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1La Psicología Trascendente Por WRONSKY, A. M.
2En los últimos años, se han hecho algunas tentativas para delimitar el verdadero campo de la Psicología Trascendente.
3No podemos asegurar si estas tentativas han tenido el éxito que de ellas se esperaba.
4Lo único seguro es que lograron despertar una curiosidad malsana en al gran público, siempre dispuesto a satisfacer los llamados de su egoísmo.
5Antes de entrar en materia, nos parece oportuno ofrecer una síntesis, breve y escueta, de las principales definiciones que, sobre Psicología, se han formulado hasta el presente.
6Pero ante todo debemos advertir que el término Psicología fue usado por primera vez al final del siglo XVI por el célebre reformador Protestante, amigo y colaborador de Lutero: Felipe Schwaerzerd Melanchton.
7En época anterior, la Psicología propiamente dicha, formaba un cuerpo de doctrina unido a la Metafísica, algunas veces a la Cosmología y también a la Física.
8Aristóteles fue le primero en componer un “Tratado del Alma” que puede considerarse como el precursor de la moderna Psicología.
9Sin embargo, esta ciencia, tal como hoy la entendemos, puede afirmarse que tiene su origen en Wundt, el cual publicó en 1873 su famoso tratado intitulado “Manual de Psicología Fisiológica”.
10Según Viqueira, esta obra refunde las diversas hipótesis, diluidas anteriormente en multitud de sistemas metafísicos.
11Veamos ahora las definiciones: Wunat: “La Psicología es la ciencia de la experiencia inmediata”.
12Roustan: “… la ciencia de la vida mental y de las leyes”.
13Ladd: “…la descripción y explicación de los estados de conciencia como tales”.
14W. James: “… el estudio de la conciencia humana”.
15Lavaissière: “… el estudio de los fenómenos de la conciencia”.
16Si continuáramos cotejando las demás definiciones propuestas, de las cuales haremos gracia al lector, comprobaríamos que todas ellas pueden ser reducidas a estas dos: 1º La Psicología es la ciencia que estudia la vida mental.
172º La Psicología es la ciencia que estudia los fenómenos de la conciencia.
18A primera vista se dirá que ambas definiciones son contradictorias, mientras la primera induce a pensar que la Psicología se ocupa de “toda” la mente, la segunda parecería afirmar que solamente se ocupa de “una parte” de la mente, la Conciencia.
19No hay tal, sin embargo.
20La diferencia está en que uso suponen que la mente se “divide” en partes, mientras los otros la conciben como un continuo.
21Ambos puntos de vista son igualmente exactos, pues si por un lado no es posible establecer en la mente solución alguna de continuidad, por otro es perfectamente razonable hablar de una vida consciente, inconsciente y aún superconsciente, al menos para fines normativos y didácticos.
22Más todas estas definiciones no bastan para abarcar toda la esfera conceptual de la Psicología Trascendente.
23Y no basta, porque la mente, tal como la concibe nuestra psicología, representa una función del cerebro y, en consecuencia, un producto milagroso de la actividad somática.
2411
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.
1Transcendent Psychology — By WRONSKY, A∴M∴
2In recent years some attempts have been made to delimit the true field of Transcendent Psychology.
3We cannot be sure whether these attempts have had the success expected of them.
4The only certain thing is that they succeeded in awakening an unhealthy curiosity in the general public, always disposed to satisfy the calls of its own egoism.
5Before entering upon the matter, it seems to us opportune to offer a brief and bare synthesis of the principal definitions of Psychology that have been formulated up to the present.
6But first of all we must observe that the term Psychology was used for the first time at the end of the sixteenth century by the celebrated Protestant reformer, friend and collaborator of Luther: Philipp Schwarzerd Melanchthon.
7In an earlier period, Psychology properly so called formed a body of doctrine joined to Metaphysics, sometimes to Cosmology and also to Physics.
8Aristotle was the first to compose a “Treatise on the Soul”, which may be considered the forerunner of modern Psychology.
9Nevertheless, this science as we understand it today may be said to have its origin in Wundt, who published in 1873 his famous treatise entitled “Manual of Physiological Psychology”.
10According to Viqueira, this work recasts the various hypotheses previously diluted through a multitude of metaphysical systems.
11Let us now see the definitions. Wundt [Sic: “Wunat” printed]: “Psychology is the science of immediate experience.”
12Roustan: “…the science of mental life and of its laws.”
13Ladd: “…the description and explanation of states of consciousness as such.”
14W. James: “…the study of human consciousness.”
15Lavaissière: “…the study of the phenomena of consciousness.”
16If we went on collating the other definitions proposed — which we shall spare the reader — we should find that all of them may be reduced to these two: 1st, Psychology is the science that studies mental life.
172nd, Psychology is the science that studies the phenomena of consciousness.
18At first sight it will be said that both definitions are contradictory: while the first leads one to think that Psychology deals with “the whole” of the mind, the second would seem to affirm that it deals only with “a part” of the mind, Consciousness.
19There is no such contradiction, however.
20The difference is that some [Sic: “uso” printed for “unos”] suppose the mind to be “divided” into parts, while the others conceive it as a continuum.
21Both points of view are equally exact; for if on the one hand no break of continuity can be established in the mind, on the other it is perfectly reasonable to speak of a conscious, unconscious and even superconscious life, at least for normative and didactic ends.
22But all these definitions do not suffice to embrace the whole conceptual sphere of Transcendent Psychology.
23And they do not suffice because the mind, as our psychology conceives it, represents a function of the brain and, consequently, a miraculous product of somatic activity.
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Our translation, period-faithful. Citable as our translation, never as the source.
The column ends by promising the subject a "sure improvement" and a cure that is "total and general". Set beside the same magazine's repeated insistence that readers verify rather than believe, the contrast is sharp: nothing here is offered for checking.
The second year opens by naming the model outright: Papus founded and directed L'Initiation in Paris, and it ran to a hundred pages a number. The Press now holds that review complete — 284 issues, 1888 to 1912 — so the comparison the editors draw can be checked. Their own first year was mimeographed at 250 copies; the Paris parent was a printed monthly of a hundred pages. The ambition is stated as a measurement, not a boast.
"In whose image and likeness our own was founded." This is the plainest statement of descent in the whole run: the Montevideo body is a deliberate refounding of Papus's Groupe Indépendant d'Études Ésotériques, publishing a review of the same name. Nº 6 p. 4 had named him as founder of both; here the magazine says what it is.
A precise piece of publishing history: eight months mimeographed at an average run of 250 copies, and from this number printed, with the run doubled and the page count nearly so. The change in the object itself is visible in the source — the earlier issues are retypes because no printed original survives to photograph.
The four founders named — Guaita, Papus, Barlet, Péladan — were the actual founders of the Kabbalistic Order of the Rose-Cross in Paris in 1888. The Press now holds three of the four: Papus's two treatises, *Guaita's Le Serpent de la Genèse (1891) and Péladan's Istar (1888), both acquired for this issue. Only Barlet is still missing — and Istar is itself listed in the sommaire of L'Initiation*'s very first number, October 1888.
The succession given — Guaita, then Barlet, then Papus — is accurate to the Order's own history, as is the role of Brother Teder (Charles Détré) as the link to the later French working under Bricaud and Chevillon. Note the date: Constant Chevillon was alive when this was printed in January 1943. He was murdered in March 1944, fourteen months later.
Two foundation dates for South America, given precisely: Cedaior creates the basis of the Martinist Order of South America from 1920, and installs the Kabbalistic Order of the Rose-Cross at Curitiba on 22 March 1927 — the equinox. The magazine is careful with these dates in a way it is not always careful with its quotations.
The barb is worth marking because it is evidence of a real quarrel: someone in Europe had written that Papus's work resembled "the class of the invertebrates" in the animal kingdom. The Montevideo editors cite it as their reason for independence — not doctrine, but an insult to the dead. Intra-Martinist politics surfacing in a magazine that usually keeps them out.
Lévi's tetrad again — knowing proved by willing, confirmed by daring, synthesised in keeping silent — here made the actual examination structure of the three Rose-Cross degrees, and glossed as an active silence. Its third appearance in the run, after Nº 3 p. 7 and Nº 6 p. 8, and the only one where it is put to administrative use.
This passage was raised by the automated screen for "nuestra raza". Read in full, "our race" here means the human race — the Hierarchs are described as watching over its needs and helping suffering humanity. It carries no hierarchy among races and makes no claim about races in the plural, which is what distinguishes it from the Nº 8 passage that was withheld. Retained, and recorded so the decision is auditable.
The Suddha Dharma Mandalam's public announcement of 1915 through Dr. Subramani Iyer is a real event, and the organisation is real, though its claim to an unbroken Himalayan hierarchy has been contested since it appeared. The dates given here — initiation 7 May 1915, further initiations in 1915 and 1923 — are the ones the movement's own literature gives.
The admission is the interesting part: there is at present no External Initiator. Jehel states that the authority died with Subrahmaniayananda in December 1924 and has not been conferred again — and then, on the next page, that he cannot initiate anyone into the order himself. A magazine claiming a Himalayan hierarchy also telling its readers that the door is shut is not doing what puffery does.
"AMAUTA" is the president of the Rosicrucian Fraternity of Uruguay — the body whose founder-president was named in Nº 1 p. 4 as Julio C. Hirian Corda, when his book entered the Order's library. The same institutional thread runs from the first issue's bibliography to this contributor's byline.
The therapeutic claims on this and the following page — that complete breathing will effect an improvement and cure no drug can, that soured milk and wholemeal bread will disinfect the intestines, that planetary aspects show deficient oxygenation — are reproduced as printed and are not endorsed. This is astrological diagnosis of a named living person's illness, offered as treatment, and no part of it should be acted on.
The reading turns on a number: fifteen conspirators, and so the fifteenth card of the Tarot, the Devil — pride, the temptation that threatens an initiate for as long as he is only an initiate. The card is correctly identified, and the interpretative move is the article's standard one, reading a count in the legend as a reference to the trumps.
Of the fifteen, twelve withdraw — the zodiacal number, "the part that feels natural harmony" — and three persist. The article gets a whole doctrine out of 15 = 12 + 3, and it is candid that this is interpretation rather than narrative.
The three blows are correctly given in their ritual order — the rule to the throat, the square to the breast, the mallet to the head — and are then read as three orders of injury to truth: to its form, to its life and law, and to its very principle. It is the most sustained piece of symbolic reading in the instalment.
"JUBELAM (a plural ending — take note)" is the writer catching something real in the ritual names and making it carry weight: the third assassin stands not for an individual fault but for organised, conscious enmity — "the black Magi, the Venal or Corrupted Associations". Whether the grammar bears the reading is another matter.
Raised by the automated screen for "LAS RAZAS". The sentence lists individuals, societies, nations and races as the kinds of agent that suffer the consequences of deforming truth. There is no hierarchy and no claim about races as such — the same reading on which the universalist passages of Nº 8 were retained. Retained, and recorded.
The instalment closes on a social reading of the legend: each stage of initiation is to bring the causes of social and individual ills to light and carry them before the powers, civil and initiatic, that can correct them. The Hiram story is being used as a warrant for public action, not withdrawal.
The classification is worked correctly against the chart built across Volume I: Jupiter and Venus in Cancer and the Wheel of Fortune in Capricorn give three bodies in cardinal signs; Sun, Moon and Mercury in Leo give three in fixed; Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Mars fall in common signs. The elemental sort that follows agrees with it.
"The TEN PLANETS of modern Astrology — that is, including Neptune, Uranus and the Wheel of Fortune." The Wheel of Fortune is a calculated point, not a body, and Papus had been quoted in Nº 3 refusing Uranus and Neptune outright. The course keeps its own counsel and counts all ten, without remarking on the disagreement with its authority.
The five accidental dignities are the traditional ones — angularity, direct motion, nearness to the midheaven, rising before the Sun, and mutual reception — and the article is honest that it applies only the first in the worked example. Its closing caution is a good one: two planets may be dignified in the same house without sharing a sign.
Wronsky returns — the byline that carried the Schopenhauer article in Nº 7 — now on transcendent psychology. Whoever wrote under it was the magazine's philosopher, and the two essays share a method: set two positions against each other, then dissolve the opposition by denying its terms.
The attribution of the word psychology to Melanchthon is the common story and is at best partial. The term is generally traced to Marulić early in the sixteenth century and to Goclenius in 1590; Melanchthon used it in lecturing but did not coin it. The article states a contested point as settled.
Wundt's Grundzüge der physiologischen Psychologie did appear in 1873–74, and taking it as the origin of psychology as a discipline is the orthodox view then and now. The roll of definitions that follows — Wundt, Roustan, Ladd, James, Lavaissière — is a real survey, not a decorative list.
And here the thread reaches Volume II. "It postulates the first hermetic principle, which says: The Universe is Mental" — the first Hermetic principle is the Kybalion's own phrasing for exactly this sentence. Wronsky is the same writer who in Nº 7 p. 20 credited it to the Emerald Tablet; here he uses the correct framing without naming the book. Across Nº 1, Nº 3, Nº 5, Nº 7 and now Nº 9, the magazine circles one borrowed maxim and lands on the right description at last.
The move is characteristic: where scientific psychology asks whether mind reaches object or object reaches mind, transcendent psychology answers that the question is malformed, since both are in one continuum. The same dissolution of a false alternative that the Schopenhauer article performed on subject and object in Nº 7.
The instalment ends on a genuine dilemma rather than an assertion: if the world is matter and energy and man contains life besides, then either life is in the world — in which case where did it come from — or man is something other than the world, which cannot be. It is left open, "to be continued".
The line given as Pythagoras's — "When injustice reigns, the wise man keeps silent and withdraws" — is not a quotation from the Golden Verses. The doctrine, however, is Pythagorean and the Press now holds it. The 1917 Golden Verses and Thomas Taylor's 1818 Life of Pythagoras were acquired for this issue; Iamblichus describes the school's discipline of silence, the subjugation of the tongue, and the arcana "kept with the greatest silence from being divulged to strangers", and quotes the Asclepius on the age in which "every divine voice is by a necessary silence dumb". That is precisely the writer's point — revelation withdraws where it cannot be rightly rendered. Greek to Latin to French to Spanish is a long road for a sentence; the teaching survives it even where the wording does not.