The Project Gutenberg eBook, Occult Chemistry, by Annie Besant and Charles W. Leadbeater, Edited by A. P. Sinnett

Title: Occult Chemistry

Clairvoyant Observations on the Chemical Elements

Author: Annie Besant and Charles W. Leadbeater

Editor: A. P. Sinnett

Release Date: June 14, 2005 [eBook #16058]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

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OCCULT CHEMISTRY

Clairvoyant Observations on the
Chemical Elements

BY

ANNIE BESANT, p.t.s.

AND

CHARLES W. LEADBEATER

Revised Edition edited by A.P. Sinnett

London

THEOSOPHICAL PUBLISHING HOUSE

1, Upper Woburn Place, W.C. 1.

1919

EDITOR'S PREFACE.

When undertaking to prepare a new edition of this book I received permission from the authors to "throw it into the form in which you think it would be most useful at the present time." It was left to my discretion, "What to use and what to omit." I have not found it necessary to avail myself to any considerable extent of this latter permission. But as the contents of the book were originally arranged the reader was ill-prepared to appreciate the importance of the later research for want of introductory matter explaining how it began, and how the early research led up to the later investigation. I have therefore contributed an entirely new preliminary chapter which will, I hope, help the reader to realise the credibility of the results attained when the molecular forms and constitution of the numerous bodies examined were definitely observed. I have not attempted to revise the records of the later research in which I had no personal share, so from the beginning of Chapter III to the end the book in its present form is simply a reprint of the original edition except for the correction of a few trifling misprints.

I have thus endeavoured to bring into clear prominence at the outset the scientific value of the light the book sheds on the constitution of matter. The world owes a debt to scientific men of the ordinary type that cannot be over-estimated, but though they have hitherto preferred to progress gradually, from point to point, disliking leaps in the dark, the leap now made is only in the dark for those who will not realise that the progress to be accomplished by means of instrumental research must sooner or later be supplemented by subtler methods. Physical science has reached the conception that the atoms of the bodies hitherto called the chemical elements are each composed of minor atoms. Instrumental research cannot determine by how many, in each case. Occult research ascertained the actual number in some cases by direct observation and then discovered the law governing the numbers in all cases, and the relation of these numbers to atomic weights. The law thus unveiled is a demonstration of the accuracy of the first direct observations, and this principle once established the credibility of accounts now given as to the arrangement of minor atoms in the molecules of the numerous elements examined, seems to me advanced to a degree approximating to proof.

It remains to be seen—not how far, but rather how soon the scientific world at large will accept the conclusions of this volume as a definite contribution to science, blending the science of the laboratory with that variety that has hitherto been called occult.

CONTENTS.

OCCULT CHEMISTRY.

CHAPTER I.

A PRELIMINARY SURVEY.

The deep interest and importance of the research which this book describes will best be appreciated if introduced by an account of the circumstances out of which it arose. The first edition, consisting mainly of articles reprinted from the Theosophist, dealt at once with the later phases of the research in a way which, though intelligible to the occult student, must have been rather bewildering to the ordinary reader. These later phases, however, endow the earlier results with a significance that in the beginning could only be vaguely conjectured. I am the better entitled to perform the task that has been assigned to me—that of preparing the present edition—by reason of the fact that it was in my presence and at my instigation that the first efforts were made to penetrate the mystery previously enshrouding the ultimate molecule of matter.

I remember the occasion vividly. Mr. Leadbeater was then staying at my house, and his clairvoyant faculties were frequently exercised for the benefit of myself, my wife and the theosophical friends around us. I had discovered that these faculties, exercised in the appropriate direction, were ultra-microscopic in their power. It occurred to me once to ask Mr. Leadbeater if he thought he could actually see a molecule of physical matter. He was quite willing to try, and I suggested a molecule of gold as one which he might try to observe. He made the appropriate effort, and emerged from it saying the molecule in question was far too elaborate a structure to be described. It evidently consisted of an enormous number of some smaller atoms, quite too many to count; quite too complicated in their arrangement to be comprehended. It struck me at once that this might be due to the fact that gold was a heavy metal of high atomic weight, and that observation might be more successful if directed to a body of low atomic weight, so I suggested an atom of hydrogen as possibly more manageable. Mr. Leadbeater accepted the suggestion and tried again. This time he found the atom of hydrogen to be far simpler than the other, so that the minor atoms constituting the hydrogen atom were countable. They were arranged on a definite plan, which will be rendered intelligible by diagrams later on, and were eighteen in number.

We little realized at the moment the enormous significance of this discovery, made in the year 1895, long before the discovery of radium enabled physicists of the ordinary type to improve their acquaintance with the "electron." Whatever name is given to that minute body it is recognised now by ordinary science as well as by occult observation, as the fundamental unit of physical matter. To that extent ordinary science has overtaken the occult research I am dealing with, but that research rapidly carried the occult student into regions of knowledge whither, it is perfectly certain, the ordinary physicist must follow him at