Extracts from Writings by Cyril Scott
Compiled by Leslie De'Ath

“Debussy, with his somewhat Christ-like face, marred by a slightly hydrocephalic forehead, was neither an unpleasant personality nor an impressive one.” (My Years of Indiscretion, p101)

“To what lofty ethers he [Richard Strauss] will soar when freed from the considerational ballast of an unnecessarily heavy purse, remains to be seen. But even then I, for one, hope that his predilection for Mozart will not compel him to help himself more and more freely to those well-defined melodies which bear so close a resemblance to that all too-melodious composer. Mozart has practically been the ruin of Tschaikowsky: will he prove the ruin of Strauss also?” (My Years of Indiscretion, p219-20)

“People imagine him [Bernard Shaw] to be a farceur, but they are entirely mistaken; he merely adopts that attitude because he dare not do otherwise.” (My Years of Indiscretion, p229)

“I write a work, am interested to hear it performed twice or three times at the most, and after that it attracts me no longer-I am impelled to create something new. Thus to sit out a whole concert of my own works is not a pleasure: it is a penance.” (My Years of Indiscretion, p281)

“If I am worth anything, time will prove it; if I am worth nothing, then all the better if my writings are not heard.” (quoted in Eaglefield Hull, Cyril Scott, 176)

“I... do not hold with the policy of raking up and performing early and unrepresentative works of composers, works written perhaps long before they had developed their respective styles. Such a policy is neither fair to the deceased or maybe still living composers, and is boring for the public.” (Bone of Contention, p139)

“...if The Masters have seen fit to use, so to say, my pen along both musical and literary lines, I do not delude myself that I am anything but an instrument, as are and have been many creative artists in whatever field, even though they may never have heard that such beings as Master exist.” (Bone of Contention, p174)

“...there is no denying that a large proportion of the clergy can barely be regarded as the epitome of spirituality, seeing they are steeped in bigotry and intolerance, and what we may term a certain pious stupidity, utterly at variance with the teachings of Jesus, or any Initiate, who has, or ever will, grace the physical plane.” (The Adept of Galilee, 113)

“K.H. [Koot Hoomi] is of Kashmiri origin, was Pythagoras in one of His previous incarnations, and among His other activities has much to do with music. He is well over a hundred-and-fifty years of age, is over six feet tall,... and speaks English perfectly.” (Bone of Contention, 234)

“Factually, a human being while living on earth consists of a physical body plus several interpenetrating subtler bodies (these constitute the aura) or ‘vehicles of consciousness’ composed of much finer matter and higher vibratory rates. Without these bodies there would be no consciousness in the physical body at all.” (Bone of Contention, 235)

“To my friend, Mrs. Marie Russak, that enlightened Seer, who brought back for me the memory of my past Egyptian lives, these impressions are affectionately dedicated.” (dedication of Egypt)

“Doctors... have not hit upon the fact known to occultists (who have other scientific modes of discovering things) for centuries, viz., that the pineal gland is the organ of psychic perception.” (The Philosophy of Modernism, 112)

“Reincarnation was in the eyes of the Church a particularly inconvenient doctrine, because it gave the human soul more than one chance to reach salvation.” (The Christian Paradox, 21)

“...I had been one [a composer] in my previous life. Between my last life and the present one I was only out of incarnation some thirty years.... Whereas I derive some pleasure from hearing the works I wrote in my last rebirth, with a few exceptions I am bored by those I wrote in my earlier one.” (Bone of Contention, 177)

“So far, with our earthly music we have only been able to imitate the faintest echo of the Music of the Spheres, but in the future it will be given us to swell the great Cosmic Symphony.” (Music: Its Secret Influence Throughout the Ages, 203)

“the sceptic is as credulous as the believer; the only difference is that he is credulous about one set of ideas or facts while the believer is credulous about another.” (Childishness, 64)

“not... all people who marry because they are in love end with a conjugal shipwreck, but... a great many of them end thus, and will continue to do so until mankind realizes in the most practical way that mere in-loveness can never form a sound basis for matrimonial alliances.” (Childishness, 75)

“He who aspires to perfect husbandship should contrive to make his wife forget that he is her husband by invariably acting as if he were her lover. This is very difficult, and requires proficiency in the art of dissembling.” (The Art of Making a Perfect Husband, 61)

“Mankind has never grown up.” (Childishness, 1)

“neither sex is prepared to recognise its own childishness, but only that of the other, and the result is much misunderstanding and conjugal tedium.” (The Art of Making a Perfect Husband, 43)

“...woman is fickle in friendship but constant in love, whereas man is constant in friendship and fickle in love.” (Childishness, 26)

“No normal and healthy woman can be completely happy in her married life without a child or children, therefore a sterile husband who aspires to true unselfishness should permit his wife to have a child by another man, if she so wishes: for the perfect husband will allow another to give what he cannot give himself.” (The Art of Making a Perfect Husband, 94)

“no one can deny that collectively we are stark, staring mad, [and] it is only because we are sane enough to realize the fact that our case is not hopeless and there is some prospect of our salvation. ...what, after all, is war but insanely unchristian nursery behaviour on a gigantic scale?” (The Christian Paradox, 12) 

“Only when a nation is invaded by a foreign Power can she be said to lose her independence, and that is precisely what would not happen under a United States of Europe or a Commonwealth of Free Nations. The citizens of the State of New York do not suddenly take it into their heads to invade the State of Ohio.” (The Christian Paradox, 142)

“...if the Church had only loved goodness and truth as much as she loved power, her good examples and her influence for good might even have been powerful enough to save the nations from calamity. But although mankind may be incredibly myopic, it is not so myopic as to have been unaffected by the bad example of an Institution which professed to teach a good example. For one thing, the Church might long since have persuaded the nations to love their enemies, had she not hated her own enemies: and incidentally, had her persuasions been successful, there would have been no enemies left to love, but only friends.” (The Christian Paradox, 17)

“The great event for which all devout Christians of various denominations have longed, and for which the devotees of the Eastern religions have also longed, is now destined to take place in the comparatively near future-we refer to the Return of The Christ among men. Yet, although doubtless He will come in an aeroplane from His retreat in Tibet, the

“great glory” will only be perceptible to those with clairvoyant sight who will be able to see His radiance and the radiance of those angels (devas) who will always surround Him.” (An Outline of Modern Occultism, 214)

“...the story of Jesus the Christ has been well-nigh ruined by the gloomy associations which all the paraphernalia of sacerdotalism have woven around it...” (The Adept of Galilee, 112)

[recounting the Passion of Christ:]
“And then he [Jesus] abandoned his body, while his head fell forward on to his breast, as if he were dead. [footnote: Jesus entered into Samadhi, as it is called-viz. super-conscious trance. In Samadhi the breathing is absolutely imperceptible and the body shows every sign of apparently recent death.]” (The Adept of Galilee, 390)

“...in the sentence ‘Whom God hath joined, let no man put asunder’ the Roman Church has arrogated to itself the position and office of God: forgetting that when the utterance was made, no such Church existed, and that such an interpretation is quite out of keeping with the general tone of Jesus’ teachings.” (The Adept of Galilee, 110)

“The curious pastime of chasing and killing animals for pleasure is a relic of barbarism. I loathe the cruel sport of hunting, and find the conversation of hunting people unspeakably boring whenever obliged to listen to it.” (Bone of Contention, 213)
(Scott shared this characteristic with Wagner, who believed in the spiritual oneness of all living things, abhorred cruelty to animals and was a vegetarian. Wagner was also one of the few composers that Scott greatly admired.)

“The scientist sees that there is an anatomical likeness between man and the monkey, and as the evolutionary impulse always makes for improvement, he concludes that man must have descended from the monkey, but he is always baffled in his efforts to find the“missing link” connecting the two. ...man has not ascended from the monkey, it is the monkey that has degenreated from man.” (An Outline of Modern Occultism, 56)

“The great event for which all devout Christians of various denominations have longed, and for which the devotees of the Eastern religions have also longed, is now destined to take place in the comparatively near future-we refer to the Return of The Christ among men. Yet, although doubtless He will come in an aeroplane from His retreat in Tibet, the

“great glory” will only be perceptible to those with clairvoyant sight who will be able to see His radiance and the radiance of those angels (devas) who will always surround Him.” (An Outline of Modern Occultism, 214)

“...the story of Jesus the Christ has been well-nigh ruined by the gloomy associations which all the paraphernalia of sacerdotalism have woven around it...” (The Adept of Galilee, 112)

[recounting the Passion of Christ:]
“And then he [Jesus] abandoned his body, while his head fell forward on to his breast, as if he were dead. [footnote: Jesus entered into Samadhi, as it is called-viz. super-conscious trance. In Samadhi the breathing is absolutely imperceptible and the body shows every sign of apparently recent death.]” (The Adept of Galilee, 390)

“...in the sentence ‘Whom God hath joined, let no man put asunder’ the Roman Church has arrogated to itself the position and office of God: forgetting that when the utterance was made, no such Church existed, and that such an interpretation is quite out of keeping with the general tone of Jesus’ teachings.” (The Adept of Galilee, 110)

“Homeopathy is more scientific than orthodoxy, for the latter is always changing its drugs and ideas.” (A Physician’s Posy, p9)

“Although it is true to say that some people are hampered by the defects of their qualities, it is also true to say that some people are hampered even more by the defects of their qualifications.” (The Christian Paradox, 5)

“The trade union spirit militates against any individuality on the part of doctors. It prompts them to walk in the beaten track and only to adopt such methods as are recognized by the profession in general, even when many doctors themselves are not convinced of the rectitude of those methods. (Doctors, Disease, and Health, 16)

“I suggest that the cancer problem will only be solved when altruistism [sic] is substituted for vested interests, and when unity in diversity will prevail among the practitioners of the healing arts. Meanwhile it is essential that the doctors and the public should be apprised of the real facts” (Victory Over Cancer, xiii)

“Constipated people needing Phosphorus are, generally speaking, of the slender, artistic type who, when children, feared the dark, hated to be alone, and throughout their lives have a fear of thunderstorms.” (Constipation and Commonsense, 44)

“In attempting to be kind to one set of people one is sometimes compelled to be cruel to another set of people” (Doctors, Disease, and Health, 19)

“...language unless carefully employed is a most unreliable means of communication.” (Ghost of a Smile, p158)