Occult Chemistry | Page 2

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 no distant
date.
The research once started in the way I have described was seen to be
intensely interesting. Mrs. Besant almost immediately co-operated with

Mr. Leadbeater in its further progress. Encouraged by the success with
hydrogen, the two important gases, oxygen and nitrogen, were
examined. They proved to be rather more difficult to deal with than
hydrogen but were manageable. Oxygen was found to consist of 290
minor atoms and nitrogen of 261. Their grouping will be described later
on. The interest and importance of the whole subject will best be
appreciated by a rough indication of the results first attained. The
reader will then have more patience in following the intricacies of the
later discoveries.
The figures just quoted were soon perceived to have a possible
significance. The atomic weight of oxygen is commonly taken as 16.
That is to say, an atom of oxygen is sixteen times heavier than an atom
of hydrogen. In this way, all through the table of atomic weights,
hydrogen is taken as unity, without any attempt being made to estimate
its absolute weight. But now with the atom of hydrogen dissected, so to
speak, and found to consist of 18 somethings, while the atom of oxygen
consisted of 290 of the same things, the sixteen to one relationship
reappears: 290 divided by 18 gives us 16 and a minute decimal fraction.
Again the nitrogen number divided by 18 gives us 14 and a minute
fraction as the result, and that is the accepted atomic weight of nitrogen.
This gave us a glimpse of a principle that might run all through the
table of atomic weights. For reasons having to do with other work, it
was impossible for the authors of this book to carry on the research
further at the time it was begun. The results already sketched were
published as an article in the magazine then called Lucifer, in
November, 1895, and reprinted as a separate pamphlet bearing the title
"Occult Chemistry," a pamphlet the surviving copies of which will one
day be a recognised vindication of the method that will at some time in
the future be generally applied to the investigation of Nature's
mysteries. For the later research which this volume deals with does
establish the principle with a force that can hardly be resisted by any
fair-minded reader. With patience and industry--the authors being
assisted in the counting in a way that will be described (and the method
adopted involved a check upon the accuracy of the counting)--the
minor atoms of almost all the known chemical elements, as they are
commonly called, were counted and found to bear the same relation to

their atomic weights as had been suggested by the cases of oxygen and