Download or read book Madame Blavatsky rebukes a sham theosophist and bigoted ass written by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and published by Philaletheians UK. This book was released on 2024-06-11 with total page 10 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dr. George Wyld is grim idol of the Jewish Sinai and fanatical Jesuit, whose perceptive faculties are so dusty as to prevent the entrance of a single ray of occult light — he thought of the moon as a dustbin! He even declared to Buddhist philosophers the grand superiority of his “Esoteric Christianity” over Lord Buddha’s system, which he portrayed as fruitful of selfishness, human blindness, misanthropy, and spiritual death. But his shot at Theosophy and the Masters, being badly aimed, flew wide of the mark. After gaining momentum, the raging torrent of religious intolerance, bigotry, and personal rancour resulting from envy from a member of the Theosophical Society and of the medical fraternity, had run dry and his chickens came home to roost. He who unjustly assails the honour of hundreds of his Asiatic Brothers, slurs their religion, and wounds their most sacred feelings, may be a very “Esoteric Christian,” but certainly is a very disloyal Theosophist. Dr. Wyld has been as disloyal to his own Master and Ideal-Christ, as he is to Theosophy.

Download or read book Madame Blavatsky on the root causes of sectarianism and intolerance written by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and published by Philaletheians UK. This book was released on 2024-06-11 with total page 12 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the mind of every religionist of whatever faith, is firmly impressed with the superiority of his own creed, his mind is firmly closed to the truths of other beliefs. This is the root-cause of sectarianism and intolerance. Theosophists, instead of preaching they own religion, they implore everyone to first study his own and remain in it, whatever it is — for Theosophy is not only compatible with every religion, nay, being the pristine stream from the Mother-Source, it is the informing life and creed of all religions — pure and convincing in its simplicity. While modern science has no knowledge of an “Intelligent Being” or “Spirit,” the science of metaphysics rejects entirely the possibility of the Infinite having any relation whatsoever with the finite, whether conscious or otherwise.

Download or read book Madame Blavatsky on the Sir Oracles of Oriental Religions who claim papal authority over Buddhist Doctrine written by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and published by Philaletheians UK. This book was released on 2024-06-11 with total page 13 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Western Orientalists keep claiming papal authority over of Buddhist doctrines. Here are four quick and easy steps on how anyone can become an authority on Buddhism. The “authority” is ready and ignorant Mrs. Grundy, “soft on whose lap her laureate sons recline,” will crown the new Pope, and force him upon the acceptance of the ignorant public. For example, a squib review of Sinnett’s “Esoteric Buddhism” called “The Cosmogony of an Artificial Fifth Rounder,” is no review but a totally meaningless ex-cathedra chaff. The witty criticaster reminds us of that naive witness, a tailor, who claimed better acquaintance with the defendant’s murdered father than his son, on the ground that the old coat and hat of the victim had been made and bought at his establishment. Between the diametrically opposed views of Mr. Lillie’s “Buddha and Early Buddhism,” and Mr. Rhys-Davids’ “Buddhism,” “M.A., Oxon.” shows no preference. Both are good as weapons against the Theosophists.

Download or read book Pantheistic Theosophy is irreconcilable with Roman Catholicism written by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and published by Philaletheians UK. This book was released on 2020-11-13 with total page 90 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Part 1. Abbe Roca’s ecclesiastical views upon the Esotericism of Christian Dogma. Part 2. Madame Blavatsky refutes the “Word made flesh” of the Catholic Church. Christian texts are allegories to the archaic mysteries of the Cycle of Initiation, and keys to the once universal mystery-language. When esoterically interpreted, they reveal their fundamental identify with the same Universal Truths. By imposing the dogma of the “Word made flesh,” the Latin Church is diametrically opposed to the tenets of Eastern Occultism, thus maintaining an abyss between East and West as long as neither yields an inch. Today’s Christians are the usurpers of a name they no longer understand. By denying the Divine Logos to any other man, except Jesus of Nazareth, the Churches carnalised the Christos of the Gnostics, and that alone prevents them having any point in common with the disciples of the Archaic Wisdom. The Church of Rome was Gnostic, just as much as the Marcionites were, until the middle of the second century. Further evidence that Rome has wandered farthest from the real religion of the mystical Christ is that it adopted the solar tonsure proper to the Egyptian priests of the public temples, and to the lamas and bonzes of the popular Buddhist cult. No “sacrificial victim” can be united with Christ triumphant before passing through the stage of the suffering Chrēst, who was put to death on the cross of his passions. It is the light of the glorious Christ-Spirit that directs the modern Theosophical movement. The Astronomical Christ can have only one anniversary of birth and resurrection in years because his parents are the Sun and the Moon, the heavenly bodies that accompany “the Man crucified in Space.” Paul had been converted not to the Jesus of Nazareth but to the Christos of the Gnostics. In his Epistles he has been made to fulminate against the heretics — Peter, James, and the other Apostles! The sacred fire which Prometheus “stole” from the gods is the flame of self-consciousness, the spark that quickened the human mind. The supposed “theft” of the sexual flame is the outcome of evolution, of which the Darwinian theory is but the rough exterior husk on the material plane. Since men had discovered the secret of physical creation, and were procreating in their turn, what was the use of god-creators? The true Christ is the glorious Ego, triumphant over the flesh. We solemnly reject the dogma of Ascension, which degrades the great mystery of Universal Unity. Mysteries were invented by those who are bend on exercising power in order to manipulate the ignorant by arrogating the prerogative of gods. Did you know that the “mysteries” of the Catholic Church are those of the Brahmanas, though under other names? Part 3. Abbe Roca counter-responds to Madame Blavatsky’s observations. Part 4. Madame Blavatsky debunks Abbe Roca’s mistaken notions concerning her observations. The Abbé has consigned the theological Christ to the background, and has not breathed a word about the esoteric Christos. Moreover, he bears me a grudge for having displayed what he pleases to call “such erudition.” He deceives himself in fancying he understands Buddhism but he does not know it even exoterically, any more than Hinduism, even in its popular form. Theosophy is neither Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, Mohammedanism, Hinduism, nor any other –ism: it is the esoteric synthesis of the world’s religions, philosophies, and sciences. Abbé Roca has fabricated for himself a Christianity of his own. Our Masters are far too great to bedizen themselves with the peacock’s feathers of infallibility. The puff of wind which knocks down a house of cards may easily pass for a heavy squall in the eyes of the architect who built it; but if the Abbé lays the blame on the puff, rather than on the weakness of his edifice, this is certainly not my fault. The homage he renders to the wisdom of our Masters, instead of intoxicating me by its heady fumes as he alleges, it made me feel an even deeper mistrust of his motives. A divine Christ has never existed under a human form outside the imagination of blasphemers, who have carnalised a universal and wholly impersonal principle. The Man-God of the Christians was never historical person. He is a deified personification of the glorified type of the great Hierophants of the Temples, and his story as told in the New Testament is a mere allegory, assuredly containing profound esoteric truths, but still an allegory. Matthew’s “strait is the gate and narrow is the way” applies neither to the Abbé nor to his faith. In his Church, the way and the gate to heaven become wider in proportion to the sums paid by the faithful. The Churches, which style themselves “Christian,” are nothing but whited sepulchres filled with the dead bones of esoteric paganism and moral putrefaction. It is infinetly more difficult, more meritorious, and more godlike, to live for the love of, whether man or an ideal, than to die for it. We have thus shown to the Abbé what we, Occultists, know as opposed to what some Fathers of the Church believed they knew. Not only he deceives himself, he is hopelessly optimistic. Though I amply elaborated upon the real Christ, i.e., the impersonal pre-Christian Logos, Abbé Roca keeps reverting back to the ecclesiastical and dogmatic Christ of his Church. Part 5. Abbe Roca’s final response, annotated by Madame Blavatsky. Part 6. Fearless Roca was finally defrocked for coquetting too openly with Theosophy. Alas! His glorious dream of a reconciliation between Pantheistic Theosophy and a Socialistic Latin Church, under a Caesaro-Papal head, came to an abrupt end.

Download or read book Early theosophical doctrines expounded by H P Blavatsky written by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Alfred Percy Sinnett, Tallapragada Subba Row, Boris de Zirkoff and published by Philaletheians UK. This book was released on 2024-06-11 with total page 37 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Secrets of Nature and of Occult Sciences cannot be revealed to the profane, who will desecrate them and turn into a weapon against humanity. They can only be imparted to a regular chela of many years’ standing, pledged to silence and secrecy during his successive initiations. Such Secrets do exist and are defended with one’s life. Occult Truth is Nature without the illusory veil of the Five Senses. Reason is purely human; instinct, an endowment of Deity. Sixth Sense is Reason over instinct, i.e., Mental Fire perceiving and registering the other Five. The Sixth Sense is spiritual clairvoyance, as opposed to psychic. The former is normal and real; the latter, abnormal and counterfeit. Not before developing his Sixth Sense, will the man of science concede the error of his theories as to the solar spectrum, unless he retracts his marked weakness for conditional and disjunctive syllogisms ending in eternal dilemmas. Appearances are deceitful, says a Master of Wisdom. While the astronomer has elucidated the visible relations of the orbs of space, he knows nothing of their inner constitution. Similarly, the knowledge of geologist and physiologist is confined to man’s outer shell. The Adept cannot cross bodily the limits of the solar system, yet he knows that far stretching beyond the telescopic power of detection there are systems upon systems, the smallest of which would, when compared with the system of Sirius, make the latter seem like an atom of dust imbedded in the great Gobi desert. Divine Wisdom alone can carry us to the perfect state of Jivanmukta, by teaching us what is true and what is false. Till then, the next best thing to learning what is true is to ascertain what is not true. With biographical notes on Frederick W.H. Myers, Sir William Crookes, and Johann Karl Friedrich Zöllner.

Download or read book Madame Blavatsky on a Christian minister who was lost in God written by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and published by Philaletheians UK. This book was released on 2024-06-11 with total page 13 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Man is truly the temple of God, for the Divine Principle can only be manifested (objectivised) to our consciousness through our senses, physical and spiritual. The “personal God” of Theosophist can only be perceived by his Higher Self, through his spiritual senses, i.e., the Divine Self is perceived by the self of the virtuous man. With diagram on “Theosophia: Fountain, Perspectives, Practice.”

Download or read book Madame Blavatsky on the Vishishtadvaita Philosophy written by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and published by Philaletheians UK. This book was released on 2018-05-12 with total page 21 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Parabrahman (Absoluteness) is the One and Only Reality, an unthinkable and unspeakable state of Ultimate Subjectivity. Ishvara is Conscious Universal Mind (Second Logos), not the personal God and Master. Vishishtadvaita Philosophy in a nutshell. 1 The Vishishtadvaitis are a sect of Vedantins; refusing to accept dualism, they place willy-nilly the origin of evil and good in Parabrahman. 2 They believe that the sun-souls attract lost earth-souls, and direct them to the path that leads to Nirvana. 3 They refer to Advaitis as Buddhists in disguise. 4 Refined Vishishtadvaitism is Ancient Magianism. Madame Blavatsky comments on the non-dualistic philosophy of Vishishtadvaita, and distinction between Impersonal and Personal God. With key metaphysical concepts by the Series Editor.

Download or read book Madame Blavatsky against Spiritualism written by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and published by Philaletheians UK. This book was released on 2020-06-12 with total page 85 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There are Spirits and Spirits; High Planetary Spirits who have been human beings millions of ages since, and upon other besides our own planet; there are the illusionary appearances of these, projected upon the intra-psychic screen of our mediumistic, hence confused, perceptions; and there are seers and mediums, as there are great men of science, willing and sincere, but ignorant tyros. Spiritualism has spawned almost as many books as a herring does eggs. There can be no spiritual intercourse, either with the souls of the living or the dead, unless it is preceded by self-spiritualization, the conquest of selfishness, and the unfoldment of the nobler powers within us. Spiritualism and Theosophy are mere opinions and beliefs, and nothing more. They can no more claim to be regarded as “facts” than any other emotional belief, for the facts of one will be delusion in the eyes of the other. Spiritualists and Theosophists fully agree that there are higher and pure spirits outside the realm of our physical senses. But they entirely disagree as to the nature and causal agency of “communicating intelligences.” The “disembodied spirits,” instead of having become the wiser for being rid of the physiological impediments and the restraints of their gross material senses, would seem to have become far more stupid, far less perspicacious and, in every respect, worse than they were during their earthly life. As nations became restricted by their own tongue, the once-universal Mystery Language is being gradually denied to subsequent generations. While the disciples of Eastern Occultism are trying to purify matter, Western Spiritualists are striving to degrade spirit. Spiritualists and Theosophists travel along a parallel, if not quite identical, path. Yet, to those bereft of a metaphysico-spiritual vocabulary, Eastern Occultism will remain impassable to the babel tower of modern thought, caused by ignorance of the true meaning of words and their synonyms, a skin deep learning leading to mistaken notions, and the tendency of elevating misconceptions to the dignity of dogmas. If people would stop speculating, and would simply stick to substantiated fact, truth would be more readily attained in each and every case. Truth stands higher than any earthly consideration ever will. Let each of us show our facts and give our explanations; and let those who are neither Occultists, Spiritualists, nor sceptics, adjudicate between the contestant parties. The world must learn at last, under the penalty of falling back to superstitious beliefs in the biblical devil, why such phenomena do so happen, and to what cause or causes they are to be attributed. New Dispensation is the latest folly of dogmatic Christianity. We are not acquainted with a god who thinks, plots, rewards, punishes, and repents. The only god whom we serve is humanity, and our only cult is love of our fellow man. This our religion and dogma. Men have done their best to replace the solar rays with the false glare of error and fiction; none more so than the bigoted, narrow-minded theologians and priests of every faith, the sophists and perverters of the Spirit of Truth. Parsifal is the theatrical representation of good and evil in a supreme struggle. It is our universe, saved through atonement; it is sin redeemed through grace, and the triumph of faith and charity. Thus far, Pilate’s “What is truth?” has never been sufficiently answered to the satisfaction of narrow-minded sectarians. The Theosophical Society upholds and advocates only corroborated facts and Truth, and nothing but the Truth, whencesoever and from whomsoever it may come. Our views have to stand or fall upon their own merit, since we claim neither divine revelation nor infallibility. We will not serve Truth and Falsehood at the same time. Our policy is war to death to every unproved dogma, superstition, bigotry, and intolerance.

Download or read book Madame Blavatsky on the Force of the Mineral Monas written by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and published by Philaletheians UK. This book was released on 2018-08-07 with total page 9 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Mineral Monas is One and Indivisible, a form of Prakriti; the higher animal and human monases are countless. The One Monas bear no relation to atoms or molecules: the latter are ordered and progressive manifestations of the energy inherent in the Monas, unfolding from abstract to concrete — which itself has not yet become individualized. As monases are uncompounded things, it is the spiritual essence and force of the Divine Monas which vivifies them in their degrees of differentiation, and which constitutes properly The Monas — not the atomic aggregation of matter that is only the vehicle and the substance through which thrill the lower and higher degrees of intelligences.

Download or read book The master key to all imponderables of the nebular theory is the Cosmogony of the Archaic Doctrine written by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and published by Philaletheians UK. This book was released on 2024-06-11 with total page 11 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Like bricks already baked, of various qualities, shapes and colour, that are no longer formless clay but have become fit units of a future wall, the cloud of dust and gas between stars is the storehouse of the materials from which new stars, planets, and other celestial bodies are produced. It is thus that star-clusters are destroyed by the Architects of the visible Universe, but to be rebuild and fashioned into new Worlds. The matter within our Solar system is in an entirely different state from that which is outside or beyond the system. Since the three dimensions (length-breadth-thickness) belong only to one characteristic of matter, i.e., extension, common sense justly rebels against the suggestion that there can be more than three. The Septenary Constitution of Space will become visible when the so-called “fourth dimension of space,” i.e., the Sixth characteristic of matter and harbinger of the Sixth Sense, is fully awakened. The turn of a four-dimensional plane of the world (the realm of atoms) is near, but till then the puzzle of the astronomer will continue until his concepts reach the natural dimensions of visible invisible space in its septenary completeness. Gravity is an obsolete law in starry heaven. Among the materialists, gravity is the summit of the all-potent imponderables. But among the students of the Sacred Science, gravity in one of the attributes of differentiation manifested as the Law of Attraction and Repulsion between various states of matter. The arrangement of the nebulae suggests that some other force than gravitation was the active agent. The Solar System is as much the Microcosm of One Macrocosm, as man is the former when compared with his own little solar cosmos.

Download or read book Is the Sun a mere cooling mass written by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and published by Philaletheians UK. This book was released on 2017-08-23 with total page 11 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beyond the cosmic veil, the heart and head of our Solar System rotates and beats; externally is spread its robe, the nature of which is not matter, whether solid, liquid, or gaseous, but vital electricity, condensed and made visible.

Download or read book Shankara was a contemporary of Patanjali and his Chela written by Tallapragada Subba Row, Boris Mikhailovich de Zirkoff and published by Philaletheians UK. This book was released on 2018-04-03 with total page 24 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Antiquity of the Atlanto Aryan tribes in Europe written by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and published by Philaletheians UK. This book was released on 2018-06-07 with total page 26 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Occult records make no difference between the Atlantean ancestors of the old Greeks and those of the Romans. The blood of the true Roman was Hellenic from the outset. With the exception of a few Latin families, descendants of Umbro-Sabellian stock from the East, the bulk of the “Founders of Rome” were assorted remnants of primitive tribes. The old Romans were Hellenes in a new ethnological disguise; the still older Greeks, the real blood ancestors of the succeeding Romans, i.e., Aeolians, Dorians and Ionians, were the dwarfed and weak remnants of the Atlantean Race. The Aeolians were a small tribe of the last sub-race of Atlanteans that survived when Plato’s Poseidonis, the very last island of Atlantis, sank as recently as 12 millennia ago. A number of small islands scattered around Poseidonis had been vacated, in consequence of earthquakes long before the final catastrophe. One of the small tribes, the Aeolians, who had become islanders after emigrating from far Northern countries, had to leave their home again for fear of a deluge. Through their original connection with the emerging Aryan race, the old Aeolians were Atlanteans not only by the power of their long residence in the now submerged continent, covering some thousands of years, but also by the free intermingling of blood, i.e., intermarriage with the new race. They sailed from beyond the Pillars of Hercules (Atlantic Ocean), and settled in the land of Pyrrha or Red, the oldest name of Thessaly, which they named Aeolia. In that mythical age, Greece, Crete, Sicily, Sardinia, and many other islands of the Mediterranean were simply the faraway possessions or colonies of Atlantis. The legend that the ancient forefathers of the Thessalonians, so renowned for their magical feats, had come from behind the Pillars of Hercules, and the critical moment when the Epireans crossed the Pindus bent on expelling the black magicians from their home to Bœotia, make perfect sense to the Occultist. The fable of Prometheus relates to the extinction of the civilized portions of the Fourth Race, whom he saved partially as seed for future humanity. Its origin antecedes the destruction of Poseidonis by more than 70 millennia. There was a time when the Indian peninsula was at one end of the line, and South America at the other, connected by a belt of islands and continents. For Atlantis was not merely the name of one island but that of a whole continent, many of whose isles and islets have to this day survived. Consentes, Complices, and Novensiles, were disguised relics of the Atlanteans. Though the last island of Atlantis perished 12 millennia ago, the Aryan Race had begun evolving nearly 1000 millennia earlier.

Download or read book Like the Phoenix of lore Arts and Sciences die only to revive written by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and published by Philaletheians UK. This book was released on 2020-09-10 with total page 10 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Whether the West had any right to impose upon Universal History the untrustworthy chronology of a small and unknown Jewish tribe and reject, at the same time, every data as every other tradition furnished by the classical writers of non-Jewish and non-Christian nations is questionable. Had it not been for the efforts of a few Alexandrian and other mystics, Platonists and heathen philosophers, Europe would have never laid her hands even on those few Greek and Roman classics she now possesses. And, having no Past of record themselves, the European critics, historians, and archæologists have not scrupled to deny one to others — whenever the concession excited a sacrifice of biblical prestige. If these incompetent builders of Universal History can persuade their public to accept as authoritative their chronological and ethnological reveries, why should the Eastern student, who has access to quite different and more trustworthy materials, be expected to join in the blind belief of those who defend Western historical infallibility? When the fury of critical bigotry has quite subsided, and Western men are prepared to write History in the interest of truth alone, will the proofs be found of the cyclic law of civilization. Europe has neither the Titanic and Cyclopean masonry of the Ancients, nor even its parchments to preserve the records of its “existing arts and languages.”

Download or read book Date of Gautama Buddha s disincarnation written by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Tallapragada Subba Row and published by Philaletheians UK. This book was released on 2018-03-17 with total page 20 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book India is the Mother of Greece written by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Edward Pococke and published by Philaletheians UK. This book was released on 2022-03-10 with total page 25 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Myths are now proved to be fables, just in proportion as we misunderstand them; truths, in proportion as they were once understood. Western ignorance is a Hellenic inheritance, much of it the result of Hellenic vanity. See how the European Orientalist has raised himself to the eminence of a philological oracle. In ascribing chronological dates to Indian antiquities, Anglo-Indian as well as European archæologists are often guilty of the most ridiculous anachronisms. Greek chronology is too defective, too bombastic, and too diametrically opposed to fact, to inspire with confidence anyone less prejudiced than the European Orientalist. Comparative mythology bear witness that the religious ideas of the Greeks and most of their gods were derived from the religions flourishing in the northwest of India, the cradle of the main Hellenic stock. Let hypothesis prevail, even though the heavens may fall. As Yavanacharya was the Indian title of a single Greek, Pythagoras, so Shankaracharya was the title of a single Hindu philosopher. Yavanani does not mean Greek writing, it means any foreign writing. The Aryan Mahabharata and the Homeric Trojan War belong to the same cycle of events: both epics are mythical as to personal biographies and fabulous supernumeraries, yet perfectly historical in the main. The Greeks besmirched their noble ancestry by belittling their Hierophants as Troglodytes! Three Hierarchs represented Budhistical and Brahmanical power in pre-Homeric Greece. While the political power of Sri-B’dho-Lemos or Triptolemos was formidable, the cave-dwelling Budhist Priests or Sroo-cula-dutæ, Lords of the Cave, who protected their secret doctrines from profanation, are today belittled as Troglodytai. Further examples of the profound Brahmanical influence in Greece are the Goghos, or Cow-Killer, who became Kakos, i.e., bad. And Soo-Bhoo-ya, or one engaged in abstract meditation, became Sophos, i.e., Wise. Despatis or Land-Lord became Despotes, thus marking the transition from Oligarchic privilege to Democratic tyranny. Sanskrit is the Mother of Greek. As Ouranos destroyed his children from Gaia, so Kronos destroyed his from Rhea. This is an allusion to the fruitless efforts of Earth or Nature alone to create real human men. An auspicious prophecy: the Greek language will wake up once more after the Sanskrit goes to sleep. With glossary of pre-Homeric Indo-Grecian terms.

Download or read book The Mysteries of New Orleans written by Baron Ludwig von Reizenstein and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2003-05-22 with total page 596 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most scandalous books published in America at the time. "Reizenstein's peculiar vision of New Orleans is worth resurrecting precisely because it crossed the boundaries of acceptable taste in nineteenth-century German America and squatted firmly on the other side . . . This work makes us realize how limited our notions were of what could be conceived by a fertile American imagination in the middle of the nineteenth century."—from the Introduction by Steven Rowan A lost classic of America's neglected German-language literary tradition, The Mysteries of New Orleans by Baron Ludwig von Reizenstein first appeared as a serial in the Louisiana Staats-Zeitung, a New Orleans German-language newspaper, between 1854 and 1855. Inspired by the gothic "urban mysteries" serialized in France and Germany during this period, Reizenstein crafted a daring occult novel that stages a frontal assault on the ethos of the antebellum South. His plot imagines the coming of a bloody, retributive justice at the hands of Hiram the Freemason—a nightmarish, 200-year-old, proto-Nietzschean superman—for the sin of slavery. Heralded by the birth of a black messiah, the son of a mulatto prostitute and a decadent German aristocrat, this coming revolution is depicted in frankly apocalyptic terms. Yet, Reizenstein was equally concerned with setting and characters, from the mundane to the fantastic. The book is saturated with the atmosphere of nineteenth-century New Orleans, the amorous exploits of its main characters uncannily resembling those of New Orleans' leading citizens. Also of note is the author's progressively matter-of-fact portrait of the lesbian romance between his novel's only sympathetic characters, Claudine and Orleana. This edition marks the first time that The Mysteries of New Orleans has been translated into English and proves that 150 years later, this vast, strange, and important novel remains as compelling as ever.