Fetching
One moment.
1Por ora parte, también las personas obesas encontrarán, al comienzo, mucha dificultad en la flexión del tronco; pero, a medida que, con el ejercicio, la gordura en exceso se va quemando y los movimientos articulares se hacen más amplios, podrán realizar esta Asana con mayor facilidad para llegar a su perfecta ejecución.
2A todos aquellos que, por falta de elasticidad, obesidad, etc., no pueden llegar a completar la perfecta realización de la Paschimottasana, recomendamos que, al comienzo realicen media postura, es decir: flexionar el tronco y agarrar el dedo grueso del pie con la mano correspondiente, pudiendo alternar el ejercicio a la derecha y a la izquierda.
3Cuando después de cierto tiempo las articulaciones se hayan hecho más elásticas, podrán realizar toda la Asana.
4Resultados. – Los efectos benéficos de la Paschimottasana pueden ser resumidos así: 1) Activación de la corriente fluídica por el llamado Suschumna o Brahama Nadj75.
52) Activación del “fuego gástrico”, lo que permite intensificar y armonizar las funciones digestivas.
63) Aumento del “tono” del hígado y bazo.
7Todos sabemos que el sol nos inunda con su calor, luz y color y que es la fuente de nuestra vida.
8Nuestro cuerpo vive absorbiendo energía solar, y una de las funciones de la parte etérica del bazo es precisamente absorber esta energía y transformándola, individualizarla en vida humana.
9La fuerza vital, invisible a nuestros ojos físicos, pero perfectamente visible para los yoguis y los videntes, se manifiesta como una infinidad de partículas etéricas en continuas vibraciones que, al ser absorbidas por el bazo adquieren un color rosado pálido y, una vez penetradas en el cuerpo, son canalizadas en todas direcciones.
10En un hombre sano, el bazo funciona activamente y la fuerza vital puede ser completamente individualizada y ser irradiada en todas direcciones; en caso contrario, esta función no se cumple completamente y, como consecuencia el organismo sufre por debilitamiento o carencia de esta fuerza vital.
11La Paschimottasana activa el primer proceso y permite así todas las disfunciones del bazo y el hígado.
124) Oxidación del exceso de grasas en los diversos depósitos orgánicos, especialmente en el vientre.
135) Aumento del tono y de la elasticidad de todos los músculos que entran en acción: los abdominales, los de la columna vertebral, los de los muslos, de las piernas y de los brazos y, por lo tanto, aumento de la circulación sanguínea.
146) Tonificación de los músculos lisos de la pared intestinal con el consiguiente aumento de los movimientos peristálticos y desaparición gradual del estreñimiento.
157) Aumento de la actividad de la glándula tiroides y tonificación de los músculos del cuello, con la consiguiente desaparición gradual de las arrugas de la piel del cuello, especialmente en las mujeres.
168) Cura de las inflamaciones del hígado y de las gastritis debido a hiperclorhidria.
179) Cura del lumbago y de los dolores reumáticos debido a mala circulación de la sangre en las regiones afectadas.
The source text as printed, transcribed diplomatically. Where the source language uses a non-Latin script that reaches us only through a Victorian romanisation, this layer is labelled transliteration, because that is what we hold.
1On the other hand, obese persons will also find much difficulty at first in bending the trunk; but as, with exercise, the excess fat is burned away and the joint movements become ampler, they will be able to perform this Asana with greater ease and to reach its perfect execution.
2To all those who, through lack of elasticity, obesity and so forth, cannot reach the perfect performance of the Paschimottanasana, we recommend that at first they perform the half posture — that is, bend the trunk and grasp the great toe of one foot with the corresponding hand, alternating the exercise to right and to left.
3When after a certain time the joints have become more elastic, they will be able to perform the whole Asana.
4Results. — The beneficial effects of the Paschimottanasana may be summarised thus: 1) Activation of the fluidic current by the so-called Sushumna or Brahma Nadi [Glossary 75].
52) Activation of the “gastric fire”, which allows the digestive functions to be intensified and harmonised.
63) Increase of the “tone” of the liver and spleen.
7We all know that the sun floods us with its heat, light and colour, and that it is the source of our life.
8Our body lives by absorbing solar energy, and one of the functions of the etheric part of the spleen is precisely to absorb this energy and, transforming it, to individualise it into human life.
9The vital force, invisible to our physical eyes but perfectly visible to yogis and seers, manifests as an infinity of etheric particles in continual vibration which, on being absorbed by the spleen, take on a pale rose colour and, once entered into the body, are channelled in all directions.
10In a healthy man the spleen functions actively and the vital force can be completely individualised and radiated in all directions; otherwise this function is not fully performed, and in consequence the organism suffers from weakening or want of this vital force.
11The Paschimottanasana activates the first process and so relieves all the dysfunctions of the spleen and the liver.
124) Oxidation of the excess fats in the various organic deposits, especially in the belly.
135) Increase of the tone and elasticity of all the muscles brought into action — the abdominals, those of the spinal column, of the thighs, the legs and the arms — and therefore an increase of the blood circulation.
146) Toning of the smooth muscles of the intestinal wall, with the consequent increase of the peristaltic movements and gradual disappearance of constipation.
157) Increase of the activity of the thyroid gland and toning of the muscles of the neck, with the consequent gradual disappearance of the wrinkles of the skin of the neck, especially in women.
168) Cure of inflammations of the liver and of gastritis due to hyperchlorhydria.
179) Cure of lumbago and of rheumatic pains due to poor circulation of the blood in the affected regions.
Our translation, period-faithful. Citable as our translation, never as the source.
Here the article states the real difference between the two branches, and does not pretend it is small: Bricaud's Martinism excluded mixed initiation and admitted only masons, and therefore grew more slowly than Papus's "by virtue of the necessity of gathering only masons and of excluding women". Montevideo follows Papus, and says so.
And then the generosity: although Bricaud's branch went another way, "all who work for the same ideal… ought to feel themselves brothers", and he is commemorated every 21 February regardless. The magazine states a disagreement and then refuses to make it a quarrel.
The correct date, in the body of the article: Bricaud died 21 February 1934, aged 53, having named Chevillon his successor. Chevillon was alive when this was printed and was murdered in March 1944, fourteen months later.
"1872 – CEDAIOR – 1943." The founder of the South American Martinist Order died on 22 January 1943, three weeks before this number went out, and the magazine announces it in five lines with the biography promised for the next issue. Nº 9 p. 2, printed the month before, had described him installing the Kabbalistic Order of the Rose-Cross at Curitiba in 1927 and continuing as its President "in Active Silence". This is the last issue in which he is written of as living.
The 21st of February carries three commemorations at once — Willermoz, the Unknown Martinists, and Bricaud — and the issue gives one article to each. It is the only number in the run built entirely around a single date.
Willermoz was indeed a contemporary of Martines de Pasqually and the pivotal figure of Lyon masonry. The dates here are close but not exact against the standard references, which give his birth as 10 July 1730 rather than the 1st, and his death as 29 May 1824 rather than the 20th. The internal arithmetic holds either way: 1730 to 1824 is the 94 years the article states.
The meeting that matters: Willermoz, in Paris on silk business in early 1767, is initiated by Martines de Pasqually into the Rite of the Élus Coëns — "the basis of the future Martinism". The article is careful to date it and to explain why he was in Paris at all, which is the kind of detail that makes a chronology checkable.
A striking piece of internal criticism: Martines protests that Willermoz was raised to Rose-Croix prematurely by a badly executed ceremonial, and predicts it will mark his whole initiatic life. The article then endorses the prediction — "Willermoz never achieved much either in the magical or in the mystical way". A commemorative piece that declines to flatter its subject.
The Convent des Gaules of 1778 and the Convent of Wilhelmsbad of 1782 are both historical, as is Willermoz's achievement in carrying the grades of Profès and Grand Profès — Élus Coën teaching in masonic dress — into the Strict Observance. The article's account of the backlash is also fair: the reform did not take in the lodges.
Willermoz's turn to magnetism in 1784 and his entry into "La Concorde" belong to the real Lyon story, and Mesmer was in France in exactly those years. The diagnosis of diseases in horses "afterwards verified by autopsy" is reported by the article, not evidenced.
The Cahier de l'Agent Inconnu is genuine and is the best-known document of the Lyon circle — revelations received from 1785 through a young woman described as a magnetic subject. The article calls this the summit of Willermoz's personal mystical career, and on the evidence of the archive that is a defensible judgement.
The verdict is the most honest sentence in the article: revere in him "not a great initiate but, especially, the man of heart", who attempted the hardest thing — "to try to re-spiritualise masonic rites" — and then, drily, "whoever has tried it knows what it means."
The closing point is made deliberately and is the magazine's own position: women have always had the right to be initiated in truly initiatic rites, and Willermoz initiated his own sister and Mlle. de Chevrier. It sets up the criticism of Bricaud two pages later for excluding them.
The heading is wrong. It prints "Jean Bricaud (1881–1943)"; the article itself gives his death correctly at p. 6 as 21 February 1934, at the age of 53 — which is right, and which is why the 21st of February is a commemoration at all. 1881 to 1934 is 53 years; 1881 to 1943 would be 62. The compositor appears to have set the current year. Marked [Sic] in the translation.
Two threads open here. Bricaud studied magnetism with Maître Philippe of Lyon — "Philippe Nizier (Amo)" — who reappears on p. 17 as one of the Masters most often seen or felt by members of the Order. And he studied Kabbalah with Jacques Charrot, "one of the disciples of Eliphas Lévi", which puts the magazine two steps from Lévi by its own account.
The chain of office is accurately given: Téder (Charles Détré) succeeded Papus and died on 25 September 1918, leaving the Memphis-Misraïm hierophancy vacant until Bricaud assumed it on 10 December 1919. The dates are the ones the Order's own records give.
The commemoration of the Unknown Martinists is analysed on three planes — moral, astral, spiritual — and the middle one is the most revealing: performing the ceremony is said to set the accumulated work of the dead vibrating in the terrestrial atmosphere and so to "re-vitalise the Invisible Current of the Order". Memory is treated as a mechanism, not a sentiment.
Paschimottanasana is correctly named and described — seated, legs extended, forehead to the knees, the great toes grasped — and the instruction to hold the breath throughout and to increase by one minute a day to a maximum of ten is specific enough to follow. The half posture offered to those who cannot fold is sound teaching.
The claims made for this posture are the most extensive in the run: cure of liver inflammation, gastritis, lumbago, rheumatic pain, haemorrhoids, constipation, and the disappearance of neck wrinkles. These are reproduced as printed and are not endorsed. The account of the spleen absorbing solar energy and individualising it as "pale rose" particles is period occult physiology, not anatomy.
The glossary on Ida, Pingala and Sushumna is accurate to the tradition: the left current negative and lunar, the right positive and solar, the central channel between them, with Sushumna also identified with the spinal cord. Naming Pingala "the Vehicle of the Gods" and locating the doctrine in a Taraka Raja Yoga school is a Theosophical framing rather than a Sanskrit one.
The annual report is the most administratively candid document in the run. The Grand Council grew from 13 members to 17; it aims at 21 "as it was in the time of Papus and as it ought to be, in accordance with our internal Law Nº 1". An occult order publishing its own constitutional arithmetic is unusual.
1,122 documents passed through the register, and the writer stops to note "the influence of the numbers 11 and 22". The count is real and the numerology is imposed on it — the same move as the fifteen conspirators becoming Tarot XV in Nº 9. Worth marking because the arithmetic elsewhere in this report is scrupulous.
The cash account reconciles, but only on the second of two figures given for receipts. A balance of $411.00 brought forward and a closing balance of $3,147.85 require receipts of $2,736.85 — which is the figure the article itself uses two lines later. The $2,736.65 printed here is a slip of two digits.
The most human passage in the volume. Outsiders ask, "fraternally", what these men live on — and the President answers in public, by name: Asuri Kapila, Surya and Pitágoras have small private incomes and live very modestly on them; Jehel gives language lessons. And then the detail that settles it: the Order owes Surya $550, more than a third of its annual dues income. Nobody is drawing from it; one of them is lending to it.
"In our Order the Degrees are not given away out of friendship nor sold for gain." The claim is then supported with numbers — 17 members raised across all grades in a year, out of hundreds — which is a low enough proportion to be credible.
Third statement of parentage in three issues: the review is "made in the image and likeness of the one Papus created". Nº 2.9 p. 1 said it of the body, Nº 1.6 p. 4 named him founder of both; here it is listed as one of the year's achievements.
And here the Ramana thread closes a circle. Among the currents the Order reports serving in 1942 is "The Ramana Ashrama (the Venerable Master Maharshi)" — the same ashram a Uruguayan contributor had described visiting in Nº 1, pp. 22–25. What read as one traveller's account turns out to have been an institutional relationship.
The stated directive is explicit and worth recording given what the run is screened for: a fraternal welcome to every teaching, eastern or western, "without preferences of race, of continent or of sect, and without the predominance of one sex over the other". Printed in February 1943.
The exhibition included portraits of "the Masters Maharshi and Saint-Martin" by Sister Fátima, and 106 works by Brother Sadananda including portraits of Peter Deunov and Krishnamurti. Deunov and Krishnamurti were living men in 1942. The Press has not located the catalogue; the works are recorded as described.
A three-month radio programme — "The Hour of the Mysterious Sciences", on La Voz del Aire — and a "Chain of Thought" of hundreds petitioning nightly at 21h30 for the sick. It was discontinued for want of money. This is the magazine at its most concretely institutional: a broadcast schedule, a station name, and an hour.
The cures reported here — a cardiac case given up by doctors, pulmonary lesions cicatrised in under three months, a "miraculous" operation, an obstetric intervention — are reproduced as printed and are not endorsed. No records are cited beyond the Order's own minutes, and no physician is named. Note that the writer himself sets "miraculous" in quotation marks and follows it with "(??)".
The five Masters said to be most often seen or felt are named: Amo (Maître Philippe of Lyon), Maharshi, Papus, Subrahmaniayananda and Aurobindo. Four of the five appear elsewhere in the run as historical figures with documented lives; the list reads as a map of the Order's actual affiliations rather than a pantheon.
Stanislas de Guaita and Helena Petrovna Blavatsky are named among beings seen on special occasions. The Press holds Guaita's Le Serpent de la Genèse, acquired for Nº 9 — so a figure the Order reports encountering in vision is one whose actual book now sits in the library beside this issue.
The balance sheet checks out almost everywhere and fails in two places. Correct: furniture 1,022.78 less 120 gives 902.78; publications 309.30 less 26.40 gives 282.90; cash 3,147.85 less 3,054.55 gives 93.30; the GIDEE contribution 410.16 less 44 gives 366.16; and both grand totals balance exactly at 9,699.84 and 4,309.88. Wrong: rents 1,775 less 600 is 1,175, not the 1,165 printed. And Objects of Worship at 230.60 less a deduction printed as 2.36 gives 228.24, not the 218.24 shown — the true deduction must be 12.36, a digit lost at the column edge. For a hand-set table of twenty accounts, two slips is a good showing.