Superstition: The Sewer of Dogmatic Creeds

Dr CA Bartzokas · Down to Earth Series · 9 pages

First published in The Theosophist Vol. III (3), December 1881, pages 60–62, and reprinted in Blavatsky Collected Writings III pages 348–55 under the title “Superstition.” The head-note extends the metaphor: the sewer of dogmatic creeds and blind faith carrying off the putrid waters of the Chaldeo-Noachian deluge to the present day. The sentence that gives the file its title is used as the opening heading of “The fear of number thirteen” in this same series, which applies the general argument to one particular case.

The article opens with the impression it means to overturn — that owing to the reports of superficial and prejudiced travellers, and to their ignorance of Asiatic religions and often of their own, Western nations generally believe no people are as stupidly superstitious as the non-Christian populations of India, China and other countries called heathen. It gives the examples usually offered: the future happiness of a father's soul staked on whether a crow accepts or rejects the rice-ball of the Śrāddha ceremony, and the belief of the Kolhapur conspirators that owl's eyes worn as an amulet make the bearer invulnerable. It grants the point without hesitation — such superstitions are as degrading as they are ridiculous. The reversal then follows: whoever affirms that such beliefs are limited to paganism, or are the direct result of the heathen religions alone, is greatly mistaken or grossly unjust. They are international, and are described as the cumulative production of countless generations of the arts of an unconscientious clergy of every religion in every age. The mechanism named is a policy rather than a doctrine — subjecting the ignorant masses by working on their untutored imaginations and credulous fears, with the object of reaching the purse by way of the soul, practised by priest upon layman from the first dawn of history to the present.

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