Miracles Are Natural Phenomena from Occult Causes

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Down to Earth Series · 8 pages

An eight-page compilation from Blavatsky, headed “Magic is a Science and an Art” and opened by a five-point abstract. The text is set in a two-column arrangement with the abstract points running down the margin against the passages that support them, and carries an epigraph from Montaigne on never having seen a greater monster or miracle than himself.

The abstract states the whole case in advance. Miracles are natural phenomena resulting from occult causes, and the admission of a miracle implies ignorance of its cause; as soon as phenomena can be produced at will, what had been thought impossible becomes possible; psychic phenomena, always objective, are the outcome of psychological glamour, while occult phenomena, though often subjective, rest on realities generally hidden from the profane; and magic is a science and an art, sorcery when arcane knowledge is misapplied and true magic or wisdom when it is used beneficently. The text then supplies the passages behind each point. The central statement is that no miracle ever did or ever will occur, but that strange phenomena falsely styled miraculous always did occur, are occurring, and will to the end of time — that these are natural, and that when the fact reaches materialistic sceptics, science will move by leaps and bounds toward the truth it has long been groping after. The distinguishing mark of the occultist is given as method rather than credulity: shown an unfamiliar phenomenon he will not affirm a priori that it is either a trick or a miracle, but will search for the cause in the region of causes.

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