A LESSON

[Lucifer, Vol. II, No. 12, August, 1888,pp.497-98]

Regarding the first rule of Practical Occultism in the April number of your journal, it may not be known to many of your readers that in most of our (Hindu) rites and ceremonies, we have to use the “five coloured powders.” These are prepared in a particular way and then spread, one after the other, over a certain Yantsa. The arrangements of these colours are however different in Tantric and Vedic rites. Pundit Kalibar Vedantabagish, the renowned Vedantist of Bengal, has promised to give me a detailed account of these colours, but I doubt whether he will allow me to publish it.
Your note on Ultimate Philosophy (the last lines on page 141 of the April number) is not quite correct. According to our Shastras “the tortoise does NOT wag its tail in absolute void,” the whole is supported by Ananta Naga, which means, one who is endless and motionless. The Elephants (not one) are the Elephants of Space (Dig Gaza), and the tortoise is a particular manifestation of Vishnu.
It is hardly fair to condemn Sir Monier-Williams on account of his taking the “Boar’s flesh” in a literal sense, and then ridicule the Puranic allegories.
H. P. MUKERJI.
Berhampur (Bengal), 12th May, 1888.

EDITORS’ NOTE—It would indeed be very “unfair,” had the editor ever meant to “ridicule” the Purânic allegories. We are painfully alive to the fact,—if our critic, who, like most Hindus, can rarely see a joke, is not—that had we ridiculed a little more, and exalted a little less, the philosophy of the Purânic and other non-Christian Scriptures, we might have avoided being so much hated and pelted with printed mud as we have been for the last twelve years. The “note” in question was surely never meant to convey the accurate meaning, but simply the absurd image as perceived by some imaginative padris. We are sorry to see that even those whose religion and philosophies we have constantly defended against every unjust attack, misunderstand us more than most of our enemies. Let our severe Bengal critic know that though we have never either sought or expected any gratitude, yet we were sanguine enough to expect some show of justice—from the Hindus, at any rate. Our forthcoming work, The Secret Doctrine, will show whether we “ridicule” the Purnas.