Rider 3 (1902): Selected writings of a bestselling American author for a UK edition.
Inspired in 1843, at age 17, by an itinerant phrenologist and mesmerist, named Grimes, who lectured in Poughkeepsie on Animal Magnetism, Andrew Jackson Davis developed the central Spiritualist doctrine concerning the world beyond before the Rochester Knockings inaugurated modern Spiritualism. This spirit medium saw a thousand voices, a thousand mediums coming from the sphere he first entered, attesting to its general truth. His first book of revelations, The Principles of Nature, dictated by him under the "magnetic" influence, passed through at least forty-four American editions. The popular appeal of the Poughkeepsie seer marked an epoch of vast public interest in voices from the other side and what they had to say, with a doctrine that cast out all fear concerning the life to come. His Harmonial Philosophy, in a word, was that the world beyond is as natural as this world of ours; that it is neither the heaven nor hell of official Christianity; that it is simply this world spiritualised, and that men and women in their psychic bodies are as men and women here in the bodies of flesh, but working with the universal laws of love, abundance and order they are closer to, in alignment with higher spiritual beings – helpers innumerable – who oversee the welfare of all – earthly and stellar – in the perfect workings of what Swedenborg called the “one man God.” His followers were legion, but no one of them spoke as he did of a rainbow-belt among the star-clouds of the Milky Way as the world of disembodied souls. No one expressed any special view or concern about humanities of other planets and whether they proceed at death to that Second Sphere which receives souls from earth. No one created such a joyful account of order and love as the essence of the universe, with his Stellar Key to The Summer Land, whose celestial rivers he claims to have seen, an exalted academy of powerful spirits whose mission is the unification of mankind.
Now, the collected writings of Andrew Jackson Davis fill twenty-seven volumes, recording every conversation between magnetizer and scribe. On account of the position which he has occupied for a period of seventy years in a movement which numbers at this day many thousands of adherents in Great Britain and the Colonies alone, it has seemed to the present editor that it would be serviceable to them and others to present — in the form of a digest — the essential parts of his doctrine, philosophy and testimony to the world of spirits and the natural law therein. The result of that undertaking is offered in this volume. It is instructive to this editor, in the process of condensation, to encounter all the ways his Great Fountain of existence indwells physical structures with Divine Administration of harmonious and loving intention. “The Architect's Divine Idea is alone immortal, not the house which He builds,” he reminds the materialist. It was also very curious, in conclusion, to note the various points at which the Harmonial Philosophy of Davis is in quite unconscious harmony with the Hermetic Science, of which the editor claims to be a student, as also with the later theory of evolution. A few instances belonging to the first case have been cited in the notes, the most striking of all being his theory of a universal fluid, which corresponds to the Astral Light of the Martinists and to the Kabalistic so-called "light of glory." These analogies could have been traced further, but it exceeded the present undertaking, which appeals to a class of minds whose acquaintance with occult lore cannot be presupposed.
--
“Earth is too limited, and its materiality is too obvious for the soul. The human mind begins by taking a literal view of everything — whether spiritual or material. Its first apprehensions are confined strictly to the apparent, but wisdom, rising on wings of ideal forms or symbolism, penetrates to that which lives within, and so judges, not from appearances, but with a righteous judgment, or from the core to the outward. So does it render a true verdict concerning that which is interior, spiritual, eternal. For the human spirit is framed for perception and enjoyment of heavenly realities. It longs for its native eternity. All love of the beautiful, all aspirations for the fulness of truth, all yearning after purity attest the immortal existence in store for the spirit and to which, by virtue of origin and essence, it is indissolubly allied. All elements of our spirit are the property of the Summer Land to come, but men seek beauty primarily in order to invest this earthly existence with imperishable characteristics inseparable from our true home. The power of the soul to anticipate realities belonging to the Land of Spirit is so perfect that on its arrival there a sense of familiarity steals over the mind, as though it had many times before witnessed the same scene.”
“The true nature of causation must be regarded as the fundamental problem of science, for we can never know anything but causes and effects. Idealism and materialism are identical on this point. Both take it for granted that all Nature is but a dream-show, where phenomena are interlinked only by the bond of antecedent and consequent. But causation resides in mind, matter can never be a cause, and every phenomenon is the effect of intellectual force exerted by pure volition. All manifest substances are expressions of an interior productive cause, which is the spiritual essence. It was impossible for matter to exist without a principle of inherent production; in order that matter might pass from the formless to the state of forms there was action necessary on the part of the great vortex of Celestial Intelligence. Matter was developed as an external negative to the Positive Power within it; and thus positive and negative were established in matter. Thus was inaugurated the law of universal motion.”
“It has been said that the earth with its scarred face is the symbol of the past but that air and heaven are of futurity. The Harmonial Philosophy — recognizing in our soul’s immortality the application of Truth with Harmonial Love — is the closing form of the present cycle of destiny. In the opening future of this planet, it will shape and sway the interests of humanity. Its fontal inspiration and aurelian centre of attraction is the perfect love of all wisdom — meaning by wisdom the sum total of impersonal and eternal principles.”
From the Poet Tree record: Hiking to Sirius Through the White Tanks
