but tootangible magnetic vampires.... Origen held all the daemons which possessed the



demoniacs mentioned in the New Testament to be [this kind of] human spirits.... They arethe blood-daemons of Porphyry, the larvae and lemures of the ancients.... [They are] thesubjective daemons so well known to medieval ecstatics, nuns, and monks ....and to certainsensitive clairvoyants; the fiendish instruments which sent so many unfortunate and weakvictims to the rack and stake."

Such weak men and women through their mediumistic passivity became the dupesand slaves of the daemons or "familiar spirits" who had taken control of them.

"Therefore, the words obsessed or possessed are synonyms of the word witch.....Jesus, Apollonius, and some of the apostles, had the power to cast out devils [or such"familiar spirits"], by purifying the atmosphere within and without the patient, so as to forcethe unwelcome tenant to flight."

But the pitiful possessed creatures were not the only kind of witches, nor were theythe only basis of the multifarious witch-lore of the middle ages with which Shakespeare was

acquainted. H. P. Blavatsky also called attention to the fact that

"....there has existed from the beginning of time, a mysterious science discussed bymany, but known only to a few. The use of it is a ....desire to cling more closely to our parent-spirit; abuse of it is sorcery, witchcraft, black magic."

The more skilful users of this perverted magic became the masters and cruel tyrantsof the poor possessed beings, turning them into tools and drudges for their wickedpurposes; while the very greatest of the black magicians were the Satans or chief gods of the witch associations. The word Satan leads at once to another special fact. To theremains forming the slime and froth of older decaying religions and worn-out sciences,* "in

the early centuries of the Christian era, [among] ... people fully convinced of the reality of occultism, and entering a cycle of degradation, which made them rife for abuse of occultpowers and sorceryof the worst description," black magic had added a demoralized vicious defilement of theprevalent Christian beliefs and ceremonies, which were themselves drawn from earlier antiquities.

-----------* The Secret Doctrine, I, XXXV.

-----------

Witches new the power of mantramic repetitions, the hypnotic effects of swinging dance-circles, and the control or charming of others' will by direct forcefulconcentrated gazing into their eyes. They knew how to produce and to heighten the terror inspired by their own ugliness, their strangeness, menacing secrecy and fateful powers,and they were able to practise telepathy. Further, besides their masters, who were blackmagicians, witches claimed to be definitely avowed and accepted servants of the chief evilspirits or devils, and in turn they were given lesser devils to aid them in their own works of evil. These lesser devils, often took the form, tradition says, of animals specially used by



wizardry, such as the cat, the dog, the goat, the toad. Women being by physical make-upmore passive, went more easily into hysteria and hallucination; also into the servileobedience desired by wizardry. Women too naturally acquired knowledge of healing.Hence probably there were always more witches than wizards, especially as knownpopularly in village and country life. Yet there were likewise handsome young women and

young men who were believed to practise witchcraft, probably because of their powers asmediums.Wizardry had its close fellowships, which held their meetings or "Sabbaths" on some

blasted bare mountain-top or in a desert spot where they performed the wildest, obscenestorgies of degraded superstitions. At these times rewards or punishments were given bythe Satans, plans were laid and instructions conveyed in both the lore and the practice.Divination, dream-interpreting, hypnotism, telepathy, juggling, ventriloquism and prophecywere included. Also the traditional use of herbs, narcotic and other, for both poisoning andresuscitation: likewise the qualities attributed to metals and stones, to personal relics, suchas hair, nails, fluids and to other parts of human and animal bodies. Clearly, all theforegoing is important in Shakespeare's basic material.

Wizardry was a conscious concentration upon the evil, a purposeful dedication of the would-be witch to a life of malignant thought and action. As a cult, wizardry was fed byrebellion against any religion except itself, and by hatred of those having worldlysupremacy. It was fostered too by personal greed, envy, resentment and a baneful joy inthe power to do evil for evil's own sake. As a practice or profession, wizardry included well-laid plans for attacks on definite persons, undermining their worldly position, ruining their health, or blasting their lives. It was remorseless diabolism. As great Adepts embody whitemagic and the good results of cooperative effort by the White lodge, so witches embodysimilar cooperation among the Black Brothers.*

------------

* The manifold characteristics of wizardry, including purposeful evil-doing, areillustrated in a number of carefully documented books. Among them are the following: - G. A. Kittredge, English Witchcraft and James the First , 1912; A. M. Summers, History of Witchcraft and Demonology , 1926; Geography of Witchcraft , 1927; M. A. Murray, TheWitch Cult in Western Europe, 1921; C. L'Estrange Ewen, Witch Hunting and Witch Trials,1929; Theda Kenron, Witches Still Live, 1929; W. B. Seabrook, Witchcraft: Its Power in theWorld Today , 1940.------------

At this point it is important to recall Wm. Q. Judge's remarks on the effect of envyand vanity:

"Envy is not a mere trifle that produces no physical result. It ....attracts to thestudent's vicinity thousands of malevolent beings that precipitate themselves upon him andwake up or bring on every evil passion.... Vanity brings up before the soul all sorts of erroneous or evil pictures, or both, and drags the judgment so away that once more anger or envy will enter, or such course be pursued that violent destruction by outside causes fallsupon the being." (U.L.T. Pamphlet No. 18, p. 12)



These passages indicate that the vanity and envy which Macbeth and Lady Macbethhave previously permitted in themselves are what first throw them open to degenerating influence, and direct to them the Witches' attention, thus wakening the wicked witch-purposes and skilful methods of soul-destruction.

Since extreme envy and vanity do not overwhelm a man in a moment, some traces

may be intuitionally detected even in the pre-play period. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth havehad in them much of "the milk o' human kindness." She testifies to it in him; and later her own aversions from crime, at times unintentionally revealed, testify to it in herself. Thesetwo, who through Shakespeare's treatment are placed among the great criminals of theworld, are never hardened criminals. Even in their worst depravity they struggle againsttheir consciences. They still have humanness. But they have long allowed themselves tobe very envious of their cousin Duncan's kingship; their vanity craves such grandeur, their self-esteem declares their own worthiness.

It is in those earlier days that the Witches, having discovered the wrong desire inthese two beings, begin evil telepathic practices upon them, augmenting the desires,stimulating the ambition and suggesting excellent reasons for the contemplated act, to

which their blood-relationship points the way. So, even before the play opens at all, theyhave thought of murdering Duncan. Lady Macbeth's early words to her husband prove this,when to re-energize his will, she says scornfully: "What.... made you break this enterpriseto me? ....Not time nor place did then adhere, and yet you would make both.... Was thehope drunk wherein you dressed yourself?"

Throughout that early time Macbeth himself, though in total ignorance, is stronglyswayed by the dark occult leading; and Lady Macbeth is even more submissive to it, sinceshe shares in the fondness for personal grandeur and distinction of rank and appearancethat appeal especially to women. She also shares in the passivity belonging to the femininenature. In the last part of her life she is almost wholly passive under the terrific effects of what has been done - by her, in action; and in her, through the Witches. It is not

unreasonable, therefore, to suppose that when Macbeth "breaks the enterprise" to her, sheis passive toward it morally; then, dwelling upon it, she grows more and more fascinatedby the charms of royalty, till her desires, fusing with the influence sent upon her, culminatein her positive will to carry the plan through. Her extreme display of will in the central partof the drama is more like a volcanic outburst than a customary activity. The proof of thisidea lies in her inner scruples, even during the very height of the action, and also in her withdrawal after the murder of Duncan.

The first climax of both her will-impulsion and the strength of the outside working,occurs when she gets Macbeth's letter together with the news of Duncan's coming. Theseaffect her like an electric shock, propelling her forward into an intense excitement of will andaction. This afterward lessens and deserts her, but at that moment her mind and will leap

toward accomplishment; and at that moment the telepathic influx she has been receivingis extraordinarily powerful. The Witches' purpose is too defined and too strong for them tomiss being on guard, invisibly, over their victims throughout that all-important night of Duncan's visit; and Lady Macbeth is their best subject, because more completely governedby them. She and Macbeth would surely be the recipients of strong psychical currents onthat night. And hence it becomes natural and almost inevitable that to push him throughdespite any of his waverings, Lady Macbeth sets resolutely aside all her own physicalshrinkings and conscientious qualms.



Surely it is clear that the Witches in this drama cannot be regarded as the ordinarypoverty-stricken old hags. They are skilful experienced knowers of their lore, practisedleaders in their craft. Everything they do and say exhibits a high degree of expertness.Their first scene strikes a keynote appropriate to them - a note indicative of their powerfulinfluence and effects. In their "desert place" they at once reveal knowledge of Macbeth's

whereabouts; as well as some purpose upon him in future, for they plan to be after "thebattle" in another solitary spot where they can meet him. Then, having answered signalsfrom their attendants, the cat and the toad, and "hovering through fog and filthy air," theypass out chanting "Fair is foul and foul is fair." What may this mean? Surely, a mis-conceiving, a failure to perceive true values. Does it not also show their intention to makefair seem foul and foul seem fair?

In the next Witch scene, shortly following, their intention becomes more clear. Herethey swing into a circle-dance, by which their "charm's wound up." Such a charm ishypnotic, - and for whom can it be intended but Macbeth, who enters at that precisemoment, walks into his fate, as he utters the words: "So foul and fair a day I have notseen;" - words just spoken by the Witches' mouths, proving a subtle link, by him

unrecognized.With Macbeth in this scene comes Banquo, whose clean unambitious soul affordshigh contrast. The Witches surprise Macbeth by addressing him as Thane of Cawdor (anew title that the King's messengers a moment later confirm), and then they startle him bytheir cry: "All hail, Macbeth! that shalt be king hereafter." The power of this greeting isproved by Banquo's observantly asking (with unconscious emphasis on "fair"): "Why doyou start, and seem to fear things that do sound so fair?" Why indeed, if he has not beforeharboured the thought with wicked envy? As hypnotizers and fomenters of quarrels amongmen in high places, the Witches have now reached a point where they can openly andobjectively tempt him and move him to definite action.

Macbeth is "rapt" with the effect of their words, says Banquo, who, though free from

envy, asks the seers for a prophecy concerning himself. They are willing to work their evilinfluence on Banquo too; and especially willing to use him as a means for further work onMacbeth. So they describe Banquo as one who shall "beget kings though he be none."This acts as prompt poison upon Macbeth. Bluntly he says to Banquo: "Your children shallbe kings." Almost accusing he is already.

When at once the Witches' foreknowledge is proved by his receiving through theKing's officer the new title of Cawdor, Macbeth's mind secretly leaps ahead: "Glamis, andThane of Cawdor. The greatest is behind." Accepting fully this proof, he immediately feelsagain the sting of jealousy, and cries to Banquo: "Do you not hope your children shall bekings?"

Once more "rapt" within himself, he argues with his temptation. And it is important

to notice that in the word "soliciting" Shakespeare describes exactly what the Witches havebeen doing, for solicit means to arouse, wholly excite.

This supernatural solicitingCannot be ill' cannot be good; if ill,Why hath it given me earnest of success,Commencing in a truth? I am Thane of Cawdor:If good, why do I yield to that suggestion



Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair And make my seated heart knock at my ribs....My thought, whose murder yet is but fantast'cal....

And here is given the proof, the secret confession by Macbeth himself of secret guilt,

and the evidence of his confusion, doubt and distress of mind. He might have found ananswer in Banquo's truly philosophical words uttered just before:

....oftentimes, to win us to our harm,The instruments of darkness tell us truths,Win us with honest trifles, to betray 'sIn deepest consequence.

In the midst of Macbeth's eager questions the Witches have vanished, using theoccult power they have attained to make their physical bodies invisible; but they well knowthat the mystery of this disappearance only intensifies their nefarious results, through

Macbeth's increased feverish desire to know more. To Banquo's wise warning he has beenutterly impermeable; and the only decision he is able to make is to "let chance crown him"if it will. Yet this confidence in chance is only desire disguised - a packing of it down, wherein smouldering it actually gains added heat. That hidden fire incites an inquiry concerningthe Witches; which results in still further confidence, so that he presently writes to his wife:"I have learn'd by the perfect'st report, they have more in them than mortal knowledge."In consequence both he and Lady Macbeth accept as real and valuable this "metaphysicalaid."

Moreover, even though the Witches do not appear in the swift scenes where theKing is murdered and Macbeth takes his place, they are not forgotten. Banquo shows fear of their evil influence, and Macbeth reveals his continuing trust in them. In fact, their fire

too, covered from outward view, burns more hotly within. This is indeed the period of their climactic working. Their telepathic hypnotic "heat" is reinforced, thus in both their victimsstrengthening the will to carry out the dreadful deed undertaken. That psychic "heat" isoperative at every moment. This is the "heat" that "oppresses Macbeth's brain" andcreates the "air-drawn dagger" so disturbing to him, yet so impelling. This image, firstlacking the "gouts of blood" and then having them, is not unlike the appearances createdthrough hypnotism by East Indian jugglers that are testified to by observers but cannot becaught on any photographic plate because not really objective. Like them, the dagger,whether or not produced by direct jugglery, is, as Shakespeare himself says, "a dagger of the mind"; and as a psychic dagger, it possesses far greater power to lead him on.

Also, though Lady Macbeth over and again shows her own tortures, yet that same

heating current entering her mind from the Witches revives will and enables her to rebutMacbeth's agonies of guilt and fear with fresh encouragement of escape from the dreadedconsequences; as when after Macbeth moans that he cannot now join in prayer, she sayswith pity: "Consider it not so deeply." When he is present she keeps her self-control. Yeteven the Witch-stimulus has not been enough. She has needed a physical support, andhas found it in drink. "That which hath made them [the grooms] drunk hath made me bold,"she says. But after the discovery of the murder, Macbeth, crazed with fear and to savehimself from accusation, kills the grooms; an act not planned, an act to which she has not



steeled herself. Then, suddenly, she sinks. The firm hold she has had of her physical self is severed by a quick sharp descent of psychic terror, resulting in a faint - a disconnectionbetween her mind and its normal plane of action.

This complete loss of control, though momentary, explains psychically her noticeableretirement through the rest of the play. Her later participation in the crimes is far more

passive. Both she and Macbeth, moved by the Witches' prophecy that kings will issue fromBanquo, are resentful and worried by his mere existence. Both are watchful of hismovements and know when he "is gone from court": Macbeth definitely plans to turn suchan occasion against him. She sighs to herself: "Nought's had, all's spent, where our desireis got without content"; and when he bursts out: "O full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife.Thou knowest that Banquo and his Fleance lives," she is ready to strengthen his thoughtof murder even while she quiets him by answering: "But in them nature's copy's noteterne." He accepts at once this reinforcement. "There's comfort yet; they are assailable";and then he broadly hints that the "assailing" is to be done that very night. She, "marvellingat his words," asks: "What's to be done?" But he - perhaps to shield her - replies: "Beinnocent of the knowledge.... till thou applaud the deed."

Thus, subtly, in motive and in heart, she is as guilty of Banquo's death as Macbethis, though she has no part in the outward action. She is given a hint too that there is to betrouble for Macduff, but she makes no comment. Gradually she draws within herself. Yetshe understands at once the cause of Macbeth's strange behaviour in the following sceneof the banquet.

The Apparitions in that scene (IV, 1) which terrify and completely unnerve Macbethare visions of Banquo as "blood-boltered." They cannot therefore be his actual ghost; for the ghost, being his double, would look as he did in life. Shakespeare again, through thetwo personages interprets his own creation, and in the same way, he even recalls andassociates with this incident his former psychic interpretation. Says she of the vision at thebanquet: "This is the very painting of your fear: this is the air-drawn dagger which, you

said, led you to Duncan." And he had called that "a dagger of the mind, a false creation,proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain." If then, Witch jugglery, working on and againstMacbeth's conscience, produced the dagger, that same jugglery, added to agonies of conscience, produced also the two hideous appearances of Banquo "with twenty mortalmurders on his crown."

Those unexpected sudden terrors of Macbeth in this scene rouse his wife once moreto action, and to scornful reproaches as she tries covertly to waken his courage, while tothe guests excusing him, till his too evident self-betrayal compels her to dismiss themhastily. Then, face to face, there comes between the two a most signficant long pause, -which is broken by Macbeth's deep-toned groan: "It will have blood." After that, her wordsare but brief, almost hopeless. She is slipping fast into passive despair. When he speaks

of "wading in blood," and having "strange things in head that will to hand," she answers ina half-dead voice: "You lack the season of all natures, sleep."What emotional torture and piercing unintentional irony are condensed in those

simple words! Already Macbeth has heard the dreadful Voice crying; "'Sleep no more!' toall the house." Already they have together suffered "the afflictions of those terrible dreamsthat shake them nightly," those awful revisionings of the day's awful deeds. How can theyexpect quiet refreshment from "the season of all natures"? After this pitiful wish for him of sleep, she speaks no word till she speaks in her own sleep, when he has piled horror on



horror, and she has lived in the hell they have created, without companioning him into hisfarther depths except as she lives them over at night. Then, "with open eyes, thoughsenses shut," she re-enacts and retells the frightful burdens of her soul.

The pathetic power of that sleep-walking scene is heightened rather than lessenedby some perception of the occult forces and qualities in it. Shakespeare himself accurately

described such sleep-action as "A great perturbation in nature, to receive at once thebenefits of sleep, and do the effects of watching!" That partial mind-paralysis, like the faint,is a disconnection between her normal mind and its usual realm of activity. W. Q. Judgecalls attention to the fact that the spirit in the body "approaches the objects of sense bypresiding over the different organs of sense. And whenever it withdraws itself the organscannot be used."* Such a state is a sleep on the physical and a waking on the astral. H.P. Blavatsky remarks that "the human brain is simply the canal between two planes - thepsycho-spiritual and the material";**

-------------* U.L.T. Pamphlet No. 18, p. 10.

** U.L.T. Pamphlet No. 25, p. 5.-------------

"In dreaming or in somnambulism, the brain is asleep only in parts - ....Generallydreams are induced by the waking associations which precede them. Some of themproduce such an impression that the slightest idea in the direction of any subject associatedwith a particular dream may bring its recurrence years after." *

------------* U. L T. Pamphlet No. 11, p. 8.

------------

Recurrence is inevitable with these two, for the ideas causing their tortures of mindare by no means slight, nor are Macbeth's added crimes. These, even if he does not tellher his plans or their results, she is sure to see. Either she witnesses them, whiledreaming, as pictures or reflections on the astral plane where they are recorded and whereshe goes in sleep, or, if not in dreams, she perceives them in thought while awake throughher unison with Macbeth in psychic vibration.

Thus, in her, dwelling on the crimes causes despair so torturing that it becomessomnambulism - that strange complex of action in passivity. The Witches have almostfinished their deadly effects on her wicked desires. As her now loathed life drags after her husband's ghastly course, they have only to lead her gradually to accept his idea: "Better

be with the dead." On this worst of all possible conclusions she acts, and with "self andviolent hands takes off her life."But in Macbeth, after the betrayal of the banquet scene, despair becomes a violent

wilfulness that moves to fury of action. "For mine own good all causes shall give way.... Mystrange and self-abuse is the initiate fear that wants hard use: we are yet but young indeed." And so there is his second fateful meeting with the Weird Sisters, to whom he goes"to know the worst." In a cavern it is, their working-place. Singing their incantation anddancing around their boiling cauldron, the Sisters cast into it those ghastly objects whose



magic makes "the charm firm and good." Macbeth comes blustering and demandsanswers. Then arise those life-like speaking Apparitions - the Witches' master-works inventriloquism, jugglery, hypnotism and all the other powers that can "raise magical spectresto deceive men's sight."

The result is that Macbeth is stiffened with inflated courage but furious with raging

jealousy that "a barren sceptre is put in his gripe" while Banquo's line of kings "will stretchout to th' crack of doom." With the utmost fierceness he now pursues his murderous plansagainst Macduff, and enters with boisterous valour into war to conquer those who arerebelling against hisauthority. At first he boasts: "The mind I sway by and the heart I bear shall never sag withdoubt nor shake with fear.... Hang those that talk of fear." But as the supports promisedby the Apparitions one by one prove false, his despair darkens into ever-increasingreasonless turbulence: "I'll fight till from my bones my flesh be hacked.... Blow, wind! comewrack! At least we'll die with harness on our back." - It is the old story that those "whomthe gods would destroy, they first make mad"; mad with overweening confidence, and thenmad with equally outrageous despair.

And when at last he knows that Birnam Wood has indeed "come against him," andthat even Macduff may be called "not of woman born"; when he knows that he has beentricked to the utmost by the "equivocation of the juggling fiends" that "lied like truth," and"paltered with him in a double sense," when life has become a mere "tale told by an idiot,full of sound and fury, signifying nothing," - then, "for a moment we see him a haggardshadow against a handsbreadth of pale sky," before his "life's candle is snuffed out."

The poignancy of the struggle in this drama lies in the intensity and the seemingunevenness of the battle between the lower and the higher. The great capacities for goodin the two tragic figures are proved by that very intensity and by the overwhelming force of their final anguish. The Karmic balance of pre-existing evil with present evil may only besurmised. Yet, apparently, the higher natures of the two sufferers are vanquished not by

ordinary degrees of corruption within and without, but by viciousness magnified to regal andsupreme power through their own previous wrong acts and the consequent entrance of wicked beings who consciously direct skilful machinations against the human man andwoman. Still, they are never wholly under the control of the Witches, or of inner vice.

Again and again they are stricken through by conscience, by self-reproach and self-horror,- those intimations of the Higher Self in man, which these two do not understand wellenough to obey, crippled as they are by past disobediences. Hence their very monitionsto good become changed into wild despair.

Since the criminal methods and effects of witchcraft (often called by other names)have existed and will exist for many ages, the Adepts' complete knowledge of these mayhave been made partly available to Shakespeare, in order that this most occult of all his

tragedies might give instruction and warning through a visual presentment of Wizardry,intensest of Black Magic, arrayed as protagonist against Soul and Spirit.-------

[In this careful study our esteemed contributor makes no reference to Hecate, agoddess of classical mythology whom Shakespeare introduces in the company of the threeWitches. Some commentators regard such introduction as "incongruous." Who is Hecate,whom the Witches themselves obey and who calls herself "the mistress of your charms,



the close contriver of all harms"? Her speech to the Witches in Act III, Scene 5, is a tell-tale. Who or what is Hecate? H. P. B. says that "the triple Hecate is the Orphic deity" who- "as the personified Moon, whose phenomena are triadic, Diana-Hecate-Luna is the threein one"; and she adds that the Egyptians called her "Hekat.... the goddess of Death, whoruled over magic and enchantments." This mysterious being combines, it is said, the

characters of moon goddess, earth goddess and under-world goddess. She is said to bewandering about with the souls of the wicked dead; and her approach is announced by thewhining and howling of dogs. - Eds.]

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King Lear - A Study in Karma

"The Adepts assert that Shakespeare was unconsciously to himself, inspired by oneof their own number." - Echoes from the Orient , by Wm. Q. Judge.

Adepts use of drama for their purposes is a long story. In the ancient Mysteries -which were Schools of Wisdom, Science and Philosophy - teachers and students enactedevents that represented some of the basic facts of Nature and of Man. The facts and theEnactments were viewed with religious reverence, and were indeed profound occultrealities, though they were often protected by a veil of myth or fable. For the pupil theEnactments were initiations into phases of Adeptship. He learned to universalize hisconsciousness, to enter through self-experience into those degrees or states of the World-Soul which the events symbolized. His knowledge was thus greatly increased of other planes of being. By living through them he came to understand the operations of theprinciples of Man and of Nature; and thus aided by the Enactments, he grew to be a

"knower" of the Kosmic principles and then a "knower" of Atman. This is proof of howsuperior in spirituality were the Enactments in the Mysteries to even the most kosmicdramas of Aeschylus, the initiate who ventured to create exoteric presentations, the actorsof which were probably not students of the Mysteries.

After Aeschylus drama thus existed as an art, quite apart from the MysteryEnactments. Using the living body and mind as its medium of expression, its appeal ismost immediate. Through this fact the Adepts may have seen in it special possibilities of service for the uplift of men. If so, they would encourage impersonally all who wereconnected with dramatic creation. The ethical intention in the makers of the Mysteries of the Adepts who inspired Shakespeare was the same. From their viewpoint of humanbetterment, the drama of Shakespeare was only a particular repetition, adapted to

sixteenth-century England and its future expansions, of their ancient purpose and perennialeffort. Therefore the occult link is between the great tragedies of Shakespeare and thegreat tragedies of Greece. They are companion activities.

In nothing is the spirit of the Englishman's finer tragedies more like the Greek thanin the clear proof they afford of the law that to each man comes back what he has given.The higher logic of a situation is not shambled. Understanding of what the Greek calledNemesis and the theosophist calls Karma was an important aim in the Enactments of the



Mysteries. Hence the evidence of karmic law in both the Greek and the English tragicdramas is only natural.

King Lear is especially strong in its karmic values. It is Greek-like too in the affinitiesthe personages feel between themselves and the powers in Nature; and like the ancients,they call these powers gods - not God. The theme of this drama concerns the relations of

parents and children. It appears in two main lines, at first seeming unconnected.The cause of the tragedy in the one line is indicated unmistakably in the first fewwords, in which the Earl of Gloster reveals to the Earl of Kent his family secret, - the sonEdmund, there present, whose "breeding has been at Gloster's charge," at whoseacknowledgment he has often "blushed" but now is "brazed," whose "mother was fair" and"made good sport," who has "been out nine years and shall away again," yet who is as dear to Gloster as the "son by order of law, some year elder than this." Gloster's breezy way of recounting his past fault with its resulting unhappiness for wife and elder son, does not blindan observer to his cruel disregard, past and present, of the son Edmund's feelings of injustice, as with bitter resentment he listens to his father in silence and thinks "base, base,why base?" The whole miserable situation of a bastard son - a situation in which the selfish

licence of the husband and father does irreparable injury to everyone concerned, includingat last himself, is laid bare in these few lines. Gloster's light manner, Kent's praise of Edmund's fine personality, and Edmund's reserved answers, hint at the mixed and darkcolours given to the drama by the Gloster story.

The other branch of the twofold theme is shown in the first scene by the arrival of Lear and his court for business of state. Just as Gloster is accountable for a broken familylife in the past and is to meet the results, so Lear is now about to do deeds which break hisown family life, and meet the results. As types the two stories and the personalities reflectand intensify each other.

An apotheosis of self - self-will, self-power, self-domination, - these are Lear. For scores of years he has seen in himself only THE KING - The reverence of feudalism for

the one at the pinnacle of its giddy social scale, for the Overmost of the overlords; thereverence of theology for its supreme Regent of God on Earth; combining with the age-long tradition of absolutism from such Single-Willed oriental empires as those of Darius andXerxes, pictured so graphically in the Biblical story of Esther , - these built up in the Westand in minds such as Lear's "that divinity which doth hedge a king."

A very different idea of the divinity in a king had been held in those far-precedingGolden and Silver Ages of Man when great spiritual Beings, who by their own persistentefforts had in earlier manvantaras raised their lower selves into harmony and identificationwith the Divine Self of All, - when these incarnated among men in order to give them theteachings of the Ancient Wisdom, and to rule over them in mildness and in observance of Nature's laws: thus inculcating and illustrating by both doctrine and practice the divine and

the kingly in man.But as evolution proceeded down into our Iron Age, that noble idea gradually cameto be personalized, debased. The King-Being ceased to embody a godlike principleinvolving duties and responsibilities. Instead, the "king" became only a foisting up of thepsychic passionate persona, ethically the mere lower cover and false concealer of theneglected inner Spirit. The precedence which in the true condition had been based onspiritual development, came to be exchanged for the precedence based on mere externalsof costume, subserviency and primogeniture. The exaltation of the persona, decked out



with most elaborate trappings, believed in and reverenced with doctrines andconventionalities worked over and matter-clouded from the teachings and customs properlybelonging to the earlier pure faiths and ceremonies - this mockery became the absolutismand the absolute monarch, as recorded in Graeco-Persian and in succeeding Europeanperiods and kingdoms. Such a monarch was in some cases nothing less than a bestial

corruption in himself and a debaucher of others, - though he claimed and used the power of life and death over his subjects. His family affections were bent almost wholly towardgilding and perpetuating his own greatness. Hence, similar in sources to the absolutismof king was the absolutism of father.

Lear in the first scene is an exhibition of a mind accustomed to absoluteirresponsible rule both as king and as father. After the first scene, when he has given awayhis powers and made himself a pensioner on his daughters, the play is a complicatedpresentment of karmic reaction, unfolding from the action of both Lear and Gloster. Lear is then a psychological picture of an absolutist forced out of his former habits and facinglife from an opposite position. The change is so sudden and violent, and what it involvesis so little understood by Lear, that for a time his mind becomes unbalanced.

In that pregnant first scene as he gives their shares of his kingdom to his two elder daughters, he makes a pompous display of his grandeur. Flattery is poured upon him bythem, to which he pays little attention; and knowing full well the young Cordelia's love for him always, he tenderly and half jestingly demands: "And now, our joy, what can you say?"He expects even more from her - not of flattery, but such an outwelling and display of affection as he would be proud and glad to have his court witness. Quintessence of fatherly pride and self-satisfaction he expects to enjoy. But Cordelia, knowing her treacherous sisters and despising flattery, is disgusted with what she has just heard. Sheis hurt at the thought of affection being measured in a contest. Not openly demonstrativeby nature, she shrinks from making of herself a public display. She trusts her father'sknowing of her love and tries to make him see her sisters' falsity; but, not fully weighing the

situation or foreseeing its outcome, she blunders by persisting too far in her reservedanswers; till Lear, utterly astonished, furious, feeling himself disgraced in public insteadof honoured, bursts into a blind violence that piles mistake on mistake, never to be undone;such an insanity of wrath as may easily befall an absolutist.

From this point Lear's mind is in a state of tumultuous confusion, dying down attimes to almost quiet, as with the Fool; at other times mounting again to the heights of rage. How these feelings repeat themselves! Beginning with shocking intensity towardCordelia, they rise through the terrible curse on Goneril, and still higher into the moreterrible because more pitiful appeal to the heavens: "If you do love old men, make it your cause." Again they obsess him when Regan asks concerning his personal retinue, "Whatneed (even one follower) in a house where so many have a command to tend you?" To

this he can only exclaim: "O, reason not the need.... O Fool, I shall go mad!" And hedashes away weeping in self-pity for the bitter injustice done him. Dazed and frantic, herushes out into the terrific storm in Nature, "and bids what will take all," - that storm whichis an exact parallel in the physical world to the fierce turmoil in Lear's mental world, aprecise balancing of action and reaction. The roaring tumults of his fury in thoseimprecations on each of his daughters have been fierce destructive malevolence, -extraordinary forceful volumes of it he has sent forth. It must create its owncorrespondence, must bring an exact return just such as that cyclonic outburst of lightning,



thunder and rain which breaks upon him and all who are unsheltered. The fact that herecovers after such psychic and moral ravage proves the strength of that convulsed mindwhen normal, and the karmic merit in him as a Soul.

In Gloster selfism has never been so rampant as in Lear. He has never been sohigh but that he had to admit superiors and equals immediately around him. But his good

sense is hardly greater. Foolishly trusting Edmund, his illegal, almost stranger son, to thepoint of cruelly exiling in anger his lawful and familiar son Edgar, he soon finds himself heartlessly betrayed by Edmund, who is working to get estate and name. Thus theseeming greatness of both Lear and Gloster is overthrown. Both grow morally through theprocess of their suffering. Lear takes simple lessons in such self-control as he never exercised while he was king. Seeing his hastiness with Cordelia, he says of his other daughters: "I will be patient.... I will endure." and in the cold of the storm he learns pity for the beggars and unclad wretches who in his pomp as king would have been to him anoffence. Thus his excessive grandeur and haughtiness gradually disappear through theextreme lowness he reaches; humility and fellowship arise in his wandering mind. Theinsanity of self-grandeur had afflicted him while he was called sane. Now, through the

stages of his mental unbalance, his regeneration proceeds.Gloster's loyalty to Lear, and to Cordelia's French army coming to reinstate Lear bywar, the other sisters punish by having his eyes torn out. Yet this result is not unsymbolicalof the soul-blindness Gloster was in when young. With Gloster the shock of his downfalland torture does not unseat his reason. It remains more on the outer planes. Yet themoral lessons it can give he sees and takes to heart. He learns much through his agony.Most patient he grows and most humble. And the finest karmic retribution is his when theson he had exiled becomes his nurse and protector, and at last explains it all to the tiredold father; so rousing mingled joy and grief that the soul slips away out of the poor mutilated body.

The teachings of Theosophy declare that intense selfishness in some form is a prime

cause of insanity. The essence of selfishness is the constant direction of thought andfeeling to the lower desires or fears and to the lower principles as active with these.Through the strength of the desires and the attention given them, or through some greatshock to them, a loosening or an actual disconnection occurs between one or more of theprinciples and the rest. Anger or terror, for example, may cause a partial displacementwithout destroying the mental balance; but a further degree of disconnection creates thatcompleter unbalance known as insanity. Adepts by their knowledge and power to actdirectly on man's inner and higher planes and principles, can heal insanity. Sometimes asuffering individual helps himself,* through moral changes; especially if he succeeds inlessening his selfishness by giving kindly attention to other men. In that way he may bringabout his own cure. This is precisely what Lear does. Shakespeare through him embodied

the Adept teaching on the subject. Then comes, too, the healing sleep. In this deep sleepLear's harassed mind regains its poise and control over the lower self. His previouslyhidden higher nature, with its lovingness and wisdom, is freed enough to act on andthrough his outer life. When he wakens before Cordelia, the blatant king-self anddomineering father are forever gone, his sanity is recovered.

-----------* Cf . C. W. Beers, A Mind That Found Itself .



-----------

The two elder daughters, having seized on all, are united only in their secret quarrelfor the other's share and in their love of Edmund; their very characters being thus theheaviest Karma their souls could have - that lustful jealous love the highest humanness

they can reach, and their greed in it so fierce that it leads to their quick deaths. Yet for Edmund this love is in part redemptive. The compassion infused into the soul of Shakespeare could perceive some good in even such love as theirs.

Edmund, in the last few minutes of his life obeys the better nature he had beforerejected. Faced by his present death, and by the proof of his treachery to each of the twosisters, he admits the justice that has fallen on him as on the father. When Edgar says of the father:

"The dark and vicious place where thee he gotCost him his eyes."

Edmund places himself in the guilty group:

"Thou hast spoken right, 'tis true;The wheel is come full circle; I am here."

The deeper import of his reply Edmund could scarcely have seen, but a theosophistknows that if Edmund had not from a past life deserved to be born a bastard son, he never would have been so. As Edgar continues with the touching story of their father's passing,Edmund, much moved, struggles with himself; but when he sees by their deaths the forceof the love for him borne by the two unhappy women, he lets the bonds of his selfishnessmelt away:

"I pant for life: - some good I mean to doDespite of mine own nature."

The one good he can do - the release of Lear and Cordelia, whose execution he hadhimself ordered, - he urges and hastens to do. That his release comes too late cannot fullydestroy its karmic value to the soul of Edmund. He dies in peace with himself, with hisfamily, and with those he had wronged. Sinned against and stigmatized all his life, thisinner redemption at the close is the best retribution he could meet. Though he gives little,it yet balances some of the heavy past Karma and prepares for a future in which hisexperience of this life will not again be needed.

Shakespeare pictures other bastard sons and their revengeful hate, but in no other play does he represent the life of such a man so fully, revealing his sufferings, thehardening of his nature, his tiger-like spitting back at everybody because of the constantinjustices shown him, and his final redemption by obeying the impulses that came from hisown better self. There can scarcely be a question that this phase of family life, so full of selfish sin, was one that the Adept inspirers were glad to see thus treated with suchprominence and compassion as to be truly instructional.



For Edgar, "whose nature is so far from doing harms that he suspects none," Karmaoperates in the way he most truly would have desired. Though it puts him into the depthsas apparently a crazy beggar, yet it permits him thereby to become his father's defender.In his beggarly state he is tempted to self-pity, but with independent unselfishness resiststhat. Immediately after, he meets his father, now sightless. Again resisting a tide of

wondering anger, he quietly takes his duty as a guide, which the blind father himself,psychically perceiving the bond between them, lays upon him. Thus Edgar wins thespiritual victory that redeems his whole family. For it is really Edmund who has been thecause of his father's terrible punishment. Edmund is thus the karmic agent in Gloster'saccount. Yet, though necessarily so, he must also meet the Karma of his own treachery.Who can be the next karmic agent in this complicated family record but Edgar, the lawfulson and harmless brother, when after convincing evidences of his own goodness, he at lastby a successful knightly challenge of Edmund as a traitor, wipes off before the world thestains that Gloster had put upon the lives of them all.

The Earl of Kent is one of the rare souls that in feudal days were occasionallyevolved by the system of vassalage that led a man to bind himself in body and mind to his

overlord. Such a vassal considered no service too high, no task too menial, if done for thatlord; - just as Kent disguised "followed his enemy king and did him service improper for aslave." But the bond of vassalage, being personal, frequently included error. This relation,when it thus became religious, may be regarded as a transfer and perversion of the relationin the East between disciple and teacher. Such souls are likely erelong to find their wayto those who know how to cherish their devotion, remove it from personal attachments, andguide it to its proper aim in the Cause of uplifting humanity.

The most recondite phases of Karma are those connected with the deaths of Lear and Cordelia. Often spectators have felt that these deaths, especially hers, are pitifullyunjust, unnecessary, and are only the dramatist's way of rounding off his story. Butdramatic conventions are not based on mere fancy or convenience. They have inner

reasons, consonant with the grandeur of this and other great dramas. Besides, Adeptinfluence would not lead to disregard of dramatic laws. Rather, it would inspire obedienceto deeper conditions of mind or soul expressible through such laws and productive of values for soul growth, even more at times than writers themselves realize. In reality, theend of great plays is the completion of groups of karmic causes, - it is a natural end, notartificial, since the causes in the story are developed to some equilibrium.

The ideal close of man's life comes when he has gained such moral balance astends to harmonize it with the equilibrium in Nature. The physical limit of Lear's life is aboutreached. But though his last grief and suffering are far higher in quality than his former selfish feelings, he has not yet earned a peaceful end; for that he has not balanced enoughof his Karma. His past violences demand that he be stricken again and even more

poignantly. In the last passages one beholds the poignancy. He is bent down under it.But something else should not be overlooked. In studying Shakespeare's chief personages, one can hardly afford to forget that they have once been actual men on earth;

just as the Greek tragedies are founded on deeds of actual beings. In neither case are thefigures simulacra of fancy. The source-stories may have been much modified, yet the basic essence of them was preserved and made evident in their final transcendent forms.

Therefore in studying the Greek or the English tragic persons, one is as justified inusing all possible insight to detect their inner experiences as he is to perceive those of men



recently gone. Hence he may properly consider by intuition that swift vision of the closinglife, incidents, cause and results, - which a soul has at the last moments before completedeath. That period of vision is the most intensely living portion of the whole life. The factof such death-vision has often been attested by men rescued from drowning. Theteachings of Theosophy record the fact as a universal experience. In a Letter from one of

the Masters occurs the following: -

"The dying brain dislodges memory with a strong supreme impulse; and memoryrestores faithfully every impression that has been entrusted to it.... that impression andthought which was the strongest, naturally becomes the most vivid, and survives all therest."

During the last hour Lear's mind is fixed on Cordelia, he is most intimately near toher. Therefore his life and hers he sees in the solemn final review in the egoic way, asincidents in a continuous life; he understands her present death as it really was - less apassive or unwilling sacrifice than a beneficent yielding of her life; beneficent to his soul,

and thus to her own, by bringing them both into more harmony with the equilibrium of Nature. Though there was brutality and violence with her going, yet her death is notpunitive to her. Even in that violence she met some of the Karma of her family, - this,rather than her own. She left France to right the family wrongs by succouring her father,knowing that death for them both was possible. She was no doubt willing to die before himif she could thereby serve him. Mere living, for Cordelia, would mean less than her realization that she has done all she could, that perhaps even her death was not defeat buta help to him who was closer to her than any other being. "We should know," said RobertCrosbie, "that Karma does not castigate, it simply affords the opportunity for adjustment."But whether or not Shakespeare knew the deeper nature of death-visions, he yet obeyedthe profound perception that longer life for Lear or for Cordelia would mean a disregard of

the subtler demands of Karma, and so would truly be a weakness in his work.The story and problems of Lear and his daughters apply to mankind high and low,and are seen not infrequently. The retention by the old of property which the young maybe too eager to get, unfair divisions or even disinheritances, and in general the moral andeconomic debts of parents to children, of children to parents - these are familiar subjectsimportant in human development and in karmic adjustment. Shakespeare shows thetragedy that may spring out of these questions, and he suggests by reversal wiser answersthan many families reach. Because of its universal applicability and highly instructionalquality, perhaps he put into this drama special effort to detect and display motives andresults in order still further to intensify and extend its appeal.

---------* U.L.T. Pamphlet No. 25, p. 1--------------

The Theosophy of Shakespeare's "Tempest"[Based upon a lecture delivered at the United Lodge of Theosophists, Bombay,

on April 26th, 1949. - Eds.]



Our study is conceived merely as an essay in the interpretation of a subject at onceProtean and profound. The more one delves into the genius of Shakespeare, the greater is the realization by every honest student of Theosophy that, as veil after veil is lifted, therewill remain "veil upon veil behind." Who was Shakespeare? What manner of man was he?What was the power behind his plays? Questions all more easily asked than answered,

but suggestions of answers are to be found in hints scattered through the recorded writingsof the latest teachers of Theosophy.The vicissitudes of Shakespeare's reputation and the vagaries of critical opinion alike

substantiate Madame Blavatsky's statement that Shakespeare, like Aeschylus, "will ever remain the intellectual 'Sphinx' of the ages."*

To students of Theosophy, however, the available references in the authenticliterature, though few and far between, are sufficiently suggestive to indicate the OccultWorld's estimate of Shakespeare and his message. "My good friend - Shakespeare," wroteone of the Mahatmas, quoting from him in a letter. In her editorial opening the first volumeof Lucifer , H.P.B. wrote that

"'Shakespeare's deep and accurate science in mental philosophy' has proved morebeneficent to the true philosopher in the study of the human heart - therefore, in thepromotion of truth - than the more accurate but certainly less deep, science of any Fellowof the Royal Institution."

Again we know from a letter addressed to Mr. A. P. Sinnett that H.P.B. wanted astudent to write out "the esoteric meaning of some of Shakespeare's plays," for inclusionin The Secret Doctrine. Lastly, of course, we have Mr. Judge's famous statement: - "The

Adepts assert that Shakespeare was, unconsciously to himself, inspired by one of their ownnumber."**

-----------* The Secret Doctrine, II, 419.** Echoes from the Orient , p. 6.

-----------

Shakespeare, then, we regard as a real and magnificent creative genius of the typedescribed by H.P.B in her article on "genius,"* who, coming under Nirmanakayic**influence, became a myriad-minded master of life and language. His amazing andexpansive knowledge of the super-physical and the invisible, his profound and penetratinginsight into human nature, his transcendent and kaleidoscopic imagination, his intuitiveperception and his inspired passages - all these are at once the expression and the

evidence of the inwardness of his plays, and of the influence pf the Adepts.

-------------* U.L.T. Pamphlet No. 13.** "A Nirmanakaya is ....a member of that invisible Host which ever protects and

watches over humanity within Karmic limits.... A Nirmanakaya is ever a protecting,compassionate, verily a guardian angel to him who becomes worthy of his help." (TheTheosophical Glossary , "Nirmanakaya").



-------------

Now, what was the nature of Adept influences upon the mind of Shakespeare? Itis not to be thought that Shakespeare was, from the first, under the special care andobservation of the Great Lodge, but rather that "the superior possibilities embedded within

himself were what Adept Inspiration spurred into stronger activity." This was possiblebecause of the largeness of his mind and the receptivity of his soul. The breadth of hisSoul-Life could cause the offspring of his Fancy "to share richly in the vital Fire that burnsin the higher (Image-making) Power." Above all, he possessed the power, as JohnMasefield has written, to touch "energy, the source of all things, the reality behind allappearance," and to partake of the storehouse of pure thought.

We will not, however, find it an easy task to unravel the mystery locked up in theallegory, symbol and character portrayal of the great plays. For, "the very fact thatShakespeare remained unconscious of the Nirmanakayic influence which his geniusattracted shows that we must not expect the unadulterated expression of Divine Wisdomin all he created."

Having thus stated the Theosophical position vis-a-vis Shakespeare, we must notethe two possible methods of studying any of his plays in terms of the Esoteric Philosophy.The first is the easier one of extracting the essence of Theosophic truth out of thesignificant lines and passages of the play. The second is the more difficult one of interpreting the entire tale and theme of the play according to one or more of the sevenkeys of symbolism suggested in The Secret Doctrine. We will use both methods, butconcentrate on the second, which, if less easy, will be found more fascinating. Before that,however, it would be useful to place The Tempest among Shakespeare's last plays.

It is a platitude of modern Shakespearean criticism that the group of plays* to whichThe Tempest belongs and of which it is presumably the last, were written in "the finalperiod" of the playwright's life and show certain distinctive features.

All these plays are romances, neither tragic nor comic but both, full of unexactingand exquisite dreams, woven within a world of mystery and marvel, of shifting visions andconfusing complications, "a world," as Mr. Lytton Strachey writes, "in which anything mayhappen next." Strangely remote from "real" life is this preternatural world of Shakespeare'slatest period, and this universe of his invention is peopled with many creatures more or lesshuman, beings belonging to different orders of life. This romantic character of these playsis reflected in the richness of their style. Here we have the primary facts of poetry,suggestion, colour, imagery, together with "complicated and incoherent periods, softenedand accentuated rhythms, tender and evanescent beauties." These plays reach the veryapex of poetic art, revealing a matured magnificence of diction and the haunting magic of the purest lyricism, altogether appealing more to the imagination than the intellect.

The fundamental feature, however, of these plays of the final period is the archetypalpattern of prosperity, destruction and recreation which their plots follow. Virtue is not onlyvirtuous, but also victorious, triumphant, and villainy is not only frustrated, but also forgiven.These are dramas of reconciliation between estranged kinsmen; of wrongs righted throughrepentance, not revenge; of pardon and of peace. Tragedy is fully merged into mysticism,and the theme is rendered in terms of myth and music, reflecting the grandeur of trueimmortality and spiritual conquest within apparent death and seeming defeat.



------------* Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, henry VIII, The Tempest .

------------

Upon the firm foundation of the accepted conclusions regarding the chronological

order of the plays of Shakespeare, and of the peculiar features of the final period, moderncritics have been only too eager to build their plausible and picturesque interpretations.We have, first, the Dowden doctrine, supported in different degrees by other critics,

likening Shakespeare to a ship, beaten and storm-tossed, yet entering harbour with sailsfull-set to anchor in Stratford-on-Avon in a state of calm content and serene self-possession. This view gives the final period of the playwright the attractive appellation of "On the Heights," and perceives in these last plays the charm of meditative romance andthe peace of the highest vision. The Tempest is reverentially regarded as the supremeessence of Shakespeare's final benignity.

Strachey's thesis, on the contrary, echoed partially by Granville-Barker, is that thesefaulty and fantastic last plays show that Shakespeare ended his days in boredom, cynicism

and disillusionment.Dr. E. M. W. Tillyard, in his Last Plays of Shakespeare, like Middleton Murry, notonly sees no lack of vitality, no boredom with things, no poverty of versification in theselater plays, but, in fact, evidences of the work of one whose poetical faculty was at itsheight. Dr. Tillyard's theory has much to commend it, but does not pursue its assumptionsto their logical conclusions, and is based on the proposition that Shakespeare was an artistbefore he was a philosopher.

The best and latest interpretation is that of Prof. Wilson Knight in The Crown of Life.He regards Shakespeare as equivalent to the dynamic spiritual power manifest in his plays,and finds in the Shakespearean sequence the ring of reason, order and necessity.Shakespeare's plays, he believes, spell the universal rhythm of the motion of the spirit of

man, progressing from spiritual pain and despair through stoic acceptance and enduranceto a serene and mystic joy. Whereas in the tragedies is expressed the anguish of theaspiring human soul, crying out from within its frail sepulchre of flesh against theunworthiness of the world, these last plays portray the joyous conquest of life's pain.

Professor Knight's interpretation comes closest to the Theosophical view of Shakespeare's final period, and many of his conclusions are broadly true. It is, however,-important to point out the danger of stereotyping the divisions of Shakespeare's life, andthe need to be wary how we apply our labels and demarcations to what G. S. Gordon calls"so mobile a thing as the life and work of man." In the last analysis, Shakespeare was allof one piece; he developed, but in his development cast nothing away; his attitudetowards life deepened, but his essential outlook always remained the same.

As students of Theosophy, however, we can attribute the surpassing majesty of theplays of the final period to the great expansion of the creative power and dramatic skill of Shakespeare which had first begun to show themselves in their grandeur in the tragicproductions of "the middle period." This expansion was the product, as it is the proof, of the Adept Inspiration from which Shakespeare progressively benefitted and on which heincreasingly drew. Thus, we are fully prepared by the Theosophical philosophy to regardthe final period as the culmination of a spiritual Odyssey which found its consummation inThe Tempest , his last and greatest of plays. In this view, then, The Tempest is a broader,



deeper "embodiment of the qualities drawn from the higher planes of man's being in whichImagination rules," a perfect pattern of myth and magic as of music and marvel. Let us nowclosely consider this masterpiece in the light of Theosophy.

The tale of The Tempest is well-known but we shall briefly recapitulate its salientstrands. It is, primarily, the story of Prospero, rightful Duke of Milan, and his charming

child, Miranda, both banished by the usurper Antonio, his brother, and living unknown ona lonely island. Here, through a long period of successful study and practice, Prospero hasmatured into a master magician, and Miranda has flowered into a marriageable maiden.The play opens with a violent storm and a resulting shipwreck, caused at the bidding of Prospero by the invisible hosts of the elements, of whom Ariel is the chief. The royal partyinvolved in the shipwreck is saved according to Prospero's plan, and is scattered on theshore, in three different parts of the island. Alonso, the King of Naples; Sebastian, hisbrother; Antonio, the usurper; Gonzalo, an honest old Councillor; and two Lords, Adrianand Francisco, land on one side of the island and most of them fall into an inducedslumber, during which the vigilant and vile Antonio persuades the susceptible Sebastianto join in a plot to kill the King. Thanks to the intervention of the invisible Ariel, the plotters

are prevented from fulfilling their purpose, and the entire party is led to look for Ferdinand,the son and successor of Alonso.Meanwhile, Ferdinand has met Miranda and has been forced into her father's

service; which he patiently undergoes until Prospero is pleased to bestow on him hisdaughter. At the same time, in a third part of the island, Caliban, the deformed and savageslave of Prospero, has been met first by Trinculo, the King's jester, and then by Stephano,a drunken butler, both of whom foolishly join the faithless Caliban in an abortive plot againsthis powerful master. These three groups are all, in the last Act, brought together near hiscell by Prospero, after Antonio and Alonso and Sebastian have been made by strange andfearful sights and sounds to repent of their folly; after Ferdinand and Miranda have beentreated to a visionary masque, played by spirits; and after Caliban and his companions

have been brought to their senses - all of which is accomplished through the agency of Ariel. The play ends with the restoration of disturbed harmony, the recompense of thegood and the repentance of the deluded, the release of Ariel from Prospero's service, andthe reconciliation of one and all to the new order ushered in by Prospero, who showshimself to be a man of wisdom and a master of destiny.

Let us first briefly consider the different interpretations offered of the underlyingtheme before we go to our own. There is first of all the excellent but purely artisticinterpretation of Dr. Tillyard whose thesis is that The Tempest gives us the fullest sense of the different worlds within worlds which we can inhabit, and that it is also the necessaryepilogue to the incomplete theme of the great tragedies.

A more ambitious and comprehensive attempt is that of Professor Wilson Knight,

who interprets the theme of the play from various points of view - poetical, philosophical,political portrays a wrestling of flesh and spirit. Politically, Knight interprets the play as thebetrayal of Prospero, Plato's philosopher-king and a representative of impractical idealism,by Antonio, Machiavelli's Prince, and a symbol of political villainy. Lastly, the play isregarded historically by Knight as a myth of the national soul. Prospero signifying Britain'ssevere, yet tolerant, religious and political instincts. Ariel typifying her inventive andpoetical genius, and Caliban her colonizing spirit.



Another serious attempt at interpretation is that of Colin Still, whose study of the"timeless theme" of The Tempest has not attracted the attention it deserves. He regardsthis "Mystery play" as a deliberate allegorical account of those psychological experienceswhich constitute Initiation, its main features resembling those of every ceremonial ritualbased upon the authentic mystical tradition of all mankind, but especially of the pagan

world. Still takes Prospero as the Hierophant, and in one aspect, as God Himself; Ariel asthe Angel of the Lord, Caliban as the Tempter or the Devil, and Miranda as the CelestialBride. The comedians, Stephano and Trinculo, led on by the Devil, constitute a failure toachieve Initiation; the experiences of the Court Party, which is of purgatorial status,constitute the Lesser Initiation, its attainment being self-discovery; while Ferdinand attainsto Paradise, to the goal of the Greater Initiation which consists in receiving a "second life."The wreck is considered symbolic of the imaginary terrors of the candidate for Initiation,and the immersion in the water as symbolic of his preliminary purification. The Masque isregarded as apocalyptic in character, and the cell is taken to represent the SanctumSanctorum, only to be entered after full initiation. And so Still goes on giving every detailthe status of a semi-esoteric symbol drawn mainly from pagan ritual. Students of

Theosophy will find that Still's thesis, though basically sound, is obscured by theologicalterminology, and that its detailed application often leads to a certain forcing of analogy.Prospero, for instance, is a man, not God, and Caliban is too clearly a thing of nature to becalled a Devil, or Satan. Still's centre of reference is altogether less in the poetry or in theEsoteric Philosophy than in a rigid system of pagan symbolism applied to the play. Weshall refer Still's laudable effort in our own Theosophical interpretation.

In Theosophical terms, we can approach The Tempest from at least three angles -the psychological, the cosmic and the occult. Of these, we shall adopt the last for detailedinterpretation of the characters in the play. Before that, however, it will be worthwhile toindicate how the psychological and the cosmic keys may be applied.

The psychological key enables us to construe the theme of The Tempest in terms

of the principles of the human constitution and the everyday experiences of the majority of mankind. In this line of interpretation, Prospero would represent Atman, the Universal Self,which overbroods the remaining constituents of man, and allows for their rescue from allinternal disequilibrium, thus producing that divine and unifying harmony which spells poiseand proportion, as well as power and peace. Miranda, the daughter of Prospero, would bethat specialization of Atman which we know as Buddhi , the spiritual and at present passiveprinciple in man, the vehicle of Atman, and at once the expression and the essence of purewisdom and of true compassion.* Ferdinand, the Prince who aspires to the companionshipof Miranda, could be made to symbolize the Higher Manas, the incarnated ray of the Divinein Man, while Antonio, the usurper who plans to secure personal power at the cost of hisweakening conscience, could represent the Lower Manas, or the Desire-Mind. To

complete the picture, Caliban could be taken as the Kama-rupa or the passional part of man in material form, and Ariel as the type of the assemblage of presiding deities, Devatasor elementals, in the human personality. This, in silhouette form, would be the system of symbols that could be constructed on the basis of the psychological key - a system which,interesting as it is in its ramifying implications, it would not be difficult for any careful reader of Madame Blavatsky's Key to Theosophy or Mr. Judge's Ocean of Theosophy to develop.

---------



* It is in this sense, alone, that Miranda represents the fallen and Sleeping Soul of the uninitiated and deluded man that Still takes her to be.---------

The second interpretation, which we have called the cosmic, follows from a

comprehensive view of the Stream of Evolution in Nature, of the Great Ladder of Being.This interpretation is implied in H. P. B.'s oft-quoted statement that

"....the Ego begins his life-pilgrimage as a sprite, an 'Ariel,' or a 'Puck'; he plays thepart of a super , is a soldier, a servant, one of the chorus; rises then to 'speaking parts,'plays leading roles, interspersed with insignificant parts, till he finally retires from the stageas 'Prospero,' the magician.'" (Theosophy , p. 34, Indian Edition, 1948)

In this line of interpretation, the play presents an image of the glorious supremacyof the perfected human soul over all other things and beings. At the peak of theevolutionary ascent stands Prospero, the representative of wise and compassionate god

-manhood, in its true relation to the combined elements of existence - the physical powersof the external world - and the varieties of character with which it comes into contact. Heis the ruling power to which the whole series is subject, from Caliban the densest to Arielthe most ethereal extreme. In Prospero we have the finest fruition of the co-ordinatedevelopment of the spiritual and the material lines of evolution. Next to him comes thatcharming couple, Ferdinand and Miranda, exquisite flowers of human existence thatblossom forth under the benign care of their patriarch and guru. From these we descend,by a most harmonious moral gradation, through the agency of the skilfully interposed figureof the good Gonzalo, to the representatives of the baser intellectual properties of humanity.We refer to the cunning, cruel, selfish and treacherous worldlings, who vary in their degreesof delusion from the confirmed villainy of Antonio to the folly of Alonso. Next, we have

those representatives of the baser sensual attributes of the mass of humanity - thedrunken, ribald, foolish retainers of the royal party, Stephano and Trinculo, whoseignorance, knavery and stupidity make them objects more of pity than of hate. Lowest inthe scale of humanity comes the gross and uncouth Caliban, who represents the brutal andanimal propensities of the nature of man which Prospero, the type of its noblestdevelopment, holds in lordly subjection. Lastly, below the human and the animal levels of life, in this wonderful gamut of being, comes the whole class of elementals, the subtler forces and the invisible nerves of nature, the spirits of the elements, who are representedby Ariel and the shining figures of the Masque who are alike governed by the sovereignsoul of Prospero. Shakespeare obviously believed in these invisible spirits and recognizedtheir place in the panorama of evolution. This cosmic interpretation, however, though

interesting in itself, does not require any special ingenuity for its application, and is neither so comprehensive nor so inspiring as the third, to which we now turn.The esoteric or occult is the highest approach to any allegorical system. The

Tempest can be made, on this approach, to yield a subtle and complete account of theways and workings of the Great Lodge of White Adepts, and the trials and tests on the pathof probationary chelaship, leading, through a series of progressive awakenings, to theattainment of the goal of conscious godhood, even amidst the irksome conditions of earthlife. This esoteric interpretation is really based on two postulates - of the probationary



character of all incarnated existence, and of the ceaseless unfolding, from within outwards,of the whole of Life. The student will do well to refresh his memory of the scheme of human evolution and occult training as given in the preface to Madame Blavatsky's Raja-Yoga or Occultism which we shall now proceed to apply to the characters of The Tempest .

To start with, let us understand the character of Prospero. By various critics,

Prospero is regarded as a magician, a superman, the spirit of Destiny and the symbol of Shakespeare himself. In our interpretation he is a perfected human soul, a godman, an Adept, the wise master of nature and the compassionate despot of destiny, the creator of his own circumstances, and the designer of the drama of the Shakespearean world. Aboveall, he is the accomplished personification of that super-state which the earlier Shakespearean characters aspire to, but never attain.H. P. B. defines an Adept as

"....a man of profound knowledge, exoteric and esoteric, especially of the latter; andone who has brought his carnal nature under subjection of the Will; who has developedin himself both the power (Siddhi ) to control the forces of nature and the capacity to probe

her secrets by the help of the formerly latent but now active powers of his being." *

More simply, she defines an Adept as, in Occultism, "one who has reached thestage of Initiation, and become a Master in the science of Esoteric Philosophy." **

-----------* Raja Yoga or Occultism, p. 1** The Theosophical Glossary , "Adept."

-----------

In the light of these references, Prospero becomes for us a logical conception. We

see him at the beginning of the play standing

"....like a white pillar to the west, upon whose face the rising Sun of thought of eternal poureth forth its first most glorious waves. His mind, like a becalmed and boundlessocean, spreadeth out in shoreless space. He holdeth life and death in his strong hand."(The Voice of the Silence, p. 71.)

This state has been attained through protracted study and effort which had beguneven when he was the reigning Duke of Milan.

The government I cast upon my brother,

And to my state grew stranger, being transported And rapt in secret studies....I, thus neglecting worldly ends, all dedicatedTo closeness and the bettering of my mindWith that, which but by being so retir'dO'er-prized all popular rate....



This is considered by many a critic to be his "fatal flaw" whereas actually Prosperowas obeying "the inward impulse of his soul, irrespective of the prudential considerationsof worldly science or sagacity." Far from having been, therefore, a scholar unfitted for direct action, he was a spiritual recluse on the brink of magical power, who has spent hisperiod of retirement on the lonely island in perfecting his adeptship. This retirement is

symbolic of the mental renunciation by the chela of the material things of life. When heattains to full adeptship and complete mastery over himself and nature, Prospero, as amember of the White Lodge, now performs one of its two tasks, viz ., to bring, in his turn,prospective members and probationary chelas to the island on which he has attainedperfection. It is on this sacred mission that he is engaged throughout the play.

Personification of wisdom and compassion that he now is, he has become one withdestiny, one with the purpose of the great law of Karma. His name itself is allegorical of his beneficent benignity. In this light, we should regard Antonio and Alonso, not asProspero's personal enemies, but as types of humanity who, in their ignorance anddelusion, disturb the divine harmony that they are then compelled by their destiny torestore, and who, in their folly, curse the aspiring chela who returns amidst them as an

Adept, only to bless. Prospero, then, uses his tempest-magic only to draw the deluded tohis island, teaching them through disaster to repent of their evil doings, and then raisingthem through his forgiveness. He is, thus, the eternally compassionate one who redeemsthe society that rejects him by the dynamic spiritual power which he radiates, even inrepose. Prospero's consciousness is already set beyond the horizon of ordinary men, ineternity; he is elevated above the petty, personal motives of average humanity, and hefeels the profound pain of the Great Instructors at perceiving the unteachability of some of their pupils.

Finally, we must note the true significance of his final speech, the Epilogue. Havingconsummated his purpose and performed his first task, Prospero, the Adept, renouncesthe formal robe of the magician and resumes the ceremonial appearance of a duke. He

has attained to a higher degree of Adeptship. He will return to earth-life as a Rajarishi ,* or divine ruler, and now undertake the more difficult task of directing, under royal guise, largemasses of men, and reestablishing righteousness on earth. When he does this, Prospero,the Adept, like Padmapani of the Buddhist legend, completely identifies himself with thesufferings of mankind and assumes the burden of helping men to find their salvation. Somuch for Prospero.

------------* One of the three classes of Rishis in India; the same as the King-Hierophants of

ancient Egypt." (The Theosophical Glossary , "Rajarshis")------------

II.

Now, turn to Ariel. Critics have considered Ariel as a symbol of the subtle powersof the imagination, the personification of poetry itself. Theosophically, however, he mustbe taken as belonging to the highest class of elementals, sufficiently individualized to bemarked off from the Nature spirits, the nerves of Nature, in the play. Ariel, stamped by hismaster with a Manasic impress, becomes the agent of his purpose, and his instrument in



controlling the congeries of elementals to develop the action of the plot. He helps raise thetempest, being part of it; he puts some of the people to sleep, so tempting the murderers,but wakes the others just in time; he thunderously interrupts the feast, drawing the moral.He plays tricks on the drunkards, overhears their plot, and leads them to disaster. Heputs the ship safely to harbour, and later releases and conducts the mariners.

All this shows the intelligence and the reason with which his master has endowedhim. He is impressed, however, not merely with reason, but also with emotion. As theopening scene of the closing Act indicates, Ariel, though non-human, aspires to be humanand seems to have caught a faint reflection of human feeling through Prospero's influence.His earlier imprisonment by Sycorax and his release by Prospero are both suggestive of tests undergone by elementals before they are used by the perfected Adept. Further, hisinstinctive impulse to become free, and the pure joy he shows when finally released byProspero, are indicative of the higher points of evolutionary progress which he desires anddeserves to reach.

All this about Ariel can be substantiated by statements in our philosophy. In TheSecret Doctrine, H.P.B. says that while the lowest elementals have no fixed form,* the

higher possess an intelligence of their own, though not "enough to construct a thinkingman."** Mr. Judge defines an elemental as

"....a centre of force, without intelligence, without moral character or tenderness, butcapable of being directed in its movements by human thoughts, which may, consciouslyor not, give it any form and to a certain extent, intelligence." (Vernal Blooms, p. 123)

It is indisputable that Ariel is a highly evolved elemental which progresses towardsthe human kingdom by its service of Prospero the Adept.

------------

* Vol. II, p. 34.** Ibid., p. 102.------------

Caliban has been over-philosophized by critics of the eminence of Browning andRenan. The mass of interpretation which his character has evoked is second only to thaton Hamlet. In all literature, it has been contended, there is no being so mysterious as thisbrute, earth-born, halting on the confines of humanity. His character, according to Hazlitt,grows out of the soil, and he has the dawning of understanding, though without reason or the moral sense. The gulf between him and humanity has been proclaimed to beunbridgeable even by Prospero's influence and teaching. According to Prof. Wilson Knight,

Caliban is a combination of man, savage, ape, water-beast, dragon and semi-devil, andsymbolizes, among other things, all brainless revolution, the animal aspect of man, theanomalous ascent of evil within the creative order, the external quality of time itself. It has,however, been claimed by some critics that Caliban, though carnal and of the earth, earthy,is neither vulgar nor unlovely. Coleridge, especially, has been very kind to Caliban, andconsidered him, "in some respects, a noble being." Towards the end of the last century,Prof. Daniel Wilson put forward in a famous book the proposition that Caliban is the exactmissing link, connecting Man and the anthropoids, the highest ape and the lowest savage.



All these interpretations of Caliban's character, though suggestive and interesting,fall far short of the theosophical explanation. Even at the hands of Colin Still, Caliban faresbadly. He makes of Caliban the Tempter, the personification of Desire. Actually, however,there is enough textual evidence to indicate that Caliban represents the material line of evolution and the lunar side of nature. He is man in form, but not man in mind. His is the

lower intelligence of the Shadow of the Barhishad or Lunar Pitris, closely connected withthe earth. They are our material ancestors who give the Chayyas or Shadows that must,to become self-conscious men, be lighted up by the Agnishwatta Pitris, the "Sons of theFire," as they are called in The Secret Doctrine. Caliban, then, has intelligence, but notenough to make a thinking man. He may be taken to allegorize "the vanity of physicalnature's unaided attempts to construct even a perfect animal - let alone man." (Ibid., II, 102and 56.) This imperfect physical form cannot be lighted up by the Great Lodge of Adeptsuntil it develops into a proper human shape. All this is brought out by the play itself. In thefirst Act, we have Prospero saying to Caliban:

".... Abhorred slave

Which any print of goodness wilt not take,Being capable of all ill! I pitied thee,Took pains to make thee speak, taught thee each hour One thing or other: when thou didst not (savage)Know thine own meaning; but wouldst gabble, like

A thing most brutish, I endow'd thy purposesWith words that made them known; but thy vile race,(Though thou didst learn) had that in't, which good naturesCould not abide to be with."

(Act I, Sc. 2)

Again, he is called

"A devil, a born devil, on whose natureNurture can never stick...."

(Act V, Sc. 1)

Later in the play, he is termed a "misshapen knave," a bastard "demi-devil," a "thingof darkness" which is "as disproportion'd in his manner as in his shape." And yet this sameCaliban, when he shows the first signs of repentance and realization at the end of the play,unfolds the possibilities of future progress, saying

"....I'll be wise hereafter And seek for grace...."(Act V, Sc. 1)

In our interpretation Ferdinand is an accepted Chela, who, having successfullypassed all the tests and trials set by Prospero, becomes united with Miranda, thepersonification of wisdom, Buddhi, similar to the Egyptian Isis and the Gnostic Sophia. Itis significant to note that Ferdinand first falls in love with Miranda, but soon realizes the



importance of serving a Master before attaining to wisdom and exclaims, in the last Act,that he has received a "second life" from his gracious Guru. Again, Ferdinand is warnedby Prospero in the First Scene of the Fourth Act against the dangers of falling prey to hiscarnal passions and thus forfeiting his right to enjoy wedded happiness. The same warningagainst the awful consequences, for one who has pledged himself to Occultism, of the

gratification of a terrestrial lust is given by H.P.B.* Similarly, the indispensableprerequisites for psychic development which she gives - "a pure place, pure diet, purecompanionship, and a pure mind"** - are fulfilled by Ferdinand before he is initiated intowisdom. He has successfully undergone the discipline of ascetic diet and of arduouslabours, and is therefore rewarded with the hand of Miranda.

---------------* Raja-Yoga or Occultism, p. 36.** Ibid., p. 42.

---------------

"If I have too austerely punish'd you,Your compensation makes amends; for IHave given you here, a third of mine own life,Or that for which I live; who, once again,I tender to thy hand: all thy vexationsWere but the trials of thy love, and thouHast strangely stood the test: here, afore HeavenI ratify this my rich gift."

(Act IV, Sc. 1)

Lastly, it is important to note that Miranda, the symbol of Wisdom, is consciously

considered by Ferdinand as vastly superior to a number of sweet-tongued ladies whorepresent the many pleasures of the senses which hold down in bondage the winged spiritof man.

"Admir'd Miranda!Indeed the top of admiration, worthWhat's dearest to the world: full many a LadyI have ey'd with best regard, and many a timeThe harmony of their tongues hath into bondageBrought my too diligent ear:

....But you, O you,

So perfect, and so peerless, are createdOf every creature's best!"(Act III, Sc. 1)

In taking Miranda as the symbol of wisdom, we are assigning her the right role in thescale of significance in the play. Had she been more weakly drawn, she would have beentoo insignificant to be of any interest, and had she been more strongly delineated, shewould have been too dominating and individualistic to be sweetly subordinate to Prospero.



As it is, however, Ferdinand and Miranda together represent, at the end of the play, a neworder of things that has evolved out of destruction; they also vouch for its continuation.Having attained to Divine Wisdom, the initiated Chela can help to carry on the mission of his Master.

Having briefly indicated the esoteric significance of the main characters, it is enough

summarily to dismiss the remaining persons in the play. Antonio, the deluded and defiantvillain; Sebastian, the weak-willed and cynical evil-doer; Alonso, the gullible and guiltyruler, - all these represent the considerable portion of selfish and ambitious humanity whichis given ample chances by the compassionate Adepts to repent of its past and to reformin the present. Stephano, the drunken and ambitious butler, and Trinculo, the stupid andcowardly jester, typify the grosser section of sensual humanity which, far from realizing itsfolly, rebels against the established order of things and is, therefore, for its own sake, madeto suffer. Then we have the good Gonzalo, type of the loquacious and large-hearteddreamers who, for all their naivete, are the quickest to come to a discovery of their owninward divinity. It is he who exclaims, at the end, that they have, at last, found themselves,and thus takes the first step on the path of chelaship.

Finally, we may consider the members of the crew who are immersed in a state of stupor as representing the dormant and ignorant mass of common humanity that isunaware of the probationary character of the school of life, in which they, nevertheless,continue to learn. Thus, from the highest to the lowest, everyone in the mighty march of evolution is elevated a stage higher than before, at the end of the play, through the nobleefforts of Prospero.

Having considered the characters, let us take note of some of the symbols in theplay, and their esoteric and psychological significance. Esoterically, the tempest can betaken to stand for the tremendous thrill of Nature at the attainment by a human being of complete perfection, at the birth of a Divine Adept. This is thus magnificently described inThe Voice of the Silence:

"Know, Conqueror of Sins, once that a Sowanee hath cross'd the seventh Path, allNature thrills with joyous awe and feels subdued. The silver star now twinkles out the newsto the night-blossoms, the streamlet to the pebbles ripples out the tale; dark ocean waveswill roar it to the rocks surf-bound, scent-laden breezes sing it to the vales, and statelypines mysteriously whisper 'A Master has arisen, a Master of the Day.'"

The same rare and solemn event is wonderfully delineated in poetic detail by Sir Edwin Arnold towards the close of the Sixth Book of The Light of Asia. The raison d'etreof this disturbance and delight produced in Nature by man's attainment of perfection is tobe found in a well-known statement by Mahatma K.H.: -

"Nature has linked all parts of her Empire together by subtle threads of magneticsympathy, and there is a mutual correlation even between a star and a man."

Further, this tempest is no awful cataclysm of nature, but has its benedictory aspect,as is clearly seen in the play. It is a necessary prelude to the peace and calm that spell thehope and joy of the whole of creation, as it is also a blessing and a boon to the strivingsouls of humanity. Psychologically, the tempest may be regarded as a condition of terrible



internal disequilibrium, an intense ferment of the human consciousness which stirs theturbulent soul to its divinest depths and awakens it to the austere reality of the life of thespirit.

If thus we understand the dual significance of the tempest, it will be easy to explainthe meaning of the symbol of the sea. It would stand for the sea of Samsara or the great

Ocean of Life with its boisterous waves of Being, and the timeless tide of the Ever-Becoming, as The Voice of the Silence says:

"Behold the Hosts of Souls. Watch how they hover o'er the stormy sea of humanlife, and how, exhausted, bleeding, broken-winged, they drop one after other on theswelling waves. Tossed by the fierce winds, chased by the gale, they drift into the eddiesand disappear within the first great vortex."

Psychologically, this stormy sea may be taken to signify the emotional nature of man, with its waves of varied passions, and its tide of deathless desire.

The Island is no casual creation of the poet's fancy, nor does it typify any terrestrial

place known to history or guessed by geography. It may be taken to symbolize Shamballa,the Sacred Island referred to in Isis Unveiled and The Secret Doctrine. This, once anactual island in the Central Asian Sea, is now fabled to be an oasis in the Gobi Desert. Theisland of The Tempest , then, stands, in our interpretation, for the dwelling-place of theDivine Instructors of mankind, those mighty Maha-Yogins of whom Prospero is at once atype and a symbol. Psychologically, this island could be taken as a new dimension of awareness, a magnetic and enclosed environment of the indwelling soul of the Chela,inaccessible to the thoughts and the things of the world.

Esoterically, Prospero's cell would stand for the Hall of Initiation, the SanctumSanctorum, into which Ferdinand is invited to enter only in the Fourth Act, with the closeof the Masque; the Court Party is invited only to "look in" at the end of the play, in the last

Act. This cell is similar to the Saptaparna cave near Mount Baibhar in Rajagriha, theancient capital of Magadha, in which a select circle of Arhats received initiationfrom Gautama the Buddha.* This cell, then, is a most solemn symbol, corresponding to theChristian Holy of Holies and to the "Adytum," "wherein were created immortalHierophants."** Psychologically, this cell may be taken to stand for the "inmost chamber,the chamber of the Heart,"*** the Brahma-pura or the secret closet into which Jesus askedus to retire for prayerful meditation.

------------* The Secret Doctrine, I. xx.** lbid., 470.

*** The Voice of the Silence, p. 10------------

Now, Prospero's wand is a protective and creative instrument, the same as Vajra*or as Dorje, a weapon that denotes power over invisible evil influences, a talisman thatprotects its owner by purifying the atmosphere around him.** Psychologically, it may betaken to stand for the protective purity of the heart of the Chela progressing on the path of Occultism.



-----------* "In mystical Buddhism, the magic sceptre of Priest-Initiates, exorcists and adepts -

the symbol of the possession of Siddhis or superhuman powers, wielded during certainceremonies by the priests and thurgists." (The Theosophical Glossary , "Vajra")

** The Voice of the Silence, p. 59

-----------

Finally, a word about the visionary Masque, conjured up with the help of nature-spirits by Ariel at the bidding of Prospero, for the benefit of Ferdinand and Miranda. Thisvision of the gods, raised by magical evocation, is a part of the ceremony of initiation andis partly intended to remind the successful Chela of the existence of higher powers andpotencies in the universe. We have Prospero telling Ariel,

"....go bring the rabble,(O'er whom I give thee power) here, to this place:Incide them to quick motion, for I must

Bestow upon the eyes of this young coupleSome vanity of mine Art; it is my promise And they expect it from me."

(Act IV, Sc. 1)

The purpose of this masque is, however, more than that; it is also,

"A contract of true love to celebrate; And some donation freely to estateOn the bless'd lovers."

(Act IV, Sc. 1)

The fertility, purity, chastity and virility invoked and represented by the goddessesand the daring nymphs define a particular relationship, not only between husband and wife,but also between Guru and Chela. Without going into details, it is enough to state that thismasque, though mechanically contrived, makes a deep impression upon Ferdinand andis proclaimed by him to be a "most majestic vision," that "makes this place Paradise." Thespirits acting the parts of gods and goddesses are merely nerves of nature or centres of force having astral forms, partaking to a distinguishing degree of the element to which theybelong and also of the ether, and acting collectively as a combination of sublimated matter and rudimental mind."*

Psychologically, the vision of the Masque may be taken as a subjective experience

of the ever-varying pageantry of the invisible universe.

-------------* The Theosophical Movement , xiv, 125.

-------------



Having interpreted the characters and some of the symbols of The Tempest , let usnow illustrate the use of our second method of studying the play, viz ., to pick out passagesand lines that either embody or point to the pure essence of Theosophy truth.

The first important passage we shall consider is the famous speech of Gonzalo inthe First Scene of the Second Act, which is an excellent parody on the pretty Utopias that

men, in their immature but charming idealism, dream about and vision forth. His rejectionof all the implements of war and machinery and his reliance on nature's abundance expressan admirable yearning, while his dream of a new golden age is delightful in its universality.Yet, the bounties of nature and freedom are not to be had on terms so easy, certainly notby sinners, nor can they be described in categories so simple. Gonzalo, like all eager andimpatient revolutionaries, forgets that a perfect society is inconceivable without perfectmen, that Utopias must be peopled with Prosperos, if they are to be realized on earth. Theanswer to his inadequate vision is to be found in Miranda's exclamation in the last Act whenshe sees, for the first time, a substantial slice of humanity in Alonso, Antonio, Sebastian,Gonzalo, Adrian and Francisco.

"O, wonder!How many goodly creatures are there here!How beauteous mankind is!O brave new world,That has such people in't!"

Yet, when all is said on the side of rationalists, Gonzalo's dreams, though naive, areboth natural and necessary; they are the visions in which thousands of eager youths andhigh-spirited men have revelled, the visions of Coleridge and Wordsworth, Blake andShelley, William Morris and Samuel Butler and H. G. Wells, visions which, though illusoryand incomplete, have a call for the nobler souls among us. As things exist, however, such

visions only invite the cynicism and the scorn of the Antonios and Sebastians of thisunimaginative world. A beautiful exposition of Theosophy is in the famous speech of Prospero at the end

of the Masque, which portrays the mayavic nature of all manifestation, and the changingcharacter of all conditioned existence.

"Our revels now are ended.These our actors, (As I foretold you) were all spirits, and

Are melted into air, into thin air: And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,The cloud-capp'd Towers, the gorgeous Palaces,

The solemn Temples, the great Globe itself,Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,Leave not a rack behind.We are such stuff

As dreams are made on, and our little lifeIs rounded with a sleep."

(Act V, Sc. 1)



This profoundly philosophical speech is a splendid statement of the idealisticDoctrine of Maya, of Appearance and Reality. Earth-life is proclaimed to be a short sleep,and the material world a delusive dream. This conception is beautifully brought out andelaborated in the first volume of The Secret Doctrine, pp. 39-40. "Maya or illusion," saysH.P.B.,

"is an element which enters into all finite things, for everything that exists has onlya relative, not an absolute, reality, since the appearance which the hidden noumenonassumes for any observer depends upon his power of cognition.... Nothing is permanentexcept the one hidden absolute existence which contains in itself the noumena of allrealities."

The whole passage should be read.The last long passage that we should mention is Prospero's farewell address to the

elementals, in the First Scene of the Fifth Act, and his renunciation of the ritual (but not theknowledge) of Magic,* ending with the words:

"....But this rough magicI here abjure; and, when I have requir'dSome heavenly music (which even now I do)To work mine end upon their senses, thatThis airy charm is for, I'll break my staff,Bury it certain fathoms in the earth,

And deeper than did ever plummet soundI'll drown my book."

(Act V, Sc. I)

This speech must be taken together with the last, in the Epilogue. These twospeeches are, in a sense, self-explanatory, in the light of our interpretation of thecharacters and symbols of the play. It will be enough to point out that, while the first isaddressed to the elementals, and delineates the type and technique of the magic thatProspero has used in the past, the second is addressed by him to humanity in general, aswell as to his Chelas in particular, and indicates the new and difficult future that is openingout before his prophetic gaze.

------------* "Magic is the science of communicating with and directing supernal supramundane

Potencies, as well as of commanding those of the lower spheres; a practical knowledge

of the hidden mysteries of nature known only to the few." (The Theosophical Glossary ,"Magic")------------

The Tempest , we have found, gives us a complete view of human existence in thetimeless soul of poetry. The central thought of the play is that the whole of existence isprobationary and progressive, that true freedom consists in the service of fellow-men, thatthe Lodge of Masters exists, that the way to the attainment of Their wisdom is open to all,



and that one great key to success in Occultism is untiring and selfless persistence in theeffort of self-education. Music and magic meet in The Tempest, so wedded that none canput them asunder. The denouement is full of grace and grandeur. As Hazlitt says,

"The preternatural part has the air of reality, and almost haunts the imagination with

a sense of truth, while the real characters and events partake of the wildness of a dream."

Creatures of rare loveliness are here created for us by Shakespeare who, throughreconciliation, forgiveness and good-will, renews the promise of a better and more beautifulworld.

-----------------

Hamlet - A Story of Psychic Unbalance

As there is equilibrium in Nature, so there is equilibrium in man, and likewisebetween man and Nature. Sanity properly defined is that equilibrium. It is mental, moraland physical health. It is a right balance between all the human states and all theprinciples. Very few men in the present age possess such health and sanity. Most of ushave only compromises. Certain average conditions are looked on as standard andnormal, therefore healthy. Whatever departs much from these is called diseased, abnormalor subnormal. The principles in man, those instruments through which his soul works, bothprotect and manifest his Spirit-Power or Life-Force. Because of some past errors of thought and action, these instruments and defenders may be poorly connected in a man,and the result in the parts of his nature called psychic is comparable to the action of aloose-jointed physical body, in which bones or muscles sometimes slip out of place.

In general usage "psychic" and "psychism" are not clearly defined. They includeboth correct and partially incorrect or at least vague limited conceptions. They are madeto refer not only to a division of man's nature and to some of his important powers andprinciples, but also to many life-phenomena. Each of these uses is proper enough, yet itis well to see that the psychic powers and principles largely make up in fact man's natureas a human being; likewise that they are the means by which human nature operates andmanifests itself. And it should also be understood that the life-phenomena referred to, bothsubjective and objective, result from the inter-relations and activities of the principles andpowers. The phenomena give evidence of the existence and characteristics of the Psychicas a great Department in Nature and in man. Much of the confusion is due to the limitedconcepts of what psychic phenomena are. Many things actually such are not so named;

for example, what people call "brain storms" and emotional "upheavals," either of enthusiasm, fear or anger, are psychic phenomena.Popularly, however, the expression psychic phenomena is chiefly applied to the

extraordinary or the abnormal. For this is the point to be particularly noted: it is theabnormal, the weird, wrongly-called "supernatural" - it is what science ignores or doesnot explain - that is especially referred to, by custom, in the word psychic. This limitationin meaning is indeed unfortunate, though even so the word covers a wide range of experience and a very important tendency in humanity. The fascination, often hypnotic,



exerted by the weird and the uncanny is a source and an abiding-place of superstition,excessive emotionalism and strange fears. Naturally too it has always been - never morethan now - a rich pasture for commercially minded mystery-mongers and "psycho-"specialists under many names.

The welter of ignorance thus indicated can be removed and men's minds

enlightened as to Psychism by a study of the Theosophical teachings in regard to thesevenfold division of man's nature. In that teaching Psychic is a big general term for all of man's elements except the very highest or purely spiritual, and the very lowest or purelyphysical. Men have therefore higher psychic phases of life and lower phases. It is thus thePsychic in humanity which undergoes evolution in the long course of experience, whicheither remains mortal and transitory or becomes pure and lasting, according as it movesdownward to undeveloped matter or upward to Spirit, according as it follows wisdom. Mostmen of today know little of the higher psychic phases; they live too largely in the merephysical and its close companion, the low psychical.

There is also in Theosophy another and a special use of the term psyche. It is aname in particular for the fourth or middle division of the seven in man - for the principle or

section that hangs in the balance, the one that sways between good and bad, true andfalse.In this special Theosophic meaning, the drama Hamlet may be called "psychic"; for

in the behaviour of that middle balance principle in the chief character the action is centraland the tragedy is found.

Without opposing directly any of the arguments for or against the sanity of Hamlet,a Theosophist may say that in insanity there is some actual disconnection between organsand functions of the brain; that insanity is of course Karmic; and that its cause is reallymoral. In the man Hamlet the middle principle tips in some actions far over towarduncontrol. Yet it soon recovers its balance. The unbalance is a kind of temporary insanity.In a man whose principles are not firmly connected (and are thus comparable to the loose

jointed physical body), the middle balance principle, always changeable, is especiallyunstable, his mind is wavering, easily open to outside influences high or low; he may havedaring flights of fancy, - sudden gusts of passion, moods of exalted enthusiastic action, or times of drooping melancholy and doubt which check any action. Such a man lives chieflyin his lower psychic nature, and fails to control it, for in will he varies between violence andlaxity; the physical in him is a close adjunct to the lower psychical, the ethical impulses areinconstant and the operation of the purely spiritual is almost choked. Possibly not enoughattention has been directed by critics to the phases of Hamlet's life that may be calledethical.

The special touchstone given by Theosophy as a test for insanity is the degree of a man's selfishness, his intensity of personalism. Hamlet is certainly not an altruist, yet he

is not especially selfish in the way that might be expected. The fact that his uncle hassupplanted him as heir to the throne seems not to be the chief element in the melancholythat veils him at first. He has had a strong confiding filial love for his father and mother.The father has suddenly gone. Astonished that the mother so promptly married the uncle,he distrusts them both. His self-love is less wounded than his filial love. This feelingaffects him much throughout the play and fills him with dismayed wonder. He does notthink of fighting for his legal rights but wishes against his mother's and his uncle's desire,to withdraw to his university again where he may continue to live in quiet. These facts,



made evident at the very first, before he has seen The Ghost, show traits that should beobserved. He is a student, a thinker, a dreamer. He prefers passiveness to action.

A question as to what throws his middle principle somewhat out of gear and leavesit undirected by Will from his higher nature, is answered as the drama proceeds. Theshock to his filial love causes the first unbalancing, namely, the undue melancholy. The

shock given by the coming of his father's Ghost carries him into amazed terror. Therevelations of the father's death by murder, of the uncle's other vile treachery, of the mother's weakness, mental and moral - these plough up all his solid foundations. Onthis terrific overturning comes the command "Revenge!" But before obeying that command,while he is hesitating about it, while his soul is harrowed by suffering, he forms a relationwith Ophelia which soon creates much added mental disturbance and unbalance.

In this relation he moves farthest over the border toward insanity. Unhappy at home,he has gone to her at first because she is winsome and may give him comfort. He loathesthe proved sensuality of his mother; Ophelia seems sweetly pure. When later she obeysher father's hasty command to give Hamlet no more time, he is hurt by the unexplainedchange and coldness in her. Brooding over all these heart-shaking experiences, his

feelings rise at times almost to frenzy. At one such moment, with thoughts distraught andclothes awry, he privately seeks her out to learn what indeed she is - can he trust her, canshe be what he needs? He gets the answer from her blank face, her silent lips, her fright.With such response to his moment of sick longing for help, how can he regard her as morethan a weak child? He leaves her in great grief, in lingering silence, slowly seeing that hedoes not wish to woo her farther. Ophelia's own grief at the father's command whichdeprives her of her lover, is now intensied by pity for that lover as mad - mad for love of her.

This leads Polonius and the King to test Hamlet as to that possibility. Withcharacteristic double-dealing, of which Ophelia is fully aware, they place her where theycan watch Hamlet unexpectedly come upon her. But he soon suspects and assures

himself that he is being overheard and tested. In a flash he determines to turn the test onher for at least truth-telling. Bluntly he asked, "Where's your father?" "At home, my lord,"she sweetly answers. Stung to fury by her lie, and by the contemptible behaviour of thetwo men, feeling his own folly, and hers, and all the world's, he rails at her in terms that bowher down like a reed before a storm. His private hurt is so great that he would ease it bythrusting the injustice of it partly on her.

For some time thereafter Hamlet feels chiefly rage and disgust for Ophelia and her father; while the poor little weakling girl shudders off into the melancholy caused byblighted affections. Then soon comes the startling death of her father through her one-timelover. After this her melancholy rapidly passes into actual insanity. There can be noquestion that her reaction to these blows is intensely personal. "Blighted affections" means

just that - single-eyed concentration on one's self, one's dreams of marriage and one'sbeloved. The mind has no other object, the soul no broader outlook. There is no capacityto resist disappointment.

Thus with Ophelia is proved the Adept teaching that insanity springs from some formof concentrated selfism. From this point of view, Ophelia's manner of death may seem tohave symbolical colourings. As she falls into the water (matter), her wide femininegarments puff out with air and support her for a time, she scattering her flowers and songsand dainty graces till the clothing is water-soaked and drags her down - the sense



attractions in her and for her pulling her finally into the sense-element (matter) from whichthey first came. Her death is pitiful, but the contracted little soul-life she has led is more so.The perception of this weak extreme passivity makes admiration of such a womanimpossible. To describe her as worthy of great praise and to be much stirred by her deathare philosophical errors into which many critics have fallen.

Hamlet's behaviour in the grave scene is just such an unreasoning outburst as anunbalanced psychic nature may be guilty of when it is surprised, grieved and personallyoffended. Previous to this for some time Ophelia and the feeling she had stirred in himhave been partially put aside, his mind preoccupied by that command "Revenge!" still notobeyed, and by the complications caused by the delay. Due to his absence he has had norecent news of the girl he had loved. Just after his return he is idly philosophizing besidea newly dug grave, when he is wildly startled by learning that the approaching mournersand the grave are for Ophelia. He sees her brother leap into the grave in excessive lament.Then the old half-forgotten love sweeps violently over him. Disgusted by that artificialsorrowing, he flies into a passion and even jumps into the grave to fight with the brother ina mad contest as to whose grief is greater and worthier. This is the least sane act of the

unbalanced Hamlet.Yet all these mental agonies of disappointment and grief connected with Opheliapass with little lasting effect. Such experiences come in course of nature to every man;but for Hamlet they are rather obstacles and byways in his path. They do not constitute thechief line of his mental action. They leave him still facing his permanent problem: TheGhost laid upon him a command as a duty, he accepted it as such, he has not fulfilled it.Why?

It is very important to perceive that The Ghost is not a mere shadowy wraith, or amere picture in the minds of several persons. The Elder Hamlet was murdered, thrust outof life before his time. In Theosophical teaching the physical aspects of men in the firststages after death are in general called Kama-rupas; but the Kama-rupas of those

murdered, either by accident, by law or otherwise, differ from the rest. Such beings are notdead to the same extent. The Force in Nature named Cohesion which held their principlestogether in physical life still holds them together in their Kama-rupas, and must do so tilltheir particular portions of that Force are ended by natural exhaustion. Hence theKamarupa of King Hamlet is strongly cohesive and can materialize to living men, as hedoes to the Watch and to the son, in the form of the armed King - a form indicative of thefeelings with which he materializes.

There is of course some dramatic embroidery attached to the story by traditionalsuperstition; yet the statement may be unhesitatingly made that The Ghost of King Hamletis a genuine materialization of that Kama-rupa to living eyes. All that this being lacks is hisphysical body, the instrument through which his principles could still function; but a Kama-

rupa is not able to function or to affect physical earth-life except through some livingphysical man. Since his physical instrument is all that the ex-King has lost, his character is just what it was before his body died. His mind remains the same collection of theological, feudal and other race beliefs prevalent in his day. As a living man and as aking, he seems to have been the usual proud, aristocratic, commanding type,unquestioningly accepting his rank, its emoluments and his own deservings. His codes of honour are those customary. Hamlet the son from childhood has been imbued with allthese beliefs and has never much questioned them, but his egoic nature is more given to



philosophy and learned pursuits. King Hamlet when alive had thought punishment the onlyproper return for any dishonour shown him. Lately as a Kama-rupa, he has been broodingover the wrongs he thinks he has suffered by being unjustly deprived of continuing life, onearth and of his possessions. The rankling sense of injustice and the knowledge of hisbrother's treachery and his wife's falsity rouse all his lower-desire principles into full activity.

He sees only two things - the revenge he wishes and the son as the one in physical life whoshould execute the revenge.This all-potent desire is what enables him to materialize to those alive, and his

demand on the son for vengeance, though not ranting, is imperious and compulsive.Revenge means, of course, killing the brother-uncle-king and seizing the throne.

But such a demand for vengeance is in itself wrong. It is almost wholly selfish andtherefore against Nature's law. When one remembers, as a student of Theosophy must,that each man is not only his father's son, or a member of a family, but is an independentEgo and a sevenfold being with his own virtues and vices and his own Karma manifestingon each of seven planes, one sees that such an act of revenge cannot affect a man onlyexternally, as is commonly assumed. The thought and act of murder must reverberate

through the whole and therefore affect the entire life and nature of the one who kills. Theknowledge and vision of Atma, or the Higher Self in every man, is the true ethical standard. According to that knowledge and vision, revenge and murder are never right; and theVoice of that Self is heard as "qualms of conscience" in any man not quite deafened bywrong-doing.

What, then, from the higher point of view, is Hamlet's relation to that Kama-rupa andits demand? During the actual interview, though he is in shivering fear, he is convinced thatthe Apparition is the living remainder of his father, able to move, speak and declare thetruth. He fully accepts at that time The Ghost's word. His quick agreement in the firstexcited moments is a natural outcome of his filial affection and of his beliefs by education,such as the false sense of honour which requires murder for murder. But also his own

mind has long been full of suspicious resentment toward his uncle. Hence while The Ghostis speaking Hamlet has little or no power to feel that the demand for vengeance may bequestioned, or to see what the Kama-rupa embodies and would instil into him. Hisresentment throws him wide open. He is not then or later exactly obsessed by the Kama-rupa, but he remains throughout the play constantly under its influence.

Previously, though possessing native goodness, Hamlet has grown selfish throughindulgence of the intellect. Prevailingly mental, he has gratified himself by years of continued university study and life, absorbed himself in that, instead of becoming at homethe chief companion and the counselor, hence the guard, of his beloved father against thedesigning uncle and the crafty time-serving Polonius. He has thus become passive towardactual life, remote from it. Though he admits much sin in his past, he is not striving to grow

better. The prime mover in him is not Spirit but the lower intellectual mind. Well trained inlogical analysis, he is yet slow to discriminate between his wrong and right motives or toanalyze the subleties of his thought ethically. Also, he is incapable of taking a practicalmasterful position in the court (probably the uncle counted on this weakness); and just asincapable of perceiving the real cause of his dilatoriness and hesitation. Thus as the dayspass, though he proves that the Kama-rupa is genuine and gives true information, yet hedoes not progress far enough morally to perceive that its demand for vengeance isunrighteous, is merely conventional, and that his promise to take vengeance by the



conventional means of murder has put his whole life on a false basis through a mistakenconcept of duty.

Instead of seeing this, Hamlet shares and cherishes the resentment expressed bythe Kama-rupa, and thus fails to detect the danger in such "commercing with the dead."He does not comprehend that, in the general ignorance concerning the dead, a man's

confidence and obedience in such an experience may prevent due attention to practicalduties in the world of the living. Though he has a sense of being part of a nation, histhought, like the Kama-rupa's, is much more to get revenge than to clear away the courtwickedness and serve the Danish people. Nowhere in his talks or the Kama-rupa's, isthere definite recognition of obligation to them. King Hamlet, like other kings of his time,had lived for his own satisfaction and glory. His son's patriotism is no higher.

But through all his misunderstandings and omissions, Hamlet does have "qualmsof conscience" regarding the vengeance. Far within - too far for him to interpret them for what they are - his higher Egoic Self is sending them out in a struggle to enlighten him. Hishesitations and delays are partly due to these admonishings of his Higher Self which hedoes not comprehend. They are in fact blurred by a slackness of mind in him, by a strong

averseness to action, which is the other reason for his delays. Active and keen Hamlet's mind is - on the surface; and it delights in using thesequalities of itself. But back of the surface is a layer of thick passivity, a heavy sluggishnessand inertia, a resistance to change. Most men have to contend with much of this mentalinertia. In Hamlet his Will in the outer life is quick, even violent. But within the outer shellhis Will often remains swamped in that deep layer of psychic sluggishness. The monitionsof the higher Egoic, the Conscience, struggling to stir that heavy mass, to make it lessdense and unreceptive to the spiritual, do not have much power. The reason is that in pastlives, as in the present, they have been too little obeyed to permit their free action now;hence there is a mental deposit of torpidity.

Caring much intellectually about philosophy, Hamlet has not grasped its deeper

phases that are morally regenerating. He has been content to abide by the prevalentreligion and the prevalent ethics. Such inactivity in the higher reaches of thought, suchpsychic sluggishness, is due to the lack of practical application of what his intellect hasstored, to the failure to put it into service for others and for his own growth in ethicalunderstanding. Of such practical application, especially for others' benefit, the drama givesalmost no evidence. This failure, now and previously, to make useful what he knows, is thereason why the Ego has such difficulty in leading Hamlet to question the moral rightnessof that murderous revenge he has promised. The egoic monition does cause him tohesitate - only that - for even when he finds the King in prayer, there is no impulse towardmercy. Sensing hypocrisy, he feels merely an added motive for a still fiercer revenge, a"more horrid heat." Thus, instead of recognizing any prompting of his own higher nature,

he blames himself furiously - "unpacks his heart with words" - for his slackness, hispuzzling procrastination and seeming incapacity. Or, understanding his deeper self so little,he at one time droops into mourning over his inaction, or again flies into sudden oftenunwise action.

That procrastination affects him almost from the beginning, as soon as The Ghostis gone. Even in the very first wording of his eagerness to do something, his vehementimpulse is weakened by intellectual analyzing and his student-like search for his "tables"



(his notebook) to set down his conclusions about his uncle, his country and the wretchedsituation; to set them down for what? Some activity in the future?

The companions of the Watch beg him to explain about The Ghost. In defendinghis privacy he flashes into the plan of "putting an antic disposition on" (playing insane),which involves just that, - action in the future, delay in the present; because, not knowing

what to do, he feels incapable, and because, under the effect of his conscience and hisinertia, he really does not wish to do. This immediately passes into self-pity - "The time isout of joint" indeed; but "O cursed spite, that ever I was born to set it right." Thus, thoughperceiving a need for action but unable to decide what action, he pauses, lets days slip bywhile he plays the antic, philosophizes and broods. Gradually he comes to excuse all thisto himself by harbouring doubts of The Ghost and its word, by believing he should getbetter proofs, "grounds more relative than this." For many weeks he thus drifts and divesalternately; drifts into love for Ophelia, bringing about her mental undoing; dives into thePlay Scene, which gives strong proof by exactly "catching the conscience of the King," asa consequence the aptest opportunity for his revenge (while the King is at prayer), but putsit by, thinking to make his vengeance even more complete. Then immediately afterward,

in angry excitement with his mother, he plunges into a sudden unplanned action that swiftlyputs out of life the eavesdropping Polonius. After such blundering, perhaps with a feelingof self-contempt, he permits the frightened King to send him out of the country as adangerous person.

Only once does the higher monition pierce through these blinding cloudssuccessfully, - that is when his very life is threatened. Then, by quick action, he learns thatthe King has really sent him to his death, manages to escape and get back; - but notwithout committing his guards (his former friends!) to their death, an act unnecessary andunjustifiable. His conscience as to right and wrong is now nearly silenced. Still further hepasses into incompetence; his life, purpose and opportunity are frittered away. The actionof the play reflects that weakness, but with no loss of interest, for this wasting into

impotence is the tragedy.Once more, near the close, the higher monition warns him of grave danger to his lifeand could save him; but this time he does not obey. He refuses to listen to the "divinitythat had shaped his end" before. At this point a vicious intrigue by the King is proceedingsuccessfully, entangling Hamlet in its deadly folds, and soon by mistake enwrapping theQueen and others. Then Hamlet sees what has happened, and at last satisfies himself byrushing upon the King and forcing the death. So impotent is his revenge, so worthless!

Regarding him and the other chief persons as once living beings and this story asin some measure their actual story, a Theosophist shrinks at the Karma it depicts in thatpresent and hints at for the future. Wasted lives, vitiated characters, lost opportunities,repetitions and agonies to come, because so little of that present has been understood and

corrected. Yet there is no fatalism in the drama. Hamlet is never once compelled by anyoutside force to a given line of action. He always has the power of choice, and the chancethat every living man has to sweep away his temptations and to act on his higher intuitions.

The stage history of Hamlet shows that this play was always popular, for variousreasons, with both actors and audiences. In the nineteenth century it was praised by someGerman and English critics as the greatest accomplishment of Shakespeare. If it isaccepted as the greatest, it must be so because it presents the problems of a vast number of men. What are those problems? First and foremost, psychic sluggishness or mental



inertia, blinding their discrimination, silencing their higher voice, stifling their better aspirations; then, the intellectualizing of life and imagining that to be the highestattainment; also, the insistence on revenge by punishment or death as the means of redressing wrongs; further, and perhaps worst, the brooding on the dead and being misledby their influence actual or supposed; all of this being Karmic, all due to men's present and

past habitual careless disobeying of their higher monitions, to their following theconventional and selfish instead of the freshly vital and serviceable to their fellow-men ingeneral. Around us constantly are men struggling under these errors, needing to beunderstood and encouraged, and when possible advised and guided. The fact is instructivethat those critics who originally stated that high estimate of this drama, found in it a pictureof themselves. Search into their lives proves them to have been of the Hamlet type, their minds brilliant, unstable, their course of action not much more firm or truly intelligent thanHamlet's own, and their ends perhaps no richer in soul-values than his. In fact, theeveryday-ness of the problems presented in this play is what endows it with its mostcompelling power. Aside from the special effects of the old period and fashion, it is on thelevel of the character and the needs of general humanity, and thereby holds its special

rank. This practicability for men's everyday lives may often not be recognized consciously,yet it does carry a measure of its advisory power to those who feel a kinship with Hamlet.If they are spiritually intelligent enough to enter really into the deeper causes and effectsof his character, they may benefit much by the half-hidden instruction. Practical applicationto actual life was what Shakespeare's Adept Inspirers always wished to encourage. Theywould naturally, therefore, give some particular esteem to Hamlet as a drama.

-------------

Julius Caesar - A Study in Violence and Bloodshed

"The Adepts assert that Shakespeare was, unconsciously to himself, inspired by oneof their own number." - Echoes from the Orient , by Wm. Q. Judge.

The carrying on of government is of far too much importance in human life for theproblems of it not to attract the attention of a great dramatist, and the interest of the Adeptsin those same problems would fuse with his own to increase his perceptions and intuitions.Political plays were not a new field for Shakespeare when he approached the story of JuliusCaesar. His long series of English chronicle plays were in essence political andgovernmental problems, and through his close following of history gave him varied study

of councillors and conspirators, mobs and armies, patriots and self-seekers, and good or poor queens and kings. Hence the play Julius Caesar exhibits the treatment of an expertin dramatic effects and also in the intricacies of human nature.

For many generations Rome had had a republican form of government, the peoplehaving some voice in their concerns. But conditions now seriously threatened thesepopular rights; republican citizens were facing a great extension of monarchy andcurtailment of the people's privileges. Caesar had retained the preceding governmentalforms, but had nearly emptied them of validity. Gradually he had enforced measures that



gave him entire control of Roman affairs everywhere. His government had at first beenregarded as a necessary but temporary dictatorship; he had been reappointed, however,and planned for permanency and greater importance. He used as the first in his list of titlesthe grand word Imperator; and most of the policies he introduced became foundationstones of the later Empire.

The pivot of this tragic drama is Brutus. A man of noble nature and unselfishmotives, knowing that he was a chief traditional leader among republican citizens, and thatthey were out of sympathy with Caesar's policies, he was led by his own sense of duty, andeven more by the urging of his party, to assist a movement for change. How this shouldbe made was the problem. He had been brooding over it long before Cassius suggestedconspiracy and murder.

Neither of these men realized the prime fact that solution by murder must alwaysmeet ultimate failure, because of the inherent moral ignorance and injustice. In the Romanconditions of the time that solution had little chance of succeeding even temporarily. For in truth most of the citizens had lost, ethically, their right to liberty through their neglect of their own responsibilities under liberal government. To Caesar's political aggressions many

people of the higher classes, though not desiring a king, were half blind; while thepopulace was little more than a mob, switching suddenly from one leader to another, fromone policy to its opposite. Yet those who like Brutus stood for popular freedom did notrealise the existing political weakness; they did not see that if as conspirators they shouldbe successful, they could hardly expect lasting moral support for any government theymight create.

There is no escaping the Karmic law that a government is the outcome of the peoplewho make it and live under it, and that to cause a change by violence is certain to bringviolence in reaction. The Romans of that period, having laid themselves open by their weakened moral fibre to a dictatorship, may be thought fortunate, so far, in having a ruler as prudent and moderate as Caesar. His imperialistic tendencies were evident enough,

but Brutus in condemning him seems to have forgotten that Rome was no longer a smallcity-state. It had acquired by war vast outlying colonies and provinces settled by peoplesof varying civilisations. Caesar was the only general who had shown capacity to handleproblems arising from these conditions.

To murder such a leader was the poorest way possible to free the state from hispolicies without resulting anarchy. Lack of executive prudence in the conspirators is provedby the oversight of these facts. Besides, they were moved largely by personalresentments, Cassius being the chief spokesman of these. Brutus alone was free fromselfish motives. He said: "I know no personal cause to spurn at him, but for the general."Yet Brutus's opposition to Caesar and imperialism was partly due to custom and theory.It was sentiment as much as statesmanship. With republicanism representing to him the

only political good, he had been considering heavy sacrifices. To Cassius he replied:"What you would work me to, I have some aim." Thus he showed that the thought of violence toward Caesar had already roused his feelings for and against it, - the two selvesin him making the inner "war" and the "passions of some difference" that he declared hadbeen troubling him.

In such an inner "war" a man's Higher Self would ever be his guide and literally his"guardian angel"; would prevent the lower self from becoming a demon of darkness; wouldever reject violence, treachery and secret betrayals, such as easily lead to murder. But the



lower self clings to its opinions, sees no solution of problems except those of his owndesire, and thus becomes so blinded that it often through mere desperation or wearinessof the conflict bursts into extreme irremediable actions. Brutus himself described thissituation exactly:

Between the acting of a dreadful thing And the first motion, all the interim isLike a phantasma or a hideous dream;The genius and the mortal instruments

Are then in council; and the state of man,Like to a little kingdom, suffers thenThe nature of an insurrection.

- Act II, Scene 1

But though within himself he saw this image, his lower mind did not follow themonition thereby conveyed. He remained theoretical. In such an experience, just before

that point of outbreak, there is so much intervention by the lower self that the force of theHigher can hardly pass through; hence it cannot prevent the "insurrection."So it was with Brutus. When he decided to enter the conspiracy, to lead the revolt,

to share in the murder, he took his stand on the belief that noble ends, such as he thoughthis to be, could justify the ignoble murderous means. Indeed, as pictured in the play,*Brutus did not have the sagacity supposed to be his. Every time he and Cassius differedas to policies, Brutus insisted on a way that contributed to their final failure. And if therewas little or no justification beforehand for the murder of Caesar there proved to have beennone afterward, when as a result the country passed into long civil war, the later conditionsbeing worse than before the revolt.

--------------* The drama is said to be based on North's translation of Plutarch's Lives - JuliusCaesar and Marcus Brutus.--------------

From the standpoint of Theosophy, this story is overcrowded with brutality andgrievous moral errors - treachery, conspiracy, murder, suicide - these are the great crimes;the lesser ones are many. But the people whose history was therein recorded, as well asthe people who were given the play, did not regard the events as indicating a special measure of depravity. Rather the contrary. The narrative still forms one of the hero storiesof the "grandeur that was Rome."

The moral standards and practices of Roman civilisation passed along with itspolitical conquests throughout Europe, all the conquered countries adopting the habits andideals of the Empire. By them they are still living - and dying. Romans for the most partwere not studious or meditative; they lived a life greedy of sensation, luxury andexcitement, full of self-will and self-glorification. They were of course unhumanitarian,ignorant of the life-principle and irreverent of it, being by long mental habit strong in the kill-impulse, weak in the mercy impulse; for they were a warring, blood-sodden people.



By men living under such dark lights, murder and suicide are neither understood nor deplored. Judged by Theosophy, both are among the worst crimes, because they attackthe very foundation of Nature. The purpose of Life being a long development of soul intoSpirit, by contact and experience with matter, these crimes throw effective and far reachingbarriers against her evolution upward. They check the progress of both the killer and the

killed. The conditions of each after death are in general not known or even considered,death being thought of as "the end of all" or - by the most religions - as a means of "knowing all."

The teachings of Theosophy are very definite on these subjects. Man in essenceis a spiritual, bodiless, formless being. Entering Earth-life he assumes a body for thepurpose of living, learning and evolving with other beings like and unlike himself, who havereached the Earth-stage of evolution. Only through such a body can a man do outwardacts on this plane. Murder kills the physical body but nothing more. If mind and soul havebeen wicked, they remain just as wicked. They still form a mind-entity.

The Karma of such a murder as that of Caesar could but be terrific - for the state,in the ensuing war; for the conspirators, varying in accordance with the unrighteousness

of their individual motives. The drama shows only two of these. After long uncertain strife, the conspirators had gathered their forces for a final effort.Evil omens had been frequent, even the sceptical Cassius feeling their genuineness.Brutus, dreading failure, was afflicted too, by grief over his wife's desperate suicide and thetorturing manner of it. On both men was the overwhelming weight of wasted struggle andlost cause. The conflict of the next day was only a fight against time - and a short time -a fight confused by blundering directions and misunderstandings, the broodings of Nemesisclouding the field like a pall. Cassius, straining to see the movement of the battle, said of his physical sight that it "was ever thick." But had not his moral and political sight also beenthick when he ensnared himself and Brutus in the conspiracy? In those final momentsthese blindnesses led him to his self-inflicted death. Brutus too, moved by error, that

shows "to the apt thoughts of men things that are not," became the victim of fear and of over-confidence. At the end both men killed themselves through ignorant pride. To themsuicide was less terrible than to be taken as prisoners through Rome amid the jeers of their former friends and inferiors.

Romans thought that suicide through loyalty to a friend or a cause, or to escapedisgrace, was honourable. They prided themselves on this kind of honour. Three personstook that means in this case of escaping what they regarded as worse than death; a fourthdid the same through desperation - a pitiful psychic exaggeration and weakness. Therewas no thought in any of them of a definite result afterward. Death seemed like a bare wall.They went up to it - jumped over - and all was ended; without accountability, without goodor evil effects, - mere blankness.

The laws of nature as stated by Theosophy - and physical science as well - declarethat energies centred in a living form cannot meet destruction. They are only changed intheir appearance. Having animated the form, they leave it again, thus breaking down thatform; but the energies are themselves still busy at shaping other forms. Theosophyapplies this also to the many and varied energies constituting a living man. Hence for aman there can be no blank wall of death with nothing on the farther side.

In the case of one who kills himself; as of one murdered, those energies - that is,those thoughts and feelings - which compose his mind and soul, are as alive and as



connected after expulsion from the physical body as before. They necessarily undergo acontinued acting and reacting between themselves. Into thoughts such as murder andsuicide men have put tremendous will-energy. Those thoughts have fused with andcoloured all the other lines of thinking of the life-period. Together they all have formed amental unit, joined by Nature's law of Cohesion. As the Cohesion making an individual

man ceases, the opposite law of Dispersion breaks up the unit and sends the energieselsewhere. That time, for a being who has remained in his body, becomes his naturalmoment of death. But for an entity who has been thrust out of his body, the power of Cohesion between the mind-energies is not destroyed. The thinking goes on; and sinceit has now no new objective experiences, it is compelled to busy itself with those it has had;especially with those later and very powerful thoughts that brought on the suicide.Therefore one who kills himself inevitably rehearses the lines of his thinking that led to hislast Earth-act, - his despairs, his wrongs, his fruitless desires, wicked deeds, and thesudden lawless taking-off. He does this till the time, whether months or years, when theCohesion between his energies reaches its natural lawful end.

That is what the suicides in the bit of history seen in this drama were obliged to face,

- Brutus and Cassius ever forming their conspiracy, conducting their winning or losingbattles, and their final pushing themselves out of life; - Portia, "true and honourable wife"of Brutus, forced to undergo over and again her impatience of his absence, her grief at hisenemies' success, and in distraction her torture of swallowing fire. And as also murderers,those suicides who were conspirators were compelled to be always repeating their stabbingof Caesar. This is the special and otherwise unexperienced torment they brought onthemselves by their suicide. They could not say, as Brutus thought he could, "Caesar, nowbe still," merely by going out of their physical bodies. Their gaining of quiet could not beso easy as that - for they had too greatly disturbed the equilibrium of the forces of Nature.

The pity is that Brutus knew better. On the morning of the last day he and Cassiusconferred (Act. V, Scene 1):-

Cas. If we do lose this battle....What are you, then, determined to do?

Bru. Even by the rule of that philosophyBy which I did blame Cato for the deathWhich he did give himself. - I know not how,But I do find it cowardly and vile,For fear of what might fall, so to preventThe time of life: - arming myself with patienceTo stay the providence of some high powers

That govern us below.

Cas. Then, if we lose this battle,You are contented to be led to triumphThrough the streets of Rome?

Bru. No, Cassius, no; think not, thou noble Roman,That ever Brutus will go bound to Rome;



He bears too great a mind.

Thus Brutus lacked the strength to obey the philosophy he knew, which would haveled him to face his own results and actually to "stay the providence of the high governingpowers." He thereby proved himself to be as theoretical in his philosophy as he was in his

statecraft.

Psychism of the Play This play gives emphasis to some unusual psychic phenomena, mostly examples

of prophecy. However little Romans in general knew or practised the ancient Easternphilosophy, they did retain some of the old beliefs that concerned forecasting of the future.In these were mixed much superstition and falsity. The fictitious exaggeration was perhapsexemplified in the accounts of the terrifying storm and the mysterious happenings of thenight before Caesar's death. A few of those incidents, however, may be recognised bytheosophists as possible psychic occurrences.

The prophetic phenomena concerned not only individuals but bore directly on the

most important political events, - the death of Caesar and the failure and death of Brutus.Theosophists know that Adepts, though neither mixing in particular temporary politics nor attempting to interfere with "the general drift of the world's cosmic relations," do watch andwork for both individual and national benefit. Said one of Them: "There never was a timewithin or before the so-called historical period when our predecessors were not mouldingevents and 'making history.'" Genuine psychic phenomena are among the means used by

Adepts for "moulding events" through the individuals who experience the phenomena. Itmay be that the disturbances of the "strange disposed time" just before Caesar's deathwere used or even in part produced as advisory monitions by invisible Adepts acting at thattime for the welfare of Rome. If then the people as a whole had recognised that the fearfulevents were indeed "portentous things unto the climate that they point upon," and if they

had really taken to heart these warnings, they could have found a way even then toimprove their political-ethical condition. If Adepts were at the time giving special attentionto Rome, Caesar as head of the Government would naturally be a chief focus for their observation. Foreseeing through their spiritual perception the coming dangers to him andknowing that his death would avail nothing, they could impress their guidance publicly bysoothsayers' prophecy and more occultly by dreams. These means indeed may have beenso used.

Soothsayers or truth-tellers were men possessed of some degree of naturalclairvoyance, which they strengthened by various means of focusing their eyes andattention till their minds were closed to external matters and were open to conditions visiblein the astral light. This light surrounds and interpenetrates the earth, and in it are

impressions of past and future events which may be read by those who know how.Whether used by Adepts or not, the Soothsayer in this story faithfully declared hismessage of danger for Caesar on the Ides of March; but he met a frequent fate of truth-tellers, for he was called by Caesar a dreamer and disregarded. On the morning of theIdes he warned again, but with no better result. Too many others were claiming Caesar'sattention. For Caesar it was a time of display and self-gratification.

Soothsaying is as well known today, under other names, as in the past - andperhaps as much (and as little) credited. The difference is only in externals. So too with



dreams. Great numbers of intelligent people believe that dreams have forecasting value,but do not confess the belief. Theosophy declares that these inner experiences have somevalidity and it gives a true explanation of them. That for soothsaying has just beenindicated.

As to dreams, some come from psychological causes and have little value. Those

that are important spring from the deeper Egoic nature. Said H. P. Blavatsky, "The Ego isthe actor, the real man, the true human self." In egoic or "real dreams.... something of whatwas seen, done or thought by the Ego impressed itself on the physical brain.... our dreamsare the waking state and actions of the true Self, the dim recollection of which at themoment of awakening becomes more or less distorted by our physical memory." Sincedreams are true impressions of "things seen," "facts witnessed," they may and do conveyto the physical brain happenings that for men are not yet present. Dreams of warning, suchas Calphurnia's are "real" and they require "the active co-operation of the inner Ego....Prophetic dreams.... are impressed on our memory by the Higher Self, and are generallyplain and clear: either a voice heard or the coming event foreseen." There are also"warning dreams for others who are unable to be impressed themselves." Caesar was one

of those so "unable." It may be that keen intuition led Shakespeare to heighten Plutarch'saccount by making Caesar's report of Calphurnia's dream, and the conspirators' later enacting of it, exactly correspond; for in this way could be intimated that "Egoic co-operation" needed for a warning dream. Also, the effort put forth by Calphurnia's Higher Self may have been indicated by Caesar's saying that she "thrice in her sleep cried out,'Help, ho! They murder Caesar!'" The dream by another personage - Cinna the poet - of danger to him, and his inattention to it leading to his death, subtly though powerfullyreinforces the occult values of Calphurnia's warning dream and Caesar's disregard of it.There is no question that to Shakespeare and the people of his time dreams and other modes of prophecy had the importance attributed to them in this drama. There is also noquestion that Theosophical teaching, while it would most carefully analyze specific

examples, does recognise the actuality of such experiences.The other important psychic phenomenon came to Brutus in his tent on the nightbefore the last battle; Act IV, Scene 3. "A monstrous apparition, which made his bloodcold and his hair to stare, and which named itself his evil spirit" (Plutarch's Life of Brutus);a "terrible and strange vision of a huge and frightful figure standing by him." It told him inthe next battle he should see it again, "his evil genius," "his evil daemon." This visionBrutus interpreted as the Ghost of Caesar warning him that his "hour had come." Thefigure, however, never names itself the ghost of Caesar, nor does Plutarch call it so.Theosophy states that a "ghost," technically regarded, is the astral double of a previouslyliving man and as such must look like that man. The entity of Brutus's vision wasundoubtedly of another order.

For an understanding it is necessary to consider the ancient belief that men haveattendant spirits. Hastings' Encyclopedia gives valuable information. The statement ismade that an "evil spirit was often conceived as a ghost," at times the ghost of a "hero,"possibly one murdered; in some stories "the two terms are used without distinction." Thevision of Brutus is cited as an example of an evil demon "specially attached to anindividual." But not all demons (daimones) by any means were evil. Plato remarked in thePhaedo (107D): "Every man has a distinct daimon which attends him during life and after death." Menander said: "By every man at birth a good daimon takes his stand, to initiate



him in the mysteries of life." Likewise Hastings states that "an avenging daimon wasthought to be appointed to punish the crimes of a particular family." Plutarch said of Caesar: "the great genius which attended him through his lifetime, even after his deathremained as the avenger of his murder." Hastings also remarks: "By the Pythagoreansa belief in demons was always fostered, especially ....as representing the souls of the

dead.... All the air, they said, was full of souls, and these are called demons and heroes."*

------------* Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, ed. by James Hastings, IV, 590.

------------

These beliefs are in general corroborated by H. P. Blavatsky, though of courseexpressed with stricter shades of occult meanings.

"Daimon was a name given by ancient peoples ....to all kinds of spirits, whether good

or bad.""....the word 'demon' ....in the meaning given to it by the whole of antiquity, standingfor the guardian Spirit, an 'Angel,' not a devil of Satanic descent. Satan ....is simply thepersonification of the abstract evil, which is the weapon of karmic law and Karma. It is our human nature and man himself, as it is said that 'Satan is always near and inextricablyinterwoven with man.' It is only a question of that Power being latent or active in us."

"Porphyry, speaking of evil spirits, said: 'Demons are invisible, but they know howto clothe themselves with forms.'"

"Destiny which ....every man is weaving around himself, ....is guided either by theheavenly voice of the invisible prototype (the guardian Angel) outside of us, or by our moreintimate astral, or inner man, who is but too often the evil genius of the embodied entity

called man.""The whole endless catalogue of bad spirits are not devils [as distinct from humanity]but spiritually incarnated sins, crimes and human thoughts."

These passages seem to indicate that the Apparition to Brutus was a form taken bythat complex of thought-energies - it was the "spiritually incarnated sins and crimes" - hisown and others', which caused those gigantic evils of the murder and the war. Coming ata late quiet hour, when Brutus was weary and troubled, his mind in a passive astral state,the Appearance shot into his inner vision a ghastly realisation of his accountability. Hishour indeed had come.

That "terrible appearance in the human form, but of prodigious stature and the most

hideous aspect," was also a close corresponding embodiment of what the conspirators'inhuman acts drew forth from Caesar in his last moments. Just before stabbing him theyhad insidiously begged for the return in freedom of one whom he had exiled, - their motivebeing to find in his denial a public excuse for the murder. Astonished and growing irritated,Caesar had finally refused with a haughty magniloquent self-importance. Then with thestabs were roused in him fear, anger, burning resentment, and deep sadness at thedeception and injustice practised on him. All these feelings were dominant in his mind atthe moment of his bodily death. And it is certain that that mass of ambitious and conscious



powers, of disappointments and desires, hatreds and fears, which constituted the mind of him who "bestrode the world like a Colossus," could not be shunted out of life by suddentreacherous stabs of supposed friends, without carrying into death a profound melancholyand a towering revengeful fury. This weight of feelings would by its own fierce grisly natureimage itself in a figure frightful to see.

There is, moreover, a special and subtle reason for its visit to Brutus as an evilgenius and as representing Caesar. This reason is in the bloodbath, pictured byShakespeare with graphic hideousness. Brutus set the example as he shouted - Act III,Scene 1:

Stoop, Romans, stoop. And let us bathe our hands in Caesar's bloodUp to the elbows, and besmear our swords; ....

And waving our red weapons o'er our heads,Let's all cry, Peace, freedom and liberty!

He thereby strengthened tenfold and poisoned the magnetic ties between Caesar,himself, and the other murderers. For blood has most powerful magnetic qualities.It was the magnetic life-bearing nature of blood that led to the beliefs in its

mysterious power and caused such practices as are indicated in Shakespeare's line: "greatmen shall press for tinctures, stains, relics and cognizance." Various religions have taughtveneration of blood and its sacramental power to unify into some strong and sacred bondthose who shared in it, who were touched by it or "purified." Though these beliefs were of course easily degraded into savage excesses, nothing could destroy the peculiar qualitiesof blood. In this case these qualities acted not only to create a particularly close bondbetween Caesar and his murderers, but they bound in stronger unity those terrible psychicforces sent out by Caesar's mind at the time of his death. By bathing their hands in his

blood and waving the stained metal of their swords, they called down upon themselvesthose strange forces in Nature that became united and visible in the monstrous figure whichvisited Brutus because of Caesar's murder, and which, in Plutarch's words, was "theavenger" and pursued "through every land all those who were concerned in it, and sufferingnone to escape."

The old Chinese philosopher Lao Tse said quietly:

"If a kingdom is governed according to the Tao the spirits of the departed will be aspeaceful as are the people, and will molest no one, for they too are governed by the Tao.When this harmony prevails between the living and those who have left, their goodinfluences are combined."

Besides the physical magnetism in Caesar's blood, there was another bond, an evenmore occult reason for the visitation to Brutus. There was likewise soul-magnetismbetween the two men. They were friends, attached by affection. Brutus had been rescuedfrom political danger by Caesar, had been given honours and dignities. Caesar trustedhim. All these magnetic ties of soul Brutus ruptured, tore into quivering shreds that drippedwith the ethereal fluids of the unrecognised inner life.



Further, since Brutus was always the centre and chief mover of the unit of actionconstituting the drama, it may be that Shakespeare regarded him both ethically anddramatically as a synthetic symbol; a symbol representing himself, his fellow conspirators,the entire government and the state, broken into fragments by his treachery, unwisdom andpolitical incompetence. When so regarded, and when his possible accomplishments are

compared with his actual failures, Brutus and the drama depicting him, tower up among thegreat tragic results of Shakespeare's creation, - heart-moving images of nobility blinded byfalse ideas of what constitutes man's duty to himself and other individuals, as also to hiscountry and its government.

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Shakespeare and the Adepts

"The Adepts assert that Shakespeare was, unconsciously to himself, inspired by one

of their own number." - Echoes From the Orient , Wm. Q. Judge.

The quoted statement may naturally raise questions of why such aid was given toShakespeare, and what evidences of it appear in his work. Theosophical teaching declaresthat every activity humanizing enough to shed a little brightness is brought by its own lightunder the direct observation of Higher Minds. No surprise, therefore, need be aroused bythe remark that Shakespeare received help from the Adepts who were guiding theTheosophical Movement in the West. For certainly such a literary and dramaticefflorescence as that of the Elizabethan period in England would attract some specialattention to the individuals creating it. Those Adepts would see in the dramatic growths of the time a means, free from sermonizing, of clarifying many men's judgment on their own

life-problems, by viewing similar ones and the outcomes of them as presented in thetheatres.Shakespeare's pre-eminence was indeed not fully known by contemporaries; but

vaster Souls would clearly perceive that though he handled the same mixture of good andevil material as other writers, and by no means minced the evil, yet by putting lessemphasis on that, he in fact sent out more of an upward call to the low, as to the high, inhis theatre audiences, and in general he reached a more humane breadth in his plays thanwas to be found in others. Even his Sonnets, more than those of other sonneteers, showedflashes of the divine discontent that draws men to the Beyond; while here and therethroughout his early works were drops "o' the milk of human kindness" which gave their own proof of the generosity of the soul that scattered them. Thus from the first

Shakespeare unconsciously exhibited such largeness of mind as is necessary to receive,and to work under, Adept Influence.Evidences of this Inspiration as found in the works are of an internal kind, since the

field of higher dramatic action is fundamentally in the mind and soul. Indeed, theinwardness of Shakespeare's plays has always compelled study from this standpoint -which of itself is one of the evidences sought. Hence a student of Theosophy does not

presumptuously expect to reach conclusions greatly different from those usually held, but only occasionally to perceive for them deeper reasons and foundations. Nor is



Shakespeare to be regarded as one of the rare beings who are under special Adeptobservation from childhood. Like other and more ordinary men, Shakespeare had to winhis help; and when it began, he did not fully know its nature or its origin, but felt it to be,as in fact it was, a broader, keener alertness of his own higher mind. The superior possibilities embedded within himself were what Adept Inspiration spurred into stronger

activity.Greater influxes of perception then came, truer visions in mind and soul revealingsprings of character hitherto half-hidden from him. Remoter causes, results, andunexpected complications became clearer. Secret relationships were felt, or subtleimpulsions between being and being. Ignorances or intuitions were detected that betrayor deliver. These perceptions he strove intensely to embody in his personages. Hence thisman's creative character-work began to be much deepened and broadened by his glimpsesunawares into the Eastern Psychology - Soul-Knowledge - which must in truth haveconstituted the very essence of the Higher Influence sent upon him, and which led to thosemanifestations of the Life-Verities recognized by men as operative in that world known asShakespeare's greater plays.

The inculcators of the Ancient Wisdom could not in that age appear openly as Adepts. They worked as philosophers, and also through other individuals or groups whosenature or activities permitted. Their continuous purpose was precisely to spread throughall possible channels their Wisdom or Psycho-Spiritual Knowledge; which in the partsconcerning men may most fittingly be called Psychology, and which was later to be knownas Theosophy. Hence for Adepts to shed a particular light on drama as a presentment of human action and its Soul-source, and to give particular aid to a noble-minded dramatistwho had obtained a large following, were only natural expressions of their purpose.

A great creator of fictional characters is great because he is able to embody withtruth in persons called imaginary the experience actual people have had, either in their present or in their past lives. More especially, he is great because within the soul-memory

of his own egoic past are the qualities and effects of a very wide range of Life-Stuff, andbecause this mental wealth lies near enough to his present consciousness to permit himto draw from it in order to re-incarnate, or in semblance put into flesh once more, phasesof his very own former lives and personalities. Moreover, that wealth of his past, like similar wealth of his present, resulted from a fusion of his actual individual experiences with keenobservation and understanding of the lives of other men. Thus, knowingly or not, such acharacter-portrayer possesses and constantly uses a large intuitive power which he hasgained through ages of varied experience and contemplation.

These statements may give a hint of why Shakespeare, Sophocles, and others of the finest portrayers of character have not used as a basis for their pictures the supposedlyideal, the notional, or the desired. They have not been satisfied to present the necessarily

slighter images offered by their fancy, or the plot-structure formed by the logic of their intellect. Instead, they have chosen veritable personages and actual incidents, - a cross-section of life as it has been lived. By a genuine visional apprehension they have enteredinto the real gist, colour and stability of Life-Fact. Of the vast Life-Record, they haveliterally relived that portion considered by them, have bound it into their very selves, andhave thus experienced quite naturally a larger encompassing of life and a surer guidanceof their artistic embodying or expressing power. For the Life-Record when thus again



revived mentally into present actuality, inevitably carries into fictional portrayals anundeniable convincingness.

The reason is that the Image-making Power possessed by man - his "King-faculty,"Theosophy teaches - is working with living Substance even when producing fictionalportrayals. The same great Power - Imagination - is active, whether it brings forth a live

human being or a vivified picture of one, though of course it operates on different planesof Nature and by different laws. At some time, Imagination co-operating with Desire andWill produced the living being. Later, Imagination, still co-operating with its two necessaryaides, brings into another phase of Life a mentalized copy or version of that same being.In each case genuine Akasic substance is the basis of the Imaginative operation. Both theliving being and the fictional portrayal are the offspring of a desire to create, a desire toenergize life-atoms through Will and in accordance with the Image before Thought or Mind.

The Image-making Power manifests in two great degrees, ordinarily known asimagination and fancy. The discrimination between them, as commonly stated, is not sofundamental and sharp as is the distinction made by Theosophy. In the Adept Psychologythe difference is deeply inherent in man's inner constitution, and corresponds to the

difference between his upper principles and the lower aspects or reflections of these. Of the two, Imagination is the Originative Power. Fancy is technically the imitative or reflectedpower, - a smaller, weaker, or even vitiated reflection of the higher. Both make Images,both mould Life-Stuff into other forms of Life. But Fancy is less "Kingly" in its modes andresults. Fancy works with grosser material, denser matter, lower in evolution, matter lessplastic; and therefore its results are often more distorted into unreality. Again, Fancyworks frequently with less noble purposes, and always it works with much less of thedynamic Fire of Life.

Therefore fictional art that mainly embodies Fancy (technically regarded) really doespossess less of Life. It is thinner-blooded, remoter, and cannot touch so intimately the lifein its observers. This is the true reason why great character-portrayers choose for their

pictures actual beings and real stories. In the activity, however, and outward productionof minds like Shakespeare's, the results of the lower Imaging power are shot through likeshimmering silk with the lights of the higher. For the breadth of Soul-Life in such mindscauses the offspring of their Fancy to share richly in the vital Fire that burns in the higher Power.

Readers or observers of fictional art have felt, far within, this basic Theosophicaldistinction, and hence have praised the character-portrayals derived from Imagination as"living"; while, however pleasing or otherwise the Fancy-portraits, they have recognizedthese as slighter or merely temporary. For example, A Midsummer Night's Dream and TheTempest are both surpassing instances of charming Fancy. ButThe Tempest is somethingmore, - it is also a broader, deeper embodiment of qualities drawn from the higher planes

of man's being in which Imagination rules.Now it must be remembered that Mahatmic influence is directed not to the physicalbut to the inner and especially the upper planes of man's nature. Thus a man "inspired byan Adept" would certainly experience added Imaging power, particularly the higher phasesof it. This explains the appearance in Shakespeare's work of the transcendent dramaticimagination critics ascribe to him by general agreement, though they have been puzzledto account for it. They have noted too, with wonder, the great expansion in creative power,in intuitive perceptivity, and in dramatic skill shown by the productions of his middle period



as compared with his efforts earlier. Many critics have regarded the expansion as sudden,and as especially connected with the tragedies, declaring in explanation that Shakespearemust have been enlightened by some tragic experience of his own.

To these propositions a Theosophist may reply that the expansion was the effect -as well as the "evidence" - of the Adept inspiration, and may suggest that it was proceeding

for some years before the time of the tragedies. In most cases such inspiration does notcome suddenly. It is like a dawn; and its progress or increase depends on how worthy therecipient continues to prove. These replies do not at all negative the statement thatShakespeare must have had himself some far-reaching unhappy experience. Most likelyhe had, and his Adept helpers made use of it. For Adepts work by natural means and turnto a man's advantage the greater receptivity of Soul that may come with suffering.

Preceding the period of Mahatmic influence were the early Chronicles, whichincluded both comic and tragic material, and the early comedies. These indicated looselyand faintly the general lines of Shakespeare's interests and abilities. An early effect on himof the inspiration may be represented by Romeo and Juliet , that supreme tragedy of blind,childishly wilful impulse, in both the older and the younger. The strong emphasis on the

foolishness of family feuds seems to indicate such guidance. Some of the more vitalizedChronicles and the comedies associated with them, in which vice meets its just deserts yetwith true charity, may also express that inspiration. The story-material and characters inthese plays were on the level of large groups in the theatre audiences, and the results inthem were so just and so free from tiresome moralizing, that they must have caused manyminds to see more clearly that what ye sow ye shall reap. It would seem therefore that inthese plays too the higher Imagination and the higher influence were at work. And in bothcomedies and tragedies dated by critics near 1600, the operation of each phase of theImaging Power is richly unfolded. A noteworthy degree is exhibited in the finer comedies,

As You Like It, Much Ado About Nothing , and Twelfth Night . These belong within thatperiod of influence not only for the pure clean fun they contain - and for the example given

by this - but also for the gems of philosophic wisdom in them, uttered at some time bynearly every personage. These comedies are perennial delights, full of a sunshine that iscontrasted only with shadows more suppositional than real. The Merchant of Venice isindeed nobler, the shadows deepen, the struggle and effort intensify, and the tragedy for Shylock is for one supreme moment de-personalized into the tragedy of a race. Here wassurely a bit of direct transmission of the influence. For in spite of all the evil selfish revengein Shylock, who that has a spark of genuine humanity can utterly fail to hear the Adeptbasic teaching of Brotherhood in that cry: "Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands,organs, senses, affections, passions?" The immediacy of the response to this in us is trulyanother evidence of the influence.

Many admirers of Shakespeare have been much puzzled to account for some of his

portrayals of women. Where did he find beings like Cordelia, Imogen, Hermione; veryquintessence of loyalty they are, under conditions most difficult and tragic. How did hethink of Miranda and Perdita, sweet and retiring as lilies of the valley? What of Violadelicately self-effacing and well rewarded; and the saucy-patch young sister of all these,Rosalind, with her rival in comedy-making, Beatrice? Chief of all, perhaps, how could hecreate Portia! Excellent materials of study for some of these he could find in the twoRoman stories he himself reworked and wherein he portrayed the noble wife of Brutus, andthe equally noble mother of Coriolanus.



But if there is cause for wonder concerning the women, why not concerning themen? Does one not see, whatever their rank, as many of "nature's noblemen" among themtoo? There are Kent and Edgar, Horatio and Banquo, quiet staunch upholders of the rightand of their particular words, like the supporting timbers of a building. There are the heart-winning elders, Duke Senior, Polixenes and Gonzalo. That fine, old student of life and of

magic, Prospero, is unique. So too is Antonio, at least in his parent-like sacrifice for hisyoung friend. Close to them are the romantic younglings, Ferdinand and Florizel, by nomeans weak, yet as fine as the flower-like girls they love. Brothers to these are Benedictand Orlando, older and more worldly-wise, but not beyond being teased and satirized bytheir mischievous mates. A trifle larger in conception is Sebastian, and superior still isBassanio, both being chosen more than choosers in their wedlock, yet worthy of thechoices. Also the philosophic Brutus and Hamlet, tragic labourers with duties they cannotmake their own. And as a fine contrast to these last two, Henry the Fifth, reformed madcapPrince Hal, wholly changed by awakening to his responsibilities, and marching confidentlyinto duties that are emphatically his own, - more loved in memory than any English King.

Through the big fabric of the Shakespearian world these beings move; and not one

of them "too pure and good for human nature's daily food." It is surely not too much to saythat for three centuries these men and women have been ideals and moulds, thoughperhaps unrecognized, of the thought-life of many young people.

If models for them are insisted on, some may easily be found in contemporaryEnglish life. Even Italy too, in spite of all the evil existing there, produced individualsnotably generous and high-minded.

Besides, it must not be forgotten that there are always such beings. They do notentirely disappear even in low periods. Spontaneously and unconsciously, they are thelevers that lift mankind a little further up in its evolution, and are the carriers and users of the traditional truths of humanity and Nature. They are scattered through all ranks andconditions, and there would be small hope for the advancement of the world without them.

All akin they are, too; for the greatness in each is of the kind that belongs to the higher egoic nature of man.With one or two exceptions, these personages of Shakespeare all exhibit or struggle

with the middle range of passions and conditions, are played upon constantly by good andevil forces that are in opposition but not entirely out of balance. Theatre audiences foundtheir own likenesses in these characters. The large number of them, their convincingvitality, and their relative importance in the world of Shakespeare, may furnish another evidence of Adept assistance. The mental life - the psychology - he depicted in this middlerange of humanity, is by everybody recognized as permanently true, as genuinely humanunder whatever conditions. Just as true, however, is the mental life exhibited by the twogreat extremes - the weaklings in general, such as the low women and the drivelling men,

including some of the clowns; and on the other hand those characters who embodied suchforce of will and power of intellect that necessarily, when their strength was turneddownward into selfishness and evil, they became the great tragic heroes and heroines.Other Elizabethans made their low and vicious mostly disgusting, and their towering tragicfigures are less humanized than Shakespeare's are, while the backgrounds of secondarycharacters are less rounded and vital. The aid given to Shakespeare may well haveresulted in this extraordinary humanization of his persons. This inference is indicated alsoby the wide difference in the degree of humanness between the later plays of Shakespeare



himself and his earlier - those rather mechanical first comedies and histories. Yet eventhese are regarded as better than the corresponding early work of other writers. He whobest held up the mirror to a large portion of nature, thereby giving Adepts the broadest fieldof operation, was for them the best instrument.

There is, moreover, another special reason why those women and men of the middle

range in character were a particularly fruitful field for Shakespeare's helpers. For centuriesthe conditions of Europe, either war-filled or monastic, nearly destroyed all forms of middle-range life. The religious, political and social systems were all cut from the same cloth of personalisms and their opposites, i.e., religious infallibles, religious know-nothings; politicaltyrants, political imbeciles; social Eminences pinnacled too high to see their own base,social slugs ever leaving behind the trail of their slime. Those conditions were the mirror of the contemporary theology, under which Mind and Soul were either manacled or swamped. Virtues of the home existed, but were shut up in fortresses. Citizen andcommunity characteristics were deflected so as to become either duties owed by vassalsor the place-proud behaviour of overlords.

In that civilization women were far too much regarded by their fathers as valuable

pawns in making princely marriages for the expansion of domains; and by their husbandsas social centres important to retain the homage of large followings of knights and squires.Below these of highest position were numerous attendants, - imitative ladies-in-waiting;much lower still were the slavish houseworkers, unnoticed, mere ciphers, useful only toincrease the number of serfs.

Say the Laws of Manu concerning women and married life: "Where women arehonoured, there verily the Devas rejoice; where they are not honoured, there indeed allrites are fruitless." But the honour indicated by Manu was not that paid to the chatelaines;its root was not economic. It was an honour paid in spirit, an expression of trueunderstanding of women's spiritual functions in the great whole of existence. Again, inspeaking of the connubial life - which is surely best exemplified by the middle range of

conditions and persons, and in which men bear equal share with women - the Laws of Manu state clearly the foundational service rendered to humanity by family relationships:"As all creatures live supported by air, so the other Orders (of society) exist supported bythe Householder." "As all streams and rivers flow to rest in the ocean, so all the Orders flow to rest in thehouseholder." The great leaders sending to the West those impartations of EasternWisdom that were to aid in human evolution, would encourage and strengthen inShakespeare's mind his natural pleasure in creating those middle-range characters, -natural because he himself had sprung from that kind of family life and continued toexperience it. Superlative tragic figures are extremely impressive to men's minds, and aremuch praised; partly because of the opportunity afforded to actors' egotistic ambition. But

such displays of purely personal powers, directed to the re-creation of the evil in mankind,may well have been less interesting to Adepts, whose chief concern was for a general upliftof all humanity. They would wish to increase Shakespeare's inherent perception of thedramatic values of those middle-range characters that were his finest models of true,natural, evenly developed womanhood and manhood. The mystery of where he found suchbeings is solved by perceiving that wide unperverted Nature contains them in fraternalunion, and he who works along with Nature learns how to see and depict them.



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Shakespeare's Views on Death

From the 14th century onwards there was a great revival of learning in Europe.Giordano Bruno visited London and became a friend of Queen Elizabeth, though someyears afterwards he was burnt at the stake in Italy for believing in what we now call theTheosophic knowledge of the universe and of man and God. Loyola, the great Jesuitfounder, had risen to power; Copernicus lived, Pythagoras's teachings were revived, andShakespeare wrote his plays. It is not surprising, therefore, to find many truths about manand the universe scattered throughout the plays of Shakespeare. It is illuminating to readthe plays between the lines, as a student of Theosophy ought to. Only a very fewexamples can be given here, but it is hoped that these will be sufficient to send the reader to the plays and help to see for himself how some of our Theosophical tenets have beenput so practically before us.

Shakespeare hints at the dual nature of man and refers to the soul as distinct fromthe body:

Her body sleeps in Capel's monument, And her immortal part with angels lives.

(Romeo and Juliet , Act V, Sc. 1)

Now, quiet soul, depart when Heaven please.(Henry VI , Part I, Act III, Sc. 2)

Further the Friar in Romeo and Juliet (Act IV, Sc. 5) while comforting the parents

points to the right attitude towards the living and the dead:

Heaven and yourself Had part in this fair maid; now heaven hath all,

And all the better is it for the maid:Your part in her you could not keep from death;But heaven keeps his part in eternal lifeThe most you sought was her promotion;For 'twas your heaven she should be advanced:

And weep ye now, seeing she is advanced Above the clouds, as high as heaven itself? ....

Move them [the heavens] no more by crossing their high will.

Shakespeare links man with the planets and suns in The Merchant of Venice (ActV, Sc. 1):

There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st,But in his motion like an angel sings,Still quiring to the young-ey'd cherubim:



Such harmony is in immortal souls;But, whilst this muddy vesture of decayDoth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.

We are reminded of the Ramayana and the Gita in the following extract fromHamlet

(Act I, Sc. 2). In the Ramayana the court is comforted at the death of King Dasaratha bybeing reminded that death comes to all. In the Gita we are taught the cyclic return fromdeath to life and life to death. In The Light of Asia we have the beautiful story of how theBuddha comforted Kisagotami for the loss of her baby, for at no house where she askedfor mustard seed did she find that no one had died. Here, in Hamlet , the queen tells theyoung Prince not to mourn for his father, for "all that live must die, Passing through natureto eternity." And the usurper-murderer consoles him by saying:

....you must know, your father lost a father;That father lost, lost his; and the survivor bound,In filial obligation, for some term

To do obsequious sorrow: but to persevereIn obstinate condolement is a courseOf impious stubbornness; 'tis unmanly grief:It shows a will most incorrect to heaven;

A heart unfortified, a mind impatient; An understanding simple and unschool'd:For what we know must be, and is as common

As any the most vulgar thing to sense,Why should we, in our peevish opposition,Take it to heart? Fie! 'tis a fault to heaven,

A fault against the dead, a fault to nature,

To reason most absurd....

The necessity for the acceptance of death is also brought out in Julius Caesar (ActII, Sc. 2):

Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,It seems to me most strange that men should fear;Seeing that death, a necessary end,Will come when it will come.

Also in Act IV, Sc. 3, Brutus, speaking of his wife's death, says that

With meditating that she must die once,I have the patience to endure it now.

As in the Gita we are told to meditate on death while still alive, so in Measure for Measure (Act III, Sc. 1) we are asked to....

....Reason thus with life, -



If I do lose thee, I do lose a thingThat none but fools would keep: a breath thou art,Servile to all the skyey influences.

....Thy best of rest is sleep, And that thou oft provok'st; yet grossly fear'st

Thy death, which is no more.

Why do we fear death? Because, as said in Measure for Measure (Act III, Sc. 1),"The sense of death is most in apprehension.".

There is an important lesson about facing the consequences of one's actions andpreparing oneself before death in Henry V (Act IV, Sc. 1). On the night before the battleof Agincourt, the King went disguised among his soldiers and spoke with them. He foundsome of them discussing the coming battle and blaming the King for what may happen tothem if his cause was not just. They argue that they owe him obedience and therefore arenot responsible for the carnage that will result in the coming battle. It is the King himself

who

"....hath a heavy reckoning to make when all those legs and arms and heads,chopped off in a battle, shall join together at the latter day and cry all, We died at such aplace; some swearing; some crying for a surgeon; some upon their wives left poor behindthem.... I am afeared there are few die well that die in a battle; for how can they charitablydispose of anything, when blood is their argument? Now, if these men do not die well, itwill be a black matter for the king that led them to it; who to disobey were against allproportion of subjection."

But the King replies:

"....the king is not bound to answer the particular endings of his soldiers.... Everysubject's duty is the king's; but every subject's soul is his own. Therefore should everysoldier in the wars do as every sick man in his bed, - wash every mote out of hisconscience: and dying so, death is to him advantage."

The same idea of the importance of one's thoughts at the last moment of deathcomes out in Hamlet (Act III, Sc. 3). There the young Prince, who has vowed vengeanceon his uncle, sees him at his prayers and thinks that now he will kill him. On secondthoughts he remembers:-

He took my father grossly, full of bread;With all his crimes broad blown, as flush as May........am I, then, reveng'd,

To take him in the purging of his soul,When he is fit and season'd for his passage?No.Up, sword; and know thou a more horrid hent:When he is drunk asleep, or in his rage....



Then trip him, that his heels may kick at heaven; And that his soul may be as damn'd and black As hell, whereto it goes.

Karma and the right attitude towards it are spoken of in many places:

'Tis good for men to love their present painsUpon example, so the spirit is eas'd.

(Henry V, Act IV, Sc. 1)

"There is occasions and causes why and wherefore in all things." (Henry V, Act V,Sc. 1)

Cure is no cure, but rather corrosive,For things that are not to be remedied.

(Henry VI , Part I, Act III, Sc. 3)

"....there's a special providence in the fall of a sparrow."(Hamlet , Act V, Sc. 2)

There is a terrible lesson in Richard III (Act 1, Sc. 4): Clarence in his dream thoughthe was dying and met the ghosts of those he had harmed in life:

....methought what pain it was to drown!What dreadful noise of water in mine ears!What sights of ugly death within mine eyes!Methought I saw a thousand fearful wrecks;

A thousand men that fishes gnaw'd upon........my dream was lengthen'd after life;O, then began the tempest to my soul!I pass'd, methought, the melancholy floodWith that grim ferryman which poets write of,Unto the kingdom of perpetual night.The first that there did greet my stranger soulWas my great 'father-in-law, renowned Warwick;Who cried aloud, "What scourge for perjury Can this dark monarchy afford false Clarence?"

And so he vanish'd; then came wandering by

A shadow like an Angel, with bright hair Dabbled in blood; and he shriek'd out aloud,"Clarence is come, - false, fleeting, perjur'd Clarence, -That stabb'd me in the field by Tweksbury; -Seize on him, Furies, take him to your torments!"........I have done those thingsThat now give evidence against my soul.



The two men sent to murder him talk with him first. Clarence hopes to escape deathby reminding them that

the great King of kingsHath in the table of his law commanded

That thou shalt do no murder: will you, then,Spurn at his edict, and fulfil a man's?Take heed; for he holds vengeance in his hand,To hurl upon their heads that break his law.

The murderer answers: -

And that same vengeance doth he hurl on theeFor false forswearing, and for murder too....How can'st thou urge God's dreadful law to us,When thou hast broke it in such dear degree?

A necessary reminder as to the animal or insect's right to life comes in these lines: -

And the poor beetle that we tread upon,In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great

As when a giant dies.(Measure for Measure, Act III, Sc. 1)

These are just a few extracts. Other aspects of the philosophy appear over and over again. "We defy augury," says Hamlet; the trouble "is not in our stars, but in ourselves."Yet there is a destiny which surrounds us, to which we must bow, willingly and

wholeheartedly.

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shakespeare in light of theosophy

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