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 A New Book Just Published 
 
 SPIRITISM 
 
 'The*-8iigin*0f*all«Relipris. 
 
 -*^^ 
 
 T SHOWS that there is an Occult Force in Nature 
 called the Astral Light, Soul of the World, the Pri- 
 ^ \p mum Mobile ! the Grand Arcanum of Transcendental 
 Magic. The Azoth of the Alchemist, the Akasa of 
 the Hindoos, the Holy Ghost of Christianity, arid the Spirits 
 of Modern Spiritualism is one and the sanie thing, that it 
 acts on man's emotional nature and makes him a religious 
 being. ^^. 
 
 y — WRITTEN BY -^-^ 
 
 J. P. Dameron, Attorney- at- Law, 
 
 230 Montgomery Street. 
 
 -wrz/?/^FOR SALK BY TH K^T/Z/^/i/^ 
 
 ^-^©-San Francisco IS^e^vs Company 
 210 POST STREET, SAN FRANCISCO. 
 PRICE, $1 OO 
 
SPIRITISM; 
 
 THE 
 
 Origin of All Rkligions 
 
 BY 
 
 J p. DAM ERON, 
 
 Author of ''The Dicpiiy Papers^' '' Devil and ' Hell,'' and " The Evil Fo7^ces 
 
 in Nature y 
 
 SAN FRANCISCO, CAL, 
 
 Published by the Author. 
 
 1885. 
 

PRKKACB 
 
 In presenting this little book to the public, I must ask the kind indulgence 
 of the reader, for it has been the work of my leisure hours; a recreation of 
 the mind from the dry details of law, which teaches us to deal with facts 
 according to law, and to reason out its relations with the many conflicting^ 
 interests of mankind. In trying to trace out the origin of these laws 
 customs and usages, it has led me far back into the night of time, when man 
 emerged from the obscurity of barbarism. Like the explorer of some great ' 
 river, as he ascends he beholds the stream branching off into many little 
 rivers, and they grow less and less, until at last he finds its source in some 
 far-off mountain, fed by the melting of the snows or springs that gush from 
 out the granite rocks. 
 
 So it is with law and religion, they both come from the invisible source — ■ 
 the mind of man. One teaches him his relations to his fellow-man, and the 
 other to his Creator ; one relates to his social nature, the other to his moral 
 and spiritual nature. They are closely allied and have much to do with 
 each other, the religious status of a people having had much to do in 
 shaping their government and civilization. Where a liberal religion has 
 prevailed the laws have partaken of its nature and the people prospered 
 and were happy ; when illiberal it has tyrannized over man and made him 
 a slave to caste and priesthood. 
 
 In all religions there are good moral precepts, and if man would live up 
 to them he would be wiser and better, but his animal nature is so strong 
 that it often tempts him to violate them ; but they act upon and tend to 
 restrain him. It is contended by some that man could not be governed 
 without a religion. It makes but little difference what a man's religion is, if 
 he be honest and will respect the rights of another. No one should say, 
 " My religion is orthodox and yours is heterodox ;" we should all be willing 
 to let every one worship God in accordance with the dictates of his own 
 conscience, for we are all in the fog and know but little of the life to come. 
 We now and then catch a stray bit of evidence that goes to confirm us in 
 the belief of the immortality of the soul. It comes like the whispering 
 
voice of spirits and angels, to tell us that we are immortal and will live 
 beyond the grave. Is it our imagination ? 
 
 Whence come these thoughts ? Did we inherit them from the teaching 
 of our ancestors ? They had no better evidence of the facts than we see 
 around us every day. They tell us these things happened thousands of 
 years ago, in benighted Asia, among people just emerging from savagery, 
 who had no knowledge of the arts and sciences, geography, astronomy, 
 geology, chemistry, botany, biology, etc. They believed the world was flat; 
 that the sun, moon and stars moved around the earth ; that the earth was 
 created in six days ; that man was made of dust, and that God breathed 
 the breath of life into him ; that he caused a deep sleep to fall upon him, 
 and took a rib out of his side and made it into a woman. 
 
 These infantile stories of the creation of man and the remarkable revela- 
 tions made by God, are conflicting and bear upon their face the evidence of 
 exaggeration and credulity. The evolution theory has swept from us the 
 myth of Adam and Eve and the eating of the forbidden fruit in the Garden 
 of Eden, which does away with the necessity of a redeemer and the vicari- 
 ous atonement and original sin. It has opened our eyes to the knowledge 
 that there is no one standing between us and our Creator ; that every one 
 must work out his own salvation and be his own savior, answering for his 
 sins according to the law of compensation ; that the laws of nature are 
 unchangeable; that the same force that shapes a dewdrop wifl round a 
 world ; that suns and stars float in space, and are held in their place by the 
 same law that guides the earth in its course around the sun ; that spring 
 comes to gladden the earth and make it green ; that winter's frost robes it 
 in a white winding sheet of snow ; but the vegetable world is not dead. It Is 
 only asleep to blossom again. 
 
 Will man live after death? This is a question that has time and again 
 been asked by the most learned sages and philosophers of all ages. Men 
 have sacrificed their lives to prove it, they have been deified and churches 
 and temples have been reared to honor their sainted names, and a vast mul- 
 titude of humanity bowed down in their praise. Still it is an open question, 
 and one that Is hard to demonstrate. The only evidence we have Is what 
 Spiritism has been able to give us, but it is so conflicting that men of science 
 difler as to the value of Its evidence, and the only solution to the question 
 Is, each one must investigate for himself, in a spirit of fairness and candor, 
 and he will find much that will convince him of the fact. I have examined 
 
the religions of all ages, and I find that it had its origin in the same intelli- 
 gent force one hears in the mysterious rapping, the tipping of the table, the 
 invisible pencil writing on a slate, the trance, the clairaudient and clairvoy- 
 ant mediums, which is the only solution to all the stories we have read about 
 gods, angels, ghosts and devils, that have ever manifested themselves to 
 man ; and the object of this book is to show that Spiritism is the origin of 
 all religions ; that all the knowledge of the life beyond has come to us 
 through the same channel, whether it purported to be from gods, angels, 
 saviors, prophets, seers, inspired men, or mediums ; it is one and the same 
 thing under different forms and different names, in different ages and differ- 
 ent countries. 
 
 The object of the author is not to attack any religion, but to give a fair 
 and impartial statement of facts, that will remove the veil that, for ages, has 
 mystified man and shut him out from the knowledge that he is a part of the 
 divine mind, and if he will but listen to his better nature he can hold con- 
 verse with those who have preceded him, which will take away all fear of 
 death and damnation and fill the heart with hope and joy. 
 
 J. P. Dameron. 
 San Francisco, California, April, 1885. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Page. 
 
 Chapter I — Spiritism 5 
 
 It is a New Religion; it is American and 
 
 Democratic, and in keeping with the 
 
 Progress of the Age in which we Live. 
 
 The Leading Scientists are Divided — 
 
 Some are Materialists, others are 
 
 Avowed Spiritualists 7 
 
 Chapter II 10 
 
 Occultism — A Hidden P'orce in Nature 
 called the Astral Light, the Soul of 
 the World, the Primum Mobile, the 
 Grand Arcanum of Transcendental 
 Magic, the Tetragrammaton of the 
 Hebrews, the Thot of the Egyptians, 
 the Azoth of the Alchemist, the Akasa 
 of the Hindoos, the Secret lost to the 
 Masonic Fraternity in the Murder of 
 Grand Master Hiram Abiff, Theopse, 
 Destiny, Occult Fraternity. 
 
 Akasa, or Life Force 16 
 
 Wonder- Workers of India 17 
 
 Destiny 22 
 
 An Occult Fraternity 22 
 
 Chapter III 24 
 
 Soul of the Universe (Anima Mundi). 
 Ether, Psychomancy, Plato and St. 
 Paul on the Triune, Body, Spirit and 
 Soul, Transmigration, Hindoo Idea 
 of a Soul, its Origin and Destiny. 
 
 Psychomancy 26 
 
 Soul 27 
 
 The Soul is Eternal 30 
 
 Chapter IV 35 
 
 Mediums, Ancient and Modern. Pro- 
 phets, Seers, Magicians, Soothsayers, 
 Astrologers, Fortune-Tellers, Materi- 
 alizations, Raps, Trances. 
 
 Mediumship 38 
 
 Materialization 42 
 
 Chapter V 48 
 
 Inspiration and Inspired Men, Saviors, 
 
 Mediators and Mediums. 
 Jesus Christ. . . ." 49 
 
 Page. 
 
 Chrisna 52 
 
 Gautama Buddha 53 
 
 Apollonius of Tyana 55 
 
 Pythagoras 55 
 
 Esculapius 56 
 
 ^schylus 56 
 
 Xenophon 56 
 
 Cicero 56 
 
 Socrates 57 
 
 Zoroaster 57 
 
 Sosioch 58 
 
 Confucius 58 
 
 Chapter VI 60 
 
 Religion; its Origin, Growth and Devel- 
 opment. 
 Chapter VII 69 
 
 Ancestral Worship of the Ancient 
 
 Aryans. 
 
 Chapter VIII 78 
 
 Religion of the Ancient Greeks; their 
 Gods and Goddesses were only Spirits 
 of Departed Sages and Heroes. Their 
 Mediums foretold the Future and the 
 Past. 
 Chapter IX 85 
 
 The Origin of the Christian Religion. 
 
 Christianity 85 
 
 Advent of Christ 85 
 
 Chapter X, 91 
 
 All Religions appear to have one Com- 
 mon Origin. The Origin of the Trin- 
 ity, Cross, Sacred Rivers, Madonna, 
 Ark, Deluge, Fish Story. 
 
 The Trinity 94 
 
 The Holy Communion or Lord's Supper 97 
 The Deluge 97 
 
 Chapter XI 100 
 
 The Eight Great Religions of the World. 
 Brahminism, Buddhism, Zoroaster- 
 ism, Mosaicism, Christianity, Mo- 
 hammedanism, Laoteseism and Mod- 
 ern Spirit\ialism. 
 
The Rise and Progress of Modern Spiritualism. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 It is a New Edition to Old Religions; it is American and Democratic, and in Keeping with the 
 
 Progress of the Age in which We Live. 
 
 "Rap, rap, rap, on the ceiling and floor, 
 
 On the pictures and door; 
 What is it that makes such a noise ?" 
 
 All scientific investigations point to the fact 
 that the earth was created by fixed laws, and 
 that it was intended for the express purpose of 
 developing man. For in him heaven and earth 
 have contributed all their best material, and 
 worked it over well for millions upon millions of 
 years, raising up mountains and eroding them 
 down into the sea. Mineral, vegetable and ani- 
 mal life changed often before it was fit to be 
 worked into man, the last crowning act of crea- 
 tion. In him enters everything, therefore he is a 
 microcosm, his physical and intellectual pow- 
 ers are the perfection of nature and the pride 
 of the all wise master. 
 
 Is it reasonable, yea, is it possible that 
 all this should be done to make a superior ani- 
 mal who should eat, drink and use all the 
 bountiful stores that nature had provided in 
 building up the globe as a fit habitation for him 
 that he should die and his body return to dust 
 from whence it sprang; if so creation is a grand 
 failure, and should there be no soul survive 
 death, or was it intended that out of him should 
 spring another form that would retain the know- 
 ledge and the individual identity in a more sub- 
 limated condition, capable of further progress. 
 I see nothing indicating that mind — intelligence 
 — can be destroyed or annihilated any more than 
 that of force and matter, which has produced 
 him. Then this intelligence must exist in an 
 individual form, and that form must begin in 
 another. On the investigation of the phenome- 
 na of modern Spiritualism I am forced to ad- 
 
 mit that there it nothing in it that is contrary 
 to the fixed laws of evolution — but it throws 
 new light on the life-forces of the universe called 
 life, soul and spirit. 
 
 There should be no conflict between science 
 and religion. While science deals in facts that 
 are demonstrable to the five senses, and is 
 aided by observation, comparison and deduc- 
 tion from which a knowledge of phenomena and 
 of the order of succession is derived. Spiritism 
 offers to lend its aid and assist science to ex- 
 plore those hidden realms of metaphysics and 
 with the higher developed senses of clairaudi- 
 ence and clairvoyance which the academy of 
 science at Paris has called the sixth sense, so 
 with this higher development they will be able 
 to go farther into the workings of the human 
 mind and bring to light that hidden force 
 called spirit, the life force of the universe that 
 has caused matter to evolve and work out so 
 many changes and forms in the physical world. 
 As each atom of matter is accompanied by cer- 
 tain force or intelligence that cause that particle 
 of matter to attract or repel other particles of 
 matter, so that it knows its affinities and re- 
 pels its dislikes; it forms the minerals in crys- 
 tals, cubes, cones and prisms, for all matter is 
 moved and governed by certain laws that are 
 acting and reacting throughout the visible and 
 invisible world and the invisible forms of 
 matter are the most active and numerous; yet 
 because we can not reach or comprehend these 
 operations of matter with the five senses we 
 cannot say it does not exist or move, but reason 
 aided by observation and comparison is forced 
 to admit the fact. We cannot see, feel or hear 
 
6 
 
 the iron crystalize but we are satisfied that it 
 does under certain conditions, so there is a si- 
 lent work ever going on in the secret laboratory 
 of nature that is beyond the keen perception or 
 understanding of the man of science, but which 
 is revealed to the higher developed senses of the 
 disembodied spirits and to those mediums that 
 occupy a border land. 
 
 So science should cease its hostility and cul- 
 tivate that intuitional sense of the inner man 
 (the spirit) which, if properly understood 
 and trained, would aid it in the great work of 
 arriving at the truth, which would lead to a 
 higher civilization and amelioration of the hu- 
 man race by expanding the intellect in the di- 
 rection of the spiritual, for the heart must be cul- 
 tivated as well as the head, for the inner man 
 has much to do with the outer man. And un- 
 til science and Spiritualism, physics and meta- 
 physics go hand in hand the highest attainments 
 will not be reached. As Joliet says, "while 
 the Western Nations have been following the 
 physical laws, the Hindoo fakirs have been fol- 
 lowing the metaphysical laws of the spirit, by 
 which they can control and perform wonderful 
 things that startle the European with wonder 
 and amazement, while we can by our know- 
 ledge perform wonders that are as startling to 
 them." 
 
 That mind and matter, physics and meta- 
 physics are all united in man and that he should 
 investigate one as well as the other, that there 
 is no dividing line; that it is the ignorance of 
 science of these metaphysical laws that shut 
 the door in the face of the pursuer of know- 
 ledge, and all that is required is to knock and 
 it shall be opened; that man is the beginning 
 of our individualized intelligence that never 
 dies but follows the laws of progress through 
 endless realms; that there is no end or limit to 
 knowledge in this life or the higher life to come 
 in the spirit land; that there is no secret in 
 nature's laws beyond the reach of individu- 
 alized intelligence of the aspiring mind. 
 
 Science, proud of her attainments and justly 
 so, strong in her foundations of laws and un- 
 assailable in her primal principles, has never- 
 theless arrogated to herself more rights than she 
 actually possesses, and claims not only to dic- 
 tate to man the essential properties and elements 
 that constitute the physical body, but here it 
 
 shuts the door against any investigation of that 
 which belongs to his spiritual nature. 
 
 The result is that materialism is closely en- 
 croaching upon the church and is fast under- 
 mining and destroying the spiritual faith of the 
 inner man and reducing him down to a piece 
 of clay, destitute of any spirituality, while the 
 churches are divided and making war on Mod- 
 ern Spiritualism, and invoke the aid of science 
 to demonstrate the fact that it is all a delusion, 
 at the same time proving to the world that 
 all religion is nothing but a deception; for if 
 there are no spirits for the Spiritualists there 
 can be none for the churches. 
 
 The greatest difficulty in describing that 
 which relates to man's spiritual nature is the 
 absolute ignorance of humanity concerning its 
 nature. The spiritual laws have heretofore 
 been ignored; the power of one mind upon an- 
 other, the influence of spirit upon spirit, have 
 scarcely been considered, while that spiritual 
 power by which Jesus wrought miracles and 
 spells (and also his disciples), which he promis- 
 ed should be given to all who believed and fol- 
 lowed in him, has been wholly blotted out and 
 tabooed by the church, and any attempt to re- 
 vive it is denounced as the work of the devil, so 
 that religion has come to mean a simple state- 
 ment, a form, a ceremony, a theory, without any 
 intermediate links connecting it with the world of 
 causes and human existence, whereas in the time 
 of Jesus it was a matter of daily life and experi- 
 ence and was so understood and practiced by 
 him and his disciples. The spirit was the great 
 motor power by which these miracles were per- 
 formed. 
 
 The working of spiritual gifts has ceased be- 
 cause they have been ignored by the church, 
 and the temporal power and material influence 
 of civilization, which has encouraged a growth 
 of materialism. Prosperity, the building up of 
 states, endowing institutions, the rearing of 
 splendid structures and churches, goes far to 
 build up the material welfare of nations and 
 society; but they take away from the mind those 
 absolute conditions that are eccential to the ex- 
 istence of spiritual gifts — simplicity, natural- 
 ness, dependence upon the unseen and the rec- 
 ognition of the higher nature of the spirits in 
 all that belongs to daily life. In following the 
 material, man has lost much of the spiritual pow- 
 
er that the ancients had. Though he has made 
 great progress in the physical laws of nature 
 in the discovery of steam and electricity, he has 
 lost sight of the more subtle psychical force 
 of mind over matter, which enabled the ancients 
 to divine the future and tell the past. It has 
 weU nigh cut humanity off from all religions 
 and made him a materialist. 
 
 The Leading- Scientists are Divided — Some are 
 Materialists, others are Avowed Spriritualists. 
 
 Darwin could not see anything behind blind 
 matter, forcing up the vegetable and animal 
 life, but the " survival of the fittest." Herbert 
 Spencer thinks that matter is impelled by the 
 active forces in nature to evolve all forms of 
 life according to its environments; Huxley ad- 
 mits that there is an " unknowable " force back 
 of or in the atom that im pells it to assume cer- 
 tain forms. Agassiz thought all matter was 
 impelled by an invisible intelligence, but.would 
 not admit that it was done by the spirit forces, 
 still he believed in a God — a Supreme First 
 Cause — that caused all matter to evolve under 
 certain laws. While, on the other hand, we 
 have the illustrious names of Alexander Aksa- 
 koff, Robert Chambers, Hiram Corson, Au- 
 gustus de Morgan, J. W. Edmonds, Dr. Elliot- 
 son, I. H. Fichte, Zollner, Prof. Ulriciof Halle, 
 Camille Flammaron, Herman Goldschmidt, 
 Dr. Hoffle, Robert Hare, Lord Lyndhurst, 
 Robert Dale Owen, Victor Hugo, W. M. 
 Thackeray, T. A. Trollope, Alfred Russel 
 Wallace (a naturalist and scientist, a cotempo- 
 rary with Darwin), Nicholas Wagner, Arch- 
 bishop Whately, Pasteur, the author of the 
 germ theory, and Professor Crookes, who stand 
 high in science and learning, all are firm be- 
 lievers in Spiritism, and that the departed from 
 this life live, can and do return and hold com- 
 munication with mortals. These men have 
 placed the mediums under the strictest test. 
 Profs. Wallace, Crookes and Zollner took the 
 mediums to their own homes and placed them 
 under the strictest test conditions. On one oc- 
 casion Mr. Varley, the electrician, by means 
 of a galvanic battery and cable-testing appara- 
 tus, showed to the satisfaction of all present, 
 that the medium was inside of the cabinet, 
 while the supposed spirit form was visible and 
 moving outside. Prof. Crookes says: "It was 
 
 a common thing for the seven or eight of us in 
 the laboratory to see Miss Cook (the medium) 
 and " Kate'' (the spirit) at the same time un- 
 der the full blaze of the electric light.'' Wil- 
 liam Crookes, after making many tests wath 
 such mediums as D. D. Home, Kate Fox, and 
 others, says that "the spirits can move heavy 
 bodies. That they can make sounds and raps; 
 that they can alter the weight of bodies, and 
 move bodies when at a distance from the me- 
 dium; raise tables and chairs off the ground; 
 the levitation of human beings; luminous ap- 
 pearances; the appearance of hands writing; 
 phantom forms and faces." 
 
 SPIRITISM IS- AS OLD AS THE HISTORY OF MAN. 
 
 It appeared to Adam in the Garden of Eden; 
 it directed Noah how to build the ark; Moses 
 saw it in the burning bush; the spirits (angels) 
 often appeared to Abraham, and at one time 
 ate veal cutlets with him in his tent; Saul saw 
 the spirit (or ghost) of Samuel at the Witch of 
 Endor; the spirit closed the mouth of the lion 
 when Daniel was thrown into the lion's den; 
 Jesus saw Moses and Elias on the mount of 
 transfiguration, and they talked with him; St. 
 Paul heard voices and was liberated from prison 
 by them; St. John had trances and saw the 
 New Jerusalem. Take the Spiritualism out of 
 the Bible and it would be a tame, dull history 
 of the Jews; but read through the light of Spir- 
 itualism it is full of interest and grandeur. 
 
 Spiritism is the basis of all religions and the 
 only way man has got any knowledge of a fu- 
 ture existence. It manifested itself in the Del- 
 phic oracles as well as to the Hebrew^ prophets, 
 if we are to believe the Greek authors. Socra- 
 tes says he received all his knowledge from his 
 little demon (spirit) that whispered it into his 
 ears. The Platonic philosophy was but little 
 different from that of Modern Spiritualism. 
 Homer is one grand poem of the gods (spirits) 
 taking a deep interest in the affairs of nations 
 and individuals. The Greeks lived close to 
 nature and held communion through the ora- 
 cles with departed heroes and sages. The Ro- 
 mans had their sybaline books and vestal vir- 
 gins, who held communion with the dead. 
 Cicero was a firm believer in the spirits, and 
 was a medium; his orations burn with the fire 
 of inspiration. 
 
Every age has had its spiritual manifestations; 
 every period has witnessed something of the 
 kind; every fireside has its ghost story, and ev- 
 ery family has something of its wonders to re- 
 late. It is nothing new. In the year 364, in 
 the reign of the Roman emperor Valen«, me- 
 diums conversed by the means of rappings 
 and employed the alphabet, as also the spirit 
 pendulum. It finally passed into disrepute as 
 a black art and was denounced by the priests 
 as the doings of the devil. Independent slate 
 writing was known to the Chinese over a thou- 
 sand years ago. Trance mediums were known 
 to the ancient Hindoos, Persians and Greeks; 
 so was that of healing, clairaudience and clair- 
 voyance; they saw and heard spirits. 
 
 Christ was a medium of the highest order; 
 he made his appearance to battle against the 
 materialism of his day; he was invested with 
 wonderful power to convince the wicked world 
 that he was sent from God to teach reforma- 
 tion, but they would not believe him but cruci- 
 fied him. Luther had wonderful mediumistic 
 power. He saw spirits and threw an inkstand 
 at the head of an evil one. The Rosicrucians 
 were invested with wonderful power and were 
 scoffed at by the materialists as fanatics. They 
 led a most singularly isolated, pure life. The 
 Huguenots were persecuted on account of their 
 spiritual dissensions from the Catholic church. 
 The Quakers, whose leaders were George Fox 
 and others, claimed a revelation from the di- 
 vine mind. William Penn, the founder of 
 Pennsylvania, was one of its followers. The 
 Shakers, an advanced class of Quakers, so 
 called from their shaking and nervous twitch- 
 ing. They were led to follow their peculiar 
 life of celibacy from the teachings of Ann 
 Lee. 
 
 In the more modern times it manifested it- 
 self in Caines and Marvels in France in 1686. 
 Swedenborg alleges that he was in full and open 
 communication with the spirit world, and daily 
 conversed with spirits and angels. 
 
 In 1829, the Seeress of Prevost startled the 
 world with what she saw, and mysterious raps 
 were often heard around her. 
 
 In 1830 the French mesmerists Billot and 
 Deleuze say they saw and felt spirits, and there 
 was a possibility of communicating with them. 
 
 Modern Spiritualism had its origin in the 
 
 rappings of the Fox sisters and in the writings 
 of A. J. Davis, who published "Nature's Di- 
 vine Revelations; a Voice to Mankind," in 
 July, 1847, in which he enunciated the doc- 
 trine of evolution ten years prior to that of 
 Darwin. 
 
 About the same time in the little village of 
 Hydesville, N. Y., in a small, unpretending 
 dwelling lived Mr. Fox, his wife and two 
 daughters. Kate, the youngest, about 9 years 
 old, was the first medium to detect and recog- 
 nize the raps, which for some time amazed the 
 family. With the assistance of her mother 
 she was she first to establish a system of signals 
 by raps, though they had been heard often by 
 different persons. 
 
 Rev. John Wesley's daughters were similarly 
 annoyed by a spirit who answered to the name 
 of "Old Jeff," but Wesley requested it to 
 leave and let his children alone; at last it dis- 
 appeared, and he lost the golden opportunity 
 to make the discovery. But the manifestation 
 of the spirit attended his religious revivals in 
 another form — that of shouting. 
 
 It is not a religion covered with moss and 
 rust of past ages, but one that is fresh and new 
 in keeping with the progress of the age. 
 
 IT IS STRICTLY AMERICAN AND DEMOCRATIC; 
 
 It has no synods, conferences or ecumenical 
 councils, to fix up creeds and dogmas to de- 
 clare what is the word of God. It has no 
 priests, bishops or popes, to grant absolutions 
 and forgive sins. It has no head or leader. 
 The medium may be a child uneducated; if the 
 communications don't bear the strictest scruti- 
 ny and test they are rejected. Every one is 
 the judge, none being required to believe un- 
 less they wish; all are at liberty to criticize and 
 comment whether it is truthful or false. The 
 spirit is cross-questioned and examined, and if 
 it don't stand the test it is discarded. It de- 
 nounces all leadership, all individual 7?ian wor- 
 shippings making every believer rely solely on 
 himselt and seek his own salvation through his 
 own exertions. It teaches individuality — "/ 
 am a man and you are another." Every indi- 
 vidual is his own priest; if he has sins he must 
 confess them to himself, and he must work out 
 his own salvation. It believes in good works; 
 short prayers, for God is not captured by elo- 
 
9 
 
 quent words and long prayers, but is pleased 
 with a pure hearc and a forgiving disposition. 
 Good deeds and kind words are worth a thou- 
 sand prayers. 
 
 It is little over a quarter of a century old, 
 but now numbers over 25,000,000 of believers, 
 making way amongst the most intelligent and 
 wealthy classes — emperors, kings and queens. 
 Though not demonstrative it is undermining all 
 the older forms of religion that had their ori- 
 gin in the night of the past. It is a religion 
 that is making rapid progress with the intelli- 
 gent and thinking masses, for it is in accord 
 with science and the laws of evolution. It 
 carries conviction to all who will investigate it 
 with candor^^and honesty of purpose. To the 
 fair-minded man who is not steeped in preju- 
 dices of the old theology, there is evidence 
 given, if he will examine, to convince him that 
 
 there is an invisible individual intelligence that 
 sees and understands him and lets him know 
 
 j that his departed friends are not dead but pres- 
 ent and holding converse w4th him. The se- 
 verest tests are given, that|no one^can explain 
 
 ^ save that it is the spirit of a departed^acquaint- 
 
 ' ance, friend, mother, father, brother, wife or 
 
 ' child. 
 
 Man needs not external revelations but an 
 internal illumination whereby he can under- 
 stand the relations he sustains to himself, his 
 brother man and the physical world. Such an 
 illumination is bestowed on, though not per- 
 ceived by all; that myriad hosts of the angel 
 world are around us; they mingle in the affairs 
 of men; their atmosphere is Jan exhaustless 
 fountain from which we draw our thoughts and 
 aspirations. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 OCCULTISM. 
 
 A Hidden Force in Nature called the Astral Light, The Soul of the World, The Primum Mobile, the 
 
 Grand Arcanum of Transcendental Magic, The Tetragrammaton of the Hebrews, The 
 
 Thot of the Egyptians, The Azoth of the Alchemist, The Akasa of the 
 
 Hindoos, The Secret lost to the Masonic Fraternity in the 
 
 Murder of Grand Master Hiram Abiff, Theopae, 
 
 V Destiny, Occult Fraternity. 
 
 "The power of thought, the magic of the mind." — Byron. 
 
 Cicero was of the opinion that the Chaldeans 
 were among the oldest magicus, who placed the 
 basis of all magic in the inner powers of man's 
 soul, and by the discernment of magic proper- 
 ties in plants, minerals and animals. By their 
 aid they performed the most wonderful "mira- 
 cles." Magic was their religion, and synony- 
 mous with science. 
 
 The influence of magic may be traced in the 
 legends of Prometheus, Sisyphus, Circle and 
 Medea. The Greek and Roman mythologies 
 are full of it, and they had implicit faith in 
 their oracles, auguries and divinations. The 
 mythologies of the ancient Germans, Slavs and 
 Celts were similar. The Druids also possessed 
 the secret art. The crusaders looked upon 
 magic as the peculiar ally of the infidels. 
 
 In the fourteenth century magic arose into 
 repute as a lawful art, and sovereigns maintamed 
 magicians at their courts. The most prominent 
 of these European magicians, adepts and writ- 
 ers was Albertus Magnus, Roger Bacon, Ar- 
 noldus de Villanova, Daniel Defoe and Eliphas 
 Levi, of the present century. 
 
 The arts of magic are founded upon the the- 
 ory that there is an occult force in nature called 
 the astral light, the soul of the world, and the 
 primiim mobile^ which is the grand arcanum of 
 transcendental magic, the Tetagrammaton of the 
 Hebrews, the Azoth of the Alchemist, the Thot 
 
 of the Egyptians, and the Akasa of the Hindoos. 
 By this element, which abounds in the celestial 
 bodies and descends in the rays of the stars, 
 every occult property is conveyed into herbs, 
 stones, metals and minerals, making them 
 solary, lunary, jovial, ethereal, mercurial, etc., 
 according to the planetary influences. * * 
 In it thoughts are realized, and images of past 
 persons and things are preserved, so that spec- 
 ters may be evoked from it, and shown to the 
 world as real objects and things — as sounds 
 and words are preserved in the audiphone. 
 
 The adepts in magic claim that the sorcerer, 
 or practicer of the black art, differs from the 
 true magician as the charlatan from the master 
 of the art; that the former invokes and uses the 
 evil force or bad spirits, while the true magician 
 uses the good force or good spirits. According 
 to the teachings of Cornelius Agrippa, there are 
 several kinds of magic, but they are generally 
 reduced to two: white or divine magic, or magic 
 within its proper province; and black or infer- 
 nal magic, to which belong chiromancy, the 
 evil eye, the command of the elements (of evil), 
 the power of transforming human beings into 
 animals, etc. In the black, the magician sells 
 himself to the devil; in the white, the devil 
 is controlled and obsessed by the magician. 
 
 To have command of this element, to direct 
 its currents and to discern its moving panorama. 
 
11 
 
 is the highest attainment, and the incorapre 
 hensible secret of the magician. To reveal it 
 is to lose it; to impart it even to a disciple is to 
 abdicate in his favor. To command this force 
 and its secrets requires the highest and best as 
 well as the purest intellect, dauntless courage 
 and unbending will, discretion, devotion, and 
 habitual silence, and to be free from tempta- 
 tions. He must be chaste, sober, disinterested, 
 inaccessible, free from prejudice and passions, 
 and w^ithout physical defect. He must live a 
 life of abstinence, having certain hours for med- 
 itation. He must make physical wants yield 
 to those of the mind; he must be able to live 
 on the scantiest diet, barely enough to keep soul 
 and body together, like the Hindoo fakirs. 
 
 It is claimed by some that the key to this 
 magical art was lost to Solomon in the death of 
 Hiram Abiff, the widow's son, who was the 
 Grand Master of the Lodge, and since the sub- 
 stitution of the other word the Masons have lost 
 the control over this occult force, by which 
 they were in olden times enabled to work won- 
 ders, which are recorded in the Bible and on 
 obelisks and pyramids of Egypt. 
 
 It is claimed that Jesus Christ was an adept, 
 and through his knowledge he was enabled to 
 perform so many miracles. To the initiated it 
 was not strange, but it was done in accordance 
 with natural forces and the fixed laws of occult- 
 ism. 
 
 The trident of Paracelsus was believed to 
 have all the virtues the cabala attributes to the 
 words, and which the hierophants of Alexandria 
 ascribed to the celebrated word Abracadabra . 
 It gave a complete knowledge and mastery of 
 nature, the secrets of the future, and the com- 
 mand of the elementary spirits; to heal the sick, 
 to move things around with an invisible hand, 
 to call up the spirits of the dead, and do many 
 things that are now done by spiritual mediums. 
 The tipping of tables, raps and independent 
 slate writing were all known to the ancient 
 adepts. 
 
 In the books of Moses there are many instan- 
 ces of the magicians performing wonders, and 
 the Egyptian magicians could do what Aaron 
 and Moses did, only Aaron's rod made the big- 
 gest snake and gobbled up all the rest; so if it 
 is a snake story, Moses' was the biggest. 
 
 These magicians played an important part in 
 
 the Persian religion, and vvhen the Jews returned 
 from their Babylonian captivity, they brought 
 back with them the secrets of the magician, 
 and they played an important part, and out of 
 them they manufactured their devil, or evil one, 
 with whom they used to scare the ignorant into 
 submission; for they ruled the people and used 
 this art to make them believe it vvas the work 
 of Jehovah ; for all the miracles claimed to be 
 done by them were the same as those performed 
 by the ancient Persian and Egyptian magi- 
 cians. 
 
 Simon Magus could fly off in the air before 
 his disciples and the crowd of witnesses, with- 
 out going through any circle-making used by 
 the jugglers ; nor is this art confined to the 
 ancients. Mr. Turner, the author of the 
 "Embassy to Thibet," tells some strange sto- 
 ries, and he corroborates the story of the Abbe 
 Hue of the reincarnation of Buddha, and that 
 of Lahma (priests) sending their astral souls oft 
 to perform missions and carry messages, what 
 we call mental telegraphy. 
 
 The wonderful things done by the magicians 
 of Kashmir, Thibet, Mongolia and Great Tar- 
 tary are too well known to need comment. If 
 jugglers they be, they have defied all detection 
 even by the best and most expert necromancer 
 of Europe and America. (See Jamblicher's 
 Mysteries Egypt ^ I. 26, Theurgy.) 
 
 Epimenides, the Orphikos, was renowned for 
 his sacred and marvelous nature. He had the 
 faculty of sending his soul out of his body as 
 long as he pleased. 
 
 Appollonius could at any time send his soul 
 out. He was a great magician. 
 
 Empedoclesof Agrigenteum, the Pythagorean 
 thaumaturgist, required no conditions to arrest 
 a waterspout which had broken over a city. 
 Neither did he need any to recall a w'oman to 
 life. He used no dark rooms or cabinets, van- 
 ishing suddenly in the air before the eyes of the 
 Emperor Domitian and a whole crowd of wit- 
 nesses (many thousands). He appeared an 
 hour later in the grotto of Puteoli. He evi- 
 dently did it by sending off his astral body, 
 while his own physical body he rendered invis- 
 ible by the concentration of akasa about it, 
 then quietly walked out of the crowd to some 
 retreat, where he remained until the return of 
 his double or astral soul. 
 
12 
 
 The astral soul scin-lecca (double) is able to 
 draw itself out of the body while in a profound 
 sleep, and often travels around and sees places, 
 so that when the person is awake and comes 
 across these places he is sometimes impressed 
 that he has been there before. Some persons' 
 visions are so clear that they are able to see 
 these astral bodies, and it has given rise to 
 spooks and ghosts. Some mediums are able to 
 withdraw their astral hands, and this accounts 
 for an extra hand often witnessed at seances. 
 Little by little the whole astral body may ooze 
 out like a passing cloud, until two forms appear 
 where there was only one, the one more shad- 
 owy than the other. 
 
 The trinity of nature is the lock of magic, 
 the trinity of man the key that fits it. It is 
 unthinkable and unpronounceable, and yet 
 every man finds in himself his God. "Who 
 "art thou, O fair being?" inquired the disem- 
 bodied soul in the KJiordah Avesta, at the gates 
 of Paradise. "I am, O Soul, thy good and 
 " purest thoughts, thy works and thy good law, 
 "* ^ thy angel '^ * and thy God." Then 
 man or soul is reunited with tfself, for this 
 "son of God" is one with him; it is his own 
 mediator, the God of his human soul and his 
 justifier. " God not revealing himself immedi- 
 ately to man, the spirit is his interpreter," says 
 Plato in the Banquet. 
 
 Paracelsus says, "The human spirit is so 
 "great a thing that no man can express it! 
 " As God himselt is eternal and unchangeable, 
 "so also is the mind of man. If we rightly 
 "understood its powers nothmg would be im- 
 " possible to us on earth. The imagination is 
 "strengthened and developed through faith in 
 "our will. Faith must confirm the imagina- 
 " tion, for faith establishes the will." 
 
 Jacolliot, the great writer and translator of 
 Oriental literature, says that "it is impossible 
 " for him to give an account of the marvelous 
 " facts witnessed while among the Hindoos. 
 " The many strange and startling things done by 
 "them would, if told, tend to make the Euro- 
 " peans look upon me as a Munchausen, or a 
 "greater liar than Sinbad the Sailor." But 
 adds with entire truthfulness, " Let it suffice to 
 " say, that in regard to magnetism and spiritism 
 " Europe has yet to stammer over the first let- 
 " ters of the alphabet, and that the Brahmans 
 
 "have reached, in these two departments of 
 " learning, results in the way of phenomena, 
 "that are truly stupefying. When one sees 
 " these strange manifestations, whose power one 
 "cannot deny, without grasping the laws that 
 " the Brahmans keep so carefully concealed, the 
 "mind is overwhelmed with wonder and lost in 
 "amazement. 
 
 "The only explanation we have been able to 
 " obtain on the subject from a learned Brahman 
 "with whom we were on terms of the closest 
 " intimacy was this : ' You have studied phys- 
 " ical nature, and you have obtained, through 
 "the laws of nature, marvelous results — steam, 
 " electricity, etc. For twenty thousand years 
 "or more we have studied the intellectual 
 " forces; we have discovered their laws, and we 
 " obtain, by making them act alone or in con- 
 " cert with other matter, phenomena still more 
 "astonishing than your own. 
 
 " While there are in the science which the 
 " Brahmans call occult, phenomena so extraor- 
 " dinary as to baffle all investigation, theie is 
 "not one which cannot be explained, and 
 "which is not subject to natural law, if prop- 
 " erly understood, which any initiated Brahman 
 "could if he would explain every phenomena; 
 " while our ablest physicist is not able to explain 
 " even the most trivial occult phenomenon 
 " produced by a fakir pupil of a pagoda, much 
 " less those performed by an adept." 
 
 To comprehend the principles of the natural 
 law involved in occultism, we must keep in 
 mind the fundamental proposition of Oriental 
 philosophy, i. There is no mtf-acle. Every- 
 thing that happens is the result of law — eternal, 
 immutable, ever active. (Apparent miracle is 
 but the operation of forces antagonistic to the 
 well-ascertained laws of nature, but are un- 
 known to science.) And what is not known or 
 understood has always been considered by the 
 ignorant as a miracle. 
 
 2. Nature is triune. There is a visible, objec- 
 tive nature; an invisible, indwelling, energizing 
 nature, the external model of the other, and its 
 vital principle; and above these two, spirit, 
 source of all forces, alone eternal and inde- 
 structible. The lower two, consequently, 
 change; the highest, the third, does not. 
 
 3. Man is also triune. He has his physical 
 body; his vitalizing, astral or spiritual body^ 
 
13 
 
 the real man; and these two are brooded over 
 and illuminated by the third — the sovereign, 
 the i77i7iwrtal soul. When the real man suc- 
 ceeds in merging himself with the latter, he 
 becomes an immortal entity. 
 
 4. Magic, as a science, is a knowledge of 
 these principles, and of the way by which the 
 omniscience and omnipotence of the spirit and 
 its control over nature's forces may be acquired 
 by the individual while still in the body. 
 Magic, as an art, is the application of this 
 knowledge in practice. 
 
 5. Arcane knowledge misapplied is sorcery; 
 beneficially used, true magic or wisdom. 
 
 6. Mediumship is the opposite of adeptship. 
 The medium is the passive instrument of foreign 
 influences; the adept actively controls himself 
 and all inferior potencies. 
 
 7. All things that ever were, that now are or 
 shall be, having their record upon the astral 
 light, or tablet of the unseen universe, the ini- 
 tiated adept, by using the vision of his own 
 spirit, can know all that has known or can be 
 known. 
 
 8. Races of men differ in spiritual gifts, as in 
 color, stature, or any other external quality. 
 Among some peoples seership naturally prevails, 
 among others, mediumship. Some are addict- 
 ed to sorcery, and transmit its secret rules of 
 [)ractice from generation to generation, with a 
 range of psychical phenomena, more or less 
 wide, as the result. 
 
 9. One phase of magical skill is the voluntary 
 and conscious withdrawal of the inner man 
 (astral form) from the outer man (physical body). 
 In the cases of some mediums withdrawal oc- 
 curs, but it is unconscious and involuntary. 
 With the latter the body is more or less catalep- 
 tic at such times; but with the adept the absence 
 of the astral foim would not be noticed, for the 
 physical senses are alert, and the individual 
 appears only as though in a fit of abstraction, 
 "a brown stiidy," as some call it. 
 
 The astral form can go anywhere, penetrate 
 any obstacle, neither time nor space are to be 
 considered; it moves with the rapidity of thought 
 and the wings of electricity. The thaumatur- 
 gist skilled in the occult science, can make his 
 astral form visible, and assume protean "jhapes 
 and appear at different places, and by his will- 
 power can cast a mesmeric hallucination over 
 
 his audience so as to make them believe that 
 what they saw was real, when in reality it was 
 but a picture in their minds, so impressed by 
 him; while his physical body seems to disappear 
 or assume any shape that he may choose. In 
 this way he quietly slips away and leaves his 
 astral body, then this astral form suddenly rises 
 and floats off in the air, which the spectators 
 mistook for the real body. 
 
 Swedenborgians believe, and arcane science 
 teaches, that the soul often leaves and abandons 
 the body, from various causes, as that of over- 
 powering grief, fright, despair, violent attack of 
 sickness, or excessive sensuality, and leaves the 
 vacant carcass, v.'hich may be entered and in- 
 habited by the astral form of an adept sorcerer 
 or an elementary (an earth-bound disembodied 
 human soul). In cases of insanity the patient's 
 astral being is either semi-paralyzed, bewildered 
 and subject to the influence of every passing 
 spirit of any sort, or it has departed from the 
 body forever, and the body is taken possession 
 of by some vampyrish entity near its own dis- 
 integration and clinging desperately to earth, 
 whose sensual pleasures it may enjoy and pro- 
 long for awhile. 
 
 Magic is the knowledge of magnetism and 
 electricity, their qualities, correlations and 
 potencies, and their effects on the animal king- 
 dom and man. It is essential wisdom, nature, 
 the material ally, pupil and servant of the ma- 
 gician. As one common vital principle per- 
 vades all things, and this is controllable by the 
 perfected human will, the adept by the know- 
 ledge of its laws can stimulate the movement of 
 the material forces in plants and animals in a 
 preternatural degree, by using and controlling 
 these hidden forces in nature to quicken the 
 conditions of its nature, and produce more 
 rapid results; thus, for example, make a plant 
 mature in a few miuutes which would take 
 months and years by the slow natural growth. 
 Many minerals and plants have within them 
 hidden powers, such as lodestone, opium and 
 hasheesh. The adept can control the sensitive 
 and alter the conditions of the physical and 
 astral bodies of other persons not adepts. He 
 can also govern and employ as he pleases the 
 spirits of the elements, but not that of immortal 
 spirit. 
 
 There are two kinds of seership — that of the 
 
14 
 
 soul and that of the spirit. The seershij) of 
 the ancient Pythoness, or of the modern mes- 
 merized subject, vary but in the artificial modes 
 adopted to induce the state of clairvoyance. 
 But as the vision of both depends upon the 
 acuteness of the senses of the astral body, they 
 differ very widely from the perfect, omniscient 
 spiritual state; for at best the subject can get 
 but glimpses of truth through the veil which 
 physical nature interposes. 
 
 The astral principle or mind, called by the 
 Hindu Yogtn Flav-atnia, is the sentient soul, 
 inseparable from our physical brain, which it 
 holds in subjection, and is in its turn equally 
 trammeled by it. This is the ego, the intellect- 
 ual life-principle of man, his conscious entity. 
 While yet in the material body the correctness 
 of its spiritual vision depends on its more or 
 less intimate relation to its higher principle. 
 When the relation is such as to allow the most 
 ethereal portions of the soul-essence to act in- 
 dependently of its grosser particles and of the 
 brain, it can unerringly comprehend what it sees, 
 then only is it the pure, rational, supersentient 
 soul. That state is known in India as the 
 samaddi ; it is the highest spiritual condition 
 known to man. 
 
 But when the body is in a total catalepsy of 
 the physical frame, the soul of the clairvoyant 
 may liberate itself and perceive things subject- 
 ively; and yet, as the sentient principle of the 
 brain is alive and active, these pictures of the 
 past, present and future, will be tinctured with 
 the terrestrial perceptions of the objective 
 world; the physical memory and fancy will be 
 in the way of clear vision. But the seer adept 
 knows how to suspend the mechanical action of 
 the brain, by forcing to stop thinking. His 
 vision will be clear as truth itself, uncolored 
 and undistorted; whereas the clairvoyant, una- 
 ble to control the vibrations of the astral waves, 
 will perceive, more or less, but broken images 
 through the medium of the brain. The seer 
 can never take fleeting shadows for realities, for 
 his memory being as completely subjected to 
 his will as the rest of the body, he receives im- 
 pressions directly from his spirit. Between his 
 subjective and objective selves there are no ob- 
 structive mediums. This is the real spiritual 
 seership in which, according to an expression of 
 Plato, soul is raised above all inferior good. 
 
 When we reach " that which is supreme, which 
 is simple, pure and iitichangeable, without form, 
 color or human qualities, \hQ God — our nous." 
 This is the state which such seers as Plotinus 
 and .A.ppollonius termed " union to the Deity," 
 which the ancient Yogins called Isva7'a and the 
 modern call Samaddi. But this state is as far 
 above modern clairvoyance as the stars above 
 the glow-worm. Plotinus, as is well known, 
 was a clairvoyant-seer during his whole life, and 
 yet he had been united to his God but six times 
 during his life, as he confessed to Porphyry. 
 
 The Brahmans divide these powers into eight 
 degrees or powers: i, Anima; 2, Mahima; 
 3, Layhima; 4, Garima; 5, Prapi; 6, Prakamga; 
 7, Vasitwa; 8, Isitwa, or divine power. The 
 fifth predicting future events, understanding 
 unknown languages, curing diseases, divining 
 unexpressed thoughts, understanding the lan- 
 guage of the heart. The sixth is the power of 
 converting old age into youth. The seventh is 
 the power of mesmerizing human beings and 
 beasts and making them obedient; it is the 
 power of resisting passions and emotions. The 
 eighth power is the spiritual state, and presup- 
 poses the absence of the above seven powers, 
 as in this state the Yogi is full of God. 
 
 Subjective communication with the human, 
 god-like spirits of those who have preceded us 
 to the silent land of bliss, is in India divided 
 into three categories. Under the spiritual train- 
 ing of a Guru or Lanrizasi the vaton (disciple 
 or neophyte) begins to feel them. Were he 
 not, under the immediate guidance of an adept, 
 he would be controlled by the invisibles, and 
 utterly at their mercy, for among these subject- 
 ive influences he is unable to discern the good 
 from the bad. Happy the sensitive who is sure 
 of the purity of his spiritual atmosphere. 
 
 To this subjective consciousness, which is the 
 first degree is after a time added that of clairau- 
 dience. This is the second degree or stage of 
 development. The sensitive — when not natur- 
 ally made so by psychological training — now 
 audibly hears but is still unable to discern, and 
 is incapable of verifying his impressions, and 
 one who is unprotected the tricky powers of the 
 air but too often delude with semblances of 
 voices and speech. But the Guru's influence 
 is there; it is the most powerful shield against 
 the intrusions of the Chritwa into the atmos- 
 
15 
 
 phere of the vaton, consecrated to the pure, 
 human and celestial Pitris. 
 
 When a Buddhist ascetic has reached the 
 fourth degree, he is considered a rahat. He 
 produces every kind of phenomena by the soul 
 power of his freed spirit. A rahat, says the 
 Buddhist, is one who has acquired the power of 
 flying in the air, becoming invisible, command- 
 ing the elements, and working all manner of 
 wonders, commonly, but erroneously, called 
 [meipo) miracles. He is a perfect man, a demi- 
 god. A god he will become when he reaches 
 Nervana, for, like the initiates of both testa- 
 ments, the worshipers of Buddha know that 
 they " are gods." 
 
 The astral soul has only passed from the 
 visible to the invisible world, and may be per- 
 ceived by the inner sense of vision, which is 
 adapted to the things of that other and more 
 real universe. The same rule applies to sound, 
 as the physical ear discerns the vibrations of the 
 atmosphere up to a certain point, not yet defi- 
 nitely fixed, but varying with the individual, so 
 the adept whose interior hearing has been de- 
 veloped, can take the sound at this vanishing 
 point and hear its vibrations in the astral light 
 indefinitely. He needs no wires, helices or 
 sounding-boards; his will-power is all-sufficient. 
 Hearing with spirit, time and distance offer no 
 impediments, and so he may converse with an- 
 other adept at the antipodes with as great ease 
 as though they were in the same room. 
 
 Spiritual Life is the primordial principle 
 above Physical Life, it is the primordial prin- 
 ciple behind; but they are one under their dual 
 aspect. " As it is above, so it is below; as in 
 heaven, so on earth." One is the counterpart 
 of the other; one is spiritual, and the other is 
 material or terrestrial. 
 
 Magic, in ancient times, was considered as 
 a divine science; wisdom and knowledge of 
 God. The healing art in the temples of zIlscu- 
 lapius, and at the shrines of Egypt and the East, 
 was always magical, and the secrets intrusted 
 only to the initiated. Then the priest was the 
 medical adviser of soul and body, as the former 
 .has much to do with the latter, as it is conceded 
 that the mind has much iuiluence over the body, 
 and health depends on that of a sound mind; 
 therefore to be a successful physician he must 
 understand both body and mind, and the soul 
 
 is embraced in the latter, and has control of it, 
 which is immortal and becomes more active 
 after the soul has left the body. 
 
 The inner entity of man is more or less divine 
 according to its proximity to the crown — 
 christos. The purer and better a man is, 
 the closer and more serene is his life and freer 
 from external dangers, and the clearer and bet- 
 ter are his impressions and his visions into the 
 future. It is this that has, in all ages of the 
 world, convinced man that an immortal spirit 
 exists within him, which under favorable cir- 
 cumstances, can converse with angels, who are 
 nothing but progressed souls that at one time 
 dwelt in a physical body. This is admitted 
 often in the Bible, and by the greatest philoso- 
 phers of antiquity; and if it could then exist, 
 there is no reason why it cannot^ now, as the 
 laws of nature never change. These spirits, or 
 guardian angels, have often appeared to man 
 and warned him of danger, and revealed the 
 future to him, by touch, glance or word, as 
 Ammonius tells us. Moreover, Lamprius and 
 others held that if the unembodied spirits, or 
 souls, could descend on earth and become 
 guardians of mortal men, " we should not seek 
 to deprive those souls which are still in the body 
 of that power by which the former know future 
 events and are able to announce them. It is 
 not probable," adds Lamprius, "that the soul 
 gains a new power of prophecy after separation 
 from the body which it did not possess before." 
 We may rather conclude it possessed all these 
 powers during its union with the body, although 
 in a lesser perfection. Like the sun it always 
 shines bright and clear, but its rays are dimmed 
 to us when it passes behind a cloud or is ob- 
 scured by an eclipse; so it is with the soul when 
 it is confined in the flesh. 
 
 Yet some persons are so spiritual that they 
 are able to hold converse with spirits and an- 
 gels, by which means they are enabled to get 
 a glimpse of the spirit world. Those disem- 
 bodied spirits that have progressed and learned 
 the laws of the spirit land, are more able to see 
 and tell what the future results will be, as a man 
 is better able to judge the future than an inex- 
 perienced boy is; as knowledge of cause and 
 effect will enable one to come at the result, as 
 everything is governed by certain laws, and to 
 understand these laws is only finding out the 
 
16 
 
 secrets of nature that will enable man to use 
 them and to advance himself in the search of 
 truth, which is the ultimate end of all research. 
 
 Akasa, or Life Force. 
 
 It was Ammonius who first taught that every 
 religion was based on one and the same truth, 
 which is the wisdom found in the books of 
 Thoth (Hermese Trismegistus), from which 
 books Pythagoras and Plato had learned all 
 their philosophy, and the doctrines of the for- 
 mer he affirmed to have been identical with the 
 earliest teachings of the Brahmans, now embod- 
 ied in the old Vedas. "The name Thoth," 
 says Professor Wilder, "means a college or 
 assembly," and it is not improbable that the 
 books were so named as being the collected 
 oracles and doctrines of the sacerdotal frater- 
 nity of Memphis. Rabbi Wise had suggested 
 a similar hypothesis in relation to the divine 
 utterances recorded in the Hebrew Scriptures. 
 P>ut the Hindoo writers assert that during the 
 reign of king Kansa Yadus the High Hiero- 
 phant alone knew how to perform the solemn 
 operation of infusing his ow-n vital and astral 
 soul into the adept chosen by him for his suc- 
 cessor, who thus became endowed with a 
 double life. 
 
 Mrs. Britten, in her "Ghost Land," gives a 
 strange account how this mystical operation of 
 the adept to transfer his spiritual entity after the 
 death of his body into the youth he loves with 
 all the ardent love of a spiritual parent, and 
 how he used the organism of the boy in sending 
 his astral soul to different places and to do cer- 
 tain things; all of which is startling, and to the 
 uninitiated it sounds like the wildest romance, 
 destitute of truth and in violation of our senses. 
 
 " In the remotest ages there has existed a 
 mysterious, awful science, under the name of 
 Theopcea. This science taught the art of en- 
 dowing the various symbols of the gods with 
 temporary life and intelligence. Statues and 
 blocks of inert matter became animated un- 
 der the potential will of the hierophant. The 
 fire stolen by Prometheus had fallen down in 
 the struggle to earth; it embraced the lower 
 regions of the sky, and settled in the waves of 
 the universal ether, as the potential Akasa of 
 the Hindoo rites. We breathe and imbibe it 
 into our organic system at every inhalation. 
 
 But it becomes potential only under the influx 
 of will and spirit. Left to itself this life-princi- 
 ple will blindly follow the laws of nature, and, 
 according to conditions, will produce health 
 and exuberance of life, or cause death and dis- 
 solution when withdrawn; but guided by the 
 will of the adept, it becomes obedient; its cur- 
 rents restore the equilibrium in organic bodies; 
 they 641 the waste and produce physical and 
 psychological miracles well know^n to mesmer- 
 izers. Infused into inorganic and inert matter, 
 they create an appearance of life, hence motion. 
 If to the life an individual intelligence, a per- 
 sonality, is wanting, then the operator must 
 either send his scin-lecca, his own astral spirit, 
 to animate it, or use his power over the region 
 of native-spirits to force one of them to infuse his 
 entity into the marble, wood or metal; or again 
 be helped by human spirits. 
 
 The good spirits will not infuse their essence 
 into these inanimate objects. They leave it to 
 the lower kinds to produce the similitude of 
 life, animation and materialization. They send 
 their influence through the intervening spheres 
 like a ray of divine light, when the so-called 
 miracle is required for a good purpose. The 
 condition — and this is a law of spiritual nature 
 — is purity of motive, purity of the surround- 
 ing magnetic atmosphere, and personal purity 
 of the operator. Thus it is that a pagan mir- 
 acle may be performad by a fakir of South In- 
 dia. A naked beggar crouched on the floor, 
 with no assistance but his magic power, will so 
 command these hidden forces of nature as to 
 move furniture in the remotest part of the room, 
 even the chair or sofa you may be sitting on; 
 the doors to open or shut, the candle to go out, 
 birds, flames, the forms of men, women and 
 animals to flit before your vision in broad day- 
 light, and many other things too strange and 
 incredible to mention. 
 
 The power to move statues and tables is not 
 confined to the ancients, but the nineteenth 
 century is full of such incidents, if we are to 
 believe what man and the papers say. In the 
 summer of 1876, the French papers gave an ac- 
 count of the capers performed by the statue of 
 the Madonna of Lourde^. This gracious lady, 
 says the sexton, has run off into the woods several 
 times, and he was forced to hunt her up and 
 bring her home. After this began a series of 
 
1 
 
 miracles, healing, prophesying, letters dropping 
 from on high, and many other strange manifest- 
 ations. These miracles are implicitly accepted 
 by millions and millions of Catholics, many of 
 them being of the most intelligent and educated 
 classes. Then why should we disbelieve the 
 statements given by the ancient historians ? 
 Titus and Livy say that when the statue of Juno 
 was asked if she \^ as willing " to abandon the 
 walls of Veii and change her abode to that of 
 Rome," consented by nodding her head and 
 answering, " Yes, I will." And, says the his- 
 torian, "Furthermore, upon carrying off the 
 figure, it seemed instantly to lose its immense 
 weight^'' and he adds, " the statue seemed rather 
 to follow than otherwise." (Tite-Livy, v. dec. i,) 
 
 Des Mousseau, a devout Catholic writer, 
 gives many instances of statues of saints and 
 madonnas walking and moving about. He 
 admits that magic can do the same, but that 
 Christianity can beat it; that one is the work of 
 God, while the other is the doings of the devil; 
 and says: "The Holy Roman Catholic and 
 Apostolic Church declares the miracles wrought 
 by the faithful sons are produced by the will of 
 God, and all others the work of the spirits of 
 hell." 
 
 The ancients animated statues, and the Her- 
 mitists called into being, out of the elements, 
 the shapes of salamanders, gnomes, undines 
 and sylphs, which they did not pretend to cre- 
 ate, but simply to make visible by holding open 
 the door of nature, so that under favoring con- 
 ditions they might step into view. And if the 
 Bible can be taken as authority, " Aaron threw 
 down his rod and it became a serpent. Then 
 Pharaoh also called his wise men and sorcerers; 
 now the magicians of Egypt they did also in 
 like manner, * * and they became serpents, 
 but Aaron's rod swallowed up their rods," 
 Aaron by a wave of his rod brought forth frogs, 
 and the magicians did the same; so that the, 
 magicians could do almost all things that Aaron 
 did: yet Aaron could excel, and Pharaoh con- 
 cluded that the best thing he could do was to 
 let the children of Israel go. 
 
 Now these manifestations of power do not 
 exceed what the magicians and fakirs claim to 
 do and have often done in the presence of the 
 most reliable and skillful scientific Europeans, 
 and they have been unable to detect any fraud 
 
 or delusion; so it is reasonable to suppose that 
 if the ancient magicians of Egypt could perform 
 these wonderful feats, they could be done now 
 under favorable circumstances, and that this 
 secret is claimed by the Hindoos to be the same 
 art that has been known in India for thousands 
 of years. 
 
 The Hindoo adepts claim to possess the power 
 of controlling the akasa (or life-principle), by 
 means of which they are able to kill a person 
 and bring him to life, by directing a current of 
 this akasa upon the wound and healing it. 
 
 The performance of the fakirs are wonderful 
 and defy all detection of trickery. They have 
 been known to be buried alive and grain sown 
 upon the grave, and in thirty days were dug up 
 alive. They will inflict mortal wounds and 
 exhibit their bowels to persons present, and 
 then heal the wounds immediately. Some of 
 these fakirs exhibited their marvelous power to 
 the Prince of Wales when in India. One of 
 the fakirs gave one of his company a vessel to 
 hold; it soon turned to a cobra, a most poisonous 
 serpent, and it was examined and found to be 
 alive and had fangs. If it had bitten any one, 
 it would have been instant death. They gave 
 some mango seed to the prince to be selected 
 by him. It was then placed in a pot of earth; 
 in a few moments it came up, put forth leaves, 
 buds and blossoms, and in about four minutes 
 matured fruit that was pronounced by all pres- 
 ent to be a fresh mango. 
 
 The same thing was done, in the presence ot 
 Dr. J. M. Peebles, in the open air; of which he 
 gives an account, during his travels in India. 
 Almost any traveler in that country will cor- 
 roborate this statement. 
 
 Wonder- Workers of India. 
 Fakirs can be buried for months, as has been 
 testified by English officers — Lord Napier, 
 Captain Osborne and Sir Claude Wade. Cap- 
 tain Osborne says he " saw one of the fakirs 
 buried for six weeks beneath my floor, and to 
 prevent any chance of deception a guard of four 
 soldiers was detailed to w^atch day and night to 
 see there was no deception." " On opening 
 it," says Sir Claude, " we saw a figure enclosed 
 in a bag of white linen fastened by a string over 
 the head. * * * xhe servant then began 
 pouring warm water over the figure. * * * 
 
18 
 
 The legs and arms of the body were shriveled 
 and stiff, the face full, the head resting on the 
 shoulders like a corpse. I then called the med- 
 ical man who was attending me to come down 
 and inspect the body, which he did but could 
 discover no pulsation in the heart, the temples 
 or the arms. There was, however, a keaf about 
 the region of the /?ram, but no other part of the 
 body exhibited any. The body was then taken 
 and placed in a warm bath, friction was applied, 
 the removal of wax and cotton pledgets fiom 
 the nostrils and ears, the rubbing of the eyelids 
 with ghee and clarified honey. Then they ap- 
 plied a hot cohesive cake of bread to the top 
 of his head, x^fter three applications of the 
 hot cake to his head, the body was convulsed, 
 the nostrils inflated and respiration begun, the 
 limbs assumed a natural fullness, the pulsation 
 was only perceptible. The tongue was anointed 
 with ghee, and unrolled where the end had been 
 placed in the gullet to prevent any air entering 
 the stomach; the eyeballs became dilated and 
 recovered their natural color, and the fakir rec- 
 ognized those present and spoke." 
 
 This plugging up process was done to keep 
 the air from entering upon the organic tissues 
 of the body and prevented decomposition, so 
 that he was hermetically sealed up. Now if 
 the fakirs can suspend life in this way and then 
 restore animation, why should not we give cre- 
 dence to the fact as stated of Jesus Christ res- 
 urrecting Lazarus ? and that of Appolonius who 
 restored to life a girl ? and that one mentioned 
 by Diogenes Laertius restored to life by Em- 
 pedocles ? Yet these were pagans and are dis- 
 carded, while that of Christ is alone believed 
 to be true. The prodigies of Jesus and Appo- 
 lonius are so well attested that they appear au- 
 thentic. Whether in either or both cases life 
 was simply suspended or not, the important 
 fact remains that by some power peculiar to 
 themselves, both the wonder-workers recalled 
 the seemingly dead to life in an instant. The 
 books are full of instances where people have 
 been buried or nearly committed to the tomb 
 who were only in a cataleptic state. 
 
 The many strange stories told by travelers in 
 the East would fill volumes. One given to a 
 delegation of the East India Company is thus 
 related : " A lot of Englishmen who visited the 
 Indian prince Jehangire, saw two tents erected 
 
 about a bow-shot apart. Then the fakir asked 
 the guests what kind of animals they wished to 
 see fight ? One said, ' Ostriches.' At a signal 
 given out stalked a couple of those birds, one 
 from each tent which they had seen erected 
 with nothing in them ; they fought some time, 
 the blood ran down their necks where they had 
 bitten each other. They returned, at a given 
 word, to the tents. Then another of the com- 
 pany called for a lion fight. Out of each tent 
 walked a lion ; after rolling over and biting one 
 another, roaring and tearing up the ground, 
 they retired at a given word. Then out came 
 two wild buffaloes, and they had a pitched bat- 
 tle. All this was done in the presence of the 
 whole court. These Bengalese conjurers and 
 jugglers then took ten mulberry seeds, which 
 they planted in the earth. In a few minutes 
 they produced ten trees. The ground parted, 
 the sprouts came up, pushing out leaves, twigs 
 and branches, spreading wide out in the air, 
 budding, blossoming and yielding fruit which 
 matured on the spot, which they tasted and 
 pronounced good. Figs, almond, mango and 
 walnut were planted ; they likewise grew^ up 
 rapidly before their eyes. The branches of 
 these trees were filled with birds of the richest 
 plumage, flitting among the leaves and singing 
 sweet notes. The leaves then turned russet, 
 fell off, branches and twigs withered, and finally 
 the trunks sank back into the earth. It all 
 transpired in less than an hour. 
 
 ''A large cauldron was then produced, and 
 a quantity of rice was thrown into it. Without 
 the least sign of fire it began to boil, and out of 
 this cauldron were taken hundreds of plates of 
 cooked rice, with a stewed fowl on the top of 
 each." This trick is performed on a smaller 
 scale by the most ordinary fakirs of the present 
 day in India. This was equal to that of Christ 
 feeding the multitude on a few loaves and fishes. 
 
 In the memoirs of the emperor Jehangire 
 (page 99), there is a strange account given by 
 an eye-witness: *'The performance of the 
 seven jugglers of Bengal. They took a man 
 and chopped each limb off and severed his head 
 from the body. They scattered the mutilated 
 members around on the ground for some time; 
 they then threw a sheet over them, and one of 
 the jugglers crept under it. In a few moments 
 he came out, followed by the mutilated man 
 
19 
 
 that a few moments before had been cut all to 
 pieces. They then took a chain," says the 
 writer, " some fifty cubits long, and threw one 
 end up until it went out of sight, and then it 
 remained suspended in the air. A dog was 
 then produced, placed at the lower end of the 
 chain, when he ran up it out of sight. Next 
 was a hog, a lion and a tiger, ail did the same 
 thing." 
 
 Another account of a fakir, given in the 
 Franco-American/\?>2i^^?.^ oi this: "He took 
 a peg and drove into the ground, threw up a 
 ball with a cord attached, which went out of 
 sight ; he then sent up a boy, and as he did not 
 return he said he vvould go after him. Soon 
 down came a hand of the boy, then a leg, then 
 the body all bloody, then came the head; pres- 
 ently down came the juggler with a bloody knife 
 in his hand. He picked up the different parts 
 of the boy and threw them into a basket, when 
 out jumped the boy and ran off." 
 
 They are known to plant the hilts of their 
 sharp swords in the ground, then lay down on 
 the points, while one by one these swords were 
 ren:ioved until he lay in the air without any sup- 
 port; and an Englishman says he took a stick 
 and felt under the body and could find no sup- 
 port. Says Colonel Yule: " They will stick a 
 live pig to a rock so it can't get away, restore 
 the dead to life, catch wild beasts with their 
 hands, read thoughts, make water flow back- 
 ward, eat tiles, sit in the midair, etc." An old 
 legend ascribed to Simon Magus precisely the 
 same power: " He made statues to walk, leaped 
 into the fire without being burned, flew in the 
 air, made bread of stones, changed his shape, 
 assumed two faces at once, converted himself 
 into a pillar, caused doors to open at will," etc. 
 
 Origen writes that the Brahmans always were 
 famous for their wonderful cures, which they 
 performed by the utterance of certain words; 
 and the present travelers in India say it is still 
 practiced, and that upon pronouncing a certain 
 word or sentence they are able to perform won- 
 derful tricks. Some will walk barefooted on 
 red, burning coals, on the points of sharp knives 
 stuck in the ground, stand posed on the big toe 
 on the point of one of them, and lift up another 
 man from off the ground. I have seen a Jap- 
 anese juggler do the same, ascend a ladder 
 bare-footed the rounds of which were very sharp 
 
 swords. I have also seen an East India negro, 
 called the "Fire King," walk on hot bars of 
 iron, take and bend them under his foot and 
 up around his leg; the outer skin would smoke 
 and fry a little, but "It did not produce appa- 
 rently any pain. He took his finger and stirred 
 up a ladle of molten lead, then took a table- 
 spoonful of the melted lead and put it into his 
 mouth, and then spat it out on the floor, which 
 I undertook to pick up but got my fingers 
 burned. He also took a dish of alcohol, put a 
 lot of tow in it, stirred it up and set it on fire, 
 took a fork and began to eat it, the blaze rising 
 up over his head. After chewing it awhile, the 
 fire blazing out whenever he opened his mouth, 
 then spitting it out on the floor it burned the 
 wood. He blew the flames out of his mouth 
 on my hand, and it burned it and singed the 
 hair. All of this w-as done in broad daylight, 
 within a few feet of myself and hundreds of 
 others. He would stick his hands into the fur- 
 nace, take up a coal of fire and light his pipe. I 
 examined his hands and feet; there appeared to 
 be no foreign substance on them, but the outer 
 skin appeared a little parched and discolored. 
 There was no one present who did not believe 
 that what he did was genuine, as several like 
 myself got their fingers burned in testing it. 
 He said that he v/ould not mind to walk into 
 the hottest furnaces, like that spoken of in the 
 Bible where the Hebrew children walked 
 through the fiery furnace, and from appearan- 
 ces he might have done it. 
 
 In Siam, Japan and Great Tartary, it is the 
 custom to make medallions, statuets and idols 
 out of the ashes of cremated persons. They 
 are mixed with water into a paste, and after 
 being molded into any desired shape, are baked 
 and then gilded and kept as household gods. 
 The cremation is done to facilitate the with- 
 drawal of the astral soul, which lingers more or 
 less until the bones are decomposed, and there- 
 fore they cremate the bodies of their departed 
 friends, and fearing that the astral soul might 
 remam satisfied for an indefinite period within 
 the ashes, they resort to the following process: 
 "The sacred dust is placed in a heap upon a 
 metallic plate strongly magnetized, of the size 
 of a man's body. The adept then slowly and 
 gently fans it with a peculiar fan, and at the 
 same time making signs and muttering a form 
 
20 
 
 of invocation. The ashes then begin to move 
 and assume the outlines of the body before cre- 
 mation. Then there gradually arises a sort of 
 whitish vapor, which after a time forms into an 
 erect column, and compacting itself is finally 
 transformed into the ' double ' or ethereal astral 
 counterpart of the dead, which in its turn dis- 
 solves away into the air and disappears from 
 mortal sight." This accounts for the Hindoos 
 preferring cremation, as it sets the astral body 
 free from the earthly remains, around which it 
 lingers until it dissolves back into its original 
 elements. 
 
 This wonderful power has existed in all ages 
 of the world in some phase or other, to illumin- 
 ate dark and benighted man, to elevate Lim 
 and cause him to look up to a higher and bet- 
 ter life to come. History, sacred and profane, 
 is full of it. Whether it came from natural- 
 born mediums, or learned by association with 
 those versed in the occult sciences of the Ori- 
 ental world, where it has been known from time 
 immemorial and sacredly guarded by the Brah- 
 mans, Buddhists, fakirs, the ancient Egyp- 
 tians, heliophants, with whom Moses learned 
 the art and introduced it among the Jews under 
 the Order of the Kabalist, and out of which 
 Freemasonry has sprung, as Solomon sent his 
 ships to Ophir for gold and frankincense, myrrh 
 and pea-feathers, which land was no doubt 
 India. 
 
 In India, Malabar, and some places in Cen- 
 tral Africa, the conjurers will let a person fire 
 his own musket or revolver at them without 
 ever touching or interfering in loading it. 
 Laing, in his travels, gives an instance of it. 
 Salvert gives a similar instance in his Philoso- 
 phy of Occult Sciences. In 1568 the Prince of 
 Orange condemned a Spanish prisoner to be 
 shot at Juliers. The soldier was tied to a tree 
 and shot at by a file of soldiers, but the balls 
 took no effect. It was supposed that he had a 
 coat of armor on; he was stripped; they found 
 he only had an amulet on, which was taken off. 
 Then he was fired at and fell dead. Not many 
 years ago there lived in Abyssinia a sorcerer 
 who would let the European travelers fire at 
 him with their own guns loaded by them vvith 
 their own balls, for a trifle. At last they offered 
 him five francs to let them place the muzzle of 
 the gun next to the body. After consulting the 
 
 spirits by placing his ear to the ground, he con- 
 sented. The gun bursted and the conjurer was 
 unhurt. An Indian said that Washington was 
 not to be killed by a bullet, as he had fired at 
 him seventeen times within short range without 
 ever touching him at Braddock's defeat; and it 
 is remarkable that he never was wounded dur- 
 ing the whole of his life, yet he was often in 
 the thickest of the fight. In fact many great 
 generals have been believed by their soldiers to 
 have a " charm.ed life." Prince Emile von 
 Sayne-Wittgenstein, of the Russian army, is 
 said to be one possessed of a charmed life. 
 
 There are persons who have the power to 
 psychologize birds and kill them by will power. 
 Jacques Pelessier, in the province of Le Var, 
 France, in 1864, made his living by catching 
 and killing birds by his will power, which was 
 thoroughly tested by men of science. Fourteen 
 birds were taken in this way in one hour; none 
 could resist his power. By stretching out his 
 hand towards them they became pov;erless. It 
 at once put them into a cataleptic sleep, and 
 the phenomena proved to be a magnetic action. 
 But his power was confined to sparrows, robins, 
 goldfinches and meadow larks, and he could 
 not charm other birds. 
 
 There are persons in India and Africa that 
 can charm snakes, crocodiles, and wild animals 
 like the tiger, which have been known to go up 
 and lick the hands of a fakir when asleep in the 
 jungles, and not injure him. 
 
 The Buddhists claim that the spirit of Buddha 
 becomes reincarnated in the flesh after death, 
 so that he ever lives, passing from out the old 
 body at death and entering into that of a young 
 child. The scene of the reincarnation is given 
 by a Florentine scientist, who visited Thibet in 
 the early part of this century, having been per- 
 mitted to penetrate in disguise to the hallowed 
 precincts of a Buddhist temple, where the most 
 solemn of all ceremonies takes place, which are 
 shut out from the gaze of the uninitiated. 
 " An altar is ready in the temple to receive the 
 resuscitated Buddha found by the initiated 
 priesthood, and recognized by certain secret 
 signs to have reincarnated himself in a new- 
 born infant. The baby, but a few days old,. 
 is brought into the presence of the people and 
 reverentially placed upon the altar. Suddenly 
 rising into a sitting posture, the child begins to 
 
21 
 
 utter, in a loud, manly voice, the following 
 sentences: * I am Buddha; I am his spirit, and 
 I, Buddha, your Dolai Lama, have left my old 
 decrepid body, at the temple of * * * and 
 selected the body of this young babe as my next 
 earthly dwelling." He says he was permitted 
 by the priests to take the baby in his arms and 
 carry it off some distance, so as to satisfy him- 
 self that it was no trick of the ventriloquist. 
 The infant opened his eyes and gave him such 
 a look that it made his flesh creep, and repeated 
 the same words, so there could be no mistake 
 about it. 
 
 This account is confirmed by Abbe Hue, a 
 celebrated Catholic priest who traveled through 
 this country, and he further states that the child 
 answers questions and tells those who knew him 
 in " his past life the most exact details of his 
 anterior earthly existence." But he was un- 
 frocked by the church because he was sincere 
 and stuck to the truth of the assertion. 
 
 But this is not the only instance of babies 
 speaking. Jacques Dubois gives an account of 
 the Camissard prophets in 1707, among whom 
 was a boy fifteen months old, who spoke in good 
 French " as though God were speaking through 
 his mouth;" and there are the Cevennes babies 
 whose speaking and prophesying were witnessed 
 by the first savans of France, which has passed 
 into history uncontradicted. Lloyd's Weekly 
 Newspaphr for March, 1875, contains an ac- 
 count of the following phenomena: " At Saar- 
 Louis, France, a child was born; the mother 
 had just been delivered, and the midwife was 
 holding the child in her hands, when some one 
 asked what was the hour. To the astonishment 
 of all present the new-born babe replied dis- 
 tinctly, 'Two o'clock.' While they all were 
 looking at the infant in speechless wonder and 
 dismay, it opened its eyes and said: 'I have 
 been sent into the world to tell you that 1875 
 will be a good year, but that 1876 wnll be a year 
 of blood.' Having uttered this prophecy it 
 turned on its side and expired, aged half an 
 hour." The truth of this prophecy is too late to 
 admit of a comment, as 1875 was a year of great 
 plenty, and 1876 one of bloody scenes on the 
 Danube, between the Turks and Russians, un- 
 paralleled except in the butchery of the Indians 
 in North and South America, and the wading 
 in blood of the English to the throne of Delhi. 
 
 There are many instances of the precocity of 
 children, but I will only relate one more, that 
 of a child of H. D. Jencken, M. R. L, barris- 
 ter at law, London, whose mother was the fa- 
 mous Kate Fox, of Rochester rapping notoriety. 
 When the child was only three months old, it 
 showed evidence of mediumship by raps on the 
 pillow and cradle, and when five months old 
 wrote a communication of twenty words. 
 
 Prophecy can only be explained by spirits 
 impressing the person, as spirits of higher intel- 
 ligence are able to combine causes and effects 
 and can tell more readily what the result will 
 be than a man; so can a man foretell events 
 better than a child; and in this obscure way 
 certain persons in a peculiar state may have 
 visions and get a glimpse into the future. But 
 spirits, like men, are limited in their knowledge, 
 and some know more than others; so it depends 
 on the source and the knowledge of the spirit. 
 The Bible and history are full of prophecy. 
 Much of it has been fulfilled, and much of it 
 has not. Governor Talmadge gives an account 
 of how a distinguished citizen's life was saved 
 on board of the United States war ship Prince- 
 ton, by a premonition. Rev. Dr. Wilson, of 
 Allegheny City, prophecied the great fire of 
 1845 in Pittsburg, the Mexican war and its 
 results, the war between Russia and the West- 
 ern powers, and the speedy limitation of the 
 temporal power of the Pope. 
 
 Napoleon, while an exile on the island of St. 
 Helena, made the following prediction about 
 the United States: " Ere the close of the nine- 
 teenth century, America will be convulsed with 
 one of the greatest revolutions the world has 
 ever witnessed. Should it succeed, her power 
 and prestige are lost; but should the Govern- 
 ment maintain her supremacy, she will be on a 
 firmer basis than ever. The theory of a repub- 
 lican form of government will be established, 
 and she will defy the world." History gives 
 us prophecies of Hannibal and Napoleon, 
 which were fulfilled. Whether old Mother 
 Shipley's prophecy will come true remains to be 
 seen; yet much of it has come to pass, but the 
 world did not end in 1882. 
 
 How the spirits arrive at these facts is un- 
 known; yet they may, like the astronomer who 
 by calculation is able to tell when an eclipse of 
 the sun or moon will take place for hundreds 
 
22 
 
 of years to come. To the ignorant this appears 
 to be impossible. The truth of science, of 
 all knowledge, is to afford facilities to predict 
 the unknown, and judge the future by the past 
 — the cause and effect — will produce certain re- 
 sults if their relation is properly understood. 
 But there is much depending on the environ- 
 ments, and these are forever changing, so that 
 it is impossible for even the most advanced 
 minds to see all that may happen or change the 
 course of things and events. So long as knowl- 
 edge is limited, so long will prophecies prove 
 failures. 
 
 Destiny. 
 ''Man, therefore, to a certain extent, is a be- 
 ing of destiny, which is ever weaving thread by 
 thread around himself, as a spider does his cob- 
 web; and this destiny is guided either by that 
 presence termed by some the guardian angel, 
 or more intimate astral inner man, who is too 
 often the evil genius of the man of flesh. But 
 these lead on the outward man, but one of them 
 must prevail, and from the very beginning of 
 the invisible affray the stern implacable law of 
 compensation steps in and takes its course, fol- 
 lowing faithfully the fluctuations. When the last 
 strand is woven, and man is seemingly enwrap- 
 ped in the network of his own doing, then he 
 finds himself completely under the empire of 
 his s^lf-made destiny. It then either fixes him 
 like the inert shell of an oyster against the im- 
 movable rock, or like a feather carries him 
 away in a whirlwind raised by his own actions." 
 
 An Occult Fraternity. 
 "There is an occult fraternity which has ex- 
 isted from very ancient times, having a hierarchy 
 of officers, secret signs and passwords, and a 
 peculiar method of instruction in science, reli- 
 gion and philosophy. If we may believe those 
 w^ho at present profess to, belong to it, the phi- 
 losopher's stone, the elixir of life, the art of 
 invisibility, and the power of communicating 
 directly with the ultra-mundane life, are a part 
 of the inheritance they possess." These adepts 
 are of a limited number, seldom remain long in 
 any place, but leave without creating notice. 
 They all appear to be men from forty to fifty 
 years old, possessed of vast erudition, and can 
 speak in many tongues. They are men of mod- 
 
 erate means, caring little for wealth, yet always 
 have enough to supply their wants. They live 
 pure and blameless; lives, are austere in manners 
 and almost ascetic in their habits. 
 
 There is a mystical fraternity now established 
 in the United States, which claims an intimate 
 relationship with one of the oldest and most 
 powerful of Eastern Brotherhoods. It is known 
 as the Brotherhood of Tuxor. It has many 
 faithful members widely scattered throughout 
 the West. They have many important secrets 
 of science which they guard with great jealousy, 
 but which they are willing to impart to man 
 when he has advanced enough to receive them. 
 No one can become a member unless he be a 
 person endowed with certain intellectual gifts 
 by birth. No position, rank or money can pro- 
 cure a membership. Nature places the stamp 
 by which they are recognized. Its officers and 
 records are kept in the spirit world, who impart 
 to the initiate whatever knowledge they see 
 proper to confer. They never mistake a person 
 nor his fidelity to keep a secret. 
 
 We have a very interesting account of one of 
 these adepts in the strange and interesting work 
 of Emma Harding Britten, " The Ghost Land 
 or Occultism," who, she says, wrote the " Art 
 Magi," which she had published; and if the 
 statement therein made be true, it is stranger 
 than fiction, and well may one exclaini in the 
 language of Hamlet: "There are more things 
 in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamed 
 of in your philosophy." 
 
 These adepts hold their conclaves in an en- 
 chanted cave in India, where invisible spirits 
 reveal themselves to the adept and mingle to- 
 gether in the human form. They perform won- 
 ders that no mortal can understand. They 
 introduce the adept by passing through under- 
 ground passages, where rocks part to admit their 
 ingress and egress. The cavern is lit up by a 
 lumjnous light that radiates from their heads; 
 the w^alls reflect this light like thousands of dia- 
 monds and crystals. The spirits flit hither and 
 thither. The brain of the adept becomes be- 
 wildered, and in a semi-conscious state he is led 
 forth to the light of day, not knowing whence 
 he came. 
 
 Madame Blavatsky, Secretary of the Theo- 
 sophical Society and author of " Isis Unvailed," 
 has made wonderful progress in the occult sci- 
 
23 
 
 ences, so that she has been able to send mes- 
 sages to the adepts of Kashmir valley, hundreds 
 of miles off, and receive answers without any 
 visible means. The messages come, and are 
 placed wherever she requests. i\t her com- 
 mand the invisible power takes it and soon re- 
 turns with the answer from some of the Yhebian 
 brothers. Wherever she goes there are persons 
 impressed to meet her with conveyance or mon- 
 ey. She has traveled over India in company 
 with Alcott, another adept. 
 
 "The keys to the biblical miracles of old, 
 and to the phenomena of modern days; the 
 problems of psychology, physiology, and the 
 many ' missing links' which have so perplexed 
 scientists of late, are all in the hands of secret 
 fraternities. This mystery must be unvailed 
 some day. But till then dark skepticism will 
 constantly interpose its threatening, ugly shad- 
 ow between God's truths and the spiritual vision 
 of mankind; and m.any are those who, infected 
 by the moral epidemic of our century — hope- 
 less materialism — will remain in doubt and mor- 
 tal agony as to whether when man dies he will 
 live again, although the question has been solved 
 by long bygone generations of sages. The an- 
 swers are there. They may be found m the 
 time-worn granite pages of caves, temples, on 
 
 sphinxes, propylons and obelisks. They have 
 stood there for untold ages, and neither the 
 rude assault of time, nor the still ruder assault 
 of the hands of the religious fanatic, have suc- 
 ceeded in obliterating the records — all covered 
 with the problems which were solved — who can 
 tell.? perhaps by the archaic forefathers of their 
 builders. The solution follows each question, 
 and this the Christian could not appropriate, 
 for except the initiates no one has understood 
 the mystic writings. The key was in the keep- 
 ing of those who knew how to commune wdth 
 the invisible Presence, and who had received, 
 from the lips of Mother Nature herself, her 
 grand truths. And so stands these monuments, 
 like mute forgotten sentinels on the threshold 
 of that unseen world, whose gates are thrown 
 open but to a few elect. Defying the hand of 
 time, the vain inquiry of profane science, the 
 insults of revealed religion, they will disclose 
 their riddles to none but the legatees of those 
 by whom they were intrusted with the mystery. 
 The cold stony lips of the once vocal Memnon, 
 and these hardy sphinxes, keep their secrets 
 well. Who will unseal them } Who of you 
 modern materialistic dwarfs and unbelieving 
 sadducees will dare to lift the Vail of 
 Isis V 
 
CHABTER III. 
 
 SOUL OF THE UNIVERSE. 
 
 (anima mundi.) 
 
 Ether— Psychomacy— Plato and St. Paul on the Triune, Body, Spirit and Soul— Transmigfration- 
 Hindoo Idea of a Soul, its Oricfin and Destiny. 
 
 The soul of the universe, the great magnetic 
 agent which gives life to all things, is what Sir 
 Isaac Newton calls the Divine Sensorum. It is, 
 he says, "a very subtle spirit which penetrates 
 through all things, even the hardest bodies, and 
 is concealed in their substance. Through the 
 strength and activity of this spirit bodies attract 
 each other and adhere together when brought 
 into contact. Through it electrical bodies op- 
 erate at the remotest distance as Vv^ell as near at 
 hand, attracting and repelling. Through this 
 spirit the light also flows, and is refracted and 
 reflected and warms bodies. All senses are 
 excited by this spirit, and through it the ani- 
 mals move their limbs. But these things can- 
 not be explained in a few words, and we have 
 not yet sufficient experience to determine fully 
 the laws by which this universal spirit operates.'* 
 
 It is an independent life-force that actuates 
 and moves all things. The^ncient oracles as- 
 serted that it was " ether that gave impressions 
 of thoughts, characters and divine visions to 
 men, by which they were able to read the past 
 and the future; that this ether abounded through- 
 out space in which all intelligence was regis- 
 tered, and that the future existed in this astral 
 light in embryo, as the present existed in em- 
 bryo in the past. While man is free to act as 
 he pleases, the manner in which he will act 
 was foreknown from all time; not on the ground 
 of fatalism or destiny, but simply on the prin- 
 ciple of universal, unchangeable harmony, and 
 as it may be foreknown that, when a musical 
 note is struck, its vibration will not and cannot 
 change into those of another note. Besides 
 that, eternity can have neither past nor future, 
 but only the present, as boundless space, in its 
 
 strictly literal sense, can have neither distant 
 nor proximate places, as there is no beginning 
 and no end, so that we only catch the reflection 
 of the past and a glimpse of the future. Pro- 
 fessor Hitchcock says: "The human spirit, 
 being of the Divine immortal spirit, appreciates 
 neither past nor future, but sees all things as in 
 the present." 
 
 Professor J. W. Draper says: "A shadow 
 never falls upon a wall without leaving thereupon 
 a permanent trace, a trace which might be made 
 visible by applying the proper process. * * * 
 The portraits of our friends, or landscape views, 
 may be hidden upon the sensitive surface from 
 the eye, but they are ready to make their ap- 
 pearance as soon as a proper developer is resort- 
 ed to. A specter is concealed on a silver or 
 glassy surface, until by our necromancy we make 
 it come forth into the visible world. Upon the 
 walls of our most private apartments, where we 
 think the eye of intrusion is altogether shut out, 
 and our retirement can never be profaned, 
 there exist the vestiges of all our acts, silhou- 
 ettes of what we have done," so that every 
 thought, act and deed is registered to condemn 
 or justify us when the mind is quickened in 
 death, as is illustrated in the case of a drowning 
 man, when all the long-forgotten scenes of his 
 moral life flash across his memory. 
 
 And it is a well-known fact that we often re- 
 cognize familiar places, landscapes and faces 
 that we have no recollection of ever having seen 
 before. This is accounted for on the theory that 
 the spirit has, in its wanderings while the body 
 was wrapped in slumber, seen these faces and 
 places. This gave rise to the idea of transmi- 
 gration, that the soul had previously been in the 
 
25 
 
 body of some one else; and this psychological 
 phenomena is one of the strongest arguments in 
 favor of the immortality of the soul. As Eli- 
 phas Levi beautifully expresses it, "Nature 
 shuts the door after everything that passes, and 
 pushes life onward in more perfected forms." 
 The chrysalis becomes a butterfly; but the latter 
 never becomes a grub again. 
 
 In the stillness of the night hours, when our 
 bodily senses are fast locked in the fetters of 
 sleep, and our physical body rests, the astral 
 form becomes free. It then oozes out of its 
 earthly prison, and, as Paracelsus has it, " con- 
 fabulates with the outward world," and " travels 
 round the visible as well as the invisible worlds." 
 
 In sleep, he says, "the astral body (soul) is 
 in freer motion; then it roams to its parents and 
 holds converse with the stars. * * * The 
 more the body is exhausted the freer is the spir- 
 itual man, and the more vivid the impressions 
 of our soul's memory." Dreams, forebodings, 
 prognostications and presentiments are impres- 
 sions left by our astral spirit on our brain, which 
 receives them more or less distinctly according 
 to the proportion of blood with which it is sup- 
 plied during the hours of sleep. 
 
 Heavy and robust persons, whose sleep is 
 dreamless and uninterrupted, upon awaking to- 
 ward consciousness, may sometimes remember 
 nothing; but impressions of scenes and land- 
 scapes which the astral body saw in its pere- 
 grinations are still there, though lying latent 
 under the pressure of matter. They may be 
 awakened at any moment, and then, during 
 such flashes of man's inner memory, there is an 
 instantaneous interchange of energies between 
 the visible and the invisible universes. Between 
 the "micrographs" of the cerebral ganglion 
 and the photo-scenographic galleries of the 
 spirit a current is established. Like the audo- 
 phone of Edison, it only needs the current es- 
 tablished, and the words come forth through it. 
 They may have been spoken years before and 
 stored up. 
 
 Blumenbach assures us that " in the state of 
 sleep all intercourse between mind and body is 
 suspended." " No man, however gross and 
 material he may be, can avoid leading a double 
 existence — one in the visible universe and the 
 other in the invisible. The life-principle which 
 animates his physical frame is chiefly in the 
 
 spiritual body, and while the mere animal por- 
 tions of him rest, the more spiritual ones know 
 neither limits nor obstacles. * * * Some 
 might object on the ground taken by theology, 
 that dumb brutes have no immortal souls, and 
 hence can have no spirits. Theologians, as 
 laymen, labor under the erroneous impression 
 that the soul and spirit are one and the same 
 thing. But if we study Plato and other philos- 
 ophers of old, we may readily perceive that 
 w*hile the irrational soul — by which Plato meant 
 our spiritual body or more ethereal representa- 
 tive of ourselves — can have at best only a pro- 
 longed continuity of existence beyond the grave, 
 (which is only the body of the spirit.) 
 
 The deeper the trance, the less signs of life 
 the body shows, the clearer become the spirit- 
 ual perceptions and more powerful is the soul's 
 vision. The soul, disburdened of bodily senses, 
 shows activity of power in a far greater degree 
 of intensity than it can in a strong, healthy body. 
 Brirre de Boismont gives repeated instances of 
 this fact. 'The organs of sight, smell, taste, 
 touch and hearing, are proved to become far 
 acuter in a mesmerized subject deprived of the 
 possibility of exercising them bodily, than while 
 he uses them in his normal state." Such facts 
 alone proved, ought to stand as invincible dem- 
 onstrations of the continuity of individual life, 
 at least for a certain period after the body has 
 been left by us, either by reason of its being 
 worn out or by accident. But during its brief 
 sojourn on earth, our soul may be assimulated 
 to a light hidden under a bushel; it still shines 
 more or less bright, and attracts to itself the 
 influences of kindred spirits, and when a thought 
 of good or evil import is begotten in our brain, 
 it draws to it impulses of like nature as irresist- 
 ibly as a magnet attracts iron filings. This at- 
 traction is also proportionate to the intensity 
 with which the thought-impulse makes itself felt 
 in \h^ ether; and so it will be understood how 
 one man may impress himself upon his own 
 epoch so forcibly that the influence may be 
 carried — through the ever-interchanging cur- 
 rents of the two worlds, the visible and invis- 
 ible — from one succeeding age to another, 
 until it affects a large portion of mankind. 
 
 Regard it as you please, there can be no 
 doubt that the properties of the ether are of a 
 much higher order in the arena of nature than 
 
26 
 
 those of tangible tiiatter, and as even the highest 
 priests of science still find the latter far beyond 
 their comprehension, except in numerous but 
 minute and often isolated particles, it would not 
 become us to speculate further. It is sufficient 
 for our purpose to know, from what the ether 
 certainly does, that /'/ is capable of doing vastly 
 more than any has yet ventured to say" 
 
 It may be what the Chaldean oracles call 
 ether, for it states that from ether have come 
 all things, and to it all will return; that the inv 
 ages of all things are indelibly impressed upon 
 it, and that it is the storehouse of the germs or 
 of the remains of all visible forms and even 
 ideas. 
 
 Psychomancy. 
 
 It may be to this subtile force that certain 
 persons, by their sensitive touch against the 
 forehead, are enabled to read names in a folded 
 ballot, or the fragment of an ancient building 
 recall its history and even the scenes which 
 transpired in and about it. A bit of ore will 
 carry the soul's vision back to the time when it 
 was in process of formation. This faculty is 
 called by its discoverer, Professor J. R. Bu- 
 chanan, of Louisville, Kentucky, Psychomancy. 
 He says, "The mental and physiological influ- 
 ence imparted to writing appears to be imper- 
 ishable. The specimens I have investigated 
 give their impressions with a distinctness and 
 force little impaired by time. Old manuscripts 
 requiring an antiquary to decipher their strange 
 old penmanship, were easily interpreted by the 
 psychometric power. * * * ^p^g property 
 of retaining the impress of mind is not limited 
 to writing, drawing, painting. Everything upon 
 which human contact, thought and volition 
 have been expended, may become linked with 
 that thought and life so as to recall them to the 
 mind of another when in contact." 
 
 Many tests have been made. A fragment of 
 Cicero's house at Tusculum was given to the 
 psychometer, who placed it to his forehead; he 
 at once described, without the slightest knowl- 
 edge where the fragment came from, the place 
 and the surrounding of the great orator's home; 
 also, the previous owner of the building, Cor- 
 nelius Sulla Felix, the dictator, was described. 
 ** A fragment of marble from the ancient Chris- 
 tian church of Smyrna brought before the psy- 
 
 chometer its congregation and its officiating 
 priests. Specimens from Nineveh, China, Je- 
 rusalem, Greece, Ararat, and other places all 
 over the world, brought up scenes in life of va- 
 rious personages whose ashes had been scattered 
 thousands of years ago. In many cases Profes- 
 sor Denton verified the statements by reference 
 to historical records. A bit of the skeleton or 
 a fragment of the tooth of some ante-diluvian 
 animal caused the seeress (who was blindfolded) 
 to perceive the creature as it was when alive, 
 and even gave a brief mention of its life and 
 sensations. The psychometer, by applying the 
 fragment of a substance to his forehead, brings 
 his inner life into relations with the inner soul 
 of the object he handles." 
 
 Professor Denton says: " Not a leaf waves, 
 not an insect crawls, not a ripple moves, but 
 each motion is recorded by a thousand faithful 
 scribes in infallible and indelible scripture. 
 From the dawn of light upon this infant globe, 
 when round its cradle the starry curtains hung, 
 to this moment, nature has been busy photo- 
 graphing everything;" so when the psychometer 
 examines his specimen he is brought into con- 
 tact with the current of astral light connected 
 with that specimen, and which retains pictures 
 of the event associated with with its history. 
 These, according to Professor Denton, pass be- 
 fore his vision with the swiftness of light, scene 
 aftei scene crowding upon each other so rapidly 
 that it is only by the superior exercise of will 
 that he is able to hold any one in the field of 
 vision long enough to describe it. 
 
 The psychometer is clairvoyant, that is, he 
 sees with the inner eye (of the soul.) Unless 
 his will-power is strong enough, and he be thor- 
 oughly trained to that particular phenomena, 
 and his knowledge of the capabilities of his 
 sight is profound, his perception of places, per- 
 sons and events must necessarily be confused. 
 But in case of mesmerization, in which this same 
 clairvoyant faculty is developed, the operator, 
 whose will holds that of the subject under con- 
 trol, can force him to concentrate his attention 
 upon a given picture long enough to observe all 
 its minute details. 
 
 There are two kinds of magnetizations. The 
 first is purely animal; the other transcendant 
 and depending on the will and knowledge of 
 the mesmerizer, as well as on the degree of spir- 
 
27 
 
 ituality of the subject and his capacity to receive 
 the impression of the astral light. But now it 
 is next to ascertain that clairvoyance depends 
 a great deal more on the former than on the 
 latter. To the power of an adept, like Du 
 Potet, the most positive subject has to submit. 
 If his sight is ably directed by the mesmerizer, 
 magician or spirit, the light must yield up its 
 most sacred records to our scrutiny; for it is a 
 book which is ever closed to those *' who see 
 and do not perceive;" on the other hand, it is 
 ever open for one who wills to see it opened. 
 It keeps an unmutilated record of all that was, 
 that is, or ever will be. The minutest acts of 
 our lives are imprinted on it, and even our very 
 thoughts rest photographed on its eternal tablets. 
 It is the book which we see opened by the an- 
 gel in the " Revelations," which is the book of 
 life, out of which the dead are judged " accord- 
 ing to their works." It is, in short, the memory 
 of God. 
 
 Soul. 
 
 Plato, Anaxagoras, Pythagoras, and the Ele- 
 atic schools of Greece, as well as the old Chal- 
 dean sacerdotal colleges, all taught the doctrine 
 of the dual evolution; the transmigration of 
 souls referring only to the progress of man from 
 world to world after death here. Every philos- 
 opher worthy of the name taught that the spirit 
 of man, if not the soul, was pre-existent. '* The 
 Essenes," says Josephus, *' believed that souls 
 were immortal, and that they descended from 
 ethereal space to be chained to bodies." Philo 
 Judaeus says, '' the air is full of them (of souls); 
 those which are nearest the earth descending to 
 be tied to mortal bodies, and return to other 
 bodies, being desirous to live in them." Noth- 
 ing is eternal and unchangeable save the con- 
 cealed Deity. Everything else must either pro- 
 gress or recede; it cannot remain stationary. 
 
 A spirit which thirsts after a reunion with its 
 soul, which alone confers upon it immortality, 
 must purify itself through cyclic transmigrations 
 onward toward the land of bliss and eternal 
 rest." According to the Sohar, all souls are 
 dual, and while the latter is a feminine princi- 
 ple, the spirit is masculine; that the soul could 
 not bear this light but for the luminous mantle 
 which she puts on; for just as the soul, when 
 sent to this earth, puts on an earthly garment 
 
 to present herself here, so she receives above a 
 shining garment, in order to be able to look, 
 without injury, into the mirror, whose light pro- 
 ceeds from the Lord of light. While imprisoned 
 in the body a man is a trinity, unless his pollu- 
 tion is such as to have caused his divorce from 
 the soul, which may desert the spirit for the 
 crimes and wickedness done when in the body. 
 *' Woe to the spirit which prefers to her divine 
 husband (soul) the earthly wedlock with her 
 terrestrial body." 
 
 ''All souls which have alienated themselves 
 in heaven from the Holy One, have thrown 
 themselves into an abyss, at their very existence, 
 and have anticipated the time when they are to 
 descend on earth. * * It carries a spark of 
 the Divine Mind to guide and direct it back to 
 God. It becomes incarnated in the flesh, and 
 thereby it forms for itself an individual exist- 
 ence, to reason and think for itself, which indi- 
 viduality it ever retains, its intelligence rising 
 and progressing through countless aeons, periods 
 and cycles, from sphere to sphere, until at last 
 it returns to the bosom of the Divine Mind, 
 whence it came. All the animal soul must of 
 course be disintegrated of its particles before it 
 is able to link its pure essence forever with the 
 Immortal Spirit. 
 
 St. Paul makes man a trine — flesh, psychical 
 existence or spirit, and the overshadowing and 
 at the same time interior entity or soul. He 
 maintains that there is a physical body which is 
 sown in the corruptible, and a spiritual body 
 that is raised in incorruptible substance. '* The 
 first man is of the earth, earthy; the second man 
 from heaven." Plato, speaking of the soul 
 (psuche), observes that " when she allies herself 
 to nous (divine substance, a god, as psuche as a 
 goddess), she does everything aright and felicit- 
 ously; but the case is otherwise when she 
 attaches herself to annoia." What Plato calls 
 nous, Paul terms the spirit; and Jesus makes the 
 heart what Paul calls the flesh. Pythagoras 
 makes the soul a self-moving unit, with three 
 elements: the vous, the phren, and the thumos; 
 the two latter shared with brutes, the former 
 only being his essential self. Whether Pythag- 
 oras borrowed it from Buddha or Buddha from 
 somebody else it matters not; the esoteric doc- 
 trine is the same. 
 
 " Socrates thought that he had a demon, a spir- 
 
28 
 
 itual something, which put him on the road to 
 wisdom. He himself knew nothing, but this 
 put him in the way to learn all." This shows 
 that he was what is now called a clairaudent 
 medium, speaking from knowledge from within. 
 So was Plato when he said " there was an yiga- 
 thon (Supreme God), who produced in his own 
 mind a paradeigma of all things." He taught 
 that in man has " the immortal principle of the 
 soul," a mortal body, and a separate mortal 
 kind of soul, which was placed in a separate 
 receptacle of the body from the other! The 
 immortal part was in the head {Timceus, xix, 
 xx), the other in the trunk. 
 
 *' Plato and Pythagoras," says Plutarch, 
 "distribute the soul into two parts, the rational 
 (noetic) 2indt\\t\xx2i\.ion2i\(agnoia.) That part 
 of the soul of man which is rational is eternal; 
 for though it be not God, yet it is the product 
 of an eternal Deity; but that part of the soul 
 which is divested of reason (agnoia) dies." 
 
 " Man," says Plutarch, " is compound; and 
 they are mistaken who think him to be com- 
 pounded of two parts only; for they imagine 
 that the understanding is a part of the soul; but 
 they err in this no less than those who make the 
 soul to be a part of the body, for the under- 
 standing (nous), which as far exceeds the soul 
 as the soul is better and diviner than the body. 
 Now this composition of soul (vous) with the 
 understanding (nous) makes reason; and with the 
 body passion; of which one is the beginning of 
 the principle of pleasure and pain, and the other 
 of virtue and vice. Of these three parts, con- 
 joined and compacted together, the eartii has 
 given the body, the moon the soul, and the sun 
 the understanding of the generation of man." 
 
 " The dcemonium of Socrates was this vous 
 mind, spirit or understanding of the divine in it. 
 This nous of Socrates," says Plutarch, " was 
 pure, and mixed itself with the body no more 
 than necessity required. * * * Every soul 
 hath some portion of vous reason; a man cannot 
 be a man without it; but as much of each soul 
 as is mixed with flesh and appetite is changed, 
 and through pain or pleasure becomes irrational. 
 Every soul doth not mix herself after one sort. 
 Some plunge themselves into the body, and so 
 in this life their whole frame is corrupted by 
 appetite and passion; others are mixed as to 
 some part. But the purer part (nous) still re- 
 
 mains ivithout the body. It is not drawn down 
 into the body, but swims above and touches 
 (overshadows) the extremest part of the man's 
 head. It is like a cord to hold up and direct 
 the subsiding part of the soul, as long as it 
 proves obedient and is not overcome by the 
 appetites of the flesh. The part that is plunged 
 into the body is called soul. But the incorrup- 
 tible part is called the nous and the vulgar think 
 it is within them, as they likewise imagine the 
 image reflected from a glass to be in the glass. 
 But the more intelligent, who know it to be 
 without, call it a doi7?ion (a god or spirit)." 
 
 " The soul, like to a dream, flies quick away, 
 which it does not immediately as soon as it is 
 separated from the body, but afterward when 
 it is alone and divided from the understanding 
 (nous) * * * The soul being molded and 
 formed by the understanding (nous), and itself 
 molding and forming the body by embracing it 
 on every side, receives from it an impression 
 and form; so that although it be separated both 
 from the understanding and the body, it never- 
 theless so retains still its figure and resemblance 
 for a long time that it may with good right be 
 called its image." 
 
 Plato (in Laws X) defines soul as "the 
 motion that is able to move icself. Soul is the 
 most ancient of all things, and the commence- 
 ment of motion. Soul was generated prior to 
 body, and body is posterior and secondary, as 
 being according to nature, ruled over by the 
 ruling ''soul. The soul, which administers all 
 things that move in every way, administers 
 likewise the heavens. 
 
 " Soul, then, leads everything in heaven and 
 on earth and in the sea, by its movements, the 
 names of which are, to will, to consider, to take 
 care of, to consult, to form opinions true and 
 false, to be in a state of joy, sorrow, confidence, 
 fear, hate, love, together with all such primary 
 movements as are allied to these. * * Being 
 a goddess herself, she ever takes as an ally nous, 
 a god, and disciplines all things correctly and 
 happily. But when with an?wia, not nous, it 
 works out everything the contrary." 
 
 Pythagoras, Plato, Tim^eus of Locris, and 
 the whole Alexandrian school, derived the soul 
 from the Universal World Soul; and the latter 
 was, according to their own teachings, ether 
 — something of such a fine nature as only to be 
 
29 
 
 perceived by our inner sight. Therefore it cannot 
 be the essence of the monas or causey because 
 the anima mundi is but the effect, the objective 
 emanation, of the former. But the human 
 spirit and soul are pre-existent; but while the 
 former exists as a distinct entity, an individuali- 
 zation, the soul exists as pre-existing matter, 
 an unscient portion of an intelligent whole. 
 Both were originally formed from the Eternal 
 Ocean of Light; but, as the Theosophists ex- 
 pressed it, there is a visible as well as invisible 
 spirit. They made a difference between the 
 anima bruia and the anima divina. 
 
 Empedocles firmly believed all men and all 
 animals to possess two souls; Aristotle, we 
 find, calls one the reasoning soul (vois), and the 
 other the animal soul (xvxg). According to 
 these philosophers, the reasoning soul came 
 from without the Universal Soul, and the other 
 from within. This divine and superior region, 
 in which they located the supreme Deity, was 
 considered by them (by Aristotle himself) as a 
 fifth element, purely spiritual and divine; where- 
 as the anima mundi proper was considered as 
 composed of a fine igneous and ethereal nature 
 spread throughout the universe, in short, ether. 
 The Stoics, the greatest materialists of ancient 
 days, excepted the invisible God and Divine 
 Soul (spirit) from any such a corporeal nature. 
 Their modern commentators and admirers, 
 greedily seizing the opportunity, built on this 
 ground the supposition that the Stoics believed 
 in neither God nor soul. But Epicurus, whose 
 doctrine, militating directly against the agency 
 of a Supreme Being and gods in the formation 
 and government of the world, placed him far 
 above the Stoics in atheism and materialism, 
 taught, nevertheless, that the soul is of a fine, 
 tender essence, formed from the smoothest, 
 roundest and finest atoms, which description 
 still brings us to the sublimated ether. Arns- 
 bius, Tertullian, Irenaeus and Origen, notwith- 
 standing their Christianity, believed, with the 
 niore modern Spinoza and Hobbes, that the 
 soul was corporeal though of a very fine nature, 
 yet retained the form of the person while living, 
 and could be so identified in the spirit world. 
 
 As to the human spirit, the notions of the 
 older philosophers and mediaeval Kabalists, 
 while differing in some particulars, agreed in the 
 whole, so that the doctrine of the one is the 
 
 doctrine of the other. The most substantial 
 difference consisted in the location of the im- 
 mortal or divine spirit of man. While the an- 
 cient Neoplatonists held that the Angocides 
 never descended hypostatically into the living 
 man, but only shed more or less its radiance on 
 the inner man, the astral soul, the Kabalists of 
 the middle ages maintained that the spirit, de- 
 taching itself from the ocean of light and spirit, 
 entered into man's soul, where it remained 
 through life, imprisoned in the astral capsules. 
 This difference was the result of the belief of 
 Christian Kabalists, more or less, in the dead 
 letter of the allegory of the fall of man. The 
 soul, they said, became, through the fall of 
 Adam, contaminated with the world of matter, 
 or satan. Before it could appear with its in- 
 closed divine spirit in the presence of the Eter- 
 nal, it had to purify itself of the impurities of 
 darkness. They compared the spirit imprisoned 
 within the soul to a drop of water inclosed 
 within a capsule of gelatine and thrown into the 
 ocean; so long as the capsule remains whole 
 the drop of water remains isolated; break the 
 envelope and the drop becomes a part of the 
 ocean — its individual existence has ceased. So 
 it is with the spirit. As long as it is inclosed 
 in its plastic mediator, or soul, it has an indi- 
 vidual existence. Destroy the capsule, a result 
 which may occur from the agonies of withered 
 conscience, crime and moral disease, the spirit 
 returns back to its original abode: its individu- 
 ality is gone. 
 
 On the other hand, the philosophers who ex- 
 plained the * ' fall into generation " in their own 
 way, viewed spirit as something wholly distinct 
 from the soul. They allowed its presence in 
 the astral capsule only so far as the spiritual 
 emanation or rays of the ** shining one '* were 
 concerned. Man and soul had to conquer 
 their immortality by ascending toward the unity 
 with which, if successful, they were kindly 
 linked, and into which they were absorbed, so 
 to say. The individualization of man after 
 death depended on the spirit, not on the soul 
 and body. Although the word " personality," 
 in the sense in which it is usually understood, 
 is an absurdity if applied literally to our immor- 
 tal essence; still the latter is a distinct unity, 
 immortal and natural /^r j^, and, as in the case 
 of criminals beyond redemption, when the shin- 
 
30 
 
 ing thread which links the spirit to the soul from 
 the moment of the birth of a child, is violently 
 snapped, and the disembodied entity is left to 
 share the fate of the lower animals, to gradually 
 dissolve into ether, and have its individuality 
 annihilated, even then the spirit remains a dis- 
 tinct being. It becomes a planetary spirit, an 
 angel; for the gods of pagans or the archangels of 
 Christians, the direct emanations of the First 
 Cause, notwithstanding the hazardous statement 
 of Swedenborg, never were or will be men on 
 our planet at least; while the modern Spiritual- 
 ist, like A. J. Davis and others, contend that a 
 soul once born, ever following the law of pro- 
 gress, goes on ever growing wiser and better 
 until it ascends to the seventh heaven, when it 
 has become perfectly divested of all impurity. 
 This leads us back to the ancient doctrine of 
 emanation and absorption; yet even then it may 
 retain its individuality and a remembrance of 
 the past. 
 
 This speculation has been in all ages the 
 stumbling block of metaphysicians. The whole 
 esoterism of the Buddhistical philosophy is based 
 on this mysterious teaching, understood by a 
 few persons and so totally misunderstood by 
 many of the most learned scholars. Even met- 
 aphysicians are inclined to confound the ef- 
 fect with the cause. A person may have won 
 his immortal life and remain the same inner self 
 he was on earth through eternity; but this does 
 not imply necessarily that he must either remain 
 the Mr. Brown or Mr. Smith he was on earth or 
 lose his individuality. Therefore the astial soul 
 and terrestrial body of man may, in the dark 
 hereafter, be absorbed into the cosmical ocean 
 of sublimated elements and cease to feel his 
 EGO, if this EGO did not deserve to soar higher, 
 and the divine spirit still remain an unchanged 
 entity, though this terrestrial experience of his 
 emanations, may be totally obliterated at the 
 instant of separation from the body. 
 
 The Soul is Eternal. 
 If the spirit, or the divine portion of the soul, 
 is pre-existent as a distinct being, from all eter- 
 nity, as Origen, Sinesius, and other Christian 
 fathers and philosophers taught; and if it is the 
 same, and nothing more, than the metaphysic- 
 ally-objective soul, how can it be otherwise than 
 eternal ? And what matters it, in such a case. 
 
 whether man leads an anirnal or pure life, if, do 
 what he may, he can never lose his individual- 
 ity ? This doctrine is as pernicious in its con- 
 sequences as that of vicarious atonement. Had 
 the latter dogma, in company with the false 
 idea that we are all immortals, been demon- 
 strated to the world in its true light, humanity 
 would have been bettered by its propagation* 
 Crime and sin would be avoided, not for fear 
 of earthly punishment or of a ridiculous hell, 
 but for the sake of that which lies the most 
 deeply rooted in our inner nature — the desire Of 
 an individual and distinct life hereafter, the 
 positive assurance that we cannot win it unless 
 we '* take the kingdom of heaven by violence," 
 and the conviction that neither human prayers 
 nor the blood of another man will save us from 
 individual destruction after death, unless we 
 firmly link ourselves during our terrestrial life 
 with our own immortal spirit — our God. 
 
 No astral soul (that is, the spiritual body), 
 even that of a pure, good and virtuous man, is 
 immortal in the strictest sense. "From ele- 
 ments it is formed, to elements it must return.*' 
 Only while the soul of the wicked vanishes, and 
 is absorbed beyond redemption, that of every 
 other person, even moderately pure, simply 
 changes its ethereal particles for still mote ethe- 
 real ones; and while there remains in it a speck 
 of the divine, the individual man, or rather his 
 personal ego, must die in the endless course of 
 time. " After death,'' says Procltis, " the soiil 
 (the spirit) contihueth to linger in the > aerial 
 body (astral form) until it is entirely purified 
 from all angry and voluptuous passions; *• * 
 then doth it put off by 2i second dying thii aerial 
 body as it did the earthly one." Whereupon 
 the ancients say that there is a celestial bod^ 
 always joined with 7>^^ soul, 2iX\d which is />«* 
 mortal, luminous and star-like. 
 
 The Chaldean magi were the masters in the 
 secret doctrine, and it was during the Babylon- 
 ian captivity that the Jews learned its metaphy- 
 sics as well as the practical tenets, and the im- 
 mortality of the soul. Before this time the 
 Jews believed that it was necessary to propitiate 
 God with burnt offerings, so that they might be 
 blessed in this life with success, they and their 
 offspring. The Bible nowhere teaches the im- 
 mortality of the soul prior to this period. Pliny 
 mentions three schools of Magi, one that he 
 
31 
 
 shows to have been founded at an unknown 
 antiquity; the other established by Osthanes 
 and Zoroaster. These different schools, wheth- 
 er Magian, Egyptian or Jewish, were derived 
 from India, or rather from both sides of the 
 Himalayas. ' Many a lost secret lies buried un- 
 der- wastes of sands in the Gobi desert of East- 
 ern Turkestan, and the wise men of Khotan 
 have preserved strange traditions and knowledge 
 of alchemy. 
 
 We must bear in mind the teachings of the 
 old' philosophers: the spirit alone is immortal — 
 the soul per se is neither eternal nor divine. 
 When linked too closely with the physical brain 
 of its terrestrial casket, it gradually becomes a 
 finite mind, a simple animal and sentient life- 
 principle (the nephesh oi the Hebrew Bible): 
 " And God created * * * tv try nephesh (life) 
 that moveth " (Genesis 1 121), meaning animals, 
 and (Genesis 11:7) it is said: "And man be- 
 came a nephesh " (living soul), which shows that 
 the word nephesh was indifferently applied to 
 immortal man and mortal beast. So it is evi- 
 dent that the common people among the He- 
 brews had not the slightest idea of soul and 
 spirit, and made no difference between life, 
 blood, and soul, calling the latter the "breath 
 of life," using the word soul promiscuously to 
 express life, blood, spirit and. body. The phi- 
 losophers and most of the modern spiritual 
 writers make the soul the divine spark, while 
 Plato and the ancients often make it the spirit. 
 
 Baron Bunsen shows that the origin of the 
 prayers and hymns of the Egyptian Book of the 
 Dead:is anterior to Menes and belongs proba- 
 bly to the pro-Menite Dynasty of Abydos, be- 
 tween; 3^100 and 4,600 years before Christ. 
 The learned Egyptologist makes the era of 
 Menes, or national empire, as not later than 
 3,056 B.C. and demonstrates that " the system 
 of Osirian worship and mythology was already 
 formed before the era." " We find hymns and 
 lessons of morality identical, or nearly so, in 
 form and expression with those delivered by 
 Jesus in his sermon on the mount," says Bunsen. 
 Extracts from the Hermetic books are found 
 oji the monuments and in the tombs, such as 
 these, " To feed the hungry, give drink to the 
 thirsty, clothe the naked, bury the dead," * * 
 ■* formed the first duty of a pious man." 
 
 Back of all religions and civilizations there 
 
 appears to be another still older, until we are 
 lost in the gray mist of time that may have ex- 
 isted twenty or fifty thousand years ago. 
 
 The doctrine of the immortality of the soul 
 is as old as this period ( Tablet Brit. Mus.j62)y 
 and perhaps far older. It dates from the time 
 when the soul was an objective being, hence 
 when it could hardly be denied by itself; when 
 humanity was a spiritual race and death existed 
 not. Toward the decline of the cycle of life, 
 the ethereal w«« spirit then fell into the sweet 
 slumber of temporary unconsciousness in one 
 sphere only to find himself awakening in the 
 still brighter light of a higher one. But while 
 the spiritual man is ever striving to ascend higher 
 and higher toward its source of being, passing 
 through the cycles and spheres of individual life, 
 physical man had to descend with the great cy- 
 cle of universal creation until it found itself 
 clothed with the terrestrial garments. Thence- 
 forth the soul was too deeply buried in its phys- 
 ical clothing to reassert its existence, except in 
 the cases of those mortal spiritual natures which, 
 with every cycle, became more rare; but now 
 and then it cropped out in a bright character, 
 so pure, wise and good, that they have been 
 deified and called gods, like Jesus Christ, Zoro- 
 aster, Buddha, Confucius, etc. 
 
 The fall of Adam and Eve in the garden of 
 Eden, by eating of the forbidden fruit, must 
 not be looked upon it as a personal transgres- 
 sion of the law of God, but simply the law of 
 dual evolution. Adam, or the first man, began 
 his career of existence by dwelling in the garden 
 of Eden, dressed in the celestial garment which 
 is a "garment of heavenly light." (Sohar, 
 II. 2g.) But when expelled, he is "clothed" 
 by God, or the eternal law of evolution, or 
 necessarianism, with coats of flesh, skin and 
 hair. It only relates to the time when the di- 
 vine spark (soul, a corruscation of the spirit) 
 was to become incarnated in the flesh, which 
 had evolved by physical laws of progression in 
 a series of imprisonments, from a stone up 
 through a long line of animal developments to 
 the body of a man; and if he will but exercise 
 his will and call upon his deity to help him, man 
 can transcend the powers of the angel. " Know 
 ye not that we shall judge angels?" asked St. 
 Paul (i Corinthians, 6^3). "The real man is 
 the soul (spirit)," teaches the Sohar. "The 
 
32 
 
 mystery of the earthly man is after the mystery 
 of the heavenly man. * * * The wise can 
 read the mysteries in the human face." (ii:y6a.) 
 
 According to the Chaldean doctrine found in 
 the Kabala, the Jehovah of the Jews was one of 
 the emanations of the divine essence, and was 
 androgynous, being male and female, like all 
 angels, double-sexed. As Brahma, the deity, 
 manifested in the mythical Manu, or the first 
 man born of Sway-ambhvua, or the Self-exist- 
 ence, is finite, so Jehovah, embodied in Adam 
 and Eve, is but a human-god, male and female, 
 or the realization of humanity embodied in the 
 first man. Like the androgynous man, male and 
 female, passive and active, created in the im- 
 age of the Elohim. But these androgynes were 
 doomed to fall and lose their powers as soon as 
 the two halves of the duality separated. Hence 
 we have the fall of man by eating the forbidden 
 fruit of the tree of knowledge; he thus lost his 
 spiritual clothing and became clothed in flesh 
 and skin and was material, so that he could not 
 rise from the earth. So out of the rib of the 
 first man, Adam, sprang Eve, the first woman, 
 by the law of materialization. 
 
 This idea is beautifully expressed in the Ori- 
 ental religion: "When the Central Invisible 
 (the Lord Ferho) saw the efforts of the divine 
 Scintilla, unwilling to be dragged lower down 
 into the degradation of matter, to liberate itself, 
 he permitted it to shoot out from itself a monad 
 (an ultimate atom), over which, attached to it 
 as by the finest thread, the divine scintilla (the 
 soul) had to watch during its ceaseless peregrin- 
 ations from one to another. Thus the monad 
 was shot down into the first form of matter and 
 became encased in stone; then, in course of 
 time, through the combined efforts of living fire 
 and living water ^ both of which shone by their 
 reflection upon the stone, the monad crept out 
 of its prison to sunlight as a lichen, one of the 
 lowest forms of vegetable life. From change to 
 change it went higher and higher; the monad, 
 with every new transformation borrowing more 
 of the radiance of its parent scintilla, which 
 approached it nearer at every transmigration. 
 For '* the First Cause had willed it to proceed 
 in this order," and destined it to creep on high- 
 er until its physical form became once more the 
 Adam of dusty shaped in the image of Adam 
 Kadmon. 
 
 Before undergoing its last earthly transform- 
 ation, the external covering of the monad, from 
 the moment of its conception as an embryo, 
 passes in turn once more through the phases of 
 the several kingdoms. In its fluidic prison it 
 assumes a vague resemblance at various periods 
 of its gestation to plant, reptile, bird, and ani- 
 mal, until it becomes a human embryo. At 
 the birth of the future man, the monad, radiat- 
 ing with all the glory of its immortal parent, 
 which watches it from the seventh sphere, be- 
 comes senseless. (See Plato* s Timceus,) ** It 
 loses all recollection of the past and returns to 
 consciousness but gradually, when the instinqt 
 of childhood gives way to reason and intelli- 
 gence. After the separation between the life- 
 principle (astral spirit) and the body takes place 
 (i, e. in death), the liberated soul, monad, ex- 
 ulting rejoins the mother and father spirit, the 
 glory proportioned to the spiritual purity of the 
 past earth-life, the Adam who has completed 
 the circle of necessity and is freed from the last 
 vestige of his physical encasement. Hence- 
 forth, growing more and more radiant at each 
 step of his upward progress, he mounts the 
 shining path that ends at the point from which 
 he started around the Grand Cycle. 
 
 For each human spirit is a scintilla of the one 
 all-pervading light, and this is in accordance to 
 Buddhist doctrine, which is that the individual 
 human spirits are numberless — collectively they 
 are one, as every drop of water drawn from out 
 the ocean is a part of it, and yet, metaphorically 
 speaking, may have an individual existence, and 
 still be one with the rest of the drops going to 
 form that ocean, though it may take millions of 
 years to find its way back whence it came; yet 
 during all that time it retained its individuality, 
 whether in vapor, in sap of plants or trees, or 
 the blood of animals, until it mingled again 
 with the waters whence it came; that this di- 
 vine spirit animates the flower, the particle of 
 granite on the mountain side, the lion and the 
 man, when it was individualized into an intelli- 
 gent, thinking soul, that followed the law of pro- 
 gress, and ascended higher and higher in wis- 
 dom and intelligence, until it again returned to 
 the great sensorum whence it emanated. 
 
 In Art Magic y page 27, there is an account 
 of a remarkable medium, a Hindoo child twelve 
 years of age, the daughter of a noble Hindoo of 
 
33 
 
 high spiritual and intellectual attainments. 
 This little child was a great writing medium. 
 She sits on the floor with her head resting on a 
 tripod, embracing its support with her little 
 arms, and in this attitude she generally falls 
 asleep for an hour, during which time sheet 
 after sheet is written over with characters of 
 ancient Sanscrit. The writing is done by an 
 invisible hand without even the ordinary appli- 
 ances of pens, pencil or ink. Over four vol- 
 umes of these writings have been thus produced, 
 and that in less than a period of three years. 
 Questions in simple Hindostanee are laid upon 
 the tripod with a lot of blank paper, and the 
 questions are answered intelligibly. In answer 
 to several questions concerning the origin of the 
 soul, and the doctrine of its transmigration 
 through the forms of animals, she wrote in San- 
 scrit the following, which is a translation: 
 
 "That the soul is an emanation from the 
 Deity, and in its original essence is all purity, 
 truth and wisdom, is an axiom which the dis- 
 embodied learn, when the powers of the mem- 
 ory are sufficiently awakened to perceive the 
 states of existence anterior to mortal birth. In 
 the paradise of purity and love souls spring up 
 like blossoms in the All-Father's garden of im- 
 mortal beauty. It is the tendency of that di- 
 vine nature, whose chief attributes are love and 
 wisdom, heat and light, to repeat itself eternally, 
 and mirror forth its own perfections in scintilla- 
 tions from itself. These sparks of heavenly fire 
 become souls, and as the effect must share in 
 the nature of the cause, the fire which warms 
 into light also illuminates into light; hence the 
 soul emanations from the Divine are all love 
 and heat, while the illumination of light, which 
 streams ever from the great central Sun of Be- 
 ing, irradiates all souls with corresponding 
 beams of light. Born of love, which corre- 
 sponds to Divine heat and warmth, and irradi- 
 ated with light, which is Divine wisdom and 
 truth, the first and most powerful soul emana- 
 tions repeated the action of their Supreme Ori- 
 nator, gave off emanations from their own be- 
 ing, some higher, some lower, the highest tend- 
 ing upward into spiritual essences, the lowest 
 forming particles of matter. These denser em- 
 anations, following out the creative law, aggre- 
 gated into suns, satellites and worlds, and each 
 repeating the story of creation, suns gave birth 
 
 to systems, and every member of a system be- 
 came a theater of subordinate states of spiritual 
 or material existence. 
 
 " Thus do ideas descend into forms and forms 
 ascend into ideas. Thus is the growth, devel- 
 opment and progress of creation endless; and 
 thus must spirit originate and ever create worlds 
 of matter, for the purpose of its own unfold- 
 ment." 
 
 " Will the mighty march of creation never 
 cease ? Will the cable anchored in the heart 
 of the great mystery. Deity, stretch out for- 
 ever ?" 
 
 "Forever! shout the blazing suns, leaping 
 on in the fiery orbit of their shining life, and 
 traveling in the glittering pathway ten thousand 
 satellites and meteoric sparks, whirling and 
 flashing in their jeweled crowns, all embryonic 
 germs of new young worlds that shall be. * * 
 
 " Earths that have attained to the capacity 
 to support organic life, necessarily attract it; 
 earths demand it, heaven supplies it. Whence? 
 As earths groan for the leadership of superior 
 beings to rule over them, the spirits in their 
 distant Edens hear the whispers of the tempting 
 serpent, the animal principle, the urgent intel- 
 lect, which, appealing to the blest souls in their 
 distant paradises, fill them with indescribable 
 longings for change, for broader vistas of know- 
 ledge, for mightier powers; they would be as 
 the gods and know good and evil; and in this 
 urgent appeal of the earths for man, and this 
 involuntary yearning of the spirit for intellectual 
 knowledge, the union is effected between the 
 two, and the spirit becomes precipitated into 
 the realms of matter, to undergo a pilgrimage 
 through the probationary states of the earths, 
 and only to regain its paradise again by the 
 fulfillment of that pilgrimage. 
 
 " When spirits lived as such in paradise, em- 
 anations from a spiritual deific source, they 
 knew no sex nor reproduced their kind. * * * 
 When they fell, and the earth, like magnetic 
 tractors, drew them within the vortex of its 
 grosser elements, they became what the earth 
 compelled them to be. In the earlier ages of 
 these growing worlds the conditions of life were 
 rude and violent; hence the creatures on them 
 partook of their nature. Then too first obtained 
 the nature of sex and the law of generation. 
 To people these earths man, like other living 
 
34 
 
 creatures, must reproduce his kind. All things 
 in matter are male and female; minerals, plants, 
 animals andmen. Spirit, the creative energy, is 
 the masculine principle that creates; nature, the 
 passive recipient, is that which germinates; 
 hence creation. Man must obey the law; 
 hence sex and generation. * * * 
 
 " Man lives on many earths before he reaches 
 this. Myriads of worlds swarm in space, where 
 the soul in rudimental states performs its pil- 
 grimages ere he reaches the large and shining 
 planet named liarth, the glorious function of 
 which is to confer self-consciousness. At this 
 point only is he man; at every other stage of 
 his vast, wild journey he is but an embryonic 
 being; a fleeting, temporary shape of matter; a 
 creature in which a part, but only a pari, of the 
 high imprisoned soul shines forth; a rudimental 
 shape, with rudimental functions; ever living, 
 dying — sustaining a littering spiritual existence 
 as rudimental as the material shape whence it 
 emerged; a butterfly springing up from the 
 chrysalitic shell, but ever, as it onward rushes, 
 in new births, new deaths, new incarnations, 
 anon to die and live again, but still stretch up- 
 ward, still strive onward, still rush on the giddy, 
 dreadful, toilsome, rugged path, until it awak- 
 ens once more, once more to live and be a ma- 
 terial shape, a thing of dust, a creature of flesh 
 and blood, but now a inan. 
 
 "It is from the dim memory that the soul 
 retains first of its original brightness and fall, 
 next of its countless migrations through the 
 various undertones of beings that antedate its 
 appearance on this earth as man, that the belief 
 in the doctrine of the metempsychosis (transmi- 
 gration of the souls through the animal king- 
 doms) has arisen. Yet il is a sin against divine 
 truth to believe that the exalted soul that has 
 once reached the dignity and upright stature of 
 manhood should or could retrograde into the 
 bodies of creeping things or crouching animals 
 — not so, not so! 
 
 *'In the fleeting images which antecedent 
 states leave on the spiritual brain, in the half 
 effaced and half-imperfect perceptions of exist- 
 
 ence which each new stage of progress and each 
 successive journey through various lower earths 
 leave, like an unquiet, ill-remembered dream, 
 on the spirit's consciousness, the past becomes 
 confused with the present, and something of 
 what we have been imposes its shadow across 
 the path of the future, as a dim possibility of 
 what we may be. 
 
 " After the soul's birth into humanity it ac- 
 quires self-consciousness, knowledge of its own 
 individuality, and closing up forever its career 
 of material transformations with the death of 
 the mortal body, it gravitates on to a fresh series 
 of existences in purely spiritual realms of being. 
 Here the further purifications of the soul com- 
 mence anew, commences with that sublime at- 
 tribute of self-knowledge which enables even 
 the wickedest spirit to enjoy and profit by the 
 change; for memory supplies him with lessons 
 which urge him to struggle forward into con- 
 quest over sin, and prophetic sight stimulates 
 him to aspire until he shall attain, by well di- 
 rected effort, the sublime hights of purity and 
 goodness from which he fell to become a mor- 
 tal pilgrim. 
 
 " The triumphant souls who enter heaven by 
 effort are God's ministering angels of power, 
 wisdom, strength and beauty. The dwellers in 
 primal states of Eden are only spirits. The 
 first are God-men, heavenly men — strong and 
 mighty powers — thrones, dominions, world- 
 builders, glorious hierarchies of sun, bright souls, 
 who never more can fall. Spirits are but the 
 breath, the spark, the shadow of a god; angels 
 are gods in person. * * 
 
 " During the various transitional states of the 
 soul in passing through the myriads of forms and 
 myriads of earths, whereon their probations are 
 outwrought, the changes are all effected by a 
 process analogous to human death. During the 
 period that subsists ere the soul, expelled from 
 one material shape, enters another, the drifting 
 spirit, still enveloped by the magnetic aural 
 body which binds it to the realm of matter, 
 becomes for its short term of intermediate spir- 
 itual existence an elementary spirit." 
 
 --^^^^^^M^^^^^>^^ 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 MEDIUMS, ANCIENT AND MODERN. 
 Prophets, Seers, Magicians, Soothsayers, Astrologers, Fortune-Tellers, Materializations, Raps, Trances. 
 
 From the earliest history of man down to the 
 present time some persons have been possessed 
 of great psychological powers, and have in all 
 countries held the position of prophets, seers, 
 magicians, soothsayers, astrologers, medicine- 
 men and fortune-tellers. Many of them have 
 been exposed in their tricks, while others have 
 stood out in bold relief as possessing a power of 
 divining the future and telling the past, reveal- 
 ing facts and incidents that no one could have 
 known, or were only in possession of the dead. 
 
 There appears to be a great variety of gifts 
 and powers possessed by these persons. Some 
 are developed in one specialty, and others in 
 something different; but they all point in one 
 direction, and claim that man exists after death, 
 that the spirit or life -principle of man lives be- 
 yond the grave, whether it be from the teach- 
 ings of the Bible, Rig-Veda, Heremetic books 
 of ancient Egypt, the Zend-Avesta of Persia, 
 the Koran or the Book of Mormon. Their 
 priests and priestesses are millions, and their 
 churches, temples and pagodas lift their spires 
 in every land; and the great majority of all peo- 
 ple in all nations have a religion and a belief 
 in the immortality of the soul. Man is a reli- 
 gious animal, and it arises from a feeling within 
 that he cannot smother or keep down. It ever 
 rises up and reaches out and will contemplate 
 and think of the future, a life in the spirit world. 
 He sees the dead bodies of his friends and rela- 
 tions laid in the cold grave; but he cannot rec- 
 oncile his mind, his reason, to the belief that 
 that is the last of him. The body will return 
 to the dust from which it came, but whither has 
 gone the life, the intelligence that once anim- 
 ated the cold remains ? He sees the birds fly- 
 ing through the air, and the smoke rise from 
 the burning logs that were once living trees; 
 
 they are shortly consumed by the fire, there is 
 only a small pile of ashes left; what has become 
 of the rest ? The smoke has disappeared in the 
 skies; so, he says, must the life, the intelligence 
 of his friends have gone the same way. There 
 must be some place where all these things have 
 gone; there must be a great reservoir for all; 
 there must be an invisible world as well as a 
 visible world. Where it is, or how it is, we 
 cannot tell; but it must exist; it cannot be lost; 
 there is no annihilation of anything; it has only 
 changed its condition; that is all. 
 
 The evidence given by the mediums is over- 
 whelming, if we can rely on their statements as 
 true, as they have in all ages been put to the 
 severest test; but it is something seen, heard 
 and felt, that is not capable of explanation or 
 demonstration upon any scientific bas.is known 
 to man; and those who have not that pecul- 
 iar power, which compose the largest number, 
 are not willing that a thing can be seen, heard 
 and felt by some and not by all. 
 
 And here lies the great difficulty to make 
 them believe, for they are not willing to admit 
 that others have higher perception and can see, 
 hear and see things that they cannot; therefore 
 they remain incredulous and skeptical. And 
 there are some whose moral and religious organs 
 are so low that the question might be, have 
 they evolved to the condition of spiritual beings, 
 or are they still man-like apes ? 
 
 There is something very remarkable about 
 this psychic force, or spiritual manifestations, 
 that will not act in the presence of some per- 
 sons while it will make itself apparent with oth- 
 ers. With some it derives force and power, 
 while with others it weakens and will not act. 
 There is something in their nature or aura that 
 repels the spirit, like that of the negative pole 
 
 33 
 
of the magnet; and especially where the mind is 
 firmly set, in opposition, of a positive nature — 
 not that of disbelief, but a fixed purpose not to 
 believe. 
 
 Persons who jiossess this mediumship power 
 are very sensitive, and have a large amount of 
 electricity in their bodies, which generate this 
 force like the electric eel; and some have it so 
 strong that they are able to give a slight shock 
 which thrills down the spine, and are able to 
 light a jet of gas with the end of their fingers. 
 
 The mind of the investigator should be kept 
 untrammeled, free from the influence of men, 
 authority, prejudice or passion, so that it may 
 have free scope in- the investigation of facts and 
 laws which exist and are established in nature, 
 and is the grand antecedent necessity to scien- 
 tific discovery and permanent progress. And 
 until men of science can come forth and inves- 
 tigate the phenomena of spiritualism in that 
 light, like Hare, De Morgan, Brookes, Wal- 
 lace, De Gasparin, Thury, Wagner and Butlerof, 
 etc. they will never succeed. These men had 
 the manhood to admit the phenomena, and 
 have struggled to solve the mystery and see if it 
 has any relation to the existence of men's here- 
 after; and the only solution they can find is, 
 that the word comes back that " man lives and 
 exists beyond the grave," and that intelligence 
 never dies, that like matter and force'it is inde- 
 structible. 
 
 In this age of cold reason and prejudice even 
 the church has to look to science for help to 
 support her tottering creeds; when in reality 
 these manifestations are the same as those in the 
 Bible, and go to explain it and establish the 
 fact beyond a doubt of the immortality of the 
 soul. But the church is so blindly roped up in 
 her creeds and dogmas that she is not willing to 
 admit these facts, which come as further evi- 
 dence and as a new addition to the good old 
 book, but contend that it is sealed and that the 
 days of miracles and manifestation of the spirit 
 are gone by, and that there are to be no more 
 revelations; that those given in the dim mists of 
 the past are sufficient, and that it is blasphemy 
 to pretend to say that there can be anything 
 more given from on high. 
 
 Yet science and reason will tell us that if 
 those marvelous powers ever existed, they can 
 be repeated now; that the laws of God, which 
 
 are the laws of nature, are unchangeable, and 
 have always existed and will forever exist. But 
 these new revelations tend to interfere with 
 some of the established rules and tenets of the 
 church and the teachings of modern Christian- 
 ity, which have widely departed from those 
 taught by the founders, for her representatives 
 have poisoned the waters of simple faith, and 
 now humanity mirrors itself in waters made tur- 
 bid with all the mud stirred up from the bottom 
 of the once pure shrine. The anthropomorphic 
 God of our fathers is replaced by anthropomor- 
 phic monsters, whose ripples send back the dis- 
 torted images of truth and facts, as evoked by 
 its misguided imagination. 
 
 Those who are soul-blind are constitutionally 
 incapable of distinguishing psychological causes 
 from material effects, as the color-blind are to 
 select scarlet from purple. There is often want- 
 ing a development of that brain matter in cer- 
 tain things, as to make the person perfectly in- 
 competent to understand that subject; as with 
 some persons Who have no taste or liking for 
 mathematics, and no teaching or explanation 
 can ever make them mathematicians, and it is 
 a waste of time to try and teach them, though 
 they may have ability in other branches of sci- 
 ence. So it is with many men; they have no 
 development in those organs of the brain that 
 tend to elevate them above the cold atheist. 
 They are perfectly destitute of the higher facul- 
 ties that lift man above the brute creation, as 
 these organs stand higher and are nearer rela- 
 ted to wisdom than reason. 
 
 Reason being a faculty of our physical brain, 
 one which is justly defined as that of deducing 
 inferences from premises, and being wholly de- 
 pendent on the evidence of other senses, cannot 
 be a quality pertaining directly to our divine 
 spirit. Hence all reasoning which implies dis- 
 cussion and argument would be useless, as rea- 
 son has been substituted by man for thiJt of in- 
 tuition or instinct in the lower order of animals, 
 and has so got control of mind as to discard 
 anything that cannot be solved by its test. 
 Therefore it is difficult to reason on religion, 
 but it must be looked upon with blind faith, as 
 it will not stand any of the tests known to sci- 
 ence, so we are forced to accept it as it is re- 
 vealed to us by those gifted with those divine 
 powers which belong to prophets, seers and 
 
6i 
 
 mediums, whose minds possess that quickness 
 of perception, sight, hearing and feeling that 
 belong to the soul. 
 
 Logic shows us that as mind as well as matter 
 had a common origin it must have attributes in 
 common, and as the vital and divine spark in 
 man's material body is the causation, so it must 
 lurk in every subordinate species. The latent 
 mentality which in the lower kingdoms is recog- 
 nized as a semi-consciousness, consciousness 
 and instinct, is largely subdued in man. Rea- 
 son, the out-growth of the physical brain, de- 
 velopes at the expense of instinct — the flicker- 
 ing reminiscence of a once divine omniscience 
 — spirit. Reason, the badge of the sovereignty 
 of physical man over all other physical organ- 
 isms, is often put to shame by the instinct of an 
 animal. As his brain is more perfect than that 
 of any other creature, its emanations most 
 naturally produce the highest results of mental 
 action. But reason avails only for the consid- 
 eration of m.ental things. It is capable of help- 
 ing its possessor to a knowledge of spirit. 
 
 In losing instinct man loses his intuitional 
 powers, which are the crown and ultimatum of 
 instinct. Reason is the clumsy weapon of sci- 
 ence — intuition the unerring guide of the seer. 
 Instinct teaches plant and animal their season 
 for the procreation of their species, and guides 
 the dumb brute to find its appropriate remedy 
 in the hour of sickness. Reason, the pride of 
 man, fails to check the propensities of his nat- 
 ure, and brooks no restraint upon the unlimited 
 gratification of his senses. Far from leading 
 him to be his own physician, its subtile philos- 
 ophies lead him too often to his own destruc- 
 tion. Woman possesses less reason than man, 
 and relies more on her intuition. Her percep- 
 tion is therefore quicker than man's, and she 
 lives a purer and better life morally and physic- 
 ally; therefore she makes the best medium, for 
 she relies upon intuition rather than reason. 
 
 Every human being is born with the rudiment 
 of the inner sense called mtuitio?i, which may 
 be developed into what the Scotch know as 
 "second sight." All the great philosophers, 
 Plotinus, Porphyry and lamblicus, employed 
 this faculty, and taught the doctrine. "There 
 is a faculty of the human mind," writes lam- 
 blichus, " which is superior to all which is born 
 or begotten. Through it w^ are enabled to at- 
 
 tain union with the superior intelligences, to 
 being transported beyond the scenes of this 
 world, and to partaking the higher life and 
 peculiar powers of the heavenly ones." All 
 great mentalities possess that power. It is that 
 which lifted Homer and Shakespeare above the 
 common herd of humanity. 
 
 To this inner sight or intuition the Jews owe 
 their Bible and the Christians their New Testa- 
 ment. For what Moses and Jesus said and 
 wrote and gave to the world was the fruit of 
 their intuition or illumination, that bears the 
 marks of modern Spiritualism, for Christ was 
 a medium of the highest order. He could 
 see, hear and talk with spirits. All the spirit 
 world appeared at his command — the physical, 
 intellectual and spiritual. He could multiply 
 the loaves and fishes, see into the hearts of men 
 as vvell as into the water to tell the fishermen 
 where to cast their nets. He could still the 
 tempest; cure the sick, lame and blind; and cast 
 out devils — evil spirits that had got possession 
 of men. 
 
 Were it not for this intuition, undying though 
 often wavering because it is so clogged with 
 matter, man's life would be a parody and human- 
 ity a fraud. This ineradicable feeling of the; 
 presence of something oittside and inside ourselves; 
 is one that no dogmatic contradictions nor ex- 
 ternal form of worship can destroy in humanity,, 
 let scientists and clergymen do what they may. 
 Moved by such thoughts of the boundlessness, 
 and impersonality of the Deity, Gautama-Bud- 
 dha exclaimed: "As the four rivers which fall 
 into the Ganges lose their names as soon as they 
 mingle their waters with the holy river, so all 
 who believe in Buddha cease to be Brahmans."' 
 It is the same thing that forced the Psalmist 
 to cry out, " I know that my Redeemer lives." 
 It has led men to the stake and supported them 
 in the most trying hours. 
 
 " The gods exist," says Epicurus, " but they 
 are not what the rabble suppose them to be.'* 
 " But neither the First Great Cause, nor its 
 emanation — human-immortal spirit— have left 
 themselves without a witness." Mesmerism, 
 modern Spiritualism and occultism are there to 
 attest the great truths of the immortality of the 
 soul, 'i^ * ^ 'phe Pythagorean knowledge 
 of things and the profound erudition of the 
 Gnostics, the world and time-honored teachings 
 
of the great philosophers of antiquity, were all 
 rejected as doctrines of Antichrist. 
 
 The loft seven wise men of the Orient, the 
 remnant group of the Neoplatonic philosophy, 
 were Hermios, Piscious, Diogenes, Eulalius, 
 Damoskius, Simplicius and Isidorus, who fled 
 from the fanatical persecutions of Justinian to 
 Persia. The reign of wisdom then closed on 
 Europe for over fifteen centuries. The books 
 of Thoth (or Hermes Trismagistus), which con- 
 tain within their sacred pages the spiritual and 
 physical history of the creation and progress of 
 our world, were left to mold in oblivion and 
 contempt for ages. But by the untiring research 
 of Champollion, Max Muller and others, the 
 Oriental learning has been resurrected from a 
 night of oblivion. Though shrouded in mystery 
 and cabalistic signs, that were intended ever to 
 keep the secret from the knowledge of the 
 ignorant rabble. 
 
 " Magic, w^hich is based on the existence of a 
 mixed world of forces placed within not without 
 us, and with which we can enter into commu- 
 nication by the use of certain arts and practices; 
 
 * * an element existing in nature unknown 
 to most men; which gets hold of persons and 
 withers and breaks them down as the fearful 
 hurricane does a bulrush. It scatters men far 
 away; it strikes them in a thousand places at 
 the same time, without their perceiving the in- 
 visible foe or being able to protect themselves. 
 
 * * All this is demonstrated; but that this 
 element could choose friends and select favor- 
 ites, obey their thoughts, answer to the human 
 voice, and understand the meaning of traced 
 signs — that is what people cannot realize and 
 what their reason rejects; and that is what I saw. 
 And I say it here most emphatically, that tome 
 it is a fact and a truth demonstrated forever.'* 
 (Du Potet, Magie Devoike, pp. 57, 149.) 
 
 1 his power was well known to the ancients. 
 Whit is now called nervous fluid or magnetism 
 the men of old called occult powe7\ or the po- 
 tency of the soul subjection to magic; which 
 power Christ possessed, as he cast out devils 
 by it. And it is evident that he must have got 
 initiated into the mysteries while in Egypt, or 
 from some of the magicians of Chaldea, who 
 were great adepts in the art, which is now be- 
 ginning to be known and revered; and it throws 
 great light on the miracles of the Bible and 
 
 explains away the strange stories of witches, 
 ghosts, spooks and apparitions, and the mira- 
 cles that Jesus Christ and his apostles "per- 
 formed. It is evident from the writings of the 
 New Testament that these magicians had some- 
 thing to do with the birth of Christ, for they 
 were the wise men from the East that followed 
 the star to Bethlehem. 
 
 Professor Dominico Berti, in his life of Bruno, 
 says: " In common with the Alexandrian Pla- 
 tonists and the later Kabalists, held that Jesus 
 Christ was a great magician in the sense given 
 to this appellation by Porphyry and Cicero, 
 who called it the divina sapientea (divine know- 
 ledge); and Philo Judaeus, who described the 
 Magi as the most wonderful inquirers into the 
 hidden mysteries of natuie, not in the degrad- 
 ing senses given now-a-days. The Magi spoken 
 of in the Bible were holy men, who, setting 
 themselves apart from everything else on earth, 
 contemplated the divine virtues and understood 
 the divine nature of the gods and spirits the 
 more clearly. So they initiated others into the 
 same mysteries, which consist in one holding an 
 interrupted intercourse with those invisible be- 
 ings during life. Magic in this sense is a higher 
 order of religion, in which the adept is enabled 
 to hold converse with spirits and angels, which 
 are a higher order of spirits who have progressed 
 in the spirit world." 
 
 Mediumship. 
 
 There are two classes of mediums. One 
 class — the high, the holy, the pure, the good — 
 nay be called properly mediators, for they come 
 between the godlike principle and man. The 
 other class is composed of those who use this 
 power for gain, who descend to the low pur- 
 pose of using this gift to accomplish bad and 
 wicked deeds — revenge, malice, debauchery, 
 lust, vice and crime. In either case it is a gift 
 of nature, at birth or subsequently, modified so 
 that the person's aura will attract those influ- 
 ences that so strangely manifest themselves in 
 the different mediums. 
 
 To BE A Mediator or good medium, it is 
 necessary for the persons to be pure and good 
 men and women, or they will draw to them- 
 selves bad influences, as "like attracts like;" 
 and the good spirits gather around the good 
 mediums who live pure lives, while the bad 
 
39 
 
 mediums gather bad spirits. So that it all de- 
 pends on the medium as to what kind of com- 
 munications one gets. God-men, like Christ, 
 Apoilonius, lamblichus, Plotinus and Porphyry, 
 gathered this heavenly nimbus around them 
 that sent forth wisdom and goodness like rays 
 of light, to teach men to be better, to overcome 
 the temptations of the flesh, and to aspire to a 
 purer and better life around them, evolved by 
 the pov,-er of their own pure souls. The best 
 and most exalted spirits were ever ready 
 to assist them in all that was good and 
 noble. 
 
 It is asserted that Apoilonius, on account of 
 his abstemious life, could see " the present and 
 the future in a clear mirror;" while Christ could 
 read the hearts of men and hold converse with 
 angels; which would be the condition of all 
 men if they possessed that high and exalted 
 nature. A few in all ages of the world have 
 had that gift; but they have all been men and 
 women of great purity of soul and the most 
 abstemious in habits. And the great seventy, 
 like the fakirs of India, by their self-denial and 
 torture of the body, and the mortification of 
 the flesh, were enabled to perform wonders. 
 
 Plotinus taught that there is in the soul a liv- 
 ing principle which attracts it onward and up- 
 ward to its origin and center, the Eternal God, 
 and this accounts for the cause why all admire 
 the pure and good man, for in the lowest and 
 most depraved there is a divine spark that is 
 pure; yet it is so loaded down with vile and bad 
 matter that it is difficult for it to do right; and 
 for that reason he can comprehend the sub- 
 lime truth of right and justice which he so much 
 admires in others, but has not the moral cour- 
 age to emulate, and is forced by his base pas- 
 sions, not willing to submit to the self-denial 
 and discipline that others possess, which elevates 
 them. 
 
 But when a medium defiles the temple in 
 which dwells the spirit of the living God, the 
 temple becomes polluted by the admission of 
 evil passions, thoughts and desires, the medium 
 falls into the sphere of sorcery. The door is 
 opened, the pure spirits retire and the evil ones 
 rush in. They will no more mingle in the 
 spirit world than they will here. The sorcerer, 
 like the pure magician, forms his own aura and 
 subjects to his will congenial yet inferior spirits. 
 
 who assist him in his performances and in car- 
 rying out his evil designs on man. 
 
 There is a class of weak-minded men, women 
 and children who give themselves up to be 
 controlled by bad spirits, who so get control of 
 the person as to make them do as they please. 
 Ignoring their own individuality they blindly 
 follow the promptings of these evil spirits, and 
 often allow them to guide and so control them 
 that they commit crimes and do many wicked 
 things, so they have been called possessed wdth 
 devils, or more properly speaking, evil spirits; 
 and in certain cases they have been obsessed, 
 as in the case of Mary Magdalen. 
 
 This class of mediums is always passive, 
 whether beneficent or maleficent; and happy 
 are the pure in heart, who repel unconsciously 
 by that very clearness of their inner nature the 
 dark, evil spirits; for verily they have no other 
 weapon of defense but that inborn goodness 
 and purity. 
 
 Mediumship, as it is often practiced now-a- 
 days, is a more undesirable gift than the robe 
 of Nessus; and it is what has brought Spiritual- 
 ism into disrepute, and caused it to be shunned 
 by many; for when it descends to that of sorce- 
 ry, witchcraft, the black arts and voodooism, 
 it is to be deprecated, and should be punished 
 with the severity of the law. For it brings 
 around bad influences that are likely to mislead 
 weak-minded persons. 
 
 True and pure mediums must be properly 
 tested by the communications given, and all 
 communications must be closely scrutinized by 
 the light of reason and justice. As St. John 
 says (i Epistle, chap, iv): "Believe not every 
 spirit; but try the spirits, whether they are of 
 God; many false prophets have gone out into 
 the world." The ancient witches and familiar 
 spirits generally turned their gift to a trade; like 
 the Obeah woman of En-dor, though she may 
 have killed her fatted calf for Saul, accepted 
 hire from other visitors. 
 
 In India, the jugglers, who by the way are 
 less avaricious than many modern mediums, 
 and the Essana, or sorcerer and serpent-charm- 
 ers, of Asia and Africa, al! exercise their gifts 
 for money. Not so with the mediators and 
 hierophants. "Buddha was a mendicant and 
 refused his father's throne." "The Son of man 
 had not where to lay his head." The chosen 
 
40 
 
 apostles provided " neither gold nor silver nor 
 brass in their purses." Apolloniiis gave one- 
 half of his fortune to his relatives, the other half 
 to the poor. lamblichus and Plotinus were 
 renowned for charity and self-denial; the fakirs, 
 or holy mendicants of India, never take pay; 
 the Pythagoreans, Essenes and Theraputas, be- 
 lieved their hands would be defiled by the touch 
 of money. When the apostles were offered 
 money to impart their spiritual powers, refused. 
 Peter, though a coward and three times denied 
 his Savior, still indignantly spurned the offer, 
 saying, "Thy money perish with thee, because 
 thou hast thought that the gift of God may be 
 purchased with money." These men were good 
 mediums or mediators, guided merely by their 
 own personal spirit or divine soul, and availing 
 themselves of the help of good spirits, so far as 
 they directed them in the right path, ever guided 
 by the prompting arising from a pure heart. 
 
 Apollonius spurned the sorcerers and " com- 
 mon soothsayers," and declared that it was his 
 peculiar abstemious mode of life which gave 
 gave him such powers. Professor Wilder be- 
 lieved with lamblichus in the attaining of divine 
 power, "which, overcoming the mundane life, 
 rendered the individual an organ of the Deity." 
 Plotinus, when asked to attend the pubUc wor- 
 ship of the gods, said, "It is for them (the 
 spirits) to come to me." That the wall of the 
 pure man will command the spirits as well as 
 other matter, and that our souls can attain 
 communion with the highest intelligences, with 
 "natures loftier than itself," and carefully 
 drive away from his theurgical ceremonies every 
 inferior spirit or bad demon, which he taught 
 his disciples to recognize. Jesus declared man 
 the lord of the sabbath, and at his command 
 the terrestrial and elementary spirits fled from 
 their temporary abodes — a power which was 
 shared by Apollonius and many of the Broth- 
 erhood of the Essence of India and Mount 
 Carmel. 
 
 The ancient Jews in the time of Moses, Da- 
 vid and Samuel, encouraged prophecy, divina- 
 tion, astrology and soothsaying, and maintained 
 schools and colleges in which the natural gifts 
 were strengthened and developed; while witches 
 and those who divined by the spirit of Ob were 
 put to death. Even in Christ's time the poor 
 physical mediums who were obsessed by evil 
 
 spirits were driven to the tombs. It is evident 
 that the ancierts knew the difference between 
 the good and bad spirits, and that the latter 
 brought ruin upon the individual and disaster 
 upon the community. 
 
 Physical manifestations depend on the medi- 
 um being passive, and spirits never control per- 
 sons of a positive character, who are determined 
 to resist all extraneous influences. When they 
 seize upon the weak and feeble-minded they 
 often drive their victims to vice. Physical me- 
 diums are generally sickly, or inclined to some 
 abnormal vice; and their influence generally is 
 of a low order ol spirits or elements that are 
 injurious to the medium; while the higher order 
 of mediums generally enjoy good health. 
 
 A medium is only the vehicle through which 
 the spirits display their power. The aura that 
 served them varies day by day, and as it would 
 appear from Prof. Crookes' experiments, even 
 hour by hour. It is an external effect resulting 
 from interior causes. The medium's moral 
 state determines the kind of spirits that come; 
 and the spirits come reciprocally, influence the 
 medium intellectually, physically and morally. 
 The perfection of the mediumship is in ratio to 
 his passivity, and the danger he incurs is in 
 equal degree. When he is fully "developed," 
 perfectly passive, his own astral spirit may be 
 benumbed and even crowded out of his body, 
 which is then occupied by an elemental, or, 
 what is worse, by a human fiend of the eighth 
 sphere, who proceeds to use it as his own organ- 
 ism, and often drives the medium unconsciously 
 to commit some diabolical crime, to even sac- 
 rifice her own child. 
 
 The adepts in occultism claim the power to 
 bring to their aid the occult forces in nature, 
 which assists them, and without that power 
 they could do nothing; that they command 
 these forces to help them, and it is by learning 
 how to control them that they are enabled to 
 perform such things; that the invisible intelli- 
 gences are at their command, and the secret is 
 to know how to command them; but that these 
 life-forces or principles can only be. used by 
 certain manipulators. It is different from Spir- 
 itualism, hence they control the forces, while in 
 the latter the forces control the medium. It 
 may be possible, in the case of occultism, that 
 the adept may be deceived and be controlled 
 
41 
 
 by a higher spirit. And that there are two 
 classes of forces, one which is under the control 
 of the good, virtuous and wise, which requires 
 great severity, the observance of rigid rules of 
 sobriety, abstinence, cleanliness, purity of soul 
 and body, the observance of fixed times for 
 meditation or prayer, abstraction, when the 
 soul can go out into the ether and associate 
 with those who have long since passed away; 
 that a mind thus influenced can travel on the 
 wings of electricity, w^hich is its vehicle, to the 
 remotest parts of the earth in a few seconds. 
 The astral soul is a separate and distinct entity 
 of our ego, and can roam far away from the 
 body without breaking the thread of life, that 
 time and space do not enter into its wander- 
 ings, that it can traverse the earth like an elec- 
 tric spark. 
 
 The adept knows the nature of the soul — a 
 form composed of nervous fluid and atmospheric 
 ether — and knows how the vital torce can be 
 made active or passive at will, so long as there 
 is no final destruction of some necessary organ. 
 Graffarilus claims that every object in nature 
 that is not artificial, when once burned to ashes, 
 still retains that form in the ashes. Kircher, 
 Digby and Vallemont hold that forms of plants 
 could be resuscitated from their ashes. At a 
 meeting of naturalists in 1834, at Stuttgart, a 
 receipt for producing such experiments was 
 found in a work of Oetinger. Ashes of burned 
 plants contained in vials, when heated, exhibit- 
 ed again their various forms. " A. small obscure 
 cloud gradually rose in the vial, took a definite 
 form and presented to the eye the flower or 
 plant." "The earthly husk," w^-ote Oetinger, 
 "remains in the retort, while the volatile es- 
 ence ascends, like a spirit, perfect in form but 
 void of substance." 
 
 And if the astral form of a plant, when its 
 body is dead, still lingers in its ashes, as has 
 been shown by chemists, by the application of 
 heat, will skeptics persist in saying that the soul 
 of man, the inner ego, after the death of the 
 grosser form, is at once dissolved and is no 
 more ? "At death," says a philosopher, " the 
 one body exudes from the other by osmose 
 through the brain; it is held near its old garment 
 by a double attraction, physical and spiritual, 
 until the latter decomposes. And if the proper 
 conditions are given, the soul can reinhabit it 
 
 and resume the suspended life. It does it in 
 sleep; it does it more thoroughly in trance. 
 Most surprisingly at the command and with the 
 assistance of the Heremetic adept, lamblichus 
 declared that a person endowed with such re- 
 suscitating power is 'full of God.' All the 
 subordinate spirits of the upper spheres are at 
 his command, for he is no longer a mortal, but 
 himself a god. In his Epistle to the Corinth- 
 ians, Paul remarks that "the spirits oi the proph- 
 ets are subject to the prophets." 
 
 " If the molecules of the cadaver are imbued 
 with the physical and chenjical forces of the 
 living organism, what is to prevent them from 
 being again set in motion, provided we know 
 the nature of the vital force and how to com- 
 mand it.? The materialist can certainly offer 
 no objection, for with him it is no question of 
 reinfusing a soul. For him the soul has no ex- 
 istence, and the human body may be regarded 
 simply as a vital engine, a locomotive which 
 will start upon the application of heat and force 
 and stop when they are w^ithdrawn. To the 
 theologian the case offers greater difficulties, 
 for, in his view, death cuts asunder the tie that 
 binds soul and body, and the one can no more 
 be returned into the other without a miracle 
 than the born infant can be compelled to resume 
 its foetal life." 
 
 But the Heremetic philosophers stand be- 
 tween these two irreconcilable antagonists, and 
 are masters of the situation. Spirit controls the 
 body. The life that animates the body, wheth- 
 er voluntarily or involuntarily, as you term it, 
 is in reality the result of the existing spirit. 
 Every molecule, every susceptible atom, each 
 substance attracted in our bodies, is under the 
 direct control of our spiritual natures. Do not 
 mistake this for will; for this is not under the 
 control of our volition. Do not misiake it for 
 intellect. The intellect is subtile in its opera 
 tions; but the spiritual nature is still more sub- 
 tile, and that it is which voluntarily or invol- 
 untarily controls every atom of our physical 
 existence. It attracts to us each substance that 
 is necessary to make up our bodies, rejecting 
 such as are not consistent with the form thereof, 
 and determines the nature of our physical bod- 
 ies in a great degree. 
 
 Every embodied mind possesses in embryo 
 every germ and power that is possessed by the 
 
42 
 
 disembodied mind, and the disembodied mind 
 possesses every power that is possessed by the 
 embodied mind, with this difference, they have 
 a physical organixation of their own, like our- 
 selves, and, are obliged to act upon physical 
 organisms here, in order to work out the mani- 
 festations of their presence and intelligence. 
 They have the advantage of possessing greater 
 elasticity of will, of acting upon more minute 
 particles of matter than you can govern, 
 because your actions, in connection with mat- 
 ter, must be directed exclusively by the motions 
 of your physical body. The spirit, on the 
 other hand, has a more subtle will, and, being 
 constrained by no physical body, can act upon 
 more nearly ultimated particles of matter, and 
 thereby produce effects which defy physical 
 science, and which scientific men fail to under- 
 stand, for they do not understand the laws by 
 which they exist; they cannot explain by what 
 power the muscles are contracted, by which 
 the hand is moved, and as to how a table can 
 be moved by an invisible force, is impossible — 
 yet it is the same hidden force, the same will- 
 power of the spirit that accomplishes both; 
 still, there has been a thought conveyed over 
 the nerves that sets the muscles to work, and 
 the brain is moved by the spirit that has set it 
 to work to send out the thought that travels 
 over the nerves that causes the muscles to 
 move. 
 
 The spirits see the aura around physical bod- 
 ies that you do not. They see the action of 
 the nervous fluids, and know from its sight 
 that these nervous fluids are composed of in- 
 finitesimal globules, each one corresponding to 
 its particular function, which the spirit employs 
 when it raps on the table, or produces vibra- 
 tions of the atmosphere. The infinitesimal 
 molecules that are thus employed might be 
 called vacuums; and in these minute globules 
 of atmosphere or aura resides the power, not 
 only of communications, but to lift tables ard 
 project bodies through the atmosphere. And 
 it is owing to this atmosphere or aura that sur- 
 rounds the person or thing that enables the 
 spirit to communicate to mortal beings. 
 
 Materialization. 
 The materialization of a spirit is only gather- 
 ing around it the atoms that are in the aura and 
 
 atmosphere around the medium, from whom it 
 draws the material to render its form visible to 
 embodied souls or living human beings. The 
 spirit having the form and the intelligence is 
 soon able, under proper conditions, to make 
 itself visible. As the red and yellow rays are 
 strong and antagonistic they have a tendency to 
 scatter the atoms of matter, so materialization 
 has to be done in the dark or in blue rays of 
 light where all other rays but the blue are ex- 
 cluded. So when spirits wish to materialize 
 they draw from the air, which is the great res- 
 ervoir of inorganic matter, such material as 
 light will not show in a clear sun light but in 
 the dark it gives off a pale light. When all the 
 rays of light are reflected the object is white, 
 when all are absorbed the object is black. 
 
 Myrids of animals exist that can not be seen 
 with the naked eye because they are too small 
 or have not the coloring matter to reflect the 
 rays of light. 
 
 The body generates an aura through the 
 pores of the skin by a process of endosmose ac- 
 tion, is then thrown off by an exosmose action 
 in the form of carbonic acid gas, which is poi- 
 sonous if again returned to the human system, 
 but under the manifestations of the spirit there 
 is, accompanying this carbonic acid gas, a cer- 
 tain force or power, whieh, for the lack of a 
 better term, we call nerve-aura. It is a similar 
 force that vibrates along the nervous system of 
 the human body, and it is upon this substance 
 that the spirit acts to produce a sound. Nitro- 
 gen is the most subtle of all elemental proper- 
 ties of the atmosphere. Carbonic acid gas, 
 mingled with nitrogen in atomic proportions, 
 becomes the material whereby spirit-lights and 
 vibrations are produced, by the aid of electric- 
 ity. These vibrations occur in direct connec- 
 tion with certain conditions known to the spirits 
 but which is unknown to science, because it has 
 no instruments fine enough to make an analysis 
 of these powers; and the best physical manifest- 
 ations are when the medium is confined in a 
 room where the air is foul with carbonic acid 
 gas, though it may be injurious to the health of 
 those living in the body; but out of this foul air 
 the spirits can find the best materializing mat- 
 ter to build up visible forms; and it has been 
 discovered by photographing that blue and 
 violet light is the best for taking pictures, as it 
 
43 
 
 is the most harmonious and slowest, as it fills 
 all space and gives color to the sky and a fine 
 effect on the picture, and has none of the an- 
 tagonistic properties of the red and yellow rays 
 which impede the action of the spirits; so all se- 
 ances should be held in rooms lit up by blue 
 or violet rays of light. The artist requires the 
 same kind of rays so that it will fix the picture 
 on the plate, from which he is able, by chemic- 
 als, to transfer to another. And all the spirit 
 requires is the proper conditions and similar 
 lights to form a body that is visible to the 
 natural eye. The picture is there and the spirit 
 is there; but it requires the proper materials to 
 bring them out, so that they become visible to 
 the mortal eye. And in this way spiritual pict- 
 ures are taken, as well as those of living per- 
 sons. And if pictures can be taken by one 
 kind of light and not another, why not materi- 
 alization be effected likewise.? 
 
 All light has a dematerializing effect. Spirits 
 find it much easier to form in the dark, as all 
 plating and impressions of the photographer 
 have first to be set in the dark. The picture 
 is given by the light shaded with blue screeiis 
 and skylight; and, as the photographer has to 
 use his dark cabinet to set the image in the 
 glass, so has the medium to use the dark cabi- 
 net to enable the spirit chemist to build up and 
 plate anew the spirit with visible matter before 
 it can appear in the light. 
 
 The spirit, having once lived in the flesh, 
 has learned the laws of the flesh, and knows 
 how to control even the organisms of other and 
 living bodies. The spirit is the life principle of 
 the body. It is what steam is to the engine — 
 which is dead matter; but, as soon as the steam 
 is turned on the piston moves backward and 
 forward, giving life to the whole: so, when the 
 spirit leaves the body, it is cold, dead matter; 
 but when the spirit enters, it at once gives life 
 and animation. The spirit and the body are 
 nucleus around which all matter clings, so that 
 when a spirit wishes to materialize it has but 
 little to do but draw the required matter from 
 others and the air, and in that way it makes 
 itself a visible body. 
 
 The human body is always giving off atoms 
 of matter through the pores of the skin so that 
 every seven years, and some say, every nine 
 months, the whole of the body has passed away 
 
 and has been replaced by nevy matter. "We 
 live," says Herbert Spencer, *' by constantly 
 dieing." These atoms given from the body, 
 especially from the medium's, is used by the 
 spirits, who understand their chemical nature, 
 and recompose them around the spirit which is 
 a perfect form to build upon. Like copper and 
 zinc, under a strong current power or a circle 
 of spirits, which induces them to yield those 
 atoms, which the spirit chemist employs to ma- 
 terialize forms by the use of elements in the air 
 which are as simple and well understood by the 
 spirits as electrotyping is by mortals, so that the 
 spirit can accomplish in a few minutes what in 
 the flesh requires years to build up, the differ- 
 ence being one of time and of permanency. 
 It is a process of galvanizing over the spiritual 
 body with visible matter, that enables them to 
 show themselves to us in the flesh. As the 
 spiritual body is invisible to the natural sight, 
 but can be seen only by the clairvoyant, who 
 sees with the vision of the soul, to enable the 
 spirit to be seen by the mortal eye it must clothe 
 itself in material matter that reflects light. 
 
 The hand being full of nerves more readily 
 materializes than any other part of the body, 
 and this accounts for the many hands often 
 seen at a seance, and is generally the first part 
 of the body that materializes. 
 
 Materialization is the highest realization of 
 modern Spiritualism. It brings the living face 
 to face with those who were supposed to be 
 dead. They tell us that they still live, and 
 have only shed off the outward husk, the mor- 
 tal body. It is the strongest evidence of the 
 immortality of the soul. The body is only one of 
 the stages of development of the embryotic con- 
 ditions of the soul, which had passed through the 
 lower forms of life during gestation, that, like 
 the eagle and the butterfly, has broken through 
 the shell of mortality and mounts on wings into 
 the sky, no longer feeding on the gross things 
 of the earth, but draws its life and vitality from 
 the ether. 
 
 The same knowledge and control of occult 
 forces, including the vital forces which enable 
 a fakir temporarily to leave and then re-enter 
 his body. Jesus, Apollonius and Elijah were 
 able to recall their several subjects to life; made 
 it possible for the ancient hierophants to ani- 
 mate statues and cause them to act and speak. 
 
44 
 
 It is the same knowledge and power which 
 made it possible for Paracelsus to create his hu- 
 munculi; for Aaron to change his rod into a ser- 
 pent and a budding branch; for Moses to cover 
 Egypt with frogs and other pests, and the same 
 Egyptian theurgist of our day to vivify his pig- 
 my mandragora, which has physical life but no 
 soul. It is no more wonderful that upon present- 
 ing the necessary conditions Moses should call 
 into life large reptiles and insects than that, un- 
 der like favoring conditions, the physical scien- 
 tists should call out the small ones which he 
 names bacteria. 
 
 Nearly all the forms of phenomena of the an- 
 cients wonder-workers, recorded in sacred and 
 profane histories, are produced now by spiritu- 
 al mediums. I have seen bodies moved, hang 
 suspended in the mid air; instruments play by 
 laying in the hands of the medium; have felt 
 the weight of invisible hands; heard voices in 
 the air over my head; musical instruments flying 
 around in the room; flowers fresh with the dew^ 
 on them, handed out of a cabinet in a well lit 
 room; have had deceased friends and relatives 
 described to me, so perfect, and their names 
 given so that there could be no mistake; I have 
 been tilted out of a chair b> the touch of the 
 hand of a little cousin; I have seen a dozen 
 ghosts or spirits walk out of a room that I had 
 sealed up; I have seen them in the broad day- 
 light rise up, come to me, and have felt their 
 pulse — sometimes they had pulse and at other 
 times they had none; I have conversed with 
 them, they told me who they were and where 
 they had departed this life, but they would not 
 admit that they were dead, but said they had 
 passed to a higher life. 
 
 I have had communications from my dear 
 departed friends, written on a slate, held in my 
 own hand under the table, the medium only 
 touching it. The signature of my mother was 
 so perfect that, had I not known she was dead, 
 I would have been willing to swear to its genu- 
 ineness in a court of justice. 
 
 I once called upon Dr. Slade, the celebrated 
 medium, to see if I could get some new light, 
 and on reading an article to him on " Evolu- 
 tion," it met the approbation of a spirit present 
 expressed by rapping on the table; but, when I 
 read where Darwin says, "Young birds do not 
 make as good nests as old ones," it rapped 
 
 " no," and so it differed with him on that sub- 
 ject. Every now and then it would pat me on 
 the thighs, which were under the table, approv- 
 ing the article. It was in broad daylight, and I 
 am certain it was not done by any visible per- 
 son, as the medium was the only person in the 
 room. He then placed one hand in mine on 
 the table, and took a slate, wiped it clean, 
 placed a piece of pencil on it, and took another 
 slate and laid it over it, then held the two slates 
 up to the side of my ear. I could hear the 
 pencil scratching like it was writing; soon it 
 gave three taps, and then he opened the slate, 
 and one whole side was written over in a plain, 
 legible manner. The following is a correct 
 copy: 
 
 Dear Sir: Your subject is one that is little 
 understood. Man has an intellectual nature, 
 and also intuition, so have animals; but, un- 
 less these two are wedded, he is not a success- 
 ful man. Often intellect has taken on the aid of 
 intuition; and, again, intuition has controlled 
 man with the guardiance of intellect. Some 
 men fail when animals do not, he by throwing 
 his intuition aside and glories in his intellect, 
 and he often makes greac mistakes in life. An- 
 imals have no pride in intellect, and trust more 
 to intuition and do not fail. 
 
 A. W. Slade. 
 
 The signature vras that of his deceased wife. 
 
 The wonderful test given by Mr. Slade con- 
 vinced the honest German scientist, Zollner, 
 that there were forces unknown to the scientist, 
 which he called transcendental physics. 
 
 Mr. Zollner, professor of physical astronomy 
 at the University of Leipsic, one of the most 
 renowned schools of learning in Europe, made 
 many tests in a scientific way in broad day- 
 light, in the presence of other professors, with 
 the physical manifestations of Henry Slade, 
 forced him to the conclusion that these wonder- 
 ful manifestations could not be explained by the 
 ordinary laws of physics. That the tying of 
 knots in a string, with both ends fastened and 
 sealed and held in his and Slade's hands on the 
 table, while the other part of the string hung 
 under the table. Communications were written 
 on a book slate which they had purchased, and 
 had been sealed up by them. They heard the 
 slate-pencil scratching like a thing of life be- 
 
tween the slates. After giving three raps they 
 removed the seals, opened the slate and both 
 sides were written all over and signed. Fear- 
 ing there might be something wTong they then 
 prepared other slates of a similar kind, and 
 when Mr. Slade put his hands on them, the pencil 
 began to scratch, and when it rapped three 
 times they took the same slates and carried them 
 home and opened them, and there were other 
 messages written to them. 
 
 Wooden rings tied together with a string and 
 placed under the table were carried and placed 
 around the upright part of the candle-stand, 
 which no mortal could do without taking off 
 the tops of the stand. 
 
 Coin was passed down through the table and 
 fell on the slate, while the pencil passed up and 
 entered into the box in which the money had 
 been placed and sealed up. A candle-stand 
 rose up and disappeared, presently it descended 
 from the ceiling and rested upon the table 
 around which they weie sitting. 
 
 A bowl of flour was placed on the floor un- 
 der the table and they felt hands touching them 
 on their legs. On inspection there were the 
 marks of hand prints in the bowl of flour and 
 the same finger marks on their pants. They 
 were certain that Mr. Slade did not do it, as 
 his hands rested on the table all the time, and 
 there was no flour in them. 
 
 That hand and foot prints on prepared paper 
 were made through the slate, though it was 
 locked up in a box. That a screen that was 
 made ot strong wood that would require a dy- 
 namic force of two hundred and ninety-eight 
 hundred weight, or more than the combined 
 strength of three hundred giants to rupture, was 
 torn apart by an invisible power. That lights 
 appeared and disappeared; that it rained on 
 them and wet their clothes in the room; and 
 many other strange things that could not be ex- 
 plained by any known law of physics. These 
 tests were through and beyond any trickery. 
 They called in the king's juggler to assist them, 
 and he was unable to detect any fraud or trick, 
 or make any explanation how it was done. 
 
 All of which goes to prove the apparent pen- 
 etration of matter, and also of the existence of 
 the fourth dimension, by which this invisible 
 power can produce these strange phenomena. 
 So these learned savans of the renowned school 
 
 of Leipsic were forced to the conclusion that 
 there was an intelligent power that could do 
 those things which were beyond their knowl- 
 edge of physical forces. That there were such 
 things in existence that did not come within 
 the known laws of length, breadth and thick- 
 ness, which is all that we can possibly know of 
 matter, and in these dimensions it includes all 
 its possibilities. But in the fourth dimension, 
 says ZoUner, " we have another aspect of the 
 case; one in which our system of geometry is 
 at fault, and its axioms cease to apply there; 
 matter is subjected to transcendental laws and 
 conditions are apparently reversed." 
 
 Professor ZoUner, in a letter to Mr. William 
 Crookes, who had also investigated the phe- 
 nomena of Spiritualism, said: " By a strange 
 conjunction our scientific endeavors have met 
 in the same field of light and of a new class of 
 physical phenomena, which proclaim to the 
 astonished mankind, wath assurance no longer 
 doubtful, the existence of another material and 
 intelligent world. As two solitary wanderers 
 on high mountains joyfully greet one another at 
 their encounter, when passing storm and clouds 
 veil the summit to which they aspire, so I 
 rejoice to have met you, undismayed cham- 
 pion, upon this new province of science. To 
 you, also, ingratitude and scorn have been 
 abundantly dealt out by the blind representa- 
 tives of modern science and by the multitude 
 befooled through their erroneous teachings. 
 May you be consoled by the consciousness 
 that the undying splendor with which the names 
 of a Newton and a Faraday have illustrated the 
 history of English people can be obscured by 
 nothing; not even by the political decline of 
 this great nation; even so will your name sur- 
 vive in the history of culture, adding a new or- 
 nament to those with which the English nation 
 has endowed the human race." (Transcenden- 
 tal Physics, page 27.) 
 
 The late exhibitions of physical force by 
 Miss Lulu Hurst throughout the United States, 
 is enough to convince all fair-minded people 
 that there is an invisible force, produced by the 
 laying of her hands upon a chair that defies 
 the strength of a dozen strong men. It flung 
 men around as though they were feathers. I 
 found it imi)ossible to hold an umbrella over 
 my head while she had but one finger touching 
 
46 
 
 the handle. Her manager announced that she 
 disclaimed any knowledge of the power that 
 produced the force. Her father informed me 
 that the power was spiritual force, as he had 
 been so informed by the spirits, but that it was 
 not policy to so announce it from the stage, 
 owing to the credulity of a great many people 
 who are prejudiced against the spiritualistic 
 theory. I was satisfied as soon as I took hold 
 of the umbrella that it was the same force that 
 could enable my little cousin to hurl me from 
 a chair twenty-five years ago. And here let me 
 state, that not long since I saw the same cousin 
 — now married and the mother of several child- 
 ren — and she informed me that she had long 
 since lost that power. 
 
 I know of several other mediums who have 
 lost the power to produce manifestations, hav- 
 ing been pursuaded by the church that it was 
 the work of the devil. My little cousin, Lillie 
 Dobbins, was a strong physical medium, and 
 could make a dining-room table follow her 
 around like a dog by touching it with the tip of 
 her finger, and make it stand on one leg and 
 flap the folding leaves, like the wings of a 
 bird. I asked what spirit it was moving the 
 table ? It called for the alphabet, and as the 
 letters were repeated, the name of Samson was 
 rapped. I then asked it to turn the house over. 
 It replied, in the same way, that it might kill 
 us. I then said, " Throw me out of the chair." 
 and immediately I felt myself moved by an in- 
 visible force, that hurled me out without an ef- 
 fort. 
 
 I had another cousin, Carrie Dameron, who 
 was a rapping medium, and I tested her in every 
 way I could, to solve the mystery. It invaria- 
 bly rapped out the name of departed relative 
 or friend, who would not admit that they were 
 dead, but only passed to a higher state of ex- 
 istence. 
 
 One of the most peculiar tests I had occurred 
 one night, when the negro boy, who made fires 
 in the dwelling, being anxious to see the mani- 
 festations, had crawled under the bed, after 
 making the fire, and unknown to any of us; 
 but the fact of his presence was revealed by 
 the attendant spirit rapping out the words, 
 "Dick is under the bed." The poor boy 
 came out affrighted, saying, " That is the devil, 
 sure, for no one know'd I was dar." 
 
 Here let me state that that dear cousin has 
 long since passed to the spirit land; and she 
 often comes to me and gives me assurance that 
 what transpired while living is more than real, 
 and that spiritualism is true. 
 
 It is evident that this is a force that has intel- 
 ligence; that can come when desired and depart 
 when not wanted, and is capable of com- 
 municating with man through raps, tipping 
 of tables, independent slate writing and in 
 other ways. It can give names and incidents, 
 of which no person present has any thought or 
 knowledge. While some of these com- 
 munications may be erroneous, on the whole 
 they are generally truthful; but it is not safe to 
 place too much reliance in their knowledge of 
 the future, for they, like mortals, are fallible, 
 and they make many statements that are false, 
 for they have only advanced intelligence, and 
 many are not so wise as those living in the 
 flesh; and it is hard to say who is at the other 
 end communicating. It may be the spirit's 
 true name or it may be some mischievous boy's 
 spirit or some lying spirit imposing on human- 
 ity. They are there as they were here — no 
 wiser, no better; as they depart this life, so they 
 wake up over there in the spirit land. 
 
 Saint Paul said: "We must try the spirits 
 before we believe them." So nothing should 
 be taken for granted, until it shall have been 
 thoroughly tested; even then it must be taken 
 with a great deal of allowance, for we little un- 
 derstand this mode of communicating. Even 
 the telegrapher requires us to repeat the mes- 
 sage before he will stand responsible for the 
 correctness of its transfer. 
 
 This mode of communication, like telegraph- 
 ing, requires time to investigate and under- 
 stand. We are not able to go over to the other 
 side to compare notes and then return. We 
 have to take it for granted that w^hat words they 
 send back are correct; and, so far, these state- 
 ments have been of so confused and uncertain 
 a nature that many have been led to the belief 
 that it must be something other than the spirit 
 of our departed friends; at best it is hard for us 
 to understand how anything, or any intelligence 
 can exist without a physical body, capable of 
 making itself manifest to our five senses; yet, 
 we hear the raps and the scratching of the pen- 
 cil, but we cannot see the power that moves it. 
 
47 
 
 There are so many frauds and deceptions in 
 the world that it becomes all to be very careful 
 that they are not imposed upon. It may be 
 a question whether it is best for ignorant masses 
 of humanity to investigate it, as they are liable 
 to be misled and placed under the control of 
 evil rather than good influences, but as man- 
 kind grow wiser and better they will learn to 
 look upon it as their future existence, and will 
 prepare and fit themselves for that advanced 
 stage of development. It will rob the grave 
 of its terrors and make death only the gateway 
 to a higher and better existence in the vast un- 
 seen universe that encompasses us. When it 
 
 is understood that this planet is only a germi- 
 nating world, and that our future happiness de- 
 pends on how we live here, and that it has 
 much to do in fitting us for the life to come, 
 that is eternal; that we can not escape the 
 burden of our own sins or shift them on the 
 shoulders of another, it will make us more care- 
 ful how we act and treat our fellow-man, for 
 we are all brothers on the same road to the 
 spirit land, where we will have to make repara- 
 tion for all the wrongs that we have done to 
 each other. There the law of compensation 
 and restoration is beyond a technicality or 
 doubt of court or jury. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 INSPIRATION AND INSPIRED MEN, SAVIORS, MEDIATORS AND MEDIUMS. 
 
 Inspiration is the natural influx of the divine 
 truth into the human soul, and its degree is 
 determined by character and capacity, and 
 it is not confined to the teachings of any reli- 
 gious truth. Even the old Testament teaches 
 that certain men were inspired of God to work 
 in linen and brass and cedar and gold. Shake- 
 speare, Angelo, Socrates and Epicteus have 
 just as good a claim to be inspired of God as 
 any of the Jewish prophets or writers in the old 
 or new Testament. 
 
 All light is from the sun, whether it shines 
 from moon or planet; whether it be reflected 
 by brook or mirror; whether it be a stray, bro- 
 ken beam to prison-cell; whether it flare in the 
 gaslight or glow in the coal of our grate, all 
 light is first or last just so much sunlight; so all 
 truth, of whatsoever kind or degree, is from 
 God. 
 
 '* Pure inspiration is confined to no particu- 
 lar person, age or nation; it is as common and 
 universal as the spirit of God. Everything that 
 possesses life, no matter m what kingdom or 
 stage of development, is to the same degree 
 the recipient, exponent, prophet and beneficiary 
 of the universal spirit of the Supreme Being. 
 Everything that moves anywhere in the illimita- 
 ble territory of Nature sustains a relation more 
 or less intimate to the spirit which animates the 
 world. Every creature enjoys a living commu- 
 nion with the all-animating principle; and the 
 relations which subsist between the little worm 
 and the creation of worlds are just as intimate 
 in principle as those enjoyed by man. Hence, 
 all things receive the spirit of God and bathe 
 in it, and express it in the external in exact pro- 
 portion to their capacity and absolute require- 
 ments. The human soul is a far richer soil for 
 the f^rowth and nurture of heavenly sentiments 
 
 than any ground around Jerusalem, which may 
 have been blessed and sanctified by the tread 
 of Christ and the prophets." 
 
 Man's eternal organism is closely joined to 
 the material world, but far more closely is his 
 spiritual nature joined to that principle which 
 enlivens and energizes the universal whole. 
 There is nothing between man and the bending 
 heavens. He can bare his head beneath the 
 dome of the living temple, and there is no ob- 
 struction intervening which can shut him from 
 a contemplation of the gorgeous creation, and 
 if he will but bare his spirit by removing 
 his pride, selfishness, ignorance and seusuality, 
 which circumscribe and entomb its fair pro- 
 portions, he will find nothing between him and 
 the enjoyment of true inspiration. 
 
 The flovver is truly impressed by the light and 
 warmth of the sun, because it possesses within 
 itself the essential qualities and properties of 
 beauty and development, ^and hence incorpo- 
 rates the descending elements of vitality in its 
 own minute structures. It is not merely a ves- 
 sel for the immediate reception and impartation 
 of light and warmth, but it receives those ele- 
 ments, subjects them to a chemical analysis, 
 and distributes the various properties to the 
 elaboration, development and sustenance of 
 its own particular individuality; and then in 
 accordance with the immutable principles of 
 distributive justice and harmony, the flower 
 breathes forth its precious odors with which it 
 loads the passing breeze, and thus imparts pleas- 
 ure to many loving beings, while it reflects back 
 the rays of the sun in beautiful colors that 
 adorn Nature with their richest hues. So it is 
 with man; like every flower he is a recipient of 
 this kind of inspiration. That is to say, the 
 influx of thoughts, facts and principles into the 
 
49 
 
 soul, which that particular mind may appropri- 
 ate; first to its own welfare and enlightenment 
 and then shedding it abroad, as the sun spreads 
 its rays over the earth for the benefit and in- 
 formation of those who next require the pab- 
 ulum. 
 
 In all ages of the world revelations of various 
 kinda, and of different degrees of importance, 
 have been given to mankind, through the in- 
 spiration of prophets, sages, philosophers, seers 
 and mediums. It all comes from the same 
 source; it all bears the same earmarks, and it 
 all tells us to be good and virtuous, if we wish 
 to be happy. The Bible is full of it — begin- 
 ning with Moses and the burning bush, and 
 ending with Saint John in a trance on the Isle 
 of Patmos. Nor was it confined to the Jews 
 alone, but was taught to the Hindoos, Persians, 
 and Chinese, by Brahma, Zoroaster and Con- 
 fucius, long before the Jews were a' nation. 
 The writings and teachings of these men to the 
 whole Eastern world was that sin would ulti- 
 mately be abolished, that everlasting right- 
 eousness would be brought in, and that then 
 the good deity, Ormuzd, would rejoice with joy 
 unspeakable forever and ever, for having tri- 
 umphed over his evil brother, Ahrmian (the 
 devil). 
 
 These pure men and women of all ages and 
 nations seemed to breathe this inspiration from 
 on high. They have spent their lives, and may 
 have died in the cause of lifting up man from 
 his low animal nature and pointing him to a 
 purer and better life beyond the grave. They 
 have been scoffed at and spat upon by those 
 in high places, and many have been put to 
 death; yet, afterwards they have been deified, 
 and churches and temples have sent up their 
 spires to honor their sainted names. 
 
 There are many men and women of modern 
 times that have acted and been controlled by 
 this divine influence, who, had they lived in 
 past ages, would have been deified for their 
 works; Luther, Calvin, Joan of Arc, the Seer- 
 ess of. Provost, A. J. Davis, and. others, who 
 have revealed many truths concerning the con- 
 nection between the natural and spiritual world, 
 and between soul and body. And there are 
 the names of Baron d'Holbach, Charles Fou- 
 rier and Emanuel Swedenborg, the Swedish 
 philosopher and psychologist, whose writings 
 
 \n press us with that inspiration. Sweden- 
 borg claimed to have seen and conversed with 
 angels, as did Abraham and the patriarchs of 
 old; and if there is any truth in the one, why 
 not believe the other, for it is more recent and 
 better authenticated. 
 
 In the writings of Plato w^e see the spiritual 
 identity of man and a future life, and his phi- 
 losophy reveals some very important laws of 
 Nature, and many psychological truths; but it 
 is mixed up with a vast amount of heredi- 
 tary superstition and absurdity. In Xeno- 
 phon we find a higher degree of beauty, truth 
 and profitableness, for no mind was ever more 
 deeply impressed with the truths of immor- 
 tality than his, because his convictions came 
 from the gushing aspirations of the living prin- 
 ciple within; and his philosophy contains more 
 substantial reasons for the immortality of the 
 soul than can be found in any portion of the 
 old or new Testament. 
 
 Jesus Christ. 
 
 Of the teachings of Jesus Christ in the new 
 Testament, the sermon on the mount is the 
 most sublime ever spoken by mortal man. His 
 whole acts seem to flow from a *pure heart and 
 a refined and spiritual elevation that has caused 
 the whole Christian world to deify him as a 
 son of God, sent into the world to redeem sin- 
 ners. 
 
 In him Nature worked her best and purest 
 material, and the influx of the divine spirit was 
 so great that he possessed the highest develop- 
 ment of physical and mental powers, and he 
 stood forth a model of form, purity and good- 
 ness. But the beauty of his natural principles 
 and the simplicity and purity of his life and its 
 teachings have been obscured by the darkening 
 influence of theological interpretations, which 
 have engrafted it on Roman paganism and 
 shrouded his life and acts in a halo of supersti- 
 tion, and invested him with power that he 
 never claimed to possess. Though possessed of 
 great healing and clairvoyant powers, he only 
 used them for the purpose of doing good, and 
 the many useful and beautiful moral precepts 
 taught by him in the new Testament should 
 cause us to regard him with deep veneration, as 
 one of the greatest reformers of the world, and 
 to ascribe any higher powers would be doing 
 
50 
 
 him injustice, for he did not profess to be a son 
 of God in any other sense than that he was a 
 branch on the great tree of hvmanity; and he 
 did not profess to be directed and impelled by 
 any other spirit than the divine love, the germ 
 of which dwells in the heart of every being, 
 undeveloped. And to this divine principle ex- 
 isting in others, but not so fully developed, he 
 appealed so feelingly, in order that its qualities 
 might advance to that degree of refinement in 
 love and wisdom which he possessed. For he 
 was a perfect type of a man, but anything more 
 than that tends to injure and detract from 
 his goodness and greatness, as it is reasonable 
 to suppose that if the birth and life of Christ 
 had been of such a miraculous character as 
 some wish us to believe, other profane histori- 
 ans than Josephus would have mentioned it, 
 and he would have given an account of the 
 so-called miraculous manifestations; therefore 
 it is evident that much that has been written on 
 this subject was the work of over-zealous or 
 designing priestcraft. 
 
 But in this age of enlightenment and reason 
 it is full time that these vile superstitious false- 
 hoods were swept away and Christ be allowed 
 to stand forth in the true light of a great re- 
 former who has founded a church that has done 
 more to elevate down-trodden humanity than 
 any other; therefore he stands at the head of 
 all others as a great and good man, possessed 
 of that divine power of looking into minds and 
 reading the hearts of men; and, like all great 
 and true men, willing to suffer crucifixion and 
 dearth for principles that would embalm his 
 memory in the hearts of millions to come after 
 him, and raise mankind from an animal plane 
 of existence to a happier and better home be- 
 yond the grave in heaven. 
 
 St. Paul says that God made Jesus *'a little 
 lower than the angel," Hebrews, iii, 3 and 9, 
 " and a little higher than Moses;" "For this 
 man was counted worthy of more glory than 
 Moses." It is evident that St. Paul never con- 
 sidered Christ more than a man "full of the 
 spirit of God." Being all good-man he was 
 therefore a god-man, as good and god are sy- 
 nonyms in the old Saxon language. It is evi- 
 dene that he was filled with the divine substance 
 that elevates man above the low, groveling ideas 
 of animal existence. It is evident that he was 
 
 mortal and preferred to live. He died because 
 he could not help it, and only, when betrayed, 
 he prayed with fervor, until " his sweat was as 
 it were great drops of blood," that the bitter 
 cup might he removed from him. He might 
 have made himself invisible by the use of his 
 mesmeric power over the bystanders, as he had 
 done before when threatened with violence, as 
 is claimed by Eastern adepts, and made his 
 escape; but, seeing that his hour had come, he 
 said, " Not my will but thine be done." Luke 
 xxiv, 34. 
 
 It is evident that Jesus was initiated into all 
 their mysteries. In King's "Gnostics," page 
 145, " there is an account of a sarcophagus, 
 the panels of which were bas-reliefs represent- 
 ing the miracles of Christ; one, the resurrec- 
 tion of Lazarus, in which Christ appears beard- 
 less and possessed of a wand, in the guise of a 
 necromancer, whilst the corpse of Lazarus is 
 swathed in bandages exactly as an Egyptian 
 mummy." And Jesus is always represented 
 with long, waving and curling hair parted in 
 the middle, after the fashion of the Naza- 
 renes. 
 
 The Talmud, speaking of the " Nazaria, or 
 Nazarenes" (who had abandoned the world 
 like the Hindoo Yogis or hermit), " calls them 
 a sect of physicians or wandering exorcists. 
 They went about the country, living on alms 
 and performing cures," fasting and praying 
 and performing miracles, like Christ and his 
 disciples. 
 
 The first Christians were, doubtless the Ebi- 
 onites, and in this we follow the authority of 
 the best critics. " There can be little doubt 
 that the author (of the Cle^nentine Hanilus) was 
 a representative of Ebionitic Gnosticism, which 
 had once been the purest form of primitive 
 Christianity. * * * ^^d who were the 
 Ebionites.? The pupils and followers of the 
 early Nazarenes — the Kabalistic Gnostics who 
 derived their doctrine from the oriental philos- 
 ophy. These Nazarenes were a despised sect, 
 on account of their different religion to that of 
 the jews (Codex Nazara'.ns).'' 
 
 Renan shows the Ebionites numbered among 
 their sect all the surviving relatives of Jesus, 
 and some of whom denounced him. John the 
 Baptist was his cousin and precursor, and was 
 the accepted savior of the Nazarenes and their 
 
51 
 
 They lived over and beyond the 
 
 prophets 
 Jordan. 
 
 There is not a word in the new Testament 
 that goes to show that Jesus was ever actually 
 regarded by his disciples as God. Neither be- 
 fore or after his death did they pay him divine 
 honors. Their relation to him was that of dis- 
 ciple, and " Master" was the name by which 
 they addressed him, as did the followers of Py- 
 thagoras and Plato. He never claimed he was 
 *'God," but said he was the *'son of man," 
 the son of God meaning that all men were sons 
 of God; and when he spoke to Mary Magdalen 
 at the tomb, '* Jesus saith unto her, * Touch 
 me not; I am not yet ascended to my father; 
 but go to my brethren and say unto them I 
 ascend to my father and yoiLr Father, and to 
 my God and your God,'" John xx, 17, which 
 implied on his part a desire to be considered on 
 a perfect equality with his brethren, nothing 
 more; that it was his astral soul or spiritual 
 body that she beheld and that he did not wish 
 her to touch him. 
 
 They looked upon him as a great prophet, a 
 holy, inspired man, a vehicle used by Christos 
 (messenger), through which the spirit of God 
 made himself manifest to man; and in Luke 
 iii, 22, "And the Holy Ghost (spirit) descended 
 in a body shaped like a dove upon him, and 
 voices came from heaver, which said. Thou 
 art my beloved son, and in thee I am well 
 pleased." In another place it says, ''Jesus, 
 full of sacred spirit, returned from Jordan and 
 the spirit led him into the desert." These pas- 
 sages are enough of themselves to convince any 
 unprejudiced mind that he was a great medium 
 and seer, through whom the spirits manifested. 
 It is evident that Christ understood the 
 magic art, when he says, "Go ye, therefore, 
 and teach all nations, * * * and lo, lam 
 with you always, even to the end of the world," 
 (that is, his spirit) and the apostles performed 
 miracles in his name after he was crucified. 
 The prison doors were opened to Peter and 
 the jailor was affrighted. It is claimed that the 
 keys of heaven were left with St. Peter. Baron 
 Bronson shows that the word Patar or Peter 
 was a mystic word which "locates both master 
 and disciple in the circle of initiations, and 
 connects them with the secret doctrines as they 
 
 Egypt," and that the ancient " Book of the 
 Dead," found in the tombs, dating back 4,500 
 years B. C., had this word written in hierogly- 
 phics, and Jesus knew the secret meaning of 
 the word bestowed by him on Simon, who was 
 thereafter called Peter, whom he initiated into 
 all the mysteries, who continued to perform 
 miracles and wonderful things, and this power 
 is still claimed by the Church of Rome. 
 
 Christ said, "Why callest thou me good? 
 There is none good but one; that is God.'' 
 "And whosoever shall speak a word against the 
 son of man shall be forgiven him; but unto 
 him that blasphemeth against the Holy Ghost 
 it shall not be forgiven." Luke xxii, 10. Is this 
 the language of a God, of the second person in 
 the trinity who is identical with the first } 
 
 Say the Hermes, "No one of the gods, no 
 man or lord can be good but God alone." 
 Christ made use of the same expression. "To 
 be a good man is impossible, God alone pos- 
 sesses this privilege," says Plato. John the 
 Baptist did not consider Christ a god, when he 
 baptized him (John i, 6 and 30), " This is he 
 of whom I said. After me cometh a 7nan." 
 Speaking of himself Jesus says, " You seek to 
 kill i?ie, a man that hath told you the truth 
 which I have heard of God." John viii, 40. 
 And even the blind man of Jerusalem, when 
 speaking of who had healed him, said, "A 
 man that is called Jesus made clay and anoint- 
 ed mine eyes." John ix, n. 
 
 Christ in all his sayings is in a Pythagorian 
 spirit. When not verbatim repetitions, his 
 code of ethics is purely Buddhistic; his mode 
 of action and walk of life Essenian; and his 
 mystical mode of expression, his parables and 
 his ways those of an initiate, whether Grecian, 
 Chaldean or Magian (for the " perfect," who 
 spoke the hidden wisdom, were of the same 
 school of Archaic learning the world over); it 
 is difficult to escape from the logical conclusion 
 that he belonged to the same body of initiates. 
 Secret societies and sects extended all over the 
 East at that time, and there is no doubt that 
 Jesus Christ was an initiate. 
 
 The learned philologists have been able to 
 trace this coming messiah far back in the sacred 
 books of the ancient Hindoos, written in the 
 Sanscrit; which is the mother language of the 
 
 were taught by the hierophants of ancient ' Aryan race. They had their trinity and they 
 
had their savior; so did the Persians and so did 
 the ancient inhabitants of Mexico. When the 
 latter country was invaded by Cortez, the priest 
 said, "The devil was ahead of us; how could 
 ' these people know of Christ and the Virgin 
 Mary unless the devil had told them of it." 
 
 The Christian Adventist undoubtedly got his 
 idea from the Hindoo, for it says in their sa- 
 cred book, " When Vishnu appears for the last 
 time he will come as a savior." According to 
 the opinion of the Brahmans he will appear 
 in the form of a horse, Kalki. Others claim 
 he will be mounting it. This horse is the en- 
 velope of the evil spirit, and Vishnu will mount 
 it, invisible to all, until he has conquered it, 
 for the last time, then he will become visible 
 ^S^" and all mankind will become good and then 
 ^ comes the millenium." The Bible speaks of 
 ^ Christ coming again on a white horse, j* 
 ^ : The Christian virtues inculcated by Jesus in 
 the sermon on the mount are nowhere exempli- 
 fied in the Christian world. The Buddhist as- 
 cetics and Indian fakirs seem almost the only 
 ones that inculcate and practice them, and 
 these the Christians call heathen and send mis- 
 sionaries to teach them morals that they have 
 derived from them, revamped, and under new 
 names given to their gods, they try to teach 
 that which they do not practice. 
 
 In the history of man, there appears to have 
 been many saviors, who died to redeem him 
 from sin, to teach him higher and nobler aspi- 
 rations and fit him for the life to come. There 
 are three that stand out more prominent than 
 all the rest who have a history; they are the 
 founders of churches that have millions of 
 members who bow down and bless their names 
 and through them seek to gain admission into 
 heaven — Chrisna, Gautama Buddha and Jesus 
 of Nazareth. 
 
 Chrisna, 
 
 The savior of the Hindoos, is the oldest. His 
 epoch, on which European science fears to 
 commit itself, is uncertain; but the Brahmanical 
 calculations fix it at about 6,877 years ago. He 
 descended of a royal family, but was brought 
 up by shepherds. Man had, perhaps, advanced 
 in civilization to the stage of shepherds;. he is, 
 theiefore called the shepherd's god. 
 
 His birth and divine descent are kept secret 
 
 from Kansa, an incarnation of Vishnu, the 
 second person of the trinity. Chrisna was 
 worshiped at Mathura, on the river Jumna. 
 (See Strabo, Arrian and Bampton.) 
 
 Chrisna is persecuted by Kansa, tyrant of 
 Madura, but miraculously escapes. In the 
 hope of destroying the child, the king has thou- 
 sands of male innocents slaughtered. Chris- 
 na's mother was Devaki or Devanagui, an im- 
 maculate virgin, who had given birth to eight 
 sons before Chrisna. He is endowed with 
 beauty, omniscience and omnipresence from 
 the time of his birth; produces miracles, cures 
 the lame and the blind, casts out demons, 
 washed the feet of the Brahmans, and, descend- 
 ing into the lower regions, hell, liberates the 
 dead, and returns to Vaicoatha, the paradise 
 of Vishnu. Chrisna was the god Vishnu in 
 human form — he crushes the serpent's head. 
 
 Chrisna is unitarian. He charges the clergy 
 with ambition and hypocrisy to their face, di- 
 vulges the great secrets of the sanctuary — the 
 unity of god and the immortality of the soul. 
 Tradition says he fell a victim to the vengeance 
 of the clergy. His favorite disciple, Ajuna, 
 never deserts him to the last. There are cred- 
 ible traditions that he died on a cross (a tree) 
 nailed to it with arrows. The best scholars 
 agree that the Irish cross at Taum, erected long 
 before the Christian era., is Asiatic. (See 
 Round Towers, p. 296.) Chrisna ascends to 
 Swarga and becomes Nirguna. 
 
 Chrisna stands at the head of the Brahman 
 religion. It is spread over India and has about 
 sixty millions of believers, who have degenera- 
 ted into caste, leaving to the Brahma 01 the 
 highest class, full control of all religious teach- 
 ing in the vedas. And these lower caste, like 
 the ignorant and superstitious of all countries, 
 have degenerated or never rose to that intelli- 
 gence, so they were unable to understand the 
 symbols and sublime truths that were taught in 
 the mythical figures of the vedas, but became 
 worshipers of the idols tliat were used to rep- 
 resent the true religion. 
 
 Krishna or Chrisna was worshiped as an 
 avotard of Vishnu, who was one of the sun 
 gods of the ancient Hindoos, and by his reincar- 
 nation in Chrisna he became a redeemer, who 
 would listen to the prayer of man; and that 
 the gods, to execute anything for the benefit of 
 
53 
 
 man, he had to become incarnated in some 
 animal or man. Vishnu, it is said, became in- 
 carnated ten times; the first time in a fish, the 
 second time in a tortoise, the third time in a 
 boar, and the remaining seven times were in 
 human forms. 
 
 If we will only search for the true essence of 
 the philosophy in both Manu and the Kabala, 
 we will find that Vishnu is the Adam Kadmon, 
 the expression of the universe itself; and that 
 his incarnations are the concrete and various 
 embodiments of the manifestations of the 
 " Stupendous Whole." " I am the soul which 
 exists in the hearts of all things, and I am the 
 beginning and the middle and also the end of 
 existing things," says Vishnu to his disciple in 
 Baghavad-Ghita, chapter X, page" 71. 
 
 " I am xA.lpha and Omega, the beginning and 
 the end. * * * j ,^^-i-, ^Y[q first and the 
 last," says Jesus to John, in Rev. 1-6: 17. 
 And if we will closely examine the new Testa- 
 ment we can see the ear-marks of the reincar 
 nation of Chrisna in Jesus Christ, who has been 
 made another avatar of the same reincarnation 
 of Vishnu, the redeemer of the Hindoos. 
 
 It is thought by some of the Oriental writers 
 that the wise men spoken of in the new Testa- 
 ment that came from the East, guided by the 
 star to Bethlehem, were Brahmin priests. 
 
 Gautama Buddha. 
 
 Gautama Buddha, the savior of the Buddists, 
 Tartars and Chinese, according to European 
 science and the Ceylonese calculations, lived 
 about 2,540 years ago. He was the son of a 
 king. His first disciples were also shepherds 
 and mendicants, and when he dies his spirit 
 reincarnates into that of a new-born babe. His 
 mother was Maya, or Maya deva (great Mary), 
 married to her husband, yet an immaculate vir- 
 gin. He is endowed with the same powers and 
 performs wonders like that of Chrisna, and he 
 also crushes the serpent's head, /. e., abolishts 
 the Naga worship as fetishism; but, like Jesus, 
 makes the serpent the emblem of divine wis- 
 dom. He abolishes idolatry, divulges the mys- 
 teries of the unity of God and Nirvana, and is 
 persecuted and driven out of the country, gath- 
 ers thousands of believers around him and dies 
 with his faithful and beloved disciple and 
 cousin, Ananda. He escaped crucifixion. At 
 
 the hour of his birth there were thirty-two 
 thousand wonders performed; the clouds were 
 stopped in the sky, rivers ceased to flow, flow- 
 ers ceased to bear, the birds remained silent 
 and full of wonder, the animals stopped eating, 
 the blind saw, the lame and dumb were cured, 
 and all nature remained suspended. 
 
 He is represented in many temples as sitting 
 under a cruciform tree, which is the " Tree of 
 Life." In another image he is sitting on Naga, 
 the Raga of serpents, with a cross on his breast. 
 Buddha ascends to Nirvana (heaven), while 
 Jesus ascends to paradise. 
 
 In the two preceding characters we can see 
 that they are much alike to that of Jesus, and 
 would naturally come to the conclusion that one 
 was taken from the other, though the two former 
 were born of royal parentage, which they for- 
 sook to become teachers of the humble and 
 low born. That their mothers were immacu- 
 late and had holy conceptions; that the king 
 sought to slay them; that the child was en- 
 dowed with wonderful powers and great intelli- 
 gence. They all performed miracles, cured the 
 lame and the blind, cast out demons, washed 
 their disciples' feet, descended into hell and 
 liberated the dead. 
 
 That Chrisna and Jesus both died on the 
 cross; one transfixed by arrows to a tree 
 and the other was nailed to a cross; that 
 they arose and ascended to heaven. So strik- 
 ing and alike are these three characters that one 
 is forced to the conclusion that they are the 
 same, and out of the dim rays of the past that 
 reflect Chrisna comes the mythical outlines of 
 the mythical Jesus, from whose teachings were 
 drawn those of the historical Christos; for we 
 find that under one identical garment of poetical 
 legend lived and breathed three real human fig- 
 ures. The individual merit of each of them is 
 brought out in rather stronger relief than oth- 
 erwise by the same mythical coloring, for no 
 unworthy character could have been selected 
 for deification by the popular instinct, so uner- 
 erring and just when left untrammeled. 
 
 If they were three distinct personages the 
 similarity would impress us with the truth of 
 the Buddhist faith: the reincarnation of the 
 same spirit in three distinct forms, and differ- 
 ent periods of the world's history. It may be 
 contended that Chrisna and Buddha were char- 
 
54 
 
 acters taken from that of Jesus of Nazareth. 
 But ample proof is at hand to show that either 
 of these religions extends far back into the night 
 of time beyond the birth of Christ or the be- 
 ginnmg of the Christian era. 
 
 They all taught a spiritual religion involving 
 about the same principles, but their followers 
 have perverted their sublime teachings and 
 turned them to suit their own interest, to en- 
 slave man and load his mind down with ignor- 
 ance and superstition, and teach him to worship 
 idols and symbols instead of the one living 
 God. 
 
 The tendency in all ages has been to deify 
 their great and good men when dead, and to 
 make saints out of them, which has, no doubt, 
 given rise to a multiplicity of gods and demi- 
 gods, similar to those of the old Greek and Ro- 
 man mythology, who at one time were men, 
 and these sages, statesmen and warriors became 
 the tutelar deities of their country, to whom 
 the people made offering as a mark of rever- 
 ence and to get them to use their influence in 
 their behalf, which has tended to confuse the 
 idea of one universal God, and to give to that 
 God a human form, as these tutelar deities and 
 guardian spirits and administering angels were 
 once human beings and have evolved under the 
 law of progress and development to higher 
 spheres. And as they still retain their form 
 when seen by seers, prophets and mediums, it 
 is natural to conclude that the supreme God, 
 the ^iX'sX prime cause^ was an anthropomorphous 
 being — a man-like god — and as the Bible says 
 God made man in his own image, therefore 
 man was like unto God, when in reality the 
 Jehovah of the Jews or old Bible was only the 
 tutelar deity of that race of people-, and not 
 the supreme God, as it is time and again said in 
 the same book that no man had ever seen the 
 face of God. 
 
 The three personalities, Chrisna, Gautama 
 and Jesus, were so far above the common herd 
 of mankind that they appeared to be true gods, 
 each in his epoch, and they have left to human- 
 ity three religions, built upon the imperishable 
 rock of ages, that have withstood the assaults 
 of time and the attacks of skepticism, for man, 
 Hci":i n religious animal, must have some God 
 v. -rsliip, some one to pray to and do lioiii- 
 i.-e, .nd ncn liavin^ a c^nceijtion of the sublime 
 
 truths, readily mistakes the symbols or the idols 
 for the real person whom it is intended to rep- 
 resent, falls into idolatry and superstition. 
 Thus the sublime teachings of these three great 
 and good men have become adulterated so that 
 it is hard to recognize them as they are now 
 taught by their disciples and priests. But 
 through the skill and learning of Max Muller 
 and other philologists who have been able to 
 trace them back to their origin in the Sanscrit 
 language, we can see that they all had one com- 
 mon origin in the teachings of Christos, who is 
 the founder of the spiritual faith of the Aryan 
 race. "Yet," says Muller, "we find the his- 
 ry of Gautama copied word for word from the 
 Buddhist sacred books into the golden legend, 
 names of individuals are changed, the place of 
 action — India — remains the same in the Chris- 
 tian as in the Buddhist legends." 
 
 " The sacred scriptures of Hindoo stole 
 Brahma, the sacrificer, who is at once both 
 sacrificer and victim;" it is Brahma, victim in 
 his own son Chrisna, who came to die on earth 
 for our salvation, who himself accomplishes the 
 solemn sacrifice (of the Sarvameda), and yet it 
 is the man Jesus as well as the man Chrisna, 
 for both were united to their Christos; they are 
 therefore the same, identical persons, or two 
 reincarnations of the same spirit, which is in 
 accordance with the Buddhist faith. The rein- 
 carnation of the Llama of Thibet, an adept of 
 the highest order, may live indefinitely. When 
 the mortal casket wears out he reincarnates 
 himself (the Ego) in the body of a new-born 
 babe, and he begins his existence in a new 
 body. This may appear strange, yet Jesus 
 speaks of the second birth, after the natural 
 birth — born in the spirit. This might have ref- 
 erence to the will force freeing its astral soul 
 so that it might communicate with spirits in the 
 spirit land. 
 
 Jesus Christ tries to imbue the hearts of his 
 audience with scorn for wordly wealth, fakir- 
 like unconcern for mammon, love of humanity, 
 poverty and chastity. He blesses the poor in 
 spirit, the meek, the hungry and the thirsting 
 after righteousness, the merciful and peace- 
 makers, and, like Buddha, leaves but a poor 
 chance for the proud cnste to enter into the 
 .iig o wi iicavcfi. jL,vcry .^uru ot his ser- 
 mon is an echo of the essential principles of 
 
55 
 
 monotheistic Buddhism. The ten command- 
 ments of Buddha are found in an appendix to 
 the Pratimoksha Sutra (Pali-Burman text) and 
 are elaborated to their full extent, as in 
 Matthew. 
 
 So great is the snnilarity of the teachings of 
 these two great reformers that the Orientalist 
 will not admit that they are different persons, 
 but say that they are the teachings of Buddha. 
 And so much alike are some of the religious 
 services that a Portuguese Catholic missionary, 
 who was seiit to Cochin China in the sixteenth 
 century, wrote back home saying that the devil 
 had been ahead of him and introduced the 
 Catholic service among them. 
 
 Apollonius of Tyana. 
 
 Apollonius of Tyana, a contemporary of 
 Jesus of Nazareth, was, like him, a religious 
 enthusiast and founder of a new spiritual school. 
 He was less metaphysical and more practical, 
 yet less tender and perfect in his nature, and he 
 inculcated the same quintessence of spiritual- 
 ity and the same high moral truths. He con- 
 fined himself to the society of the rich while 
 Christ confined himself to that of the poor. 
 He was the friend of kings and moved among 
 the aristocracy, and be was born rich. Never- 
 theless they were both miracle-workers, healing 
 the sick, raising the dead, etc., yet his miracles 
 are more wonderful and varied and better at- 
 tested. Materialism denies the fact in both 
 cases, but history affirms it. Apollonius, who 
 is represented as one of 'the sixteen saviors that 
 mankind has had, is claimed by some to have 
 been like Christ, crucified and rose from the 
 dead, and appeared to his disciples, but history 
 does not bear out the assertion. 
 
 He performed supernatural cures and, like 
 the Spiritualist of the present day, proclaimed 
 to the people that he was heaven-ordained. He 
 confounded the most learned scholars of Rome 
 and Greece. He ate no animal food, discarded 
 woollen clothes, wore his hair long and well 
 combed, washed his face, kept his body sweet 
 and clean, refused to associate with women, 
 lived single like Jesus, the Shakers and Catho- 
 lic piiests; was opposed to offering up sacrifi- 
 ces, did not think much of oral prayer, believed 
 in free speech, taught a new religion, honor, 
 equity, personal purity and universal education. 
 
 and performed miracles like Pythagoras, who 
 was a bright medium and claimed to get his 
 wonderful powers and knowledge from on high. 
 He could perform a magnetic or psychologic 
 cure, and was believed to be a god or a son of 
 a god, or else a veritable Beelzebub, the prince 
 of devils. 
 
 When Apollonius desired to hear the " small 
 voice " (the spirits), he would wrap himself up 
 in a fine woollen mantle, on which he stood 
 upon both feet, after making certain magnetic 
 passes and offering an invocation well known to 
 the adept. Then he drew the mantle over his 
 head and face and his translucid or astral spirit 
 was free, which was similar to the account the 
 Bible gives of Elijah: " When Elijah heard it 
 he wrapped his face in his mantle and stood in 
 the entering of the cave, and behold there came 
 the voice." 
 
 Apollonius went to Hindostan in search of 
 the wisdom of the Brahmins. He was brought 
 into the presence of the chief sage of the East, 
 who addressed him in the following language: 
 "It is the custom of others to inquire of those 
 who visit them who they are and for what pur- 
 pose they come; but with us the first evidence 
 of wisdom is that we are not ignorant of those 
 who come to us." Thereupon this clairvoyant 
 recounted to Apollonius the most notable events 
 of his life, also his father and mother, and the 
 incidents of his journey and who were his com- 
 panions and all about him. He was awed by 
 the knowledge they possessed and earnestly 
 sought to be admitted into their secrets. 
 After the usual length of waiting he became 
 duly illuminated and returned and astonished 
 Europe with his piercing clairvoyance and won- 
 derful powers in healing and knowledge of the 
 occult force. 
 
 His power of divining the future was won- 
 derful. While lecturing at Ephesus he sudden- 
 ly stopped and exclaimed, *' Strike! stiike the 
 tyrant! Domitian is no more; the world is de- 
 livered of its bitterest oppressor!" At that day 
 and hour Emperor Domitian was assassinated 
 at Rome, and he saw it though hundreds of 
 miles distant. 
 
 Pythag^oras. 
 
 " Pythais, the mother of Pythagoras, was 
 overshadowed by the specter or ghost of the 
 
m 
 
 god Apollo, who afterwards appeared to the 
 husband and informed him of the divine origin 
 of the child about to be born." 
 
 ** Hercules, or Alcide<5 as he was called by 
 the Greeks, was always claimed to be the son 
 of the god Jupiter by a human mother Alemena, 
 the wife of a Theban king." 
 
 " Apollo, Mercury and Adonis were all 
 claimed to be incarnations, each being ' sons 
 of God ' born of mortal woman; each being 
 for a time incarnate on earth for the benefit of 
 mankind; each destroyed and received up into 
 heaven again, as mediators between the Most 
 High Zeus, the Great Unknown and Unknow- 
 able, and sinful men." 
 
 Parkhurst, in his Greek Lexicon, says: " It 
 is well known that by Hercules was meant the 
 sun or solar light, and his twelve famous labors 
 referred to his passage through the zodiacal 
 signs." And that the Garden of the Hesperi- 
 des was the Garden of Eden, and the serpent's 
 head was crushed beneath the heel of Her- 
 cules; all of which goes to show that the an- 
 cient theology taught by Moses was the same 
 as that which existed in India, Egypt, China, 
 Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Arabia, Asia Minor 
 and Palestine; with the Greeks, Romans, Celts, 
 Gauls, modern Europeans, Australians, ancient 
 Mexicans and Peruvians, which had its origin 
 with the pre-historic man long before the conti- 
 nents took their present shape. The legends 
 among the savage as well as the civilized man, 
 point to the antique garb, with its shreds and 
 patches of ever increasing theological compli- 
 cations, for the benefit of modern fiinaticism, 
 and the edification of those who are content to 
 take the word of priestcraft, instead of think- 
 ing and investigating for themselves. 
 
 Esculapius. 
 
 There is a splendid description given of the 
 great savior, Esculapius, in Ovid's Metamor- 
 phoses: 
 
 " Once as the sacred infant she surveyed. 
 The god was kindled in the raving maid," 
 And thus she uttered her prophetic tale: 
 * Hail, great physician of the world, all hail! 
 Shall heal the nations and defraud the tomb; 
 Swift be thy growth, thy triumph's unconfined; 
 Make kingdoms thicker and increase mankind; 
 
 * Pythoness or sybil. 
 
 Thy daring acts shall animate the dead, 
 And rouse the thunder on thy guilty head; 
 Then shalt thou die, but from the dark abode 
 Shall rise victorious and be twice a god.' " 
 
 " Strabo informs us that the temples of Es- 
 culai)ius were constantly filled with the sick, 
 and that tablets were hung all over the walls, 
 describing the cures effected by T/ie Savior.'" 
 There is still a remarkable fragment of one of 
 these tablets extant, and exhibited by Greuter 
 in his collection. It was found in the ruins of 
 a temple of Esculapius, which gives an account 
 of two blind men restored to sight by Escula- 
 pius in the open view, and with the loud accla- 
 mations of the peo[)le acknowledging the power 
 of the god." 
 
 iEschylus. 
 
 Of /Eschylus, under the name of Prome- 
 theus, "Seneca and Hesiod say that he was 
 nailed to an upright beam of timber, to which 
 were affixed extended arms of wood, and this 
 cross was situated near the Caspian Straits." 
 " At the final exit of this god the whole frame 
 of nature became convulsed; the earth shook, 
 the rocks were rent, the graves were opened, 
 and in a storm which seemed to threaten the 
 dissolution of the universe, the solemn scene 
 closed, and the savior gave up the ghost." 
 
 Xenophon. 
 
 There can be no doubt that Xenoi)hon was 
 a man of noble as})irations and a believer in the 
 immortality of the soul. Speaking of sleep, 
 he says: "Nothing s*o nearly resembles death 
 as sleep, and nothing so strongly intimates the 
 divinity of the soul as what passes in the mind 
 on that occasion, for the intellectual principle 
 in man, during this state of relaxation and free- 
 dom from external impressions, frecjuently looks 
 forward into futurity and discerns events before 
 time has yet brought them forth, a plain indica- 
 tion of what the i)Ower of the soul will here- 
 after be, when the soul shall be delivered from 
 the restraints of its present bondage." 
 Cicero. 
 
 Cicero, the great orator and statesman, was 
 also a defender of those unvarying principles 
 that govern the universe and was endowed with 
 a consciousness of the truth, which caused him 
 to discard superficial theories that then shroud- 
 
57 
 
 ed the public mind in the form of heathen n)y- 
 thology. He was a great lover of nature, and 
 his mind was lifted far above the herd of ignor- 
 ant, superstitious humanity, which in all ages 
 of the world is ready to put to death those no- 
 ble defenders of truth and justice who teach a 
 doctrine in opposition to that which they pro- 
 fess, 
 
 Cicero says: "For my own part, I feel my- 
 self trans[)orted with the most ardent impa- 
 tience to join the society of my de[)arted 
 friends. I ardently wish, also, to visit those 
 celestial worthies of whose honorable conduct 
 I have heard and read much, or whose virtues 
 I have myself commemorated in some of my 
 writings. To this glorious assembly I am speed- 
 ily advancing, and I would not turn back in 
 my journey, even on assured condition that 
 youth like that of Pelius should again be re- 
 stored. * * * /\p(] after all, should this, 
 my persuasion of the soul's immortality prove 
 to be a mere delusion, it is at least a pleasing 
 delusion, and I will cherish it to my last 
 breath. I am well convinced, then, that my 
 dear departed friends are so far from having 
 ceased to live, that the state they now enjoy 
 can alone with propriety be called life." 
 
 Socrates. 
 
 Socrates is as much, if not more, of an au- 
 thority in the scientific and literary world than 
 many of the Christian and so-called sacred 
 writers, lie testified in the midst ol all his 
 wisdom and learning to the continued presence 
 of his daemon or guardian angel, who warns 
 him of danger, predicts to him events that are 
 coming, reveals to him the state of the future 
 life and makes the gateway of death one of 
 glory and grandeur. 
 
 Some of the ancient writers of the church 
 claim that Socrates, the Athenian philosopher, 
 was a good man. As Christ was a teacher to 
 the Jews, so Socrates was a tencher of the true 
 philosophy to the Gentiles. " And those who 
 lived according to the Logos," says Clemens 
 Alexandrinus, " were really Christians, though 
 they have been thought to be Atheists, as Soc- 
 rates and Heraclitus were among the Cheeks, 
 and such as resembled them;" " for God," says 
 Origen, "revealed these things to them and 
 whatever things have been well spoken." 
 
 In Socrates we find those sublime truths that 
 removed the fear of death, and in his conversa- 
 tions we have the best reasons ever given by 
 man of the immortality of the soul. The man- 
 ner of his death and the composure with which 
 he swallowed the poison is only ecjualed by the 
 tragic end of Jesus of Nazareth. 
 
 Zoroaster. 
 
 Zoroaster, the founder of the fire-worshi[)ers 
 of Persia, was born under somewhat similar 
 circumstances to those of Christ, though his 
 parents descended from kings. "His mother, 
 when pregnant, saw in a vision a being glorious 
 as Djemschid, who assailed the Deves (the 
 Persian evil spirits) with a sacred writing, before 
 which they fled in terror. The interpretation 
 given by the magician was that she should be 
 favored among women by bearing a son to 
 whom Ormuzd (good — god) would make known 
 his laws and who should spread them through 
 all the East. x'Vgainst this son every power of 
 evil would be in arms." That after many trials 
 and much persecution he should triumph, and 
 at last should ascend to the side of Ormuzd in 
 the highest heaven, and his foe sink into Ahri- 
 mana and hell. 
 
 King Darius sought like Herod to kill him, 
 and on lifting up his sword to hew the child in 
 pieces, his arm was grasped by some unseen 
 power and was withered to the shoulder, which 
 so frightened the king that he dropped the 
 sword and fled in terror. They then stole the 
 child from his mother and cast him into the 
 flames; there he lay peacefully on his fiery 
 couch as if in his cradle; where he was foimd by 
 his mother (I)ogdo), who carried him home un- 
 harmed. Many efforts were made to kill him 
 but he always escaped unharmed. He was 
 placed in the way of wild bulls and wolves and 
 fed on [)oisoned food, yet he escaped without 
 injury. 
 
 At thirty years of age his mission began. He 
 left his native home and visited the court of 
 Iran. Being warned in a vision he turned aside 
 into the mountains of Albordi, where he re- 
 ceived many revelations and was lifted up into 
 the highest heaven, where he beheld Ormuzd in 
 all his glory encircled by a host of angels. He 
 was there fed on food as sweet as honey, which 
 opened his eyes so he saw all that was passing 
 
in the heavens and on the earth. The dark- 
 ness of the future was made to him as day, and 
 he learned the inmost secrets of nature — the 
 revolution of worlds, the influence of stars, the 
 greatness of the six chief angels of God, the 
 felicity of the beatified, and the terrible condi- 
 tion of the sinful. He descended into hell, 
 and there looked on the evil one face to face. 
 Finally he received from God the divine gospel 
 (Zend-Avesta) and by repeating a few verses of 
 it he would put his enemies to flight. 
 
 Celestial fire was also given him to be kept 
 continually burning, and he at last overcame 
 his enemies, and the king became a convert to 
 his doctrines. Their moral teachings are pure 
 and beautiful, and his ideal of the Divine One 
 high and just; but in the course of centuries 
 his followers became idolatrous and the sacred 
 fire became more and more an object of vener- 
 ation, and the sun, the loving emblem of their 
 sacred fire, was their object of worship. They 
 finally degenerated into what is known as fire- 
 worshipers; licentiousness desecrated the tem- 
 ples and human sacrifices were at last offered. 
 This religion lasted for over twelve centuries, 
 when it was displaced by that of the Koran, 
 with the exception of some Parsees or sun-wor- 
 shipers in India. 
 
 He says, speaking of overcoming evil, " But 
 though he has been brave in battle, killed wild 
 beasts and fought with all manner of external 
 evils, if he neglect to combat evil within him- 
 self, he has reason to fear that Ahriman and 
 his deves will seize him." 
 
 Sosioch. 
 
 Sosioch, the Persian savior, is also born of a 
 virgin, and at the end of time he will come as 
 a redeemer to regenerate the world, but he will 
 be preceded by two prophets, who will come to 
 announce him (see King's translation of the 
 "Zend-Avesta" in his " Gnostics," page 9). 
 Then comes the general resurrection, when the 
 good will immediately enter into this happy 
 abode — the regenerated earth — and Ahriman 
 and his angels (the devils) and the wicked will 
 be purified by immersion in a lake of molten 
 metal. * * * Henceforward all will enjoy 
 unchangeable happiness and, headed by Sosi- 
 och, ever sing the praises of the Eternal One." 
 
 The above is a perfect repetition of Vishnu 
 
 in his tenth avatar, for he will throw the wick- 
 ed into the infernal abodes, in which, after 
 purifying themselves, they will be pardoned, 
 even those devils which rebelled. 
 
 •'This Sosioch, or mediator, is much like 
 the Messiah of the Jews, and here was the deep 
 and real point of unison between the two reli- 
 gions, and this explains the meaning of the star 
 which was seen in the East and which guided 
 the magi of Zoroaster to the cradle of Christ." 
 (See "Ten Great Religions," page 209.) 
 
 Confucius. 
 
 Six hundred years before the birth of Christ 
 the Chinese philosopher Confucius, in his book 
 "Lun-Yu," chapter V, 15, enunciated the 
 Golden Rule: "Master consists in having an 
 invariable correctness of heart; and in doing 
 towards others as we would that they should do 
 to us." 
 
 And in this noble character we find the same 
 lofty spirit that rose above the groveling herd 
 of humanity, whose time is absorbed in getting 
 food to support a starving body. Though he 
 has not been deified he has left a deep impres- 
 sion on the morals of his people, so that he 
 is as much an object of veneration as a savior 
 who might have died upon a cross for a reli- 
 gious idea. He has received the title of phi- 
 losopher, a term far more appropriate than that 
 of savior. 
 
 Mr. Kersey Graves, in his work entitled 
 "Sixteen Crucified Saviors," says there have 
 been at least thirty-four avatars or god-men. 
 
 The following is a list: 
 
 9- 
 10. 
 II. 
 12. 
 
 13- 
 14. 
 
 15- 
 16. 
 
 17- 
 
 Krishna or Chrisna, of Hindostan. 
 
 Buddha Sakia, of India. 
 
 Salivahana, of Bermuda. 
 
 Zulis, also Osiris and Horus, of Egypt. 
 
 Odin, of the Scandinavians. 
 
 Crita, of Chaldea. 
 
 Zoroaster and Mithra, of Persia. 
 
 Baal and Taut, of Phoenicia. 
 
 Indra, of Thibet. 
 
 Bali, of Afghanistan. 
 
 lao, of Nepaul. 
 
 Wittoba, of Billongonese. 
 
 Thammuz, of Syria. 
 
 Atys, of Phrygia. 
 
 Xamotis, of Thrace. 
 
 Zoar, of the Bowzes. 
 
 Adad, of Assyria. 
 
59 
 
 i8. Deva, Tat, and others, of Siam. 
 
 19. Alcides, of Thebes. 
 
 20. Mikado, of the Sintoos. 
 
 21. Beddru, of Japan. 
 
 22. Hesus, or Esos and Bremilla, of the 
 Druids. 
 
 23. Thor, son of Odin, of the Gauls. 
 
 24. Cadmus, of Greece. 
 
 25. Hil and Teta, of Mandaites. 
 
 26. Gentaut and Quaxalcote, of Mexico. 
 
 27. Universal Monarch, of the Sibyls. 
 
 28. Tschy, of Formosa. 
 
 29. The Logos, of Plato (The Word), 
 
 30. Holy One, of Xaca. 
 
 31. To and Tien, of China. 
 
 32. Adonis, of Greece. 
 
 ;^$. Ixion and Quirinius, of Rome. 
 
 34. Prometheus, of Caucasus. 
 
 "Each of these saviors was born at mid- 
 winter and their births have excited the jeal- 
 ousy of some kingly tyrant, and, though them- 
 selves of royal descent, were born in caves or 
 mangers, forced to pass their infancy in obscur- 
 ity and not unfrequently cause the ' massacre of 
 all the innocents' in the district in which they 
 are born. They are all miracle- workers, and 
 are generally connected with some snake story, 
 in which is represented the evil power which is 
 adverse to them. They generally perform 
 about the same class of miracles, preach the 
 highest morals of the age in which they appear, 
 and are benevolent and act the part of great 
 reformers, and oppose the abuses of the times. 
 They feed multitudes, cast out devils, heal the 
 sick; finally they succumb to the powers of 
 evil that oppose them; die a violent death, very 
 often by crucifixion, descend to the lower re- 
 gions to rescue lost souls, reascend to heaven 
 and thenceforth become judges of the dead, 
 mediators and redeemers of men, who offer up 
 vicarious sacrifices to God for the sins of the 
 people." 
 
 "These good-men or god-men," says Mr. 
 Graves, "all appear to point to one origin in 
 India." " How the ancient Mexican could 
 have conceived the idea of a savior," says the 
 priest who accompanied Cortez in his conquest 
 of the country, " I cannot imagine unless the 
 devil gave them the information." 
 
 So all nations have had their saviors; they 
 make him comply with their ideal and color 
 them black, red or white, as may chance to 
 
 be the color of the race to which they be- 
 long. 
 
 "Many of the ancient statues of the god 
 Buddha in India, have crisp, curly hair, with 
 flat noses and thick lips; nor can it be reasona- 
 bly doubted that a race of negroes formerly 
 had pre-eminence in India." It was the opin- 
 ion of Sir William Jones that a great nation of 
 blacks (not certainly, though possibly, negroes) 
 formerly possessed the dominion of Asia, and 
 held the seat of empire at Sidon (more proba- 
 bly Babylon). These must have been the peo- 
 ple called by Mr. Maurice, Cushites or Cuthites, 
 described in Genesis, and the opinion that they 
 were blacks is corroborated by the translators 
 of the Pentateuch, who constantly render the 
 word Cush by Ethiopia. The figures of the 
 ancient Hindoo gods found in cave temples is 
 very different from the present race. This 
 points back to the remote age when all man- 
 kind were black, as is claimed by some ethnol- 
 ogists. The color of the first human beings 
 was black. 
 
 To comprehend these saviors we must look 
 upon them as great and good men who breathed 
 the divine breath of inspiration, who by their 
 pure lives lived in harmony with the spirit world 
 and drew their wisdom from the soul of the 
 universe, which is overflowing with truth and 
 goodness. These saviors were sensitives and 
 were able to connect themselves with it, and to 
 draw from it some of its secrets and divine 
 truths. 
 
 Each wave of thought, whether of good or 
 evil, that vibrates from the heart or mind goes 
 out by the silent system of spiritual laws, and 
 inflluences all minds within the radius of its 
 control. The spiritual beings around us are 
 moved and affected. It reaches out wave after 
 wave, and is met by a response from the spirit- 
 ual agencies that come down from the great 
 central mind (God). There is no limit to the 
 light and knowledge that is locked up in the 
 spirit world, if man would place himself en 
 rapport with it. It only requires that he should 
 seek it earnestly; it only requires that he should 
 trust it; it only requires that he should submit 
 and have faith and live in harmony with nature, 
 and do right and good will follow his earnest 
 wishes and prayers. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 RELIGION; ITS ORIGIN, GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT. 
 
 As the savage slowly evolved from the ape- 
 like man, his brain became larger and more 
 developed in the region of the moral and 
 reflective organs. His forehead assumed a 
 higher and broader proportion, the crown rose 
 in the region of the organs of benevolence and 
 veneration. Man alone has this prominence on 
 the crown of the head; all other animals are 
 deficient. While many animals possess a back 
 skull largely developed, man alone has a fore- 
 head and a highly curved crown, and in the 
 lowest there is but a slight elevation. The 
 prominence in this region of the head is the 
 most marked feature between the benevolent, 
 pious and good man and the low and bad man. 
 Therefore religion is dependent on the brain 
 development in the region of the crown of the 
 skull. 
 
 The moral and intellectual brain was the last 
 to evolve; as man was forced to think and rea- 
 son these organs expanded and by slow degrees 
 man became a reasoning, thinking animal. 
 Man's religion is high or low as he recedes or 
 approaches the lower animals; low and de- 
 graded races have a low and degraded religion, 
 and as man ascends in the scale of intelligence 
 his religion becomes broader and more liberal. 
 It is the ignorant and narrow-minded that con- 
 stitute the over-devout fanatic and the religious 
 tyrant and bigot who is always a great stickler 
 for creeds and dogmas. God, creation and 
 religion are things too broad, too high and too 
 noble to quarrel about or to burn men, women 
 and children because they entertain other ideas 
 than those entertained by the orthodox believ- 
 ers of the time. 
 
 The most of the animals know the difference 
 between day and night. Some know the sea- 
 sons of the year; the squirrel, for instance, 
 
 60 
 
 lays up its store of nuts for the long winter, 
 and many birds migrate south every fall. All 
 animated nature is governed by instinct, while 
 man is governed by reason and intuition — the 
 latter in animals is called instinct. In man it 
 is elevated and guided by reason. What we 
 call our first impression is this feeling of intui- 
 tion that makes us religious, because it is the 
 inner whispering of our nature that admonishes 
 and forces us to admit that there is a future 
 state, that the life princi[)le never dies. Ani- 
 mals may have it, but they have not developed 
 a reason or an intelligence so that they can ex- 
 press it, or perhaps feel it; yet they all cling to 
 lite and dread to die, they know this life but 
 not the life to come. 
 
 All strange phenomena that man cannot un- 
 derstand, he is ready to believe is produced by 
 some supernatural power; it is a mystery and 
 he is ready to ascribe it to some marvelous 
 cause. The mind that is ignorant of these 
 causes has a vague and indefinite idea of it; 
 therefore he is ready to believe it is produced 
 by some unseen being, and as he has learned 
 from experience there are good and bad results, 
 so is he ready to ascribe it to good or bad 
 spirits. 
 
 So by degrees he became a superstitious ani- 
 mal and was ready to conclude that all phe- 
 nomena that he could not understand was the 
 work of some good or evil spirit, according to 
 the manner of its visit and its interest for good 
 or evil. This idea gave rise to good and evil 
 spirits, gods and demons; all of which tended 
 to create a religious feeling within his nature. 
 As he receded from the beast this feeling was 
 increased by the development of those organs 
 that tended to make him a social, moral being, 
 grateful for the blessings conferred upon him by 
 
61 
 
 the bountiful hand of nature, which is ever 
 ready to assist him to rise. 
 
 No other animal has a religion. It may be 
 said to be one of the marked distinctions that 
 place man above the brute creation. No mon- 
 keys or apes have any reverence for a supreme 
 being. "Man is the first animal," says Pro- 
 fessor Fowler, " that has the organ of venera- 
 tion," which he places at the crown of the 
 skull. Some men have little or no reverence, 
 and the want of this development makes them 
 atheists and disbelievers in a supreme being 
 and a future existence. 
 
 The moral and religious organs are the last 
 that develop in the child, and over them the 
 skull is last to harden. Man alone possesses 
 this craniological development, and the lower 
 the man or the lower the race the less the brain 
 is developed, and the harder is the infant's 
 skull on the crown of the head, as in the case 
 of the negro child and the inferior races and 
 apes. The phrenologist and ethnologist can 
 almost tell the moral and intelligent status of 
 the man by the shape of his skull and to what 
 race of people he belongs. All prehistoric 
 skulls of man and the lower order of animals 
 possess less brain capacity than those ot more 
 recent periods. The mammoth elephantus pri- 
 mogehitus of the tertiary period, though twice 
 as large as that of the modern elephant, pos- 
 sessed a less brain capacity. As the world has 
 grown older animals have grown less and their 
 brain larger. 
 
 So religion is a matter of growth and devel- 
 opment as well as of muscle and brain, and 
 is dependent on the brain for its existence, 
 so this will account for the universal idea that 
 man has of a future state of spirits, angels and 
 gods. As his brain increases he has a higher 
 standard for his god. He first makes himself 
 an image out of stone, mud or wood; then he 
 gives it the form of a man, which is the highest 
 conception of a form that he can conceive, and 
 here he generally stops and becomes a man- 
 worshiper. 
 
 It is this indwelling principle that forces up 
 the savage to that of the civilized, moral, social 
 and intellectual man, and as these faculties are 
 developed man ascends and progresses, and the 
 higher the condition on earth the higher will be 
 his condition in spirit life, for it follows the 
 
 law of progress, and as spirits progress so will 
 man, for they are only higher beings of intelli- 
 gence, and are only freed from the body, while 
 man is the undeveloped spirit, chained to the 
 body, only to be freed at death; therefore they 
 act and react upon each other, and spirits attract 
 like spirits, whether in or out of the body, 
 so that spirits are attracted to earth and spirits 
 of mortals ascend to the spirit spheres, when in 
 proper condition, and this interchange is ever 
 going on between them, ascending and de- 
 scending. The spirit of the savage descends 
 to the savage on the earth and the spirit of the 
 savage on earth ascends to their spiritual sphere. 
 So they learn of a spirit land, and this is their 
 religion. So it is with the Hindoo or with the 
 Christian, and whatsoever the condition of man 
 is on earth, he has his spiritual sphere and the 
 spirits from that sphere communicate wdth him, 
 for spirits that are not in harmony cannot min- 
 gle. "Like attracts like, whether on earth or 
 in the spiritual world." 
 
 In this way all nations have their religion, 
 and they get it through kindred spirits, so that 
 Spiritualism is the origin of all religions, as it 
 is the only way man can get a knowledge of the 
 spirit world, for all religions are full of spirit- 
 ism, and when carefully compared we are forced 
 to admit that it has all come through the same 
 channel, and its standard depends on the me- 
 diums and the spirits that communicate and the 
 race to which they belonged. Some men are 
 more progressed on earth than some spirits who 
 have been in the spirit land thousands of years. 
 
 Religion, therefore, should be progressive; as 
 men, spirits and angels progress, their knowledge 
 of nature and God becomes enlarged and their 
 intelligence becomes expanded, and so should 
 religion become more liberal. While science 
 has found out many of the secrets of the phys- 
 ical laws and benefited mankind, it has refused 
 to look into the metaphysical laws that relate to 
 mind, soul or spirit, and still allows man to 
 bow down and worship the religions of Moses 
 and Christ, who had no idea of steam or elec- 
 tricity, but who traveled about in dugouts or 
 on a camel's back. What we want is a religion 
 in keeping with the age, and the spirits demand 
 it, for they have progressed. 
 
 Religion has its origin in the mind, like that of 
 thought and perception. As soon as man had 
 
62 
 
 evolved to such a condition of intelligence that 
 he could connect a train of thought and had 
 language to express his ideas, he became a reli- 
 gious animal, and had higher aspirations than 
 his animal desires. He looks forth into the fu- 
 ture and believes that there is something within 
 him that will exist forever; that he will live in 
 the spirit long after the body has decayed and 
 returned to the dust. This thought is peculiar 
 to man and has tended to elevate him and force 
 him to overcome his animal nature and aspire 
 to reach a higher moral condition. As his 
 moral and intellectual organs push up the front 
 and crown of the head he becomes more hu- 
 mane and intelligent, he has more respect for 
 the rights of others, and he tries to subdue his 
 animal passions, which in time he is able to 
 place under the control of the moral, reasoning 
 faculties of the mind; but to arrive at that con- 
 dition it costs every one a struggle. Some in- 
 herit more of the vicious animal nature than 
 others, while it is natural for some to be good, 
 for they are born so; but the great mass of man- 
 kind inherits so much of the animal nature that 
 it takes a lifetime to get it under control, and 
 it may never be done. 
 
 A Hindoo maxim says: " Brahma inscribes 
 the destiny of every mortal on his skull, and the 
 gods themselves cannot avert it." That is, 
 everybody has their destiny in their skulls and 
 if he has not the moral and intellectual nature 
 given to him by birth, he cannot make a wise 
 and moral man out of himself; but that he can 
 improve himself and his condition, and his 
 brain will develop in that direction by use; 
 that brain grows and expands like the muscles 
 of the legs and arms by use; that there was 
 never a mind, however great or small, but by 
 proper study and training might have learned 
 more. It is a bottomless well that can never 
 be pumped dry. The mind is a battery con- 
 nected with infinity; the more perfect the bat- 
 tery the greater is its capacity to draw from 
 anima mundi (the mind or soul of the universe), 
 which is inexhaustible, it is a part of the deity, 
 a spark, a divine scintilla that has gone out 
 from the universal mind, which is called God. 
 Therefore all well balanced minds have a high 
 regard for truth, justice, love and virtue, and 
 hate vice. 
 
 This love of virtue and truth struggles to 
 
 elevate mankind and better the condition of all; 
 it stands out prominently in the patriot and the 
 philanthropist, they who in all ages of the world 
 have struggled to overcome ignorance and prej- 
 udice. They have been defeated time and 
 time again, but their influence is felt for ages. 
 It will take many generations to remove the 
 patriotic feeling of a Washington from the 
 hearts of the American people, for all love a 
 pure, good and patriotic man, though they may 
 not have manhood to imitate his virtues. Still 
 it all has its effect on society and slowly pushes 
 up the masses from their low, animal natures 
 and selfish desires. 
 
 When we examine the religion of the savage 
 and that of civilized man, we see much simi- 
 larity and traces of one mingled in the other. 
 
 When the Zulu sacrifices a bullock and offers 
 up his prayer he says: '* There is your bullock, 
 ye spirit of my ancestors; I pray for healthy 
 body that I may live comfortably, and thou 
 treat me with mercy," (mentioning the name of 
 his dead ancestor). 
 
 A Khond, when offering a sacrifice to the 
 earth goddess, says: " By our castle, our flocks, 
 our pigs and our grain, we procured a victim 
 and offered a sacrifice; do you enrich us; let 
 our herds be so numerous that they cannot be 
 housed; let children so abound that the care of 
 them shall be too much for their parents. 
 * * * We are ignorant of what is good for 
 us; give it to us, what is best." 
 
 The Zulu says the spirit of a dead man de 
 parts from his body and becomes an ancestral 
 ghost. The widow will tell how the spirit of 
 her husband came back in her sleep and up- 
 braided her for not taking care of the children. 
 The son will describe how his father's ghost 
 stood before him in his dreams. 
 
 The Mandan Indian woman will talk for 
 hours to her dead husband or child. 
 
 A Chinaman is bound to announce any fam- 
 ily event, such as a wedding, to the spirits of 
 his ancestors. They not only talk to the ghost 
 of their dead kinsfolk, but offer them food. 
 
 A Russian peasant will often put crumbs of 
 cake behind the pictures of the saints, believing 
 that the souls of their forefathers are creeping 
 around behind it. 
 
 The feeding of the dead is still kept up in 
 Brittany; on All Souls* Day they will put cake 
 
m 
 
 and sweetmeats on the graves, and will leave 
 fragments on the supper table all night for the 
 souls of the dead of the family, who will come 
 to visit them. Flowers are now left on the 
 graves as a substitute. 
 
 John Chinaman believes, when he offers 
 a sacrifice to his dead ancestors, of roast pig 
 and rice, that the flavor or essence of the viands 
 ascends and the spirit of his departed father 
 sniffs up the odors as they rise, which pleases 
 him and he will shower blessings down on 
 his dutiful son, while he is at liberty to take 
 home the cold food, the gross and material that 
 cannot be eaten by the immortal spirit, but 
 which is good for himself and his family to 
 make a feast upon. 
 
 Classic literature abounds in instances where 
 the horse and clothing were burned with the 
 owner. The burning of Patroklas with the 
 Trojan captives and their horses and hounds, is 
 an instance; and when he came back to the 
 sleeping Achilles, he tried to grasp him with 
 loving hands; but the soul, like smoke, flits 
 away below the earth. 
 
 Hermotinos, the seer, used to go out of his 
 body, until at last coming back from a spirit 
 journey, found that his wife had burned his 
 corpse on a funeral pile, and that he had to 
 become a bodyless ghost. 
 
 Herodotus tells us about Scythian funerals, 
 and how Melissa's ghost came back shivering 
 because her clothes had not been burned with 
 her. 
 
 To the present day the good wife of the Hin- 
 doo mounts the funeral pile, believing that her 
 spirit will accompany her husband to the other 
 world. 
 
 Among the ancient Peruvians the wife of the 
 dead prince would hang herself in order that 
 she might continue in his service. 
 
 The leading of the dead general's horse in 
 the funeral procession had its origin in the an- 
 cient custom of killing the horse at his grave 
 and burying it with him, so that its spirit would 
 accompany him to the spirit world and there be 
 his war horse. As late as in 1 781, at Treves, 
 when General Friedrich Kasimir was buried 
 according to the rites of the Teutonic order, 
 his war horse was killed at his gra've and buried 
 with him. This custom is still kept up by the 
 savages, and the King of Dahomey decapitates 
 
 the head of a slave when he wishes to send a 
 message to some departed friend, and a heca- 
 tomb of wives and women are slaughtered on 
 his grave when he dies, to accompany him to 
 the spirit land. 
 
 Religion has its origin in the heart; it is a 
 part of man's intuitional nature; it comes from 
 the spiritual rather than the rational, yet it 
 must have reason as well as faith to give it sup- 
 port; it must have works as well as belief, and 
 belief cannot stand long with reason and facts. 
 The want of positive facts, such as can be de- 
 monstrated by a scientific test, is one cause of 
 the growth of materialism. To some the test 
 of Spiritualism is sufficient, but to others it is 
 not. The positive materialist rejects that evi- 
 dence and disturbs the subtle currents that 
 bring those facts, which are given by a class of 
 sensitives. Scientific minds, such as Profes- 
 sors Wallace, Crookes and Zollner, are able 
 to appreciate them; but the cold materialist, 
 like Tyndal and Spencer, reject all spiritual 
 manifestations. 
 
 There are two classes of religious persons: 
 one moved by love may be called amo, the 
 other the credo. The latter are interested only 
 in creeds and forms and outward show, who 
 are narrow-minded and fanatical and have in 
 all ages filled the world with strife, war and dis- 
 sensions. They are prompt to go to church on 
 Sunday, when they appear very devout. They 
 may be called Sunday Christians. The amos, 
 on the other hand, make religion consist of 
 doing good; they care little about creeds and 
 dogmas, and they try to promote peace and 
 happiness. They use their belief as a means, 
 while the credos stand firm on it as a finality 
 that is to take them to heaven. 
 
 Of the credo Morris says: ** It is possible to 
 be delighted with a doctrine and yet have no 
 just conception of its practical bearings; to 
 revel in the thought of a blessing, and yet not 
 discern its force as a moral motive; to have an 
 intense admiration of the principles of equity 
 and love, and yet be a stranger to both the 
 theory and practice of them in varied relations 
 of life and the world." 
 
 The highest idea of a religious man is to do 
 good and to have a regard for what is right and 
 just between himself and his fellow man. The 
 observance of the Golden Rule is his standard; 
 
64 
 
 a just appreciation of the bountiful gifts of na- 
 ture which are given to him to use and enjoy. 
 Pleasure in every form is good in itself; it is 
 the great allurement that God has given to his 
 children to enjoy and not to abuse. 
 
 All wisdom and philosophy are resolved into 
 one simple principle: that happiness and intel- 
 ligence depend upon the moral development of 
 our religious nature; without it man is but a 
 little above a brute. An immoral genius is no 
 genius, simply a man of talent, such as Lord 
 Byron; but in Shakespeare and Milton we have 
 the highest moral purity, one capable of giving 
 a full expression of the soul. 
 
 Two men may stand on the same spot, to 
 one everything is beautiful and lovely, while to 
 the other it may all appear a barren waste. 
 One looks on the bright side of the picture, 
 while the other looks on the dark side of it. 
 One has hope, the other despair; one is an op- 
 timist, the other a pessimist, who sees evil in 
 everything, " that this is a vile world of sin 
 and sorrow." 
 
 Light and heat come together in the sun- 
 beam, and so does law with virtue of desire 
 and deed. In becoming religious one loses 
 nothing but often gains when least it is expect- 
 ed. No one can perceive its beauties unless his 
 heart is morally good. " To know nature then, 
 one must be true to nature. To be true to na- 
 ture then, one must live looking forever to the 
 mighty spirit who presides. Nature has been 
 said to have an exhaustless meaning, but it is a 
 meaning to be rightly seen and heard only by 
 him who strives ceaselessly and prayerfully to 
 become all that the divine image and likeness 
 is capable of becoming, which is in fact to be- 
 come humane and religious, and as we become 
 more humane the world becomes to us more di- 
 vine and man a better Christian." 
 
 Religion may be divided into two parts; that 
 which relates to its historical forms is called 
 comparative theology; the other is that which 
 explains the conditions under which, in the 
 highest or lowest form it is possible, is called 
 theoretic theology. 
 
 Comparative theology is like that of compar- 
 ative philology and can be traced back to the 
 early races of mankind in Asia. It shows that 
 it has taken many forms and has much to do in 
 shaping the public mind, laws and institutions 
 
 of every country, and all religions may be said 
 to be the groundwork of every government ex- 
 cept that of the United States, in which a new 
 departure was taken and God and religion were 
 for the first time left out. 
 
 There are two modes by which man gets his 
 religious knowledge: natural and revealed. 
 The natural is the knowledge man gets by the 
 light of nature and reason; the revealed religion 
 is that which comes by revelations from God, 
 angels and spirits, and the inspiration of pro- 
 phets, seers and mediums. It manifested itself 
 to Mose^: in the burning bush, and he heard it 
 on Mount Sinai. Therefore all religious knowl- 
 edge we have on this subject is through revela- 
 tion, and this revelation has been made to man 
 through the mediumship of some person who 
 has been inspired or who has held converse 
 with angels or spirits. The record of these 
 facts are called a Bible in the Christian reli- 
 gion; with the Hindoos it is called the Vedas; 
 with the sun-worshippers the Zend-Avesta; with 
 the Mohammedans the Koran. 
 
 " True religion is that which embraces the 
 universe, reveals perfect justice to all, breathes 
 boundless goodness, fills the reason with lights 
 the affection with love, the sorrowing with con- 
 solation^ the down-trodden with courage^ and 
 the despairing with the golden beams of eternal 
 hope and happiness. It is responsive to every 
 real human need, the infinite sources of love 
 and wisdom perpetually flow into and flood the 
 individual receptive spirit; and the innumera- 
 ble host of the heavenly spheres freely shower 
 their fondest affections and their most resplend- 
 ent thoughts into the common life of the terres- 
 trial millions o' '>uman beings. There is no 
 one utterly forsaken, li' are a part of the whole 
 in the great plan of creation; no bleeding heart 
 that either lives or dies wholly alone and un- 
 known; there are ministering spirits and guar- 
 dian angels watching over every human being; 
 no unrequited life in this universe of love; no 
 possible estrangement from the redemptive 
 power of the universal presence." 
 
 All humanity moves within the orbit of the 
 spiritual Sun according to certain and fixed 
 laws of the spirit world. There is no gravita- 
 tion equal or superior to the attraction of heav- 
 en, while our feet and our animal nature cling 
 to the earth, yet our heads point towards the 
 
65 
 
 heavens. That our bodies will return to the 
 earth from whence they came and the self, the 
 ego, the soul, will ascend to the mansion in the 
 skies, where it will follow the laws of progress 
 and grow wiser, purer and better until it reaches 
 the divine sensorium whence it came. 
 
 The supreme Power whom we reverence is 
 the boundless and endless one — the grand 
 ''Central Spiritual Sun' — by whose attributes 
 and the visible effects of whose inaudible will 
 we are surrounded — the God of the ancients 
 and the God of modern seers. His nature can 
 be studied only in the worlds called forth by 
 his mighty yf<7/. His revelation is traced with 
 His own finger in the rocks, in imperishable fig- 
 ures upon the face of the cosmos, and the same 
 forces are at work and the same laws that gov- 
 ern matter are now in operation as were in the 
 days of Moses, David and Jesus Christ and 
 the apostles. It is the only infallible gospel 
 we can recognize. The earth is God's Bible, 
 for it His is work, and He has written on the 
 rocks characters that the geologist can read. 
 "Therefore," says Agassiz, *'to understand 
 God we must study His works in nature, and 
 the more we learn of it the more we will know 
 of Him." 
 
 The materialist says there is no God except 
 the gray matter in our brain, yet there is an 
 inward whispering that says "No." The ego, 
 which lives and thinks and feels independently 
 of us in our mortal casket, does more than be- 
 lieve; it knows that there exists a God in nature, 
 for the sole and invincible Artificer of all lives 
 in us, as we live in Him. No dogmatic faith 
 or exact science is able to uproot that intui- 
 tional feeling inherent in man, when he has 
 once fully realized it in himself. Human na-, 
 ture is like universal nature in its abhorrence of 
 a vacuum. It feels an immortal yearning for a 
 supreme power; without a God the cosmos 
 would seem like a soulless corpse. Being for- 
 bidden to search for Him where alone His 
 traces would be found, man has filled the ach- 
 ing void with a personal God, whom his spirit- 
 ual teachers have created for him to worship 
 out of the heathen myths. 
 
 Religion places the human soul in the pres- 
 ence of its highest ideal; it lilts it above the 
 level of ordinary goodness and produces, at 
 
 least, a yearning after a higher and better life — 
 a life in the light of God. 
 
 Religion is that which distinguishes man 
 from the animals. We do not mean the Chris- 
 tian or Jewish religions only, but all religions — 
 a faculty which, in spite of sense or reason, en- 
 ables man to apprehend the Infinite, under any 
 varying disguises. For all religions have in 
 them a spark of good. Without this faculty, 
 there could be no controlling or governing 
 man; for all religions are nothing but the groan- 
 ing of the spirit, struggling and longing after the 
 Infinite. 
 
 This yearning after immortality has, in all 
 ages of the world, made him a slave to priests 
 and fanatics, to be humbugged and imposed 
 upon, instead of being his own priest and con- 
 sulting the inner prompting of his better nature. 
 He has suffered others to think for him and 
 intercede in his behalf. 
 
 All men are mediumistic, if they would only 
 consult and listen to their better promptings, 
 which are ever whispering in their ears what is 
 right and what is wrong. But, blinded by prej- 
 udice and superstition, they shut their ears to 
 those inward whisperings, and follows the 
 teachings of some selfish, scheming man, who, 
 to furthei his ends and ambition, has, in all 
 ages of the world, seized upon this religious 
 sentiment in man to rule, control and govern 
 him. 
 
 "The king is at the head of state and 
 church. The king never dies and the church 
 never does wrong." This idea has kept the 
 masses in slavery and ignorance. They have 
 been taught to obey and pay the priest to pray 
 for them. The king and the priest have preyed 
 upon their earnings, and it was to their interest 
 to keep them in ignorance, so they could con- 
 tinue to prey upon them. "This unnatural 
 and unjust religion," says Draper, " has retard- 
 ed civilization a thousand years." They have 
 used it to control man and govern him to suit 
 their interest and not his. The moment a man 
 begins to investigate he becomes skeptical, and 
 then he is in a tair way to learn the truth and 
 think for himself, and worship God in accord- 
 ance to the dictates of his conscience. 
 
 Religion has led to endless wars that have 
 devastated whole countries, and reduced the 
 inhabitants to the condition of slaves, and 
 
(jS 
 
 forced them to accept the religion of some am- 
 bitious general, or fanatical priest, who had no 
 other idea of God than that which his narrow, 
 bigoted brain would allow him to create. So 
 they have made gods and religions to suit their 
 fancy, and not in accordance with the grand 
 idea and plan of nature and creation. Said a 
 native to a missionary: 
 
 '* Your soldiers seduce our women. * * * 
 You come to rob us of our land, pillage the 
 country and make war upon us, and you wish 
 to force your God upon us, saying that He for- 
 bids robbery, pillage and war. You are white 
 on one side, and black on the other, and if we 
 were to cross the river, it would not be us that 
 the devil would take." 
 
 Among Christians there is nothing but dis- 
 sensions — a contest about creeds and ceremo- 
 nies; they are intolerant and tyrannical if left 
 to them to govern man and control his con- 
 science. Each claims to be right and all oth- 
 ers wrong. Its dogmas are orthodox, but all 
 other churches are heterodox, and are ready to 
 go to war and cut each other's throats about 
 something in which all may be wrong or know 
 nothing about. 
 
 There is nothing more incomprehensible to 
 the heathen than the trinity — Father, Son and 
 Holy Ghost, and these three in one; all equal in 
 the God-head — and the divinity of Christ; that 
 he was born of a woman and still he was God. 
 There is but one God and yet there are three; 
 how can this be ? Some worship the Father, 
 some the Son, and others the virgin Mary, who 
 was the mother. 
 
 The abstract fictions of antiquity, which for 
 ages had filled the popular fancy with but flick- 
 ering shadows and uncertain images, have in 
 Christianity assumed the shapes of real person- 
 ages and become accomplished facts. Alle- 
 gory, metamorphosed, becomes sacred history, 
 and pagan myth is taught to the people as a 
 revealed narrative of God's intercourse with his 
 chosen people, while thousands of books, con- 
 taining as much sacred history and as strong 
 evidence that they were written by divine hands, 
 have been committed to the flames and their 
 believers have been put to the torture. 
 
 The theology of Christendom has been 
 rubbed threadbare by the investigations of 
 science and the research of the philologist and 
 
 the archaeologist. It is found to be, on the 
 whole, subversive, rather than progressive, of 
 spirituality and good morals. Instead of ex- 
 panding the rule of divine law and justice, it 
 leaves us in doubt and dread of damnation. It 
 fills the mind with doubt as to what course to 
 pursue. It makes cowards of all; every one 
 dreads death, instead of looking on it as a 
 transition into a higher sphere and a better ex- 
 i'^tence. 
 
 The Jewish religion teaches us of an an- 
 gry and revengeful God (which is an absurdity), 
 who will condemn the spirits of the wicked to 
 hell-fire and the devil, there to be roasted for- 
 ever. That part of the Lord's Prayer, that 
 says, " Lead us not into temptation," is an in- 
 sult to God and common sense. The absurd- 
 ity of the thought that God, the embodiment of 
 goodness and purity, would or could, for a mo- 
 ment, entertain the idea of leading any mortal 
 into temptation of any kind ! No, this part of 
 the Lord's Prayer is directed to Satan, the tute- 
 lar genius who hardened the heart of Pharaoh, 
 put an evil spirit in Saul, sent lying messengers 
 to the prophets and tempted David to sin; such 
 is the God of Israel, as described in the Bible. 
 
 The various religions are like the pure white 
 ray, broken up and scattered by the prism. 
 Red, which represents blood, is the stronger; 
 it has been the most prominent in all the West- 
 ern religions; it has caused more wars and 
 bloodshed than any other, while that taught by 
 the Brahmins and the Buddhist has been like 
 that of the blue rays; it is the slowest and it 
 lingers longest in the atmosphere, which gives 
 it the cerulean hue. So each ray of the spec- 
 trum, by imperceptible shadings, merges into 
 each other, and so all the great theologies that 
 have appeared at different times, have diverged 
 from each other until they form thousands of 
 religious creeds and sects, when all combined 
 represent only one Eternal Truth. 
 
 *' Truly," says Bishop Kidder, " were a wise 
 man to choose his religion from those who pro- 
 fess it, perhaps Christianity would be the last 
 religion he would choose, for they preach one 
 thing and practice another." Their ministers 
 claim to be followers of the disciples, but in no 
 instance do they do as the disciples did, '* Care 
 not for food or raiment or gold or wealth; heal 
 the sick or console the distressed;" but always 
 
67 
 
 keep an eye to. the good things of this earth 
 and a fat parsonage. They tell the people the 
 days of miracles are closed, and that the door 
 to heaven is shut, to be entered only through 
 and by the church; that man must look to Jesus 
 and the cross and the virgin Mary, and not to 
 God himself. It is evident that they have be- 
 come degenerate and do not understand the 
 true workings of the spirit through the occult 
 powers that are ever ready to be invoked to 
 assist and instruct man how to become wiser 
 and better. In their ignorance they have dei- 
 fied a great medium, who understood these 
 forces and used them to reform man and purify 
 the church. But instead of following out his 
 directions they have used his name to mislead 
 mankind, and they have so clouded man's in- 
 tellect with dogmas that it has caused him to 
 lose sight of his individual relation and account- 
 ability to God. 
 
 The Christian religion is repulsive to the 
 Chinese, because Jesus had so little respect for 
 his father and mother, and his disrespect for 
 the dead, when he said to the young man, "Let 
 the dead bury the dead." 
 
 As a Khan said to Marco Polo : * ' You see 
 the Christians are ignorant. They can't get 
 their gods to do anything; while these idolaters 
 can get their gods to do anything that is wanted 
 of them, insomuch, that when I sit at table the 
 cups from the middle of the hall come to me 
 filled with wine or other liquor, without being 
 touched by anybody, and I drink from them. 
 They control storms, causing them to pass in 
 whatever direction is indicated they should 
 take, and do many other marvels; while, as 
 you know, their idols speak, and give them 
 predictions on whatever subjects are chosen, 
 which you Christians cannot do. Why should 
 we change our religion for one that is infe- 
 rior ? " 
 
 Why should the Christian sneer at the mirac- 
 ulous power of fakir adepts and mediums, 
 when they only do what prophets and Christ 
 and his apostles did — unbolt prison doors, and 
 strike sinners blind ? Why should the devout 
 Catholic turn from the performances of medi- 
 ums and adepts, when their priest claims to do 
 the same thing, by making the coagulated blood 
 of a martyred saint boil and fume in a crystal 
 bottle. A Hindoo priest can plunge an arm 
 
 into the heart of his idol and out gushes a stream 
 of blood, and he can change water into blood. 
 Indeed, there is no difference. Both have the 
 same power; both do or practice deception on 
 the people; one is no better than the other; 
 both are idol-worshipers, and of those mystic 
 systems which precede by far the Brahmanism 
 and even the primitive monotheism of ancient 
 Chaldea. 
 
 The difference between ancient and modern 
 religion is only the difference in their civiliza- 
 tion. The Christian religion is but a similar 
 force like all others, and equal in its line of 
 development. Civilization is not dependent on 
 any form of religion, but is traceable to a great 
 variety of influences; among which that of the 
 mingling of races is most prominent, which 
 infuses more energy and expands the races, 
 while freedom and science are the motive pow- 
 ers which the church has often crushed or re- 
 tarded. The leaf needs no miracle to produce 
 a flower, nor does the child become a man 
 through the agency of any miraculous power; 
 it is but the result of natural growth and devel- 
 opment. 
 
 Meanwhile, we must remember the direct ef- 
 fects of the revealed mystery. The only way 
 the priest of old could impress the masses with 
 the belief in the divine power was by the per- 
 forming of "miracles," by the animation of 
 matter, by their will-power, which convinced 
 the skeptical mind that there was an invisible 
 power that was capable of moving matter. 
 And to teach them that there was an omnipo- 
 tent and omnipresent power, a great first cause 
 that governed all things for a fixed purpose, 
 with which they had an influence. 
 
 The world needs no sectarian church, whether 
 of Buddha, Jesus, Mahomet, Swedenborg, Cal- 
 vin or any other. There being but one truthy 
 man requires but one church — knowledge — the 
 temple of God within, walled in by matter, but 
 penetrable by any who wish to find the way. 
 " The pure in heart see God." Nature is God's 
 tempUy and aspii'ation is his worship; and to 
 understand these laws, is to make gods of our- 
 selves, for each and every man has, within him, 
 a spark, which, if cultivated by living a pure, 
 good life, will always keep him in the right 
 path, and, finally, make him a demi-god, for all 
 angels and arch-angels have followed the law of 
 
68 
 
 evolution and progress, and once were dwell- 
 ers in the flesh. 
 
 Man needs no savior or priest to direct him 
 to heaven, if he will follow the inner prompt- 
 ings of his better nature. He will find his way, 
 for death is as much a fixed law as that of 
 birth, and is in harmony with the laws of na- 
 ture; and the same intelligence and force that 
 brought him into existence, will carry him 
 through the ordeal of death, and if he has lived 
 n harmony with these laws, he has nothing to 
 fear, whether he be pagan or Christian. 
 
 All progress is natural, and is divine. It 
 proceeds by laws inherent and immanent in 
 humanity. Laws whose absoluteness affirm 
 infinite mind, as implicated in this finite ad- 
 vance up to mind. The laws that govern this 
 onward movement are inspiratiofi — drawn 
 from the infinite mind, whether it be pagan or 
 Christian, whether it believes in Christ or 
 Buddha. 
 
 The religion of the savage is not the religion 
 of the civilized man. One is that of fear, super- 
 stition and ignorance, a fetishism; while 
 the other should be that of science, of truth 
 and knowledge, of reason and love. For the 
 growing belief that the stability of law is the 
 guarantee of universal good; or, to translate it 
 into the language of the spirit, that law means 
 love, is the sign of love in its practical and 
 universal sense, is itself becoming the all-ab- 
 
 sorbing calculus, and all-analyzing prism of our 
 spiritual astronomy — the preserver, the divine 
 interpreter of law. The stoic, Aurelius, said: 
 " Whatever happens to us is from nature, 
 because that only can happen by nature which 
 is suitable, and it is enough to remember that 
 law rules all." 
 
 The world of religion is broader than Chris- 
 tendom has apprehended, and it is destined to 
 widen in the sight of man as he progresses in 
 knowledge. The opening of China to the 
 Western nations, and their immigration and 
 labor, are events as momentous to the religious 
 as to the commercial and political world. India 
 and China are full of "lights," of which the 
 Christian has never dreamed, that have been 
 kept in the dark and denounced as the work of 
 sorcery and jugglery. 
 
 Let us rest assured that liberty, democracy, 
 labor, reform, popular progress, are not empty 
 words; they will reach beyond the assertion of 
 exclusive rights or selfish claims into full recog- 
 nition of universal duties : that liberty is not to 
 stop in license, nor democracy in greed 
 and aggression, nor progress to be earned 
 through bloody retribution alone; civilization 
 will not be retarded in its onward march by the 
 exposure of the falsehood of any creed or 
 church, for there is nothing can stay the hand 
 of the Infinite. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 ANCESTRAL WORSHIP OF THE ANCIENT ARYANS. 
 
 The science of religion is to sift and classify 
 it, and thus try to discover the necessary ante- 
 cedents of all faith and the laws which govern 
 the growth and decay of human religion, and 
 the goal to which all religion tends. Whether 
 there ever can be one perfect universal religion 
 is a question as difficult to answer as whether 
 there ever can be one perfect universal lan- 
 guage. 
 
 A perfect religion, like a perfect language, is 
 something beyond all conception. All reli- 
 gions, like languages, must have passed through 
 many changes. Religion is a thing of growth 
 and development; it has its roots deep down 
 in our spiritual nature, which are ever urging us 
 on to a higher state, to reach out and grasp the 
 infinite and to comprehend our creator. 
 
 The time for a belief in the supernatural in 
 religion is past; that faith is a hallucination 
 or an infantile disease; that all the stories told 
 about the gods and saviors have at last been 
 found out and exploded; that there is no possi- 
 ble know^ledge except that which comes to us 
 through our senses; that we must be satisfied 
 with facts and finite things that are made mani- 
 fest to us. 
 
 It is our ignorance of these laws that makes 
 us superstitious and creates a belief in the su- 
 pernatural. As we advance in the light of 
 knowledge the mysterious recedes in the dark- 
 ness of ignorance. 
 
 The Archaic man supposed that every force 
 to which his attention was directed was similar 
 to that which he recognized in himself, and 
 either was, or implied, a like being. He was 
 conscious, or thought he was conscious, that he 
 (himself) consisted of a soul and a body — of 
 something substantial and of something insub- 
 
 stantial. And he concluded that, in like man- 
 ner, there were souls in all things. He saw 
 that there were forces in nature more powerful 
 than he and which he could not control, and 
 were capable of doing him good or evil; there- 
 fore they appeared to him fit objects of suppli- 
 cation — beings whose favor he might procure 
 or whose wrath he might avert by offerings, 
 prayer and supplication. Hence arose the 
 whole system of manes-worship, and all the 
 myths of the sun and of the moon; of the 
 dawn, the twilight and the night; of the wind 
 and the storm; of the earth and sea and sky. 
 
 " The uncultivated man, indeed, worshiped 
 every force" (see "Village Communities") 
 "that assists or obstructs him in his daily work. 
 That worship is his recognition of the existence 
 of such a force and of its connection, or, at 
 least, its possible connection, with his own wel- 
 fare. It was by this method he accounts for 
 all phenomena which have attracted his atten- 
 tion, which his unlettered brain could not ex- 
 plain. In other words, mythology was the 
 natural philosophy of the early world, and out 
 of which has evolved the multiplicity of heathen 
 gods and goddesses, who were special divini- 
 ties to assist and direct nature, which presided 
 over birth, life, death, dreams, trances and 
 visions." 
 
 From these facts it was almost inevitable 
 that the untrained intellect should come to the 
 conclusion that the disembodied spirits bore an 
 important part in the economy of nature. The 
 forces that assisted him were good, those that 
 obstructed him were bad. He was forced to 
 acknowledge the presence of these forces, and 
 they produced all the changes and phenomena 
 that came under his observation, and the only 
 
 69 
 
70 
 
 way he could explain them was to ascribe them 
 to some supernatural power. 
 
 Manes-worship, therefore, stands at the base 
 of mythology. Man sought to conciliate the 
 spirits of their distinguished heroes and slates- 
 men. Thus the Thebans and Athenians dis- 
 puted over the body of (Edipus, and the Ar- 
 gives and Trojans fought for the bones of Ores- 
 tes. The Acanthians offered sacrifice to the 
 gigantic Persian engineer who died in their 
 midst, and the people of Amphipolis to the 
 gallant Brasidas. The Hindoo of the present 
 day adores the manes of the prominent English 
 officials who happen to be buried in their vil- 
 lages. 
 
 So the Archaic mind was governed by a vast 
 variety of gods, acting each on his own princi- 
 ples, and each seeking the exclusive interest of 
 his worshipers. Every assembly of men had 
 their own god and regarded that god as their 
 exclusive property. Each nation had its pe- 
 culiar tutelar deity and pantheon of gods. 
 
 When primitive man had arrived at a stage of 
 intellectual development so that he had a con- 
 ception of a divine being — one greater and 
 higher than himself — he had accomblished 
 much. How he arrived at that conclusion the 
 most learned differ. 
 
 One of the first impulses to religion proceed- 
 ed from an incipient perception of the infinite 
 pressing upon man through the great phenom- 
 ena of nature, and not from sentiments of sur- 
 prise or fear, called forth by such finite things 
 as shells, stones, bones, trees or animals; that 
 is to say, by fetishes. 
 
 Though the prehistoric and cjiiaternary man 
 may and did use such things, they were but- 
 rude emblems and symbols to give an expres- 
 sion to the belief that therewas an invisible 
 power which controlled and could render them 
 assistance if it saw proper to so act; while 
 others claim that it came from ancestral wor- 
 ship of the images of the departed dead that 
 they saw in their dreams, whom they worked 
 up into ghosts and spirits, who still lived in the 
 air and could render them assistance, and that 
 it was the natural affection of the parent that 
 drew him near to his children, and who was 
 ever ready to assist them in their troubles. So 
 the son looked upon his dead father as a kind 
 of god to whom he owed his existence. In 
 
 childhood he looked up to him for protection 
 and support, and when he had grown into man- 
 hood these ideas still lingered in his memory, 
 and the love and affection he had for him while 
 living ripened at his death into a feeling of 
 reverence that is closely allied to that of ven- 
 eration, so to propitiate his spirit he is led to 
 do homage to his grave and confer on him 
 divine rights; indeed, the ancient Aryan be- 
 lieved that it was necessary to make sacrifices 
 on his father's tomb, and the Chinese still fol- 
 low this kind of worship. 
 
 Periodically they have a feast of the dead. 
 While the odor rises to satisfy the hunger of the 
 departed spirits of the dead, they are practical 
 enough to think that it does not injure the ma- 
 terial carcass of the hog to take it home in the 
 evening and make a feast for the mortal man. 
 While the more cultivated Aryan does not offer 
 the viands to his dead, there still lingers the 
 idea of strewing flowers over the graves of their 
 departed loved ones. 
 
 The Chinese bride at the present day wor- 
 ships in company with her husband his an- 
 cestors; so the Aryan bride thousands of years 
 ago did homage to the gods of the house to 
 which she was introduced, and entered into 
 formal communion with them. She was pre- 
 sented upon her entrance into the house with 
 the holy fire and lustral water, and partook 
 along with her husband in the presence of the 
 lares of the symbolic meal. She was robed in 
 white, the emblem of purity and the robe of a 
 priestess. She ceased to be a member of her 
 father's house and to worship her father's gods, 
 but became the priestess to her adopted house 
 spirit. Hence comes the modern custom of 
 robing the bride in white, and the eating of the 
 wedding cake and the drinking of the wine, 
 that the ancient Aryan and his bride of- 
 fered up to the house spirit of his departed 
 ancestors. 
 
 The ancient Aryans worshiped dead ances- 
 tors long before they emigrated from the plains 
 of Bokhara, in Central Asia, into Europe, be- 
 fore they had a Zeus, Jupiter or Indra. The 
 common progenitors of our race did homage to 
 the dwellers in the spirit world, and above all, 
 offered their daily orisons to their own fathers 
 upon the holy hearth and at the commence- 
 ment of every meal, which was, in effect, a 
 
71 
 
 sacrifice. Libations and offerings were made 
 as tokens and pledges of honor and affection to 
 their departed ancestors, which custom still 
 lingers in the form of saying grace before the 
 commencement of the evening meal, while 
 some families still set the empty chair of the 
 deceased up to the table. The spirits were not 
 supposed to come unbidden, the offering must 
 be made to them, their presence invited, and 
 their share set apart. The common meal was 
 closely connected with their family worship. 
 Meals are an essential part of all religious wor- 
 ship. "The earliest religious acts seem to 
 have been the eating of a meal prepared on an 
 altar." (See M. De Coulange's " Ancient 
 Cities," page 182.) 
 
 They thought every object consisted of two 
 parts: of a substance and of a shadow; of a 
 soul and of a body: of something immaterial 
 as well as of something material; that articles 
 of food and of drink possessed this nature. It 
 was upon the immaterial part of the offerings 
 that the spirits fed, while the earthly parts were 
 left for man. That which supported and 
 strengthened after its kind the human body 
 supported and strengthened by its spiritual 
 force the spirit to whom it was presented; nor 
 did the worshipers doubt that at every such 
 meal their divine head sat present, though un- 
 seen, among them. 
 
 All religious festivals with the native of Aus- 
 tralia, Africa, America, Europe and Asia, 
 whether he be Pagan, Mohammedan, Bud- 
 dhist, Brahmin, Jew or Christian, are of a 
 spiritual nature and owe their origin to a belief 
 of a future existence after death. The Irish 
 wake is only the lingering custom of the an- 
 cient Celt feast to the dead. 
 
 Early philosophy, then, and religion were at 
 first one, and such a union in later times tended 
 to produce, in the words of Lord Bacon, "a 
 heretical religion and a fantastic philosophy." 
 But in an early stage of mental development, 
 the combination is one which we might expect. 
 In their philosophical aspect these forms repre- 
 sented two theories: the one the natural phi- 
 losophy, the other the biology of our fore- 
 fathers. In their religious aspect the one was 
 the mythical, or heroic, or Olympian religion; 
 the other was the domestic religion, the reli- 
 gion of the hearth, the worship of deceased 
 
 ancestors. ' ' The worship of the house-spirits," 
 says Hearn in his work on "Aryan House- 
 holds," "was a reverential religion, * * * 
 and every meal was in effect a sacrifice, and 
 the Aryan housefather, when he reverentially 
 asked a blessing upon his humble abode, felt 
 that he was not only seeking a continuance of 
 the diviue protection, but that he was securing 
 the happiness of the spirits of his fathers and 
 his gods." 
 
 Each household had a house-spirit which 
 was the spirit of the deceased ancestor that 
 still dwelt at and protected the holy hearth on 
 which the ever-burning fire was the emblem of 
 the comfortable element, and the origin of 
 communication between the spirit of the de- 
 parted and those living in the flesh; and it was 
 in the olden days of our Aryan ancestors their 
 mode of worship. The husband and wife 
 made their own offerings; he was the priest and 
 she was the priestess, and it was the center of 
 the spiritual life. 
 
 The Aryan language contains an abundance 
 of terms expressive of a religious sentiment of 
 adoration, of piety, of faith, of prayer, and of 
 sacrifice; but there is not any word suggestive 
 of public worship — priests, idols or of temples 
 or of altars, or that they had any middle-men 
 who could act as go-between from God to man 
 to forgive his sins and give him a free pass to 
 heaven. 
 
 The house-spirits were directly charged with 
 the preservation of the property of the house- 
 hold, as Horace tells us, "The guardians 
 against thieves." "They, repelled the thief," 
 Ovid assures us in "Fasti," v. 141. 
 
 He is known to the Greeks by the name of 
 the " Hero of the House," " Man of the 
 Household;' by the Romans, "The Husting 
 of the Teutons;" and " The Damovoy, or 
 Angel in the House," of the Russian peasant 
 of the present day. The hearth was the altar; 
 there the holy fire ever burned, and there the 
 gross corporeal substance of the food was 
 purged away and its spiritual essence rendered 
 fit for the acceptance of the spirit. On this 
 hearth where in his lifetime he had so often 
 sacrificed, the departed house-father received 
 at the hands of his successor his share of every 
 meal and heard from his lips in his own honor 
 those words of prayer and praise. 
 
72 
 
 The first step in the formation of a house- 
 hold was marriage. Then he was a finished 
 man, according to the Greeks, and what we 
 call a family man. "Then only," says Menu, 
 *' is a man perfect when he consists of three 
 persons, united: his wife, himself and his son." 
 Our remote ancestors sought marriage for the 
 purpose of raising a son, for it was to the son 
 that the father could look to perpetuate the 
 household. It was by the son, according to 
 the teachings of Menu, that the father dis- 
 charges his duty to his progenitors and by 
 whom he attains immortality. It is the son 
 who, in the words of ^4^]schylus, is the savior of 
 the hearth of his fathers. The son must be 
 born in lawful wedlock; an illegitimate son was 
 not only not acknowledged, but was excluded 
 from the household. 
 
 It was of little importance what befel a man 
 after he had raised a son. The ancient Hin- 
 doo father, after he had raised his family, left 
 home and lived in the iorest, where he might 
 be free from care and to study and philoso- 
 phize. Solon prohibited celibacy; criminal 
 proceedings might be taken at Athens and 
 Sparta against one who did not marry at all. 
 Cicero says it is a part of the duty of the cen- 
 sors to impose a tax upon unmarried men. It 
 was considered a crime not to get married and 
 have no son to offer sacrifice upon his father's 
 grave, and to inherit and keep up the house- 
 hold, which could not be mortgaged and sold — 
 the land was not regarded as an asset in the 
 way of payment of debts. The son, therefore, 
 was the person who continued upon earth his 
 father's existence after that father had joined 
 the house-spirits, so when a father had begotten 
 a son he had discharged his duty to his progen- 
 itors. 
 
 ** Those animals," says Menu, " begotten by 
 adulterers destroy, both in this w^orld and the 
 next, the food presented to them by such as 
 make oblations to the gods and to the manes." 
 The rule of the Attic law was that a bastard 
 had no place in the worship, nor in the house- 
 hold, nor in the property of the parent, and it 
 was the same in Roman, German and Norse 
 law. A man married for duty and not for 
 pleasure. " Mistresses," says Demosthenes, 
 "we keep for pleasure; concubines for daily 
 attendance upon our persons; wives to bear us 
 
 legitimate children and to be faithful house- 
 keepers." Isais said, " No man who knows he 
 must die can have so little regard for himself 
 as to leave his family without descendants, for 
 then there would be no one to render him the 
 worship due to the dead." When Leonidas 
 selected the three hundred braves to defend 
 Thermopylae, he took only fathers that had 
 sons living at home. 
 
 Cato the elder tells us that it was the first 
 duty of the house-father on his return home, 
 to pay devotions at the altar of the lares. See 
 Mommsen's History of Rome, volume I, page 
 
 173- 
 
 Plato, speaking of the worship of the gods, 
 who were only the spirits of good and great 
 men who had progressed high in the spirit 
 world, says, "Alter these gods a prudent per- 
 son will celebrate the holy rites of daemons — 
 spirits — and after them of heroes, and after 
 them follow the statues of the household gods, 
 held holy according to law, and after them are 
 the honors paid to living parents; since it is 
 just for a person to pay to living parents; since 
 it is just for a person who owes the first and 
 the greatest of debts to pay those that are of 
 the longest standing, and to think that all the 
 things he has acquired and holds he owes to 
 those who begot him and brought him up, for 
 supplying what is required for their service to 
 the utmost of his power, bringing from his sub- 
 stance first, and in the second place from his 
 body, and third from his soul, by paying ofif the 
 debts for their care of him, and in the favor of 
 those who gave the pangs of labor as a loan to 
 the young, and by returning what has been due 
 a long time to those who in old age are greatly 
 in want. It is requisite, likewise, to hold pre- 
 eminently a kind language towards his parents, 
 because there is for light and wicked words of 
 punishment most heavy, for Nemesis, the mes- 
 senger 6f justice, has been appointed an in- 
 spector over all persons in matters of this 
 kind." 
 
 " For as something is always flowing away 
 from us, it is necessary for something, on the 
 contrary, to be flowing to us. Now recollec- 
 tion is the influx of thoughts which had left us. 
 * * * Each person while his daemon (spirit) 
 is standing steadily, going on successfully or 
 unsuccessfully to places as high and steep. 
 
while daemons (spirits) are opposing with cer- 
 tain disturbances; and that it is meet ever to 
 hope that the deity will, when troubled, fall 
 upon the good state which he has given, makes 
 them less instead of greater and causes a change 
 from the present state to a better one with 
 respect to the good things, the contraries of 
 these, that they will always be present to them 
 with good fortune." Plato, volume V, page 
 i6i. 
 
 The respect for another's property was due 
 to the respect or fear for the spirits that guarded 
 that property. It is still a custom among the 
 nomads of Central Asia if a horse is stolen for 
 the owner to go to the grave of the father of 
 the suspected horse thief and stick a spear into 
 the grave. This proceeding is understood by 
 the thief to be a complaint made to his de- 
 ceased house-father's spirit, and if the suspi- 
 cion be well founded the horse is found the 
 next morning tied to the spear. 
 
 Word, in his book, " Journey to the Source 
 of Oxus," gives an instance where the grain 
 was piled up around a graveyard. He inquired 
 of a chief, Agha Maheide, the cause. "The 
 old man put the forefinger of his right hand to 
 his lips and looking at me said, ' God forbid; 
 bad as men are they will not pilfer in the pres- 
 ence of the dead.' " The natives prefer to 
 trust their valuables to the sacred guardianship 
 of such a place rather than to a weak and fail- 
 ing brother. 
 
 There are many people who will not dese- 
 crate a graveyard, and who believe that the 
 spirit will avenge the wrongs done to it when in 
 the flesh. Mr. Taylor, in his book, " Primi- 
 tive Culture," gives an instance of where a 
 Brahmin cut off the head of his mother, with 
 her consent and request, so that her spirit 
 might punish a neighbor who had repudiated 
 some small debt which he owed to the house- 
 hold. The remarkable custom of setting 
 dharna, which once existed in Ireland, and of 
 late years has been prohibited by the penal 
 code in India, traces of which, perhaps, may 
 be found in the Twelve Tables. The religious 
 sentiment of the Archaic society of the Aryan 
 race was a force which recognized property m 
 the household which was guarded by the house 
 spirits. 
 
 The Chinese still carry the bones of the dead 
 
 back to China to be interred. Such worship 
 was natural, according to the Archaic ideas; 
 but far more natural, by the same standard, 
 was the belief that the spirits of those whom 
 men loved and honored in their life, continued 
 after death their vigilance and their aid. The 
 interests of men in the flesh were also their 
 interests in the spirit, and the lives and the 
 hates of this world followed the deceased to 
 that world which lay beyond the grave. 
 Manes-worship, therefore, stands on the same 
 base as the more picturesque worship of Olym- 
 pus. Thus primitive worship and that great 
 train of consequences that has been transmitted 
 to us, depends, like primitive mythology, upon 
 the state of our intelligence. It is, after all, 
 the intellect that ultimately directs and deter- 
 mines the main current of the varying and tor- 
 tuous stream of the world's history. 
 
 '^' The Locan gods," says Mr. Taylor in his 
 "Primitive Culture," volume II, page no, 
 "the patron gods of particular ranks and crafts, 
 the gods from whom men sought special help 
 in special needs, were too near and dear to the 
 inmost heart of pre-Christian Europe to be 
 done away without substitutes, so they substi- 
 tuted saints who could answer their prayers. 
 Some have St. Cecilia, the patroness of music; 
 St. Luke, patron of painters; St. Peter, of fish- 
 mongers; St. Valentine, of lovers; St. Sebas- 
 tian, of archers; St. Crispin, of cobblers; St. 
 Hubert, who cures the bite of mad dogs; St. 
 Vitus, of vitus dance; and St. Fiacre, of the 
 hackney coaches. 
 
 As a rule every trade, every profession, every 
 guild, every tribe, every clan is also a caste, 
 and the members of a caste not only have their 
 own special objects of worship, but the princi- 
 pal deities likewise. So in the nineteenth cen- 
 tury we still have St. Valentine's day on the 
 fourteenth day of February for making merry. 
 On this day it was supposed by the ancients the 
 birds of the air made choice of their mates, 
 and that it was a favorite day with this merry 
 goddess to be around and aid the boys and girls 
 in their courtships. 
 
 There is no evidence that the Aryans were a 
 polytheistic people. Pictet is of the opinion 
 that their original belief was one true God, 
 while Hearn in his work, "Aryan Households," 
 'hinks that the polytheistic pantheon was not 
 
74 
 
 of a religious origin, but only scientific, and 
 was designed merely to explain in the rude 
 fashion of an early time the ordinary phenom- 
 ena of nature. They had a word which cor- 
 responded with that of Vesta, which goes to 
 prove that the Aryans recognized the hearth. 
 It does not indicate how far in their eyes the 
 hearth was holy. 
 
 The Hindoo, Greek and Roman pantheons 
 had their origin not so much as distinctive reli- 
 gions, as they were a professional class or a lit- 
 erary clan. 
 
 The magi of the ancient Persians, the Brah- 
 mins, the Hierophants of ancient Egypt, and 
 the Levites of the Jews, were all a privileged 
 caste, and used their knowledge to control their 
 ignorant masses through their religious feelings 
 and dread of a future punishment or in hope of 
 a reward for doing good. So they manufact- 
 ured gods to suit their wants, and these gods 
 made such revelations as suited the interest and 
 wishes of this favored class. 
 
 Gladstone said, *' that the pagan deities 
 represented deified men. Honest gods were 
 heroes deified a little above mortal man, in- 
 vested with passions of love and hate, courage 
 and cowardice, united with noble sentiments, 
 base and vulgar thoughts, with lofty and sub- 
 lime ideas, all wrought up by fancy so as to 
 work upon the minds of the people." 
 
 It is the opinion of Herbert Spencer that 
 **the rudimentary form of all religion is the 
 propitiation of dead ancestors, who are sup- 
 posed to be still existing and to be capable of 
 working good or evil to their descendants." 
 In order to better propitiate the favor of his 
 dead ancestor he sometimes carves his image in 
 wood or stone, which sentiment in time lapses 
 into idolatry. Every object which strikes the 
 rude fancy as analagous to the character of an 
 individual may become an object of worship. 
 The savage molds his deity according to the 
 caliber of his mind, out of mud or carved from 
 wood or stone. 
 
 Deep down in the human breast is implanted 
 a religious belief that behind all visible appear- 
 ances is an invisible power; underlying all con- 
 eeption is an instinct or intuition from which 
 there is no escape; that beyond material actual- 
 ities potential agencies are at work, and through 
 all belief, from the stupid fetishism to the most 
 
 exalted monotheism as a part of these instinct- 
 ive convictions, it is held that there is a being 
 (or beings) who rules man's destiny, and that it 
 may be propitiated, to which all turn their eyes 
 and lift up their prayers when in distress and 
 danger, that cannot be averted by the power of 
 man. 
 
 The word mythology is derived from myt/ios, 
 fable, and logos, speech. It relates to the 
 genesis of gods and their nature. It is a mass 
 of fragmentary truth mixed up with fiction, 
 built up of dead facts cemented with wild fan- 
 cies. It is the effort of the untutored man to 
 explain the origin of things. In the black 
 clouds he sees evil, in the flowing brook, in the 
 rustling branches he feels the breathing of gods, 
 goblins dance in the twilight and demons howl 
 in the darkness of night. When evil comes 
 God is angry, when fortune smiles God is 
 pleased . 
 
 *' Myths," says Bancroft in his "Native 
 Races," volume III, page i6, "were the ora- 
 cles of our savage ancestors; their creeds, the 
 rule of their life, prized by them as men now 
 prize their faith; and by whatever savage phi- 
 losophy these strange conceits were eliminated, 
 their effect upon the popular mind was vital. 
 Anaxagoras, Socrates, Protagoras and Epicurus 
 well, knew and boldly proclaimed that the gods 
 of Grecians were disreputable characters, not 
 the kind of deities to make and govern 
 worlds." 
 
 " Everywhere," says Herbert Spencer, "we 
 find expressed or implied the belief that each 
 person is double; that when he dies his other 
 self, whether remaining near at hand or gone 
 far away, may return and continue capable of 
 injuring his enemies and aiding his friends." 
 This idea of duality, he is of the opinion, 
 had its origin with the savage, whose image is 
 reflected in the brook, or his shadow which fol- 
 lows him everywhere, moving as he moves. In 
 the dream the images are as perfect as in life, 
 and this has led man to believe in the existence 
 of a spiritual body. 
 
 All religion believes in prayers and sacrifices, 
 and there has never been found a race of 
 human beings but they had some kind of reli- 
 gion. Says Max Muller, in his lectures on 
 " The Growth of Religion," "it is an inherent 
 characteristic of man." The Fiji believes the 
 
75 
 
 shooting stars are gods and the small ones the 
 departing souls of men. The Benin negroes 
 regard shadows as their souls. The Maori 
 word mota^ a soul, meant a shadow, while the 
 idea of God being everywhere sprang from a 
 spirit, and the idea of a spirit from that of a 
 shadow. 
 
 Tacitus informs us that the ancient Germans 
 count those only as gods whom they can per- 
 ceive, and by whose gifts they are clearly bene- 
 fited, such as the moon, sun and fire. The 
 savage has no fixed ideas about religion; he has 
 no bible or catech'sm, only some sacred songs 
 and customs taughc to him by his mother. 
 His religion floats in the air, and each man 
 takes as much or as little of it as he likes. 
 
 A negro was worshiping a tree, supposed to 
 be his fetish, with an offering of food, when an 
 European asked him w'hether he thought that 
 the tree could eat. The negro replied, ** Oh, 
 the tree is not the fetish; the fetish is a spirit 
 and is invisible, but he has descended into the 
 tree. Certainly he cannot devour our bodily 
 food, but he enjoys its spiritual part and leaves 
 behind the bodily part, which we see." 
 
 The stone on which all the kings of England 
 have been crowned is an old fetish, and the 
 coronation of Queen Victoria is only a survival 
 of an old Anglo-Saxon fetishism. So is the 
 counting of the beads in the rosary, or kissing 
 the cross, an act of fetishism. Portuguese 
 sailors fasten the image of St. Anthony to the 
 bowsprit of the ship, and kneeling, address it 
 in the following words: "St. Anthony, be 
 pleased to stay there till thou hast given us a 
 fair wind for our voyage." A Spanish captain 
 tied a small image of the Virgin Mary to the 
 mast of his ship and declared that it shall hang 
 there until a favorable wind is granted him. 
 This is his fetish, y^t A^ , 
 
 Every religion is a compromise between the 
 / wise and the foolish, the old and the new, and 
 the higher the human mind soars in its search 
 after divine ideals, the more it becomes neces- 
 sary to have symbols to convey to the untutored 
 mind of the childlike majority of people who 
 are not capable of realizing sublime and subtle 
 abstractions. Therefore they worship the thing 
 rather than what it was intended to represent. 
 While we laugh at the fetish worship of the 
 negro, if we would only look around in our 
 
 own churches we would see many fetish objects 
 or idols. The Portuguese sailor saw the poor 
 negro fetish and made fun of it, yet he wore 
 around his neck a like fetish in the form of a 
 cross. So there is no religion entirely free 
 from fetishism; nor is there any religion which 
 consists entirely of fetishism, for back of all 
 religion there is a spirit in some form which 
 relates to the great creative cause. 
 
 When religions were founded nothing was 
 known of science, of astronomy, of geology, or 
 of the universe. The earth was the great cen- 
 ter around which the sun, moon and stars rose 
 and set, like little lamps hung up in the heav- 
 enly vaults to light up the firmament. The 
 invention of the telescope by Galileo in 1610, 
 startled the religious world. The Roman 
 Church saw that it would lead to new discov- 
 eries in astronomy which would shake the foun- 
 dation and then throw down the edifices of 
 their religion, which was based upon the bible 
 and the stability of the earth, the littleness of 
 the sun, moon and stars. The church burned 
 in effigy Pierre d'Albano, the author of a work 
 on astronomy, in 1327, and in the same year 
 burned Cecco d'Astoli, of Florence, for pro- 
 claiming that the earth moved. In 1600 the 
 church burned Brieno at Rome, lor professing 
 the same belief, and imprisoned Campanella 
 for twenty-five years because he assented to the 
 philosophy of Galileo. They made Galileo 
 retract in 1630. It put a close guard on the 
 words of Ciampoli in 161 5, and in 1625 it 
 burned Antonio de Domines, and no one dared 
 to express the idea that the earth was round or 
 that it revolved around the sun. Copernicus 
 dared not publish his work until his death. 
 Kepler, the legi iator of the skies, a Protestant, 
 dared not quit England and was persecuted by 
 the church and accused of heresy. His aunt 
 was burned for sorcery at Weil. His mother 
 was accused of sorcery and imprisoned at Stutt- 
 gardt in 1615. Roger Bacon, a learned friar 
 of Oxford, was thrown into prison because he 
 studied physics and astronomy and taught 
 magic. 
 
 In France the illustrious Descartes was a 
 wanderer and an exile through life. He was 
 pursued everywhere by the hate of bigots. He 
 was a scientist and an astronomer, and for that 
 reason was deemed an enemy to the church 
 
 /il.jj. /L. 
 
76 
 
 and to God. A learned Jesuit, Fabri, was im- 
 prisoned in Rome for saying, in a sermon, that 
 ** the motion ot the earth once demonstrated, 
 the church must interpret in a figurative sense 
 those passages of the scripture that are opposed 
 to that principle." For they inserted Joshua 
 commanding the sun to stand still, a'^ it was so 
 written in the word of God, the bible. 
 
 To-day mankind is governed by reason, and 
 the ancient religions must be ignored, for they 
 are founded on blind faith in what they are 
 told. The idea of this earth being the center 
 of all objective nature, when in reality it is 
 only one of the particles; a grain of sand in the 
 vast oceans of worlds that are spread out 
 through the skies. Far from affirming that 
 everything was made for man, it should be pro- 
 claimed that the universe is a continuous whole, 
 an unbroken chain, of which mankind is but a 
 link; and that he, like all other things, must 
 move on to a higher state of existence; that 
 there is no retrogression; that on and upward 
 is the watchword of all nature, which is moved 
 by the laws of evolution and progress, which is 
 now an admitted fact by the more intelligent 
 thinkers. 
 
 The religion of the twentieth century must 
 be a religion of science and not repulsive to 
 reason. While old religions have grown great 
 in blood and tears, by persecutions and tor- 
 ments, amid the suffering of martyrs and cruel 
 expressions of the adherents to old doctrines, 
 the religion of the future must be prepared by 
 the unanimous consent, by universal conver- 
 sion, which will rise without the cost of a tear or 
 a drop of blood. It will be founded on rea- 
 son and justice, and will spread over the whole 
 earth as fast as science can beat back ignor- 
 ance and superstition. Steam, electricity and 
 the printing press are now doing the work and 
 laying the foundation of the future religion. 
 
 * ' Religion may transcend phenomena and 
 rise to a region which mortal science may not 
 enter; indeed, it must do so; the more it 
 ascends to the height of its great argument, the 
 more it expands and draws nearer to the infin- 
 ite; but if it have no basis than emotions, and 
 reject all that intuition, science and reason 
 may offer for its justification, it may not soar 
 to that ' purer ether, that diviner air,' where 
 faith is merged in knowledge." According to 
 
 Quatrefages, "religion is a belief in beings 
 superior to man, and capable of exercising 
 good or evil influence upon his destiny; and 
 the conviction that the existence of man is not 
 limited to the present life, but that there 
 remains for him a future beyond the grave." 
 True reason and religion have an eye for 
 earth as well as heaven. Like the tall sequoia 
 of California, their branches are in the sky, 
 but their roots are deeply imbedded in the 
 earth. 
 
 So it is necessary to look to the physical 
 wants of man as well as his spiritual nature; a 
 man can be a better Christian on a full stom- 
 ach than on an empty one. It is just as nec- 
 essary to send to the heathen the plow and 
 the schoolmaster as it is to send the bible and 
 the minister. 
 
 All religions aie good and worthy of respect, 
 because they enable us to render to God the 
 homage of grateful and submissive hearts. It 
 brings man into communion with the divine 
 mind, and by prayer we link ourselves with 
 Him; it elevates us and lifts us up to the im- 
 mortal; it makes us better, whether God hears 
 our prayer or not, and we know and feel that it 
 makes us better. 
 
 But the doctrine of a religion is another 
 thing, one that cannot bear or endure the scru- 
 tiny of reason. The doctrine of the Buddhist, 
 which restricts human life to the earthly exist- 
 ence, which denies personal immortality to 
 man, absorbing the individual at his death into 
 the bosom of the Great All, in Nirvana, is 
 revolting pantheism. The doctrine of Mo- 
 hammedanism, which has no basis but the 
 words of its founder, gathered under the title 
 of Koran, and regarded as a divine revelation, 
 is not taken in earnest by the Mussulmen them- 
 selves, but held as a kind ot political power 
 which they enforce with the sword and torch. 
 The doctrine of Judaism, which rests on the 
 advent, always vainly expecting a savior, a 
 messiah, who never comes, the need of whom 
 is in no wise apparent, is almost ridiculous and 
 absurd. 
 
 The doctrine of original sin, which lies at 
 the foundation of Christianity, is illogical and 
 unjust. To hold all mankind — the past, pres- 
 ent and future — responsible for the indiscretion 
 of Eve for eating an apple that was placed on 
 
77 
 
 a tree to tempt her, an event supposed to have 
 occurred some six thousand years ago in an 
 obscure corner of Asia, and that, to atone for 
 this original sin, besides being driven out of the 
 Garden of Eden, which science has shown to 
 be a myth, God had to send His only son 
 Jesus to be crucified between two thieves, to 
 ransom all men, condemned and lost in conse- 
 quence of the indiscretion of Adam and Eve, 
 who did a good thing by eating the apple that 
 opened their eyes to their ignorance and na- 
 kedness, is contrary to all reason and common 
 sense. 
 
 No one can be honest with himself and say 
 that his religious views have never changed 
 from childhood to old age. The older we 
 grow the more we learn to understand the wis- 
 dom of a childlike faith, when we are ready to 
 believe anything our parents teach us, until we 
 have advanced and learned to think and act 
 for ourselves. So the idea of God in childhood 
 is different from that of manhood, and that 
 idea of religion changes with our intellectual 
 development. No two persons have and en- 
 tertain the exact ideas of a religious belief. So 
 all religion should be progressive and in full 
 accord with the prevailing ideas of science and 
 
 the knowledge of things. The religion of the 
 ancient Hindoo, Egyptian, Greek, Roman or 
 Hebrew is not suited to our present state of 
 civilization and enlightenment. A religion that 
 is not able to grow and live with us as we grow 
 and live, is dead and will not admit of pro- 
 gress. A religion that is definite and unvary- 
 ing in its uniformity, so far from being a sign of 
 honesty and life is always a sign of dishonesty 
 and death. Every religion that is to be a 
 bond of union between the wise and foolish, 
 the old and the young, must be pliant, must be 
 high and deep and broad, bearing all things, 
 believing all things, possessing all things, and 
 enduring all things. The more it is so, the 
 greater its vitality, the greater its strength and 
 the warmer its embrace. 
 
 If religion refuses to accompany science it 
 will be left alone: scientific truths are only de- 
 structive to that which opposes them. A reli- 
 gion which is not contradictory to the laws of 
 nature has nothing to fear from science, and 
 will progress hand in hand with it. While 
 science is limited in research by laws which 
 govern matter, that of the spiritual relates 
 to the intelligence that directs to the fountain 
 from which all knowledge flows. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 RELIGION OF THE ANCIENT GREEKS; THEIR GODS AND GODDESSES WERE ONLY 
 
 SPIRITS OF DEPARTED SAGES AND HEROES. THEIR MEDIUMS 
 
 FORETOLD THE FUTURE AND THE PAST. 
 
 The Greeks were truly a medium istic race of 
 people; they were great lovers of the beautiful 
 and . lived close to nature, and followed her 
 laws and took their models from her, and in 
 so following her they succeeded in rising to an 
 elegance of refinement and a perfection of 
 beauty that has never been excelled. Her 
 poets,' orators, statesmen, warriors, philoso- 
 phers, painters and sculptors are the masters 
 of all ages, whom all try to emulate but none 
 claim to excel. 
 
 Her religion was natural, and her gods and 
 goddesses were only progressed human beings 
 who had cast off the outer coil, and had be- 
 come more perfect, wiser and better, but who 
 still retained mortal feelings and passions, that 
 made them still linger and take a deep interest 
 in the affairs of mortal man. 
 
 The Greek religion differs from all the other 
 religions in this: the human character of its 
 gods. The gods of Greece are men and wo- 
 men idolized and on a large scale, but still 
 they are intensely human and but little above 
 mortals. The gods of India were vast ab- 
 stractions and, as they appear in sculpture, are 
 hideous and grotesque idols. The gods of 
 Egypt seem to pass away into mere symbols 
 and intellectual generalizations; but the gods 
 of Greece are persons, warm with life, radiant 
 with love and beauty, having their human adven- 
 tures, wars and love scrapes. The symbolical 
 meaning of each god disappears in his personal 
 character. They were not confined to any 
 particular sphere, but like mortals mingled to- 
 gether, having different interests and occupa- 
 tior^, like a number of human beings, young, 
 healthy, wise and beautiful and endowed with 
 immortality. 
 
 They are not trying to save souls by any 
 ascetic means; no intention or bother about 
 making progress through the universe by obey- 
 ing the laws of nature; but were bent on pleas- 
 ure, on having a good time. Fighting, feast- 
 ing and making love were their usual occupa- 
 tions. If it can be said they cared for govern- 
 ing the world, it was in a loose sort of a way, 
 with no regular system or laws. They inter- 
 fered with human affairs only from time to time 
 as it suited their whim or passion. They an- 
 nounced no moral law, and they gave no pre- 
 cept or example to guide men's consciences. 
 
 According to the Jewish religion man was 
 made in the image of God, but according to 
 the Greek religion the gods were made in the 
 image of man. Heraclitus says, ** Men are 
 mortal gods and the gods immortal men." 
 The Greeks, like the modern Spiritualist, be- 
 lieved that the gods were close to him and in 
 his midst; on the summit of the mountain, 
 among the clouds, often mingling in disguise, 
 and they made themselves visible or invisible 
 at their option. They were only advanced 
 Greeks, a little higher, but not very much 
 wiser or better. They beheld themselves re- 
 flected in their deities, and they conjectured 
 themselves up in the heavens, and saw with 
 pleasure a race of divine Greeks in the skies 
 above, corresponding with the race of Greeks 
 below. 
 
 The Greek religion, like that of modern 
 Spiritualism, was delicious and calculated to 
 make men happy and take away the fear of 
 death. It was without austerity, asceticism or 
 terror; a religion filled with forms of beauty 
 and nobleness, kindred to their own, with gods 
 who were capricious, indeed, but never stern, 
 
 78 
 
79 
 
 and seldom jealous or cruel. It was a heaven 
 peopled with such a variety of noble forms 
 that they could choose from among them as 
 their protector the one whom they liked best, 
 and possibly themselves be selected as favorites. 
 Each person had his guardian deity or spirit; 
 the hunter, on a moonlight night, might chance 
 to behold the graceful figure of Diana gliding 
 through the woods in pursuit of game, while 
 the happy inhabitants of Cyprus might come 
 suddenly on the fair form of Venus resting in 
 a laurel grove. The Dryads could be seen 
 glancing among the trees, and theOriads heard 
 shouting in the mountains, and the Naiads 
 found asleep by the side of their streams. If 
 the Greek chose to do so he might take his 
 gods as the subject for a poem, the model for a 
 statue or a picture. 
 
 The Greek religion did not guide or restrain, 
 it only stimulated man. Nowhere on earth, 
 before or since, has the human being been 
 educated into such a wonderful state of perfec- 
 tion or such an entire and perfect unfoldment 
 of itself as in ancient Greece. There every 
 human tendency and faculty of soul and body 
 opened into symmetrical proportions. That 
 small country, not larger than the State of 
 Maine, carried to perfection in a few centuries 
 every human art. 
 
 Everything in Greece was artistic, because 
 everything was finished, was done perfectly. 
 On that little peninsula ripened the master- 
 pieces of epic, tragic, comic, lyric and didac- 
 tic poetry; the perfection in every school of 
 philosophy, hfstory, oratory, mathematics, 
 sculpture and painting. She developed every 
 form of government and gave us our model for 
 a republic, and she fought and won the great 
 battle of the world. Before her time every- 
 thing in human literature and art were rude 
 and imperfect attempts; since then everything 
 has been a rude and imperfect imitation, and it 
 was all owing, in a great measure, to her liberal 
 spiritual religion. 
 
 The gods of the Greeks were men and wo- 
 men; they were not abstract ideas, concealing 
 natural powers and laws. They were open as 
 sunshine, bright as the moon, and a fair com- 
 panion of men and women, idolized and gra- 
 cious;- just a little way off, just a little way up 
 in the air. It was humanity projected up into 
 
 the skies, a divine creature of more than mor- 
 tal beauty, but thrilling with human life and 
 human sympathies. 
 
 They had gods and goddesses, muses, fates 
 and furies without number. Every woodland, 
 lake and stream had its nymphs. Mount 
 Olympus swarmed 'with them; here they assem- 
 bled and discussed the affairs of nations and 
 men. They h?d Jupiter or Jove, the supreme 
 god, and Juno, his wife, who sometimes took 
 offense at her husband, for his flirtations with 
 the other goddesses and sometimes with a beau- 
 tiful mortal maid. His attendants were the 
 beautiful Hebe and Ganymede. They had a 
 brave Mars, the god of war; the wise Minerva, 
 who sprang from the brain of Jove, and who 
 espoused the cause of Troy; the beautiful 
 Venus, that came from the sea-foam, typical of 
 the fact that life first had it? origin in the sea. 
 She warmed the hearts of men with love, and 
 her mischievous boy, Cupid, was always shoot- 
 ing arrows into the hearts of the unsuspecting 
 youths, and for a joke he would let a stray 
 arrow fly at the heart of some old bachelor or 
 widower that would send him around among 
 the fair maids in search of a wife. And there 
 was Diana, the goddess of hunting, with her 
 fleet greyhounds, to whom all the sporting fra- 
 ternity paid reverence; and the wing-heeled 
 Mercury, who flew through the air to carry 
 messages from one god to the other. 
 
 They were all live gods and goddesses and 
 endowed with passions like mortals. They 
 were only a little above man and were invested 
 with the power of going where they wished un- 
 seen and under no restraint to mortal man; in- 
 deed, they were only the spirits of mortals, for 
 they claimed that they all had been men and 
 women once, but had cast off the mortal coil 
 and assumed the robes of immortal gods. 
 Even when great men died they were often 
 deified and called gods or demi-gods. 
 
 Such a religion was calculated to make a 
 people brave and polite and to inspire them 
 with a love for the beautiful and grand. With 
 the belief that these were gods and goddesses, 
 ever ready to commend them in that which 
 was good, noble and brave, and condemn them 
 in cowardice and infidelity to state, and who 
 took an interest in their welfare and rejoiced in 
 their valor and success at arms. " To-night," 
 
80 
 
 said Leonidas to the three hundred brave Spar- 
 tans at Thermopylae, " we shall sup with the 
 immortal gods!" "On! sons of the Greeks!" 
 was the battle-cry of Marathon; "above you 
 the spirits of your fathers watch the blows 
 which, to preserve their tombs from desecra- 
 tion, you strike to-day." 
 
 It was this belief in immortality that inspired 
 Homer to write the great heroic poem that in 
 time became the bible of the Greeks. The 
 gods and goddesses therein pictured are noth- 
 ing but tutelary deities that had espoused the 
 cause of certain men and nations. They were 
 nothing but patron saints that had ascended to 
 the spirit land, yet they still lingered around 
 their favorite abodes and took an interest in 
 mortals. 
 
 " The gods," says Homer in XVH Odyssey, 
 page 475, "like strangers from some foreign 
 land, assuming different forms, wander through 
 cities, watching the justice and injustice of 
 man. There were avenging demons and furies 
 who haunt the ill-disposed, as there are gods 
 who are the protectors of the poor." 
 
 In the twentieth book. Homer puts into the 
 mouth of Achilles, after the death of his be- 
 loved Patrocles, these words: 
 
 " 'Tis true, 'tis certain, man, though dead, re- 
 tains 
 Part of himself; the immortal mind remains; 
 The form subsists without a body's aid. 
 Aerial semblance and empty shade. 
 
 "This night my friend, so late in battle lost. 
 Stood at my side, a pensive, plaintive ghost; 
 Even now familiar, as in life he came, 
 Alas! how different! yet how like the same." 
 
 The fiery imagination and the subtle and 
 vigorous intellect of the Greeks peculiarly fit- 
 ted them for the reception of the impressions 
 from the spiritual, invisible world, as we see 
 in the writings of Homer, ^Eschylus, Sophocles, 
 Xenophon and others. The following is an 
 extract from Hesiod: 
 
 " Invisible the gods are ever nigh, 
 
 Pass through the mist and bend the all-seeing 
 
 eye; 
 The men who grind the poor, who wrest the 
 
 right. 
 
 Awless of heaven's revenge, stand naked to 
 
 their sight. 
 For thrice ten thousand holy demons rove 
 This breathing world, the delegates of Jove; 
 Guardians of men, their glance alike surveys 
 The upright judgments and the unrighteous 
 
 ways." 
 
 The Greeks saw gods everywhere; the eternal 
 snows of Parnassus, the marble temples of 
 Athens glistening in the sun, the thousand isles 
 nestling in the ^^gean sea, the fragrant groves 
 where the philosophers disputed, the fountains 
 shadowed by plane trees, the solemn fields of * 
 Platsea and Marathon; each and all of these 
 had their attendant spirits. A thousand deities 
 received homage in a thousand temples, and 
 for fear they might have offended some one of 
 the many gods, they erected one to the '* Un- 
 known God." "That one," St. Paul said, 
 "that he worshiped." The Greeks believed 
 that the spirits controlled the destinies of men 
 and nations, and took part in their affairs; 
 were ever present, though everywhere unseen; 
 knowing all things yet known to none; eternal, 
 invisible and incomprehensible. Gods who 
 mingled visibly in the actions of men, who 
 clothed themselves with material forms and 
 lead them on to victory; who shared the pas- 
 sions of humanity and sympathized with their 
 infirmities, who controlled the present and gave 
 omens of the future, were the beings that the 
 Greeks loved or feared, and bowed down to 
 to do homage and erect temples. 
 
 Their poetry is full of sublimity, represent- 
 ing one god as appearing in the clouds and 
 hurling down thunderbolts into the midst of the 
 contending armies of earth. At times the 
 gods get angry and take sides in the affairs of 
 men, as in the case of the siege of Troy. A 
 god is often represented as wandering through 
 the country in the form of a beardless youth, 
 challenging men to play with him on the lyre. 
 A goddess snatches from out the midst of bat- 
 tle an endangered warrior, whose noble form 
 she has become enamored of, and thus saves 
 his life by enveloping him in a mist and remov- 
 ing him from sight. Another goddess, mounted 
 on her celestial steed, rushing through the air 
 from capital to capital, arousing surrounding 
 nations to take up arms in the defense of some 
 
81 
 
 common cause that she has espoused. They 
 filled the earth and skies with beings of inter- 
 est, and made life a romance, and it was a 
 pleasure to die in the defense of country and 
 the right. It infused into the heart a love of 
 country, bravery and devotion that has never 
 been equaled, a refinement and a culture that 
 has never been excelled, and a faultless phy- 
 sique and loveliness and beauty that has in all 
 ages of the world been the model of every 
 artist and the pride of every master to imi- 
 tate. 
 
 They worshiped the beautiful, and her artists 
 and painters strove to make their pictures and 
 statues perfect. Through this beautiful my- 
 thology constantly breaks the radiance of the 
 spiritual world, which informs us that these 
 myths are only the representatives of beings in 
 the spirit land that take an interest in the affairs 
 of man, but were so clouded in mystic lore 
 that they were taken for heathen rites — an 
 abominable absurdity — until its true meaning 
 was interpreted in the light of modern Spirit- 
 ualism, and proven that these gods and god- 
 desses were merely progressed human beings in 
 a higher state of development. 
 
 The Greeks had their mediums through whom 
 they communicated with the different tutelary 
 gods and goddesses, patron saints and spirits. 
 They never went to war or did any important 
 act without consulting their oracles, and their 
 wonderful predictions, according to the histo- 
 rians have been fulfilled. The most renowned 
 of the oracles was at Delphi, where the Pytho- 
 ness, a priestess or medium, sat upon a tripod 
 over a fissure in the rocks, from which arose a 
 vapor that had an inspiring effect on the me- 
 dium. Soon she would go into a trance, like 
 some of our modern mediums, and then, gen- 
 erally in poetry or doggerel verse, she would 
 utter some statement of a prophetic nature, 
 which would run about as follows: 
 " See I number the sands; I fathom the depths 
 
 of the oceans — ■ 
 Hear even the dumb; comprehend, too, the 
 
 thoughts of the silent; 
 Now, perceive I am an odor, an odor it seem- 
 
 eth of lambs' flesh; 
 As boiling it seemeth, commixed with the flesh 
 
 of a tortoise; 
 Brass is beneath and with brass is it covered." 
 
 This was given in response to a question of 
 Crcesus, of Lydia, who had sent an embassa- 
 dor to Delphi to test its truthfulness. He had 
 at that hour gone into the kitchen of his palace 
 and cut in pieces a lamb and a tortoise, and 
 placed it in a brass vessel and covered it with 
 a brass cover and commenced to cook it. This 
 was a satisfactory test, so he sent back his em- 
 bassador with three thousand oxen, numerous 
 gold and silver vessels, a gold lion, one hundred 
 and seventy ingots of the same metal, with a 
 girdle and a necklace of incredible value. De- 
 positing them before the shrine of the goddess, 
 the embassador of Crcesus demanded whether 
 he should go to war against the Persians. The 
 oracle replied, " When a mule becomes the 
 ruler of the Persian people, then, O tender- 
 footed Lydian, flee to the rocky banks of Her- 
 mos, make no halt, and care not to blush for 
 thy cowardice." This Croesus misunderstood, 
 not aware that Cyprus was the son of a Median 
 princess and a Persian of humble condition, 
 and was the ruler prefigured under the type of 
 the 7;iuk king. Pie made war upon the Per- 
 sians and soon he was forced to flee, as the 
 oracle had predicted. 
 
 These oracles became the recipient of vast 
 gifts from kings and rich people that consulted 
 them, and they were consulted by a far greater 
 number of people than now-a-days consult our 
 mediums; while then, as now, they made many 
 mistakes, and there were impostors then as 
 now, who humbugged and imposed upon the 
 credulous. The belief in their predictions was 
 then universal, and no general would go to war 
 without consulting them. Even Alexander the 
 Great consulted the oracle at Delphi, but the 
 medium said that she was not ready; the spirit 
 did not move her. Alexander took her by the 
 arm and said she must give him a sitting. 
 While leading her to the tripod, she said, " Al- 
 exander, thou art irresistible." He at once let 
 her go and started off. She called him back, 
 and said that she did not mean that, but to 
 wait, she had something more to say. " No," 
 said Alexander, ''that is enough." He imme- 
 diately returned to his army and told them 
 what the oracle had said, " that he was irre- 
 sistible," and it was the battle-cry of the army 
 which ever lead his cohorts to victory. He 
 was warned by the magi not to enter Babylon, 
 
82 
 
 *'that once within her walls he must assuredly 
 die/' For a while he encamped outside of its 
 walls, but being over-persuaded by the doubt- 
 ing philosophers of Anaxagoras, he entered the 
 city, and in a few months he died in a de- 
 bauch. It is evident that Alexander had much 
 faith in the oracles, as he visited Jupiter Am- 
 nion in the Libyan desert, and left many valua- 
 ble presents. 
 
 Plutarch, in writing about the oracles, says: 
 "It would be impossible to enumerate all the 
 instances in which the Pythia proved her power 
 of foretelling events, and the facts of them- 
 selves are so well and generally known that it 
 would be useless to bring forth new evidence. 
 Her answers, though submitted to the severest 
 scrutiny, have never proved false or incorrect." 
 And then he cites many instances, among them 
 the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, which over- 
 whelmed the cities of Pompeii and Herculane- 
 um; the defeat of Xerxes' army at Marathon 
 and his navy at Salamis, etc. 
 
 Lycurgus, the great Spartan law-giver, con- 
 sulted the oracle of Delphi. Being satisfied 
 of the correctness of the answer he received, 
 he left his native land never to return. 
 
 The most renowned of these oracles were 
 those of Phocis, at Claros in Ionia, at Delos, 
 at Delphi, at Didyma on Mount Ismenus in 
 Boetia, at Larissa among the Argives, and at 
 Heliopolis in Egypt. The pythonesses or me- 
 diums were selected for their great mediumistic 
 power. They were females, virgins of great 
 purity, and they were never allowed to marry. 
 Then, as now, it was a gift confined to the 
 few, and they divined the future and told the 
 past, in many instances, with great accuracy, 
 according to the writings of the ancient histo- 
 rians. 
 
 Herodotus and Plutarch give many instances 
 of the truthfulness of these oracles, and relate 
 how the spirits defended the temple at Delphi 
 from the Persians, who went there to pillage it 
 of its vast wealth. ''At first the temple was 
 as silent as the grave, then all at once a deaf- 
 ening roar of thunder and flashes of lightning 
 burst forth, and superhuman voices were heard 
 to come forth from the shrine; huge rocks 
 were loosened upon the summit of Parnassus 
 and rolled down amongst the invaders and lev- 
 eled them like grass. The rest were affrighted 
 
 and fled in dismay." And this story is as well 
 authenticated as many which are related in the 
 bible of the invisible arm aiding the children of 
 Israel in battle. 
 
 Socrates was a clairvoyant medium from his 
 youth. He had unearthly monitions, a "di- 
 vine voice," as he termed it, attended him; not 
 to urge him to do good, but to restrain from 
 evil. It was equally busy in the most momen- 
 tous and the most trifling actions of life — at 
 Athens and at Corinth, when he lifted his 
 spear against the enemies of his country; when 
 he bore with meekness the revilings of the 
 shrewish Xantippe; when, in the height of 
 his success, he stood surrounded by Plato, 
 Alcibiades and others of the most noble youths 
 of Greece; and, finally, when he became old 
 and feeble and was persecuted, and he calmly 
 prepared himself to die, this "divine voice" 
 whispered to him sweet words of hope and 
 consolation. 
 
 Xenophon said of him, "The little voice" 
 imparted to Socrates a knowledge of the perils 
 that awaited him and of the life to come, 
 which so inspired him that he calmly awaited 
 death as a pleasure that would free him from 
 the mortal body and enable him to assume one 
 of eternal glory. 
 
 Plato relates many instances where Socrates 
 gave warnings to his friends of danger, and 
 thereby saved their lives. One he gives of a 
 noble Athenian, Timarchus, "for," said Soc- 
 rates, " the spirit has just given me the accus- 
 tomed sign that some danger menaces you." 
 And no one can read of this great philosopher 
 and not be impressed with the idea that he 
 was not in communion with spirits who placed 
 so much wisdom in his mouth. 
 
 Gibbon, speaking of Julian, says: "We 
 may learn from his faithful friend, the orator 
 Libanus, that he lived in a perpetual inter- 
 course with the gods and goddesses (the spirits), 
 that they descended upon earth to enjoy the 
 conversation of their favorite hero, that they 
 gently interrupted his slumbers by touching 
 his hands or his hair, that they warned him of 
 every impending danger, and conducted him 
 by their infallible wisdom in every action of 
 his life." 
 
 The present forms of communication with 
 the spirits by table-tipping and slate-writing 
 
83 
 
 were also well known to the ancients. Am- 
 mianus Marcellinus says that in the reign of 
 the Emperor Valens, A. D., 371, some Greeks, 
 skilled in theurgy, were brought to trial for 
 attempting to ascertain, by magic arts, who 
 would succeed to the throne [see page 83]. 
 This mode was similar to that now adopted 
 by many investigators of modern Spiritualism. 
 And Tertullian says, in reproaching some of 
 the Christian fathers: "Do not you, magicians, 
 call ghosts and departed souls from the shades 
 below, and by their infernal charms represent 
 an infinite number of delusions. And how do 
 they perform all this but by the assistance of 
 evil angels and spirits, by which they are able 
 to make stools and tables prophecy.'' Conse- 
 quently it is self-evident, whether we take inco 
 consideration that evil or good spirits were 
 concerned, that this fact goes to show that 
 seances were held and tables tipped over fifteen 
 centuries ago. 
 
 Ancient history is full of instances that go 
 to establish the fact that man had communica- 
 tions with spirits of the departed. The omen^; 
 that attended the assassination of Caesar, the 
 apparition of Brutus, at Philippi, and Sylea, the 
 night before he died, saw in a vision the manner 
 of his end. Pliny, the younger, gives an ac- 
 count of a remarkably haunted house that was 
 purchased by the philosopher Athenodorus, on 
 his arrival at Athens. He was struck with its 
 remarkable cheapness, and was informed that 
 no one would live in it. "He said he had 
 nothing to fear." At midnight a noise was 
 heard and the ghastly figure of a skeleton passed 
 through the apartments, dragging a rusty chain, 
 and motioned him to follow. He arose from 
 his table, where he sat writing and follow^ed. 
 The spirit preceded him to an inner court of 
 the mansion and then vanished. He marked 
 the spot by laying some leaves where the appa- 
 rition designated, and returned to his study. 
 The next morning he sought the magistrates of 
 the city. A search was made and a skeleton 
 loaded with a rusty chain was dug up at the 
 spot that he had marked. He had the skeleton 
 removed and properly interred, and it never 
 appeared again; so it proved a lucky invest- 
 ment. 
 
 Macrobius says that Trajan, previous to his 
 invasion of Parthia, consulted the oracle of 
 
 Heliopolis. It returned a blank sealed paper. 
 At this he laughed and said that as he did not 
 believe in the oracle that they had sent him a 
 proper answer. He sent again, this time the 
 oracle returned a vine cut in pieces and wrapped 
 in a linen cloth, as a symbol that he in like 
 manner should be, should he return. He died 
 in the East and his body was returned, cut up 
 and wrapped in cloth. 
 
 Strabo and Pliny assure us that in the reign 
 of Augustus, the priests of a temple at the foot 
 of Mount Loracti, dedicated to the goddess 
 Feronia, had been known to walk barefooted 
 over great quantities of glowing embers; and 
 Strabo says, "The same ordeal was practiced 
 by the priestesses of the goddess Astabores in 
 Cappadocia." 
 
 In speaking of mediums among the ancients, 
 a writer in the London Examiner says: 
 
 " How many persons who practice, or who 
 discredit the fashionable exercise of table-turn- 
 ing and spirit-invoking are aware that, ages ago, 
 before our ancestors had tables to turn, the 
 process was a well recognized one in Imperial 
 Rome and Constantinople ? Of abnormal 
 manifestations of disturbance in the ordinary 
 range of nobility among human beings, we hear 
 nothing in ancient history, but we hear enough 
 of the manner in which the Greeks and Romans 
 in early Christian ages endeavored by assumed 
 spiritual agency, to influence the movements of 
 the legs of tables, to make us sensible that 
 modern processes for effecting the same end 
 are inferior in point of elegance and awe-in- 
 spiring effect. This, we think, will scarcely be 
 denied by those best acquainted with the 
 present method of conducting a seance when 
 they learn the Roman method of operation, 
 which was as follows: When a family or an 
 individual desired to obtain information in re- 
 gard to some friend beyond the pale of human 
 knowledge, recourse was had to a priest, that is, 
 a professor practiced in the arts of superhuman 
 intelligence. Accordingly, when the appointed 
 day came, the of^ciating medium appeared in 
 white, and bearing in his hands a small table 
 standing on a tripod base. Pausing at the 
 entrance door he waited till the threshold and 
 the atrium had been sprinkled with aromatic 
 and symbolic fluids before he passed on into 
 the principal apartment of the house, and de- 
 
84 
 
 posited his tripod over the center of the. floor. 
 This table, which, as we are informed, must be 
 made of laurel-wood, cut under awe-inspiring 
 auspices, had attached to its base a metallic 
 hoop encircling it, on which the letters of the 
 Greek alphabet were graven, while its upper 
 rim bore a number of catgut strings, to which 
 a silvered leaden ball was suspended. When, 
 after due course of prayers, incantations and 
 various gentle aids to motion, the table 
 began to rotate, the priest and his attendants, 
 who sat on the floor, forming a circle round 
 it, noted down each letter that was in turn 
 touched by the extending strings of the rotating 
 tripod. These letters were put together, and 
 the words they formed accepted as the answer 
 of the oracle. In the case of table-turning in 
 the latter days of the Empire, which has been 
 trasmitted to us, we find that a body of con- 
 spirators, being desirous of ascertaining if the 
 pretender Theodorus, whose cause they ad- 
 vocated, would be the successor of the Emperor 
 Valens, tested the question by this interdicted 
 mode of divination; and conceiving that the 
 letters Th E O D had been struck, there could 
 be no doubt of the fulfillment of their wishes, 
 they hastily overthrew the table, hurried the 
 priests out of the house, and dispersed, lest 
 their evil deeds might be detected by the Im- 
 
 perial officers appointed to enforce the penal- 
 ties incurred by dealers in magic. Fate, how- 
 ever, was too strong for them, for Theodorus 
 was seized and put to death, as history can 
 testify, while Theodosius succeeded to Valens, 
 and thus relieved the oracle from the charge of 
 mendacity." 
 
 But we need not marvel at these strange 
 stories of profane history, for the Holy Bible is 
 filled with it, from Genesis to Revelations. 
 Aaron's rod was turned into a serpent and 
 swallowed up the rods transformed into ser- 
 pents by the Egyptian magicians. The He- 
 brew children walked through the fiery furnace; 
 Jacob wrestled with an angel; the walls of Jer- 
 icho were overthrown at the sound of a ram's 
 horn; Lot's wife was turned into a pillar of 
 salt; the witch of Endor raised the spirit of 
 Samuel; Abraham conversed with angels and 
 ate veal cutlets with them in his tent; and a 
 voice cried out to Abraham and told him of a 
 ram entangled in the vines, which he could 
 ofler on his altar as a sacrifice, instead of his 
 son Isaac; Elijah was fed by the ravens; the 
 children of Israel were fed with manna; Christ 
 on the mount of Transfiguration saw and talked 
 with Moses and Elias; Peter was let out of 
 prison; and Christ rose from the dead. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE ORIGIN OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 
 
 Christianity. 
 
 Christianity comes from the Greek word 
 Christos which signifies washed over or anointed, 
 and is the same as the translation of the Hebrew- 
 word Messiah, Messias, or Mashiach. These 
 words alike mean the anointed one. Kings and 
 high-priests were consecrated to their office by 
 being anointed. The anointed 07ie, therefore, 
 means the chosen, ordained, crowned or conse- 
 crated to a high office; christiioniai signifies to 
 be good, kind and merciful; christotheia signifies 
 goodness of heart, chresteriso signifies to proph- 
 esy, chresies means a prophet, chresmos is the 
 oracle or the divine response and chrisma is the 
 anointing oil which was anciently freely used on 
 Christian converts and still continues in the unc- 
 tion of the Catholic church. Thus chres or chris 
 is the Greek expression for that which is good 
 and beautiful, or which comes from heaven. 
 The word christos was so closely associated 
 with divinity that it was often applied by the 
 Greeks to Apollo and other gods. The world 
 has had many christos or saviors, and all 
 nations have had their christos or christs. 
 Therefore Jesus Christ is the name applied to 
 the Hebrew christos, the anointed prophet. 
 Mary used oil to anoint Christ, and wiped his 
 feet with her hair to show her profound vener- 
 ation for him. 
 
 Christianity is a name full of power and 
 eloquent meaning, a divine and inspired 
 religion, lull ot love and heroism. It cannot be 
 monopolized by the believers in Jesus Christ, 
 but includes all who embrace and follow the 
 instructions of Jesus Christ and imitate his 
 purity of life, and who attempt to live in 
 perfect* accord with the divine law, so as to 
 embody in themselves the highest inspiration of 
 which he is capable. 
 
 It allows a large range of belief and worship. 
 One may be a Christian and believe that Christ 
 was only a good man; another may believe 
 Christ a god equal to the father in heaven, and 
 he can be a Christian; another can worship the 
 Virgin Mary, his mother, and be a Christian. 
 Anyone may be a Christian if he goes to church 
 and contributes to the support of the gospel; 
 in a word all who belong to the Christian 
 nations, whether he be a Jew or Gentile, 
 Atheist or Infidel, is according to the definition 
 of the term, a Christian. It represents and 
 expresses a civilization. 
 
 Advent of Christ. 
 
 The time was propitious for the introduction 
 of a new religion. Paganism was in its last 
 throes; Jupiter's, Manu's and Moses' altars had 
 no longer believers, and the intelligent people 
 had discarded the myth, and the masses were 
 ready to swallow any new religion offered. 
 Pythagoras, Aristotle, Socrates, Plato and 
 Cicero had evicted the myth of the Olympian' 
 gods from the minds of the intelligent thinking 
 people. Their writings, like that of modern 
 science, had undermined the dogmas of the 
 fabulous mythology. Cicero wondered that 
 two priests could look into each other's faces 
 and not laugh at the trick. For two ages past, 
 Pyrrha, Cimon, Sextus, Empiricus and Enesidius 
 no longer believed in anything and Lucretius 
 had just written his book on nature. 
 
 On the other side, those old and decaying 
 theologies of Moses left in the spirit of the 
 multitude the idea of a Redeemer, which 
 ancient India had bequeathed to all the 
 nations; and the wearied people waited for 
 something new to replace their extinct beliefs, 
 to nourish their energy, paralyzed by doubt, 
 and in great need of hope. 
 
 85 
 
86 
 
 It was then that a poor Jew, born of the 
 lower class, appeared, possessed of remarkable 
 mediumistic power, and started on the mission 
 of reforming man and checking the growth of 
 materialism. He soon gathered around him 
 many followers, and persecution did its work 
 "and the blood of martyrs became the seed 
 of the church." 
 
 Primitive Christianity had its origin in small 
 scattered groups, organized into secret soci- 
 eties with passwords, grips and signs, which 
 enabled the initiated to recognize each other. 
 To avoid the unrelenting persecutions of their 
 enemies they were obliged to meet in the night 
 in secret places; in caves, deserted catacombs, 
 woods and mountain fastnesses. From the first 
 appearance of Jesus and his twelve disciples, 
 they sought refuge in quiet places, in the 
 wilderness and among their friends in Bethany. 
 It is evident that they were rather quiet and 
 did not attract much attention among the 
 profane writers. Renan shows that Philo, 
 who lived in Palestine while the "glad tidings" 
 were being preached, never heard of him. 
 Josephus, the Hebrew historian, who was born 
 three years after the crucifixion of Christ, only 
 makes a short mention of him, and even that 
 bears the marks of^interpolation. 
 
 Suetonius, the secretary of Adrian, who 
 wrote the history of the Emperor Claudius in 
 the second century, says that he (Claudius) 
 banished all the Jews, who were continually 
 making disturbances at the instigation of one 
 Crestus, evidently meaning Christ. 
 
 The Emperor Adrian, in a letter to Servia- 
 nus, says, "That he believes the new sect 
 (Christians) were worshipers of Serapis, an 
 Egyptian deity; and Christ is represented as 
 Serapis, wearing long hair, turned back, falling 
 down on his back and shoulders like a woman, 
 his whole person enveloped in drapery, reach- 
 ing his feet." [See "Gnostics and their Re- 
 mains," page 68.] " There can be no doubt," 
 remarks the same author, " that the head of 
 Serapis, marked, as the face is, by a grave and 
 pensive majesty, supplied the first idea for the 
 conventional portraits of the Savior." 
 
 The Gnosis, or Gnosticism, comprehended 
 the doctrine of the magi — the wise men of the 
 East who followed the star to Bethlehem — and 
 they were in direct communication with the 
 
 Divine mind, which revealed to them these 
 facts, through some of the modes of spiritual 
 manifestation. They were not Jews, they were 
 heathen who had come from the East, and 
 were skilled in the arts of nature and knew by 
 certain signs they were to know him, and so 
 informed Herod of his whereabouts. 
 
 Christ said, " God is a spirit and they who 
 worship him worship in spirit and truth." Those 
 who follow Christ's teachings embrace the doc- 
 trines of Spiritualism, and consequently there 
 should be no antagonism between Spiritualism 
 and the other Christian religions, as they are 
 all derived from the same source. Christ said, 
 "I will be with you even to the end of the 
 world." He evidently meant that his spirit 
 would be with them. And the idea that Christ 
 would come again and reign on earth was taken 
 from the mistaken idea that he should be rein- 
 carnated in the flesh again, which is the belief 
 of the Buddhists that Buddha is ever reincar- 
 nating in the person of a child. 
 
 Christ and his apostles were possessed of 
 wonderful mediumistic powers, but in time this 
 mediumistic power was lost in the cold em- 
 brace of the Christian churches, who did not 
 follow his sublime teachings and preach his 
 gospel to the whole world. In losing this me- 
 diumistic power the churches have become ma- 
 terialistic, and for that reason they oppose the 
 doctrine of modern Spiritualism, which is in- 
 tended to take man back to the pure stream of 
 religion that he taught in his sermon on the 
 mount. Christ received his messages direct 
 from the Divine mind, and there is no reason 
 why it cannot be done by others as well as by 
 him. 
 
 The laws of the natural and spirit world are 
 always the same. Philo and other contempo- 
 rary historians say the Essenes were a sect of 
 pure and holy men, which arose about one 
 hundred years before the advent of Jesus of 
 Nazareth; and it is supposed by some that he 
 belonged to that order. The doctrines, man- 
 ners and customs of this sect resembled that of 
 Jesus and his disciples, and his sermon on the 
 mount is full of their aphorisms. This pure 
 and simple spiritual religion taught by the early 
 Christians perished about the time that Con- 
 stantine the Great usurped its name and fame 
 in order to justify his own iniquitous and atro- 
 
87 
 
 cious murders, and to give him strength by 
 enlisting the Christian: under his banner; and 
 it then became engrafted on Roman paganism. 
 The shaved headed augurs were changed into 
 monks and priests, and the vestal vjrgins into 
 nuns and sisters of charity; and the burning 
 of incense, is a vestige of the fire-worship- 
 ers, who always kept a fire burning in a lamp 
 suspended near or on the altar. After it be- 
 came the state religion, with the Emperor Con- 
 stantine at its head, it assumed a power that 
 enforced its creeds upon the unbelievers, that 
 made the name of Jesus known to the whole 
 Roman empire, which at that time governed 
 the civilized world. 
 
 Ammonius Sacchas, the great Alexandrian 
 teacher and philosopher, the theodtaoktis, in his 
 numerous works a century and a half before 
 St. Augustine, acknowledged Jesus as "an 
 excellent man, and the friend of (}od." He 
 always maintained that the ultimate design of 
 Jesus was not to abolish the intercourse with 
 gods and demons (spirits), but simply to purify 
 the ancient religion; that "the religion of the 
 multitude went hand in hand with philosophy, 
 and with her had shared the fate of being by 
 degrees corrupted and obscured with mere hu- 
 man conceits, superstitions and lies; that it 
 ought, therefore, to be brought back to its 
 original pin'ity , by purging it of this dross and 
 expounding it upon philosophical principles; 
 and that all Christ had in view was to 
 reinstate and restore to its primitive integrity 
 and purity the wisdom of the arkcients." 
 
 All great religious reformers were pure at the 
 beginning. The first followers of Buddha as 
 well as the disciples of Jesus were men of great 
 austerity and the highest morality, as in the 
 case of Sakya-Muni, Pythagoras, Plato, Jesus, 
 St. Paul, Ammonius and Sakkas. The great 
 Gnostic leaders, if less successful, were not 
 less virtuous in practice nor less morally pure. 
 Marcion, Basilides and Valentinus were renown- 
 ed for their ascetic lives. The Nicolaitanes, 
 if they did not belong to the great body of the 
 Ophites, were numbered among the small sects 
 which were absorbed in it at the beginning of 
 the second century. The Gnostics were a sect 
 of philosophers that arose in the first century 
 of Christianity, and they formed a system of 
 theology agreeable to that of Pythagoras and 
 
 Plato, and in conformity to that of the script- 
 ures. They held that all religions had their 
 origin in secret societies. 
 
 The innumerable gems and amulets are a 
 proof of this. They had their symbols, signs 
 and secret workings that the outside world 
 knew nothing of, by which means they were 
 able to know each other. The Kabalists were 
 the first to embellish the universal Logos with 
 such terms as " Light of Light,'' the messenger 
 of life and light (see John i), and we find these 
 expressions adopted z>/ ioto by the Christians, 
 with the addition of nearly all the Gnostic 
 terms, such as Pleroma (fullness), Archons, 
 yEons, etc., as to the ''first born"\.he first 
 and the " only begotten." These terms are as 
 old as the world. Origen shows the word 
 "Logos," as existing among the Brahmins. 
 The Brahmins say that the God is light, not 
 such as one sees, nor such as sun and fire; but 
 they have the God Logos, not articulate, the 
 Logos of the Gnosis, through whom the high- 
 est mysteries of the Gnosis are seen by the 
 wise — those of clairvoyant sight. The Acts 
 and the fourth Gospel are full of Gnostic ex- 
 pressions. The Kabalistic terms " God's first- 
 born emanated from the Most High," together 
 with that ^vhich is the " spirit of the a?iointed;" 
 and again, "they called Him the anointed of 
 the highest," are reproduced in spirit and sub- 
 stance by the author of the Gospel of St, John. 
 " That was the t7'ue light, and the light shineth 
 in darkness." "And the word was 7nade 
 flesh . " 
 
 The " Christ " and the " Logos " are terms 
 which existed ages before Christianity. The 
 Oriental Gnosis was studied long before the 
 days of Moses, and we have to seek for the 
 origin of all these words in the Archaic periods 
 of the primeval Asiatic philosophy. Peter's 
 second epistle and Jude's fragment, preserved 
 in the new Testament, show by their phraseol- 
 ogy that they belonged to the Kabalistic Orien- 
 tal order, for they use the same expressions as 
 did the Christian Gnostics, who built or took 
 a part of their system from the Oriental Kab- 
 ala, and that it was grafted on it. " Presump- 
 tuous are they [the Ophites], self-willed, they 
 are not afraid to speak evil of dignities," says 
 Peter in Second Epistle, ii: lo. The original 
 model for the latter is the abusive Tertullian 
 
88 
 
 and Irenseus. " Likewise (even as Sodom and 
 Gomorrah) also, these filthy dreamers defile 
 the flesh, despise dominion and speak evil 
 of dignities," says Jude, repeating the very 
 words of Peter and thereby using expressions 
 consecrated in the Kabala. Dof?iinion is the 
 ''empire," the tenth of the Kabalistic sephiron. 
 They held that the types of the creation, or 
 the attributes of the Supreme Being, are 
 through the emanations of Adam Kadmon. 
 
 Thus, when the Nazarenes and other Gnostics 
 of the more Platonic tendency twitted the 
 Jews as '* abortions who worship their god 
 Qurbo, Adonai" we need not wonder at the 
 wrath of those who had accepted the old Mo- 
 saic system, but at that of Peter and Jude, who 
 claimed to be followers of Jesus, and dissent 
 from the views of him who also was a Nazarene. 
 The dispersed Nazarenes were a secret sect that 
 had no affiliation with the Jews, and they were 
 a remnant of the ancient Phcenicians, that still 
 lived on the other side of the Jordan and ex- 
 tended far into the interior. 
 
 According to the Kabala, the empire of 
 dominion is "the consuming fire and his wife 
 is the temple or church, and powers and digni- 
 ties (spirits) are subordinate genii of the arch- 
 angels and angels of the Sohar." These ema- 
 nations are the very life and soul of the Kab- 
 ala and Zoroasterism, And the Talmud, the 
 sacred book of the Jews, is borrowed from the 
 Zend-Avesta, the sacred book or bible of the 
 Persians and fire-worshipers; therefore, by 
 adopting the views of Peter, Jude and other 
 apostles, the Christians have become but a dis- 
 senting sect of the Persians, for they do not 
 even interpret the meaning of all such powers 
 as the true Kabalists do. 
 
 St. Paul, warning his converts against the 
 worshiping of angels, showed how well he ap- 
 preciated, even so early as his period, the dan- 
 gers of borrowing from a mythical doctrine, the 
 philosophy of which could be rightly interpre- 
 ted but by its well-learned adherents, the Magi 
 and the Jewish Tanaim. In Colossians ii: i8, 
 he says, *' Let no man beguile you of your 
 reward in a voluntary humanity and worshiping 
 of angels, intruding into those things which he 
 hath not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly 
 mind," is a sentence laid right at the door of 
 Peter and his companions. 
 
 In the Talmud Michael is prince of water, 
 who has seven inferior spirits subordinate to 
 him. He is the patron, the guardian angel of 
 the Jews, as Daniel informs us. And the 
 Greek Ophites, who identified him with their 
 Ophimorphous, the personified creation of en- 
 vy and malice, of Ilda-Baoth, thet Demiurgus 
 (creator of the material world), and undertook 
 to prove that he, Samuel, the Hebrew prince 
 of the evil spirits or Persian deos, were natur- 
 ally regarded by the Jews as blasphemers. 
 
 In all ages and among all nations there is a 
 tendency of the ignorant and designing to 
 create gods out of ministering spirits and angels 
 that come in contact with mediums, seers and 
 prophets, which soon corrupts the pure and 
 monotheistic belief in one God, out of whose 
 divine will and power all things have evolved. 
 
 It is evident that Jesus was a pure and good 
 man, endowed with a great love of the pure 
 and simple religion, and it is clearly apparent 
 that he struggled hard to reform the Jews; but 
 they did not understand and appreciate him, 
 and they therefore crucified him; and after the 
 elapse of three hundred years he was deified as 
 one of the godhead, and from his teachings 
 and those of his disciples, has arisen the 
 Christian church, and over the question of his 
 divinity rivers of blood have been shed to 
 make him a god, and to enforce the creeds and 
 dogmas of the church. 
 
 St. Paul was the true founder of Christian 
 theology. This indomitable disciple was a man 
 of learning, weH versed in the mysterious doc- 
 trines of the Gnostics, and wrote in the true 
 Kabalistic spirit of the masters of the Lord 
 Jesus Christ; and the manner of his conversion 
 is one of the best physical manifestations of 
 the spirits on record. It is evident that St. 
 Paul, believing in occult powers in the world, 
 " unseen," but ever " present," says, " Ye 
 walked according to the ceon of this world, ac- 
 cording to Archon (Ilda Baoth, the De?niurg), 
 that has the domination of the air," and *' we 
 wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against 
 the dominations, the powers, the lords of dark- 
 ness, the mischievousness of spirits in the upper 
 regions." This sentence " ye were dead in sin 
 and error," for "ye walked according to the 
 Archon," or (Ilda-Baoth,) the god and creator 
 and master of the Ophites, shows unequivo- 
 
89 
 
 cally that, isc, Paul, notwithstanding some 
 dissensions with the more important doctrines 
 of the Gnostics, shared more or less their cos- 
 mogonical views on the emanations; 2d, that 
 he was fully aware that this Demiurg, whose 
 Jewish name was Jehovah, was not the God 
 preached by Jesus; and now, if we compare 
 the doctrine of St. Paul with the religious 
 views of Peter and Jude, we find that not only 
 did they worship Michael, the archangel, but 
 that they also 7-everenced Sa/an, because the 
 latter was also an angel before his fall. This 
 they do quite openly, and abuse the Gnostics 
 for speaking "evil " of him. (See Peter's Sec- 
 ond Epistle). 
 
 No one can deny the following: Peter, when 
 denouncing those who are not afraid to speak 
 evil of '' dignities," adds immediately, *' where- 
 as angels which are greater in power and might 
 bring not railing accusations against them (the 
 dignities) before the Lord." Who are the 
 *' dignities" referred to? Jude, in his general 
 epistle, makes the meaning of the word as clear 
 as day. The ''dignities" are the devils, and 
 the devils are evil spirits. Jude when com- 
 plaining of the disrespect shown by the Gnos- 
 tics to powers and do?ni7iions, uses the very 
 words of Peter: " And yet Michael, the arch- 
 angel, when contending with the devil (evil 
 spirit) he disputed about the body of Moses, 
 durst not bring against him a railing accusation, 
 but said, 'the Lord rebuke thee.' " Is this 
 not plain enough to show that they did? if not 
 then we have the Kabala to prove who were 
 the dignities. 
 
 In Deuteronomy xxxiv: 6, we find that the 
 " Lord Himself buried Moses in a valley of 
 Moab, and no man knoweth of his sepulchre 
 unto this day." This biblical lapsus linguce of 
 Jude gives a strong coloring to the assertions of 
 some of the Gnostics. They claimed only 
 what was secretly taught by the Jewish Kaba- 
 lists themselves, to-wit: that the highest su- 
 preme God was unknown and invisible, "the 
 king of light is a closed eye;" that Ilda-Baoth, 
 the Jewish second Adam, was the real Demi- 
 urg; and that lao, Adonai, Saboth and Eloi 
 were the quaternary emanations which formed 
 the unity of the God of the Hebrews — Je- 
 hovah. Moreover, the latter was also called 
 Michael, the archangel, by Samuel, and re- 
 
 garded as an angel several degrees removed 
 from the godhead. The disciples were unedu- 
 cated, except St. Paul, and they drew their 
 knowledge from the unseen world like many of 
 the mediums of modern Spiritualism, who often 
 confound the most learned doctors and men of 
 science. 
 
 The Chaldean version of the Pentateuch, 
 made by the well-known Babylonian divine 
 Onkelos, was regarded as the most authoritive 
 of all; and it is according to this learned rabbi 
 that Hillel, and and other tanaim after him, 
 held that the being who appeared to Moses in 
 the burning bush, on Mount Sinai, and who 
 finally buried him, was the angel of the Lord, 
 Memro, and not the Lord himself, and that he 
 whom the Hebrews of the old Testament mis- 
 took for lahoh, was his messenger, one of his 
 sons or emanations. All this goes to establish 
 but one logical conclusion, merely that the 
 Gnostics were far superior to the disciples in 
 knowledge, learning and the religious doctrines 
 of the Jews. 
 
 There have existed in all ages men who be- 
 longed to secret societies under different names 
 — Esoteric, Brahminical, Buddhistical, Chal- 
 dean, Hermetic, Ophite, Gymnosophites and 
 Magi philosophers. The Sufis and Rashees, of 
 Kashmere, instituted a kind of international 
 and universal Freemasonry among the Esoteric 
 societies; and says Higgins, "These Rashees 
 are the Essenians, Carmelites or Nazarites of the 
 Temple, and it was from the latter Christ de- 
 rived his knowledge, as he was a Nazarene, and 
 the priest or masters understood the occult sci- 
 ence, under the name of Regenerating Fire. 
 This science for more than three thousand 
 years was the peculiar possession of the Indian 
 and Egyptian priesthood, into the knowledge 
 of which Moses was initiated at Heliopolis, 
 where he was educated; and Jesus was educated 
 among the Essenian priests of Egypt or Judea, 
 and by the knowledge thus gained these two 
 great reformers, particularly the latter, wrought 
 many of the miracles mentioned in the script- 
 ures." 
 
 "The Christian Gnostics sprang into exist- 
 ence towards the beginning of the second cen- 
 tury, and just at the time when the Essenes 
 most mysteriously faded away, which indicates 
 that they were the identical Essenes, and, more- 
 
90 
 
 over, pure Chrisiists^ viz: they believed, and 
 were those who best understood what one of 
 their own brethren had preached. In insisting 
 that the letter Iota, mentioned by Jesus, (Mat. 
 v:i8,) indicated a secret doctrine in relation to 
 the ten aeons, is sufficient to demonstrate to 
 a Kabalist th-it Jesus belonged to the Free- 
 masonry of those days; for I, which is iota in 
 Greek, has no other name in other languages, 
 and is, as it was among the Gnostics of those 
 days, a pass-word, meaning the ' Sckipture of 
 the Father,' in Eastern brotherhoods which 
 exist to this day." 
 
 "It comes to this," writes Irenneus, com- 
 plaining of the Gnostics, '^they neither con- 
 sent to the scriptures nor tradition;" and why 
 should we wonder at that, when even the com- 
 mentators of the nineteenth century, with noth- 
 ing but fragments of Gnostic manuscripts to 
 compare with the voluminous writings of their 
 calumniators, have been enabled to detect 
 fraud on every page ? How much more must 
 the polished and learned Gnostics, with all 
 their advantages of personal observation and 
 knowledge of the facts, have realized the stu- 
 pendous scheme of fraud that was being con- 
 summated before their very eyes } Why should 
 they accuse Celsus of maintaining that their re- 
 ligion was all based on the speculations of 
 Plato, with the difference that his doctrines 
 were far more pure and rational than theirs, 
 when we find Sprengell, seventeen centuries 
 later, writing the following: ''Not only did 
 they (the Christians) think to discover the dog- 
 mas of Plato in the books of Moses, but, more- 
 over, they fancied that by introducing Platon- 
 ism into Christianity they would elevate the 
 dignity of this religion and make it more popu- 
 lar among the nations." 
 
 "They introduced it so well that not only 
 was the Platonic philosophy selected as a basis 
 for the trinity, but even the legends and my- 
 thical stories which had been current among 
 the admirers of the great philosopher, as a 
 time-honored custom required in the eyes of 
 his posterity such an allegorical homage to 
 every hero worthy of deification, were revamp- 
 
 ed and used by the Christians. Without going 
 so far as India, did they not have a ready 
 model for the ' miraculous conception ' in the 
 legend about Periktione, Plato's mother? In 
 her case it was also maintamed by popular tra- 
 dition that she had immaculately conceived 
 him, and that the god Apollo was his father. 
 Even the annunciation by an angel to Joseph, 
 in a dream, the Christians copied from the 
 message of Apollo to Aristovv, Periktione's 
 husband, that the child to be born from her 
 was the offspring of that god. So, too, Romu- 
 lus, one of the founders of Rome, was said to 
 be the son of Mars by the virgin Rhea Sylvia, 
 and he was suckled and nurtured by a wolf and 
 was afterwards deified." 
 
 The birth and the wonderful manifestations 
 that are related of Christ, was one of the leg- 
 ends peculiar to that age. To enshroud it in 
 mystery and to make it miraculous was to give 
 to him the prestige of a god, when in reality he 
 only claimed to be the son of man; and 
 when we make due allowance for it we are 
 left to wonder how it was ever possible that 
 any one should look upon him otherwise than 
 as a good man, who was conceived, born, lived 
 and died as other men. How he could be 
 held as other than a man surpasses my compre- 
 hension, and how the intelligent, thinking peo- 
 ple of the nineteenth century can think he was 
 a god is evidence of credulity, stupidity and 
 ignorance. 
 
 It is evident that the Gnostics had a better 
 and more correct knowledge of the teachings 
 of Christ and his disciples than those who 
 claim to be founders of the modern Christian- 
 ity, which did not have its rise until in the 
 third century; and we should be willing to give 
 to them the credit of being as honest as any 
 other sect. And if we can believe Nicholas of 
 Antioch, a man of honest repute, full of the 
 holy ghost and wisdom, we must come to the 
 conclusion that Christ was simply a good man 
 with lofty thoughts, a great love of humanity, 
 and clear perception of right, added to his 
 great mediumistic powers. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 ALL RELIGIONS APPEAR TO HAVE ONE COMMON ORIGIN. THE ORIGIN OF THE 
 TRINITY, CROSS, SACRED RIVERS, MADONNA, ARK, DELUGE, FISH STORY. 
 
 The Olympus of the Greeks is but a repro- 
 duction of the Hindoo Olympus. The legend 
 of Jason and the Golden Fleece is still in the 
 mouth of every one in India, and the Iliad of 
 Homer is nothing but an echo and enfabled 
 souvenir of the Ramayana, a Hindoo poem, in 
 which Rama goes at the head of his allies to 
 recover his wife, Sita, who had been carried 
 off by the King of Ceylon; while the Greeks 
 immortalized it in Homer, where Paris carried 
 off the fair Helen to Troy. 
 
 ^sop and Babrias copied Hindoo fables 
 that reached them through Russia, Syria and 
 Egypt. Babrias, though a Greek, says at the 
 commencement of his second proem that it 
 came from the East; and Jacolliot says that no 
 one can read the fables of the Hindoo Pilpay, 
 or the Brahmin Ramdamyayer, without being 
 impressed with the idea that they are the orig- 
 inal, and that ^.sop, Babrias and La Fontaine 
 are plagiarists, and that the Greek and modern 
 fabulists have not taken the trouble to change 
 the action of these little dramas. 
 
 One nation copies from another like individ- 
 uals, and the succeeding generations retain the 
 history and traditions of their ancestors. The 
 Greek language and religion has been taken 
 from the Hindoo. As the Sanscrit is the mother 
 of the Greek language, so the Brahmin religion 
 and laws are more or less copied into the 
 Greek and Roman religion and laws. Homer 
 and Virgil, Sophocles and Euripides, Plautus 
 and Terence, copied, altered and modified the 
 poetry of the Brahmins; while Socrates, Py- 
 thagoras, Plato and Aristotle have drawn their 
 inspiration from an older and a more ancient 
 philosophy of the Brahmins, Egyptians and 
 Persians. Titus, Livius, Sallust, Herodotus 
 
 and Tacitus are our models as historians, and 
 they only copied from others still older, dating 
 farther back in time. The Justinian code has 
 been taken from the Hindoo code of Manu, 
 as it bears the ear-marks of legislation, mar- 
 riage, filiation, parental authority, tutelage, 
 adoption, property, the laws of contract, de- 
 posit, loan, sale, partnership, donations and 
 testaments. 
 
 Manu, Manes, Minos and Moses were all 
 great law-givers and legislators. These four 
 names overshadow the entire ancient world. 
 They appear at the beginning of the four dif- 
 ferent nations, and they play the same role, 
 surrounded by the same mysterious halo. All 
 of the four were legislators and high-priests, 
 and all four founded theocratic and sacerdotal 
 societies. That they stand in relation to each 
 other as predecessor and successor, however 
 distant, seems proven by the similitude of name 
 and identity of the institutions they created. 
 *' In Sanscrit Manu signifies the man par excel- 
 lence, the legislator. Manes, Minos and Moses, 
 do they not betray an incontestible unity of 
 derivation from the Sanscrit with the slight va- 
 riations of different periods, and the different 
 languages in which they are written, Egyptian, 
 Greek and Hebrew.?" 
 
 Manu, the philosopher and law-giver of In- 
 dia, and Manes, the Egyptian legislator, are ex- 
 tensively copied. A Cretan visits Egypt to 
 study her institutions, which he introduces into 
 his own country, and history preserves his 
 memory under the name of Minos. Moses is 
 the liberator of the servile caste of Hebrews 
 from out of bondage in Egypt. These laws 
 are all claimed to have been given to them by 
 God, out of which they have created caste, 
 
92 
 
 which in India has crushed the masses down 
 in ignorance and superstition, and it made all 
 subservient to the Brahmins, who really were 
 the governing class. Moses created the order 
 of Levi, the priests who claimed that God 
 governed them; but they ate the offerings, col- 
 lected the tithes and ruled the people. The 
 Roman people were divided up into castes — 
 priests, senators, patricians and plebeians — 
 which was a feebler imitation of the Hindoo 
 society. Such has ever been the laws and reli- 
 gions, ''Divide, corrumpe ei imperaV divide, 
 demoralize and govern. 
 
 The Vedic civilization, under the Hindoo 
 priests (the Brahmins), like that of Egypt un- 
 der Manes, crushed the masses into a nation of 
 slaves, which deprived them of all social and 
 political rights, making them mere machines to 
 produce, that the privileged classes may live 
 in luxury and splendor. The Roman hierarchy 
 for ages has kept the masses in ignorance, that 
 they might govern them, and at one time their 
 power was so great that they even scourged 
 kings and forced them to do penance. 
 
 " Excommunication was nothing else than a 
 weapon of despotism, picked up in the pagodas 
 of Brahma, for the subjugation of people and 
 for the triumph of the priests. We have seen 
 Savonarola die at the stake for having exposed 
 the disorders of Alexander VI; and the pious 
 Robert of France, abandoned by his friends 
 and his faithful servants, obliged to bend the 
 knee under the hand of a religious fanatic. 
 Human hecatombs have been burning on the 
 piles of faith and the altar reddened with blood. 
 Ages have passed away; we are but wakening 
 to progress and freethought. But let us expect 
 struggles without end until the day shall come 
 when we shall have courage to arraign all sa- 
 cerdotalism at the bar of liberty." 
 
 The Hindoos, in their primitive times, had 
 their virgins attached to the service of the pa- 
 godas; some tended the sacred fire, which 
 burned day and night before the holy trinity, 
 and never was allowed to go out; others, on 
 days of procession, danced before the car or 
 ark as it was carried through the villages; oth- 
 ers, under the delirium produced by an excit- 
 ing beverage which is known to the Brahmins, 
 uttered oracles in the sanctuaries to fakirs and 
 sunniassys (holy mendicants), or to extort from 
 
 the amazed people, abundant offering of fruit 
 rice, cattle and money; others sung sacred 
 hymns at the sacrifices and festivals and at fun- 
 erals, religion requiring each son to make offer- 
 ings on the recurring anniversary of his father's 
 and mother's deaths, and, as no man could be 
 admitted into heaven who had not a son to 
 make this offering, so this accounts for the 
 great desire of men of the Aryan race to have a 
 son to inherit his name. The consecrated vir- 
 gins of Egypt danced before the statues of the 
 gods; the pythonesses of Delphi, the priestesses 
 of Ceres, who delivered oracles, the vestal vir- 
 gins of Rome who tended the sacred fire, and 
 the sisters of charity, were but heirs to the 
 devadassa of India. This tradition of the 
 woman, virgin and priestess is so much of an 
 oriental inspiration that we see all the nations 
 of antiquity reject it as they gradually emanci- 
 pated themselves from superstition and mystery. 
 If, then, it appears but a legacy from the prim- 
 itive cradle, nothing is more natural than to 
 trace it to the country whence departed the 
 colonizing tribes. 
 
 Jesus is a Sancrit word signifying pure es- 
 sence, which is the root, the radical origin 
 of a large number of ancient names used 
 alike for gods and distinguished men, such as 
 Isis, the mother of Horus, the female principle 
 in nature, the Earth, the Egyptian goddess; 
 Josue, in Hebrew; Joshua the successor of 
 Moses; Josias, king of the Hebrews; and Jeseus 
 or Jesus, in Hebrew. Jeosuah, which name 
 is very common with the Hebrews, was in 
 ancient India the tiller, the consecrated epithet 
 assigned to all incarnations. "The ol^ciating 
 Bohemians in temples and pagodas now accord 
 this title of Jeseus, or pure essence, or divine 
 emanation, only to Chrisna, who is alone recog- 
 nized as the word, the true incarnation by the 
 Vishnuites and freethinkers of Brahminism." 
 (See "India Bible," by JacoHiot, page io8.) 
 Hence comes the word Jesus Christ, from 
 Jezeus — Chrisna — of the Sanscrit. 
 
 Chrisna, Buddha, Zoroaster, Christ and Mo- 
 hammed have all played a human role, and 
 God has judged them as he has all the rest of 
 mankind, according to the good they have 
 accomplished. These great and good men 
 started out for a high and noble purpose, but 
 their successors, more cunning than their mas- 
 
93 
 
 ters, having made them gods to smooth their 
 own way, present themselves to the people as 
 celestial messengers, and thus sanctify their 
 ambitious purposes, and rule and govern man. 
 On a careful and critical examination they all 
 teach the same thing; all tell about the same 
 story. It is the same, revamped to suit the 
 age and the nation in which they lived. 
 
 The Egyptian god Bacchus was brought up at 
 Mysa, and is famous as having been the con- 
 queror of India. In Egypt he was called Osi- 
 ris; in India Dionysius, and not improbably 
 Krishna or Chrisna, which means a savior, as 
 he was called Adoneus, which signifies the Lord 
 of heaven, or the Lord and giver of light in 
 Arabia, and liber throughout the Roman do- 
 minions, from whence is derived our term lib- 
 eral for everything that is generous, frank and 
 amiable. He manifested his glory in the 
 wine, therefore he is sometimes called the god 
 of wine. It is evident that he was one of the 
 sun-gods of some of the ancients, as we find 
 expressions like these used in his worship: lo 
 Terombe, let us cry unto the Lord; lo or la 
 Baccoth, God sees our tears; Jehovah Evan! 
 Hevoe! and Eloah, the author of our existence, 
 the mighty God; Hu Esh, thou art the fire; 
 Elta Esh, thou art the life; and lo Nissi, O 
 Lord, direct us; which last is the literal English 
 of the Latin motto in the arms of the city of 
 London, retained to this day, " Domine dirige 
 jios." The Romans, out of all these terms, 
 preferred the name of Baccoth, out of which 
 they composed Bacchus. The more delicate 
 ear of the Greeks was better pleased with the 
 words lo Nissi, out of which they formed Dio- 
 nysius. 
 
 The three letters I H S, surrounded with 
 rays of glory, that are so often seen hanging in 
 the Catholic churches and burying grounds, 
 which are supposed to stand for Jesus LLomine- 
 um Salvator, is none other than the identical 
 name of Bacchus, Yes, exhibited in Greek 
 letters, V H E, (see Hesychius on the word 
 V JL E, i. e.. Ye s, Bacchus, Sol, the Sun). 
 And the feast of Bacchus was always celebrated 
 by drinking wine and eating bread, from which 
 the Christians derived the idea of the sacra- 
 ment. One of the odes of Anacreon, trans- 
 lated, reads thus: "To arms! But I shall 
 
 drink; boy, bring me the goblet, for I would 
 rather lie dead drunk than dead." 
 
 In the ancient Orphic verses, sung in the 
 orgies of Bacchus, as celebrated throughout 
 Egypt, Phoenicia, Syria, Arabia, Asia Minor, 
 Greece, and ultimately in Italy, it is related 
 how that god, who had been born in Arabia, 
 was picked up in a box that floated on the 
 water, and took his name Mises, in signification 
 ot his having been saved from the water, and 
 Bimater from his having had two mothers; that 
 is, one by nature and another who had adopted 
 him. He had a rod with which he performed 
 miracles, and which he could change into a 
 serpent at pleasure. He passed the Red Sea 
 dry-shod at the head of his army; he divided 
 the waters of the rivers Orontes and Hydraspus 
 by the touch of his rod and passed through 
 them dry-shod. By the same mighty rod he 
 drew water from the rock, and wherever he 
 marched the land flowed with milk and honey. 
 And the similarity of these verses shows that 
 Moses copied them or that they were taken 
 from him. 
 
 The Egyptian tau or cross (T) was in use 
 many centuries earlier than the period assigned 
 to Abraham, the alleged forefather of the 
 Israelites, for Moses directed the children of 
 Israel to mark their door-posts and lintels with 
 blood, lest the " Lord God " might make a 
 mistake and kill them instead of the Egyptians, 
 and this mark is a tau, the identical Egyp- 
 tian handle-cross, with the half of which tal- 
 isman Horus raised the dead, as is shown on a 
 sculptured ruin at Philae. And it is asserted 
 that the rod of Moses, which he used to per- 
 form his miracles before Pharaoh, was no doubt 
 a crux ansata, or something like it, as used by 
 the Egyptian priests. In the ancient Hebrew 
 the sign of the cross was formed thus X, but 
 in the original Egyptian hieroglyphics it is the 
 the same as a perfect Christian cross *j*. 
 
 According to King and other numismatists 
 and archaeologists, the cross was a symbol of 
 eternal life. A tau or Egyptian cross was used 
 in the mysteries of Bacchus and Eleusinia. It 
 was laid on the breast of the initiate, as a sym- 
 bol of the "new birth;" that his spiritual birth 
 had regenerated and united his astral soul with 
 his divine spirit, and that he was ready to as- 
 cend in spirit to the blessed abodes of light and 
 
94 
 
 g ory. The tail is a magic talisman and at the 
 same time is a religious emblem. It was 
 adopted by the Christians, through the Gnos- 
 tics and Kabalists, who used it largely, as their 
 numerous gems testify. They took the tau, or 
 handle-cross, from the Egyptians, and the 
 Latin cross from the Buddhist museums, who 
 brought it from India, where it can be found 
 to have been in use for two or three centuries 
 before Christ. The cross was known to the 
 ancient Assyrians, Egyptians, Armenians, Hin- 
 doos and Romans, long before the crucifixion 
 of Christ. 
 
 The Brah-matma, the chief of the Hindoo 
 initiates, had on his head-gear two keys, which 
 were symbols of the revealed mystery of life 
 and death, and were placed cross-wise; and in 
 some of the Buddhist pagodas of Tartary and 
 Mongolia, the entrance to a chamber within 
 the temple is generally ornamented with a 
 cross, formed of two fishes, and so are the 
 zodiacs of the ancient Chaldeans and Buddhists 
 represented with crossed fishes. And even 
 Solomon's temple was built on these founda- 
 tions, forming the "triple tau" or three 
 crosses, according to one of the traditions of 
 ancient Masonry. 
 
 In its mystical sense the Egyptian cross de- 
 rives its origin from its former use as an em- 
 blem of the realization by the earliest philoso- 
 phers of an androgynous dualism in every man- 
 ifestation of nature, which proceeds from the 
 abstract idea of a likewise androgynous or 
 double-sexed (male and female) deity. The 
 tau or Egyptian cross, in its mystical sense as 
 well as the crux ansata, represents the " tree of 
 life" while the Roman cross, on which Christ 
 was crucified, was called the " l?re of infamy." 
 The crucifix was an instrument of torture, and 
 was common among the Romans, for it was 
 unknown among Semitic nations until con- 
 quered by the Romans, and during the first 
 two decades after the crucifixion of Christ, the 
 apostles looked upon it with horror. It is cer- 
 tainly not the Christian cross that John had in 
 mind, when speaking of the signet of the 
 " living God," but the mystic tau. 
 
 Many customs found in Christendom may 
 be traced back to Egypt. The Egyptian at 
 his marriage put a gold ring on his wife's finger 
 as a token that he entrusted her with all his 
 
 property, just as in a Church of England mar- 
 riage service the bridegroom does the same 
 thing, saying, "with all my worldly goods I 
 thee endow." The feast of candles at Isis is 
 still marked in the Christian calendar as Can- 
 dlemas-day. The Catholic priests shave their 
 heads as the ancient Egyptian priests did sev- 
 eral thousand years ago. The surplice of the 
 Episcopal minister, which he wears when read- 
 ing the liturgy is the same as that worn by the 
 ancient Egyptian priest. The Pope assuming to 
 hold the keys, was taken from an Egyptian 
 priest at Thebes whose " title was keeper of the 
 t\yo doors of heaven," (see Sharpe's "Egyp- 
 tian Mythology.") All the forms and ceremo- 
 nies of the* Jews bear ear-marks of having been 
 borrowed by Moses from the Egyptians; " the 
 ark," "the holy of holies," the scapegoat, the 
 cherubim, w^ere derived from the sphynx. Also 
 the rite of circumcision was practiced in Egypt 
 as early as the fourth dynasty, says Wilkinson, 
 long before the time of Abraham. 
 
 The Trinity. 
 
 In the Book of Hermes, the origin of which 
 is lost in the colonization of Egypt, there is a 
 reference made to the Hindoo Chrisna, accord- 
 ing to the Brahmins, and it enunciates in dis- 
 tinct terms the trinitarian dogma. "The light 
 is me," says Pimander; ''the Divine thought; I 
 am the nous, or intelligence, and I am thy God 
 and am far older than the human principle, 
 which escapes from the shadow. I am the 
 germ of thought; the resplendent word; the 
 Son of God. Think that what thou seest and 
 heare"t is the verbwn of the master; it is the 
 thought which is God, the Father. The celes- 
 tial ocean, the ether, which flows from east to 
 west, is the breath of the Father, the life-giving 
 principle, the Holy Ghost, for they are not 
 separated and their union is life." 
 
 The trinity of the Egyptians was a triangle. 
 Plutarch says that the Egyptians worshiped 
 Osiris, Isis and Horus, under the form of a 
 triangle. He adds that they considered every- 
 thing perfect to have three parts, and therefore 
 their good god made himself three-fold, while 
 their god of evil remained single. 
 
 The ancient Hindoos had a Christ, a virgin 
 " mother of God," queen of heaven, though 
 Isis is also by right the queen of heaven, and 
 
95 
 
 is generally represented carrying in her hand 
 the crux ansata (y ) or cross. In one of the 
 ancient tombs of the Pharaohs there is a figure 
 of the birth of the sun in the form of a little 
 child issuing from the bosom of its divine 
 mother, the resplendent golden rays darting 
 forth from its head, which was intended to rep- 
 resent the rays of the sun-god. The mono- 
 gram or symbol of the god Saturn was the sign 
 of the cross with a ram's horn in indication of 
 the lamb of God. Jupiter also bore a cross 
 with a horn, and Venus a cross with a circle. 
 
 Among the Semitic nations we can trace the 
 trinity to the prehistoric days of the fabled Se- 
 sostris, who is identified by more than one critic 
 with Nimrod the "mighty hunter." "Tell me, 
 O, thou strong in fire, who, before me, could 
 subjugate all things ? and who shall after me } " 
 And the oracle saith thus: "First, God, then 
 the Word and then the Spirit." (See " x\p 
 Malal," liber i, cap. iv.) 
 
 Then there was the trinity of God, earth, at- 
 mosphere; earth, fire and water; and this three- 
 fold function of the Divinity evidently gave rise 
 to the Hebrew Jehovah, or Ye-ho-vah, repre- 
 senting the Future, the Present and the Past, 
 and from this idea of the three united in one 
 has given us the trinity — Father, Son and Holy 
 Ghost — which was taken from the three-fold 
 deity of the Hindoos, which antedates that of 
 the Jews, who understood the powers of the 
 prism and the breaking of the rays of light into 
 red, yellow and blue, by the means of w^hich 
 they were able to calculate and make astronom- 
 ical calculations, and with the aid of the trian- 
 gle, with its three sides in one, they described 
 a part of a circle which represents the infinite 
 and is an important figure in geometry, next 
 in importance to the circle that encloses a 
 globe, which is the most perfect form ot all 
 bodies and figures, and represents the whole. 
 
 There is no doubt of the great antiquity of 
 the trinity in India, as it is written in books, in 
 a language that has ceased to be spoken for 
 thousands of years, long before the birth of 
 Christ, while in their temples and ruins, in the 
 old cavern of Elephanta, hewn into the solid 
 rock at a time so remote that it is not known 
 in history. Here the traveler beholds with awe 
 and astonishment, in the most conspicuous part 
 of the most ancient and venerable temple of the 
 
 world, a bust expanding in breadth nearly twen- 
 ty feet, and no less than eighteen feet in alti- 
 tude — a bust composed of three heads united 
 to one body, adorned with the oldest symbols 
 of Indian theology, and thus expressly fabricat- 
 ed to indicate the one God in his triune char- 
 acter of the Creator, Preserver and Regener- 
 tor of mankind. 
 
 The Zoroastrians or sun-worshipers had a 
 trinity in the sun, light, fire, flame, three mani- 
 festations of the sun, which gave rise to the all- 
 seeing eye, which is synonymous to that of 
 sun-worship, which Solomon introduced into 
 the order of Freemasonry, which he took from 
 the Egyptians and Assyrians. 
 
 The Persian triplicate deity was also composed 
 of three persons — Ormuzd, Mithra and Ahri- 
 man. 
 
 The Hindoos had three in their trinity, Brah- 
 ma, Vishnu and Siva, corresponding to power, 
 wisdom and justice, or creator, preserver and 
 destroyer of life, which in their turn answered to 
 spirit, force and matter, and the past, present 
 and future. 
 
 The Chinese idol Sampao, consisted of three, 
 equal in all respects. 
 
 The ancient Egyptians had their triplet, 
 Emepht, Eicton and Phta; and this triple god, 
 seated on the lotus, one of the images, can 
 now be seen in the St. Petersburg museum. 
 
 The Peruvians supposed their god, Tanga- 
 Tanga, to be one in three and three in one. 
 
 The ancient Mexicans had also a trinity. — 
 Yzona (Father), Bacah (Son) and Echvah (Ho- 
 ly Ghost) and they said they received the doc- 
 trine from their ancestors. (See Lord Kings- 
 borough's " Anct. Mex.," page 165.) And 
 these ancient Mexicans or Aztecs had a Christ 
 and a virgin mother; and one of the priests 
 that were with Cortez said that the devil had 
 evidently informed them of these facts, for who 
 else could have given them that information. 
 
 All these facts carry us back long anterior to 
 the time mentioned in the old Bible, which was 
 taken by the Egyptians from India, and by the 
 Israelites carried from Egypt to Palestine. 
 Moses and Aaron learned it in the temples from 
 the hierophants or priests, who were learned 
 in all the religious matters, and who guarded 
 their secrets with most sacred vigilance. For 
 centuries the Egyptians were a secluded people 
 
96 
 
 like the Chinese, says Herodotus, and the 
 Greeks by stealth drew all their information 
 from them; that the Egyptians were, at an early 
 date, undoubtedly a colony from India, as their 
 religion and civilization bear its ear-marks. 
 
 Modern Christanity is nothing but the pure 
 and spiritual doctrines taught by Christ, defiled 
 by paganism and superstition which have been 
 engrafted on it. All the forms and ceremo- 
 nies that were condemned by Christ had their 
 origin in the old pagan worship of idolatry. 
 The burning of the fire on the altar and the 
 burning of the incense had their origin in the 
 heathen temples thousands of years before the 
 birth of Christ. The nuns of the Roman 
 Catholic church are taken from the vestal 
 virgins, and the monks took the place of the 
 Roman augurs. The forms of churches and 
 cathredals were taken from those of the ancient 
 temples of the heathen gods. These temples 
 were first constructed for tombs, hence the idea 
 is still prevalent of burying the dead in the 
 churchyard or under the church floor or altar. 
 
 The Papal tiara, which is the crown worn by 
 the Popes of Rome, the so-called successors of 
 St. Peter, is the same as that worn by the gods 
 of ancient Assyria; so also are the tonsure and 
 surplice of the priests copied from the same 
 source, and the tinkling bells were used before 
 the altar of Jupiter Amnion, around the hem of 
 the robe of the high-priest of the Mosaic Jews; 
 and bells were also suspended in the pagodas, 
 and on the sacred table of the Buddhist. The 
 beads and rosaries were used by the Buddhist 
 monks for over five hundred years before the 
 birth of Christ, and the cross was in use for 
 many centuries before it was adopted as a 
 symbol of the Christian church, as a secret 
 sign of recognition among neophytes and adepts 
 of occultism. It is a Kabalistic sign, and 
 represents the oppositions and quaternary equi- 
 librium of the elements. It is also found in 
 the caves and ruins of the prehistoric man of 
 Europe, Asia and America. 
 
 The cross, the miter, the dalmatica, the cope 
 which the grand lamas (priests) wear while 
 performing certain ceremonies out of the 
 temple, the service with double choirs, the 
 psalmody, the exorcism, the censer suspended 
 from five chains and which can be opened or 
 closed at pleasure, the benedictions given by 
 
 the lamas by extending the right hand over the 
 heads of the faithful; the chaplet, ecclesiastical 
 celibacy, religions retirement, the worship of 
 saints, the fasts, the processions, the litanies, 
 the holy water, are all striking analogies that 
 are difficult to explain. 
 
 Father Bury, a Portuguese missionary, when 
 he beheld the Chinese bonzes (priests) using 
 rosaries, praying in an unknown tongue and 
 kneeling before images, exclaimed in astonish- 
 ment, "There is not a piece of dress, not a 
 sacerdotal function, not a ceremony of the 
 courts of Rome which the devil has not copied 
 in this country." (See Kesson, " The Cross 
 and Dragon," also Father Hue's " Recollections 
 of a Journey in Tartary, Thibet and China.") 
 
 The question at once rises, which was the 
 original? Did the Christian Catholics copy the 
 Buddhists, or did the Buddhists borrow from 
 them? The rock-cut monasteries and temples 
 in India, the records of China and Ceylon, all 
 agree in placing it in favor of the Buddhists, 
 who existed not less than five hundred years 
 before Christ. Says Mr. Plardwicke, "It may 
 have been possible to have two spontaneous 
 growths, but more probable that the one is 
 copied from the other." 
 
 The Hindoos had their sacred river in the 
 Ganges, where they bathed and purified them- 
 selves; so the Jews had theirs in the river 
 Jordan. The Jews plagiarized their religion 
 from the Hindoos, as the Greeks did from the 
 Egyptians, and the Romans from the Greeks, 
 so that upon a careful scrutiny of all the ancient 
 religions, they bear the ear-marks of one origin in 
 India. And the similiarity of these religions 
 is so great that the modern Hindoos found 
 fault with the British government for allowing a 
 temple of Vishnu to fall to ruins, as they claim 
 that Chrisna and Christ are one and the same 
 person. 
 
 Religions, like thoughts, have one common 
 origin in the brain, and in both cases the ideas 
 are more borrowed than original. Symbolism 
 is often used to convey to the untutored mind 
 the idea of some great truth; but frequently the 
 mind cannot yet entirely comprehend it, so 
 that the common mind falls down and worships 
 the image instead of the true being which it is 
 intended to represent. As the mind becomes 
 more enlightened it sees and comprehends 
 
97 
 
 these truths and then discards the idols and 
 images and looks up to and feels the great 
 truths in his own mind. 
 
 The Madonna is only the reproduction of 
 Isis under a new name, standing on the crescent 
 of the moon, holding her infant Horus in her 
 arms, which represented to the ancient Egyp- 
 tians that the moon followed the sun, and that 
 Iris, the Earth, with her child Horus, \vho was 
 the son of Osiris, the sun-god, the ruler of the 
 day, and the son followed the father; that night 
 preceded the day. Juvenal says, "That the 
 painters of Egypt made their living by paint- 
 ing the goddess Isis and her son Horus, and 
 exporting them to Italy, which was a very pop- 
 ular picture at the time of the introduction of 
 Christianity into Rome, and was by the priests 
 substituted for and called the Madonna, the 
 virgin Mary and child." (See "Ten Great 
 Religions," page 254 ) 
 
 In the explorations of the ancient ruins at 
 Philie, Upper Egypt, which antedated the birth 
 of Christ, there has been found what was sup- 
 posed to be the holy family, when in reality it 
 proved to be Osiris, Isis and Horus, instead of 
 being Joseph, Mary and Jesus; and what is 
 still more remarkable, that in the old temples 
 of India they are represented as black, while 
 many of the ancient statues of Buddha are 
 represented with Crisp, curly hair, with flat 
 noses and thick lips; nor can it be reasonably 
 doubted that a negro race once held pre-emi- 
 nence in India. Higgins writes, "There is 
 scarcely an old church in Italy where some 
 remams of the worship of the black virgin and 
 child are not to be met with," This is strong 
 evidence that they were taken either from India 
 or Egypt. 
 
 The Holy Communion or Lord's Supper. 
 
 The Holy Communion or Lord's Supper had 
 its commencement in the Bacchic mysteries, 
 where a communion cup was handed around 
 after supper, out of which all took a sip of 
 wine. It was called the cup of Agathodaemon. 
 The Orphite rites were similar, where the com- 
 munion consisted of bread and wine in the 
 worship of nearly every deity of any import- 
 ance. Epiphanius tells a strange story about a 
 Gnostic sect that celebrated their eucharist, 
 having three vases of the finest and clearest 
 
 crystal which w^ere filled with white wine, and 
 while the ceremony was going on, in the pres- 
 ence of all, it changed to a blood-red, then a 
 purple, and finally into an azure-blue color. 
 Then the magus handed the vases of wine to a 
 woman of the congregation, asking her to bless 
 it. Then it was poured into a larger vase, and 
 after much prayer and devotion it began to boil 
 and rise in the vase until it ran over. 
 
 During the mysteries wane which represented 
 Bacchus was used, he being of Indian origin. 
 Cicero mentioiled him as a son of Thyone and 
 Nisus, and consequently Bacchus crowned with 
 ivy or kissos, is Chrisna, one of whose names 
 was Kissen, or Christ. The ancient Greeks 
 and Romans in the mysteries used wine to rep- 
 resent Bacchus and bread for Ceres. 
 
 The Deluge. 
 
 The ancient Chaldeans and Hindoos had 
 their Adam and Eve, their Noah and the flood, 
 while the Bible would lead us to believe that 
 the Gnrden of Eden was located on the 
 Euphrates, and that the ark rested on Mount 
 Ararat, while the Hindoo tradition places it on 
 the Himalayas. It cannot be denied that man 
 must have had a beginning, and that there has 
 been a deluge in Central Asia there can be no 
 doubt, the tradition of which can be traced to 
 every country, and which, according to Bunsen, 
 happened about the year 10,000 B. C, and had 
 nought to do with the mythical Noah orNuah. 
 A partial cataclysm occurs at the close of every 
 geological "age" of the world, which does not 
 destroy it, but only changes its general appear- 
 ance. While some portions are submerged, 
 others are elevated. And the fossils found 
 lead us to believe that new races of men, new 
 animals and a new flora evolve from the disso- 
 lution of the preceding ones. 
 
 The Hindoo tradition says that Vaivasvata, 
 who in the Bible becomes Noah, was saved by 
 a little fish, which turned out to be an avater 
 of Vishnu. The fish warns that just man that 
 the globe is about to be submerged, that all the 
 inhabitants must perish, and orders him to con- 
 struct a vessel in which he shall embark with 
 all his family. When the ship is finished he 
 goes on board with his entire family, taking 
 with him the seeds of all plants and a pair of 
 every kind of animal; then the heavens open 
 
98 
 
 and the rains fall and the entire surface of the 
 earth is covered with water. A gigantic fish, 
 armed with a horn, places itself at the head of 
 the ark, and the holy man, following its orders, 
 attaches a cable to its horn, and the fish guides 
 the ship for forty days and nights through the 
 raging elements, and finally landed the ark on 
 the summit of the Himalayas; yet among all 
 the ancient Egyptian writings there is no men- 
 tion of a deluge, therefore it is evident that it 
 was confined to Central Asia, if it ever oc- 
 curred at all; and as the writings of the ancient 
 Hindoos are much older than those Of" the 
 Bible, it most probably was taken from the 
 Hindoo by the Chaldeans, and from them by 
 the Jews. But it is, in all probability, an alle- 
 gory representing the incarnation of the spirit 
 in the flesh. 
 
 Noah is the Chaldean for Nuah, who is the 
 king of the humid principle, the spirit moving 
 or floating on the waters in his ark, the latter 
 being the emblem of the argha or moon, the 
 feminine principle. Noah is the '* spirit" fall- 
 ing into matter, so we find him as soon as he 
 descended to the earth, planting a vineyard, 
 drinking wine and getting drunk on it; /. e., the 
 pure spirit becoming intoxicated as soon as it is 
 finally imprisoned in matter. 
 
 The dagon or fish-man, found engraven in 
 stone and metal of the ancients, had its origin 
 in the idea that man sprang from fish. The 
 Japanese have a singular idol formed out of the 
 body and tail of a fish, fastened upon the head 
 and shoulders of a monkey, which gave rise to 
 the idea of mermaids. "The Hindoo god, 
 Vishnu, assumed the form of a fish with a hu- 
 man head, in order to reclaim the Vedas, lost 
 during the deluge. Having enabled Visvami- 
 tra to escape with all his tribe in the ark, but, 
 pitying weak and erring humanity, he remained 
 with them for some time, taught them how to 
 build houses and cultivate the land. He re- 
 mained on land in the day-time and went to 
 the ocean to pass his nights. '*One day he 
 plunged into the water and returned no more, 
 for the earth had covered itself with vegetation, 
 fruit and cattle." 
 
 This fable of Vishnu disguised as a fish gives 
 weight to the sacred books of the Hindoos, es- 
 pecially in view of the fact that the Vedas and 
 Manu reckon more than twenty-five thousand 
 
 years of existence, as proved by the most serious 
 as well as the most authentic documents. Few 
 people, says the learned Halhed, have their 
 annals more authentic or more serious than the 
 Hindoos. 
 
 The big story of Jonah and the whale had its 
 origin in the same idea, that man sprang from 
 out of the fish. Vishnu is evidently the Adam 
 Kadmon of the Kabalists, for Adam is the Lo- 
 gos, or the first anointed, as Adam second is 
 the King Messiah; Adam Kadmon was an ema- 
 nation of Jehovah; and Adam the first man was 
 the first materialized spirit of man clothed in 
 flesh; having lost the power to dematerialize 
 was forced to live in the flesh on the earth. Be- 
 ing androgynous, as all angels are, and falling into 
 deep sleep or trance, the female principle was 
 separated by drawing her life principle out of 
 his side and materialized in the material form 
 of a woman, called Eve in the Bible. 
 
 Lakmy, or Lakshmi, the passive or female 
 counterpart of Vishnu, the creator and pre- 
 server, is also called Ada Maya. She is the 
 "mother of the world," Damatri, the Venus 
 aphrodite of the Greeks; she is also called Isis 
 and Eve. While Venus was born from the sea- 
 foam, Lakmy springs out from the water at the 
 churning of the sea. When born she is so 
 beautiful that all the gods fall in love with her. 
 The Jews, borrowing their types wherever they 
 could get them, made their first woman after 
 the pattern of Lakmy. It is a curious coinci- 
 dence that Viracocha, the Supreme Being of 
 ancient Peru, means, when literally translated, 
 " foam of the sea." 
 
 In the oldest Hindoo book, Manu, there is 
 a passage that says, "That this world issued 
 out of darkness; the subtle elementary princi- 
 ples produced the vegetable seed, which ani- 
 mated first the plants. From plants, life passed 
 into fantastical bodies, which were born in the 
 waters; then, through a series of forms of 
 plants, worms, insects, fish, serpents, tortoises, 
 cattle and wild animals, until finally man was 
 evolved. This is in accordauce with the laws 
 of evolution, as laid down by Darwin and 
 Huxley. 
 
 "The object of all religions," says the Per- 
 sian Hafiz, "is alike." All men seek their 
 beloved, and is not all the world love's dwell- 
 ing ? Why talk of a mosque or a church } 
 
99 
 
 Hindoo teachers say, " The creed of the lover 
 differs from other creeds. God is the creed of 
 those who love Him, and to do good is best 
 with the folio w^ers of every faith." He alone 
 is a true Hindoo whose heart is just, and he 
 only is a good Mussulman whose life is pure. 
 "Remember Him who has seen numberless 
 Mahomets, Vishnus, Vivas, come and go, and 
 who is not found by one who forgets or turns 
 
 from the poor." "The common standpoint 
 of the three religions," says the Chinese, "is 
 that they in<;ist on the banishment of evil de- 
 sire and do good." 
 
 So we see in all religious beliefs a commin- 
 gling of their forms and ceremonies, which 
 goes far to establish the fact that all religions 
 must have had their origin from a belief in a 
 state of future existence. 
 
CHAPTER XL 
 
 THE EIGHT GREAT RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. BRAHMINISM, BUDDHISM, ZORO- 
 
 ASTERISM, MOSAICISM, CHRISTIANITY. MOHAMMEDANISM, 
 
 LAOTESEISM AND MODERM SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 Comparative Theology, like comparative 
 anatomy, comparative geography, and compar- 
 ative philology, is yet in its infancy. It is a 
 science which consists in the study of the facts 
 of human history and their relation to each 
 other. It does not dogmatize; it observes, 
 and it deals only with phenomena and facts 
 that relate to the spiritual nature in man. 
 
 By comparing the various religions of man- 
 kind we see wherein they differ, wherein they 
 agree, and what appears true and what false. 
 It shows both sides of religion and that as it 
 has advanced with civilization, it has lost much 
 of its severity, and that a higher religion and 
 better morals must find root in the decaying 
 soils of past religious beliefs and traditions of 
 God, duty and immortality of the soul. 
 
 The duty of comparative theology is to do 
 justice to all the religions of mankind, to strike 
 out all debasing superstitions and arrive at the 
 truth. All religions teach the immortality of 
 the soul, future rewards and punishments, a 
 hell and a heaven. The basis of all religions 
 is spiritism; that the spirit of the departed lives 
 and has its existence in the atmosphere sur- 
 rounding us. 
 
 The ablest writers on comparative theology 
 are Max Muller, Bunsen, Burnouf, DoUinger, 
 Hardwicke, St. Hilaire, Duncker, Baur, Renan, 
 Cox, and J. F. Clarke, author of the "Ten 
 Great Religions." These writers show great 
 learning and have stripped mythology and the- 
 ology of its outward forms and sacred robes, 
 showing, beyond a doubt, that religions, like 
 civilizations, are the outgrowth of older reli- 
 gions and civilizations; that it comes from 
 within; that it is a part of man's nature to be 
 religious, so that he has often been called a 
 
 religious animal, as no other animal offers up 
 prayers or supplications to the Great Spirit of 
 the unseen universe. 
 
 All the principal religions, like the human 
 race, appear to have had their origin in Asia, 
 and have spread thence over the whole civilized 
 world. Each race has adopted a certain relig- 
 ion that has had much to do in shaping its civ- 
 ilization. Research has shown that India is the 
 mother of civilization and religion; that, far 
 back in the night of time, the songs of the Reg- 
 Veda were written in Sanscrit. It is the oldest 
 written language, and is the mother of the 
 Greek language, which, from its perfection, was 
 claimed by the Greeks as the language of the 
 gods — while the modern Christians, adhering to 
 the idea of Moses and creation, make the He- 
 brew the language of God as given to Adam 
 and Eve in the Garden of Eden. 
 
 There appears to be a material connection 
 between language and religion. As language is 
 the medium through w^hich the soul communi- 
 cates its thoughts and feelings to its fellow- 
 man, so, in the growth and development of 
 language, we are enabled to trace the early 
 ideas and view^s of primitive man far back in 
 the past, long before there was ever a written 
 language, for words were used long before they 
 were reduced to writing, so that the philologist 
 is enabled to trace back the Aryan religion to a 
 period long before it separated into different 
 races. So that by the use of words, generic in 
 their nature, that are to be found in common 
 use, by different races speaking different lan- 
 guages — the same or similar words are used to 
 express the same thing or ideas — it is evident 
 that far back in the past these different races 
 spoke a common language; and when the gen- 
 
101 
 
 eric words relate to God or religion, then it is 
 evidence that their religion was about the same. 
 So in this way the human family has been 
 traced back to the different origins and centers 
 from which it diverged. Each of these diverg- 
 ing races carries with them these generic words, 
 with their meaning about the same, though 
 they may and often do change the nomencla- 
 ture of these generic words, as the dialects and 
 provincialisms tend to give the phonetic sounds 
 to them. 
 
 " If," says Max Muller, " we would learn to 
 be charitable in the interpretation of the lan- 
 guage of other religions, we shall more easily 
 learn to be charitable in the interpretation of 
 our own language. We shall no longer try to 
 force a literal interpretation on words and sen- 
 tences in our sacred books, which, if interpre- 
 ted literally, must lose their original purport 
 and their spiritual truth." If we can make 
 allowance for mouth and lips and breath, we 
 can surely make the same allowance for words 
 and their utterance, for all languages have their 
 dialects. There is a high and there is a low 
 dialect; there is a broad and there is a narrow 
 dialect; there are dialects for men and for wo- 
 men and for children; for clergy and for laity; 
 for the noisy streets and for the still and quiet 
 life of the closets of students; and as the child 
 advances to manhood it has to learn its lan- 
 guage and its religion. 
 
 The religion of the nursery, with baby talk, 
 ghost and witch stories, implants a supersti- 
 tious religion which requires a severe mental 
 struggle to outgrow, and some are so effemin- 
 ate that they never are able to throw it off. 
 Therefore the mass of mankind speak the lan- 
 guage of their fathers and adopt their ideas of 
 politics and business, and cling to the religion 
 of their mother; therefore the masses move 
 slowly in politics and still slower in religion. 
 The early expressions of religion were no doubt 
 frequently childish and mythical, which has 
 tended to confuse the scholar in arriving at 
 what was the real religious sentiment. It is 
 impossible to express abstract ideas except by 
 metaphor, and it is not too much to say that 
 the whole dictionary of ancient religion is 
 made up of metaphors, and consequently there 
 is a constant struggle in the mind to free the 
 material from the spiritual. 
 
 By the aid of comparative philology man 
 has been enabled to trace the leading races and 
 religions back to three centers in Asia — the 
 Aryan, the Semitic and the Turanic. The 
 Aryan includes the Hindoo and the European 
 races, for that reason they are called Indo- 
 European, and some call them the Indo-Ger- 
 manic. I am inclined to believe Indo-Euro- 
 pean is, perhaps, the best term, as it leads to 
 less confusion. This race at a very early date 
 broke up into four parts. The Indians or Hin- 
 doos went southeast into India by the way of 
 the Punjaub, while the Irsenians settled in Per- 
 sia, and reach through Hindoo Koos mountains 
 east to the country now known as Afghanistan, 
 and to the Himalaya mountains, and west into 
 the Caucasus mountains, which was at one 
 time supposed to be the home of the white 
 race, who are often called the Caucausian race. 
 The Greeks and Romans entered Europe by 
 crossing the Plellespont. ^neas fled from 
 Troy and settled in Italy. The Celts, Teutons 
 and Sclavs entered Europe from the north side 
 of the Black Sea. 
 
 The Hindoo branch of the Aryan family still 
 adheres to its old religion, and in the belief of 
 spirits and of the spirituality of God in the 
 shape of a Divine mind or Sensorium, from 
 whence all divine intelligence is drawn. And 
 their religion is that of Brahminism and Bud- 
 dhism. Their sacred books or bible is the 
 Vedas, written in the Sanscrit, and from this 
 language the philologist is enabled to trace the 
 origin of the Greek, Latin, and the German 
 and Anglo-Saxon and English languages. 
 
 It is evident that the Semitic religion of 
 Abraham dates far back into the past, long 
 before the flood, which was the submerging of 
 some portion of the Eastern hemisphere, per- 
 haps a submerged continent which is now called 
 Lemuria. It lies to the south of India, and is 
 where some writers locate the origin of man on 
 earth. 
 
 The Bible says, "And Joshua said unto 
 all the people; thus saith the Lord God of 
 Israel: your fathers dwelt on the other side of 
 the flood in old times, even Terah, the father 
 of Abraham and the father of Nachor, and 
 they serv'ed other gods. * * * Now, there- 
 fore, fear the Lord and serve Him in sincerity 
 and truth; and put away the gods which your 
 
102 
 
 fathers served on the other side of the flood 
 and in Egypt and serve ye the Lord/' 
 
 And it is evident from this declaration of 
 Joshua that before the flood they had other 
 gods, and it might have been that they belong- 
 ed to the same stock or root as the Aryan 
 races, who had many gods. The Brahmins 
 claim that they got their knowledge of God 
 from the Pitri, who lived before the flood. 
 They were spirits who returned to earth to teach 
 man after the flood. Here we get a glimpse of 
 the remoteness of man and his religion, and 
 here was the beginning of the Hebrew race and 
 religion; the idea of a Jehovah and a jealous, 
 revengeful God, a monotheisthic God without 
 wife or children, to whom Christianity has given 
 a son equal to the father, and Mohammedan- 
 ism has given Him a prophet who has charge 
 of His earthly affairs and of the admission into 
 Paradise. 
 
 The Semitic nations have, on the contrary, a 
 different word for their deity. El, which means 
 strong, and throughout all the Semitic races it 
 is a term applied to their deity. In the He- 
 brew we have the word Beth-El, the house of 
 God; ha-El, the strong one. 
 
 " El was the name for God in Babylon, and 
 was worshiped at Byblis by the Phoenicians, 
 and he was called the sun of heaven and earth. 
 His father was the son of Eliuui, the most high 
 God, who had been killed by wild animals. 
 The son of Elium, who succeeded him, was 
 dethroned and at last slain by his own son El, 
 whom Philo identified with the Greek Kronos, 
 and is represented as the presiding deity of the 
 planet Saturn, with the name of El. Philo 
 connected the name with Elohim, the plural of 
 Eloah. In the battle between El and his 
 father, the aliens of El, he says, ' were called 
 Elohim, as those who were with Kronos were 
 called Kronivi.' " 
 
 Eloah is used in the Bible synonymous with 
 El. It means gods in general or false gods, 
 while in Arabic ilah without the article means 
 a god in general, with the article Al-ilah or 
 Allah becomes the name of the God of Moham- 
 med. Hence we find through all the Semitic 
 races different terms for God, which have been 
 changed but little from El, the \^ jylonian 
 name for God. 
 
 The majority of the writers o )hilology 
 
 claim that the Semitic language had its origin 
 in a different root. That it sprang from some 
 wild, ape-like man family or group, far differ- 
 ent from that of the Aryan. 
 
 Elyon. which in Greek means the highest, is 
 used in the old Testament as a predicate of 
 God. It occurs also by itself as a name of 
 Jehovah. Melchizedek is called emphatically 
 the priest of El-Elyon — the priest of the Most 
 High God. It is evidently derived from a 
 Phoenician word, Elium, the High God, the 
 Father of Heaven, who was the father of El. 
 The word Jehovah or Jahveh is supposed to be 
 derived from a Chaldean word, Ido, God. It 
 is claimed by Sir Henry Rawlinson to be found 
 on inscriptions in the ruins of Babylon. Yet it 
 may be of Hebrew origin — after their separation 
 from the main branch of the Semitic race — and, 
 therefore was a local word, which the Jews used 
 in the sense of the one true God. Abraham 
 worshiped God as Jehovah, and philologists 
 differ as to whether it is of Hebrew origin. 
 
 The Semitic nations, Assyrians, Babylonians, 
 Phoenicians, Carthagenians, the Moabites, Phil- 
 istians, and, sometimes, the Jews, called their 
 great or supreme (iod, Bel, or Baal. Before 
 the flood, he was called Bel. Though origin- 
 ally 07ie Baal, he became divided into many 
 divine personalities through the influence of 
 local worship. So we hear of a Baal-tsur, 
 Baal-tsidon, Baal-tare, originally the Baal of 
 Tyre, of Sidon, and of Tarsus. At Shechem> 
 Baal was worshiped as Baal barith, supposed to 
 mean the God of treaties. At Ekron, the Phil- 
 istians worshiped him as Baal-zebub, the lord 
 of flies (hence comes our Beelzebub); while the 
 Moabites, and the Jews, too, knew him also 
 by the name of Baal-peor. On the Phoenician 
 coins, Baal is called Baai-shamayim, the Baal 
 of heaven, which is the. Beelsamen of Philo, 
 identified by him with the sun, and makes him 
 a sun-god. 
 
 When the ancient Babylonians spoke of 
 Belus, the Supreme God, cutting off his own 
 head, that the blood flowing from it might be 
 mixed with the dust out of which men were 
 for.med, sounds horrible and absurd; but, by 
 this myth, they only convey the idea that there 
 is in man an element of divine life — that we 
 are also his offspring. The ancient Egyptians 
 convey about the same idea in the seventeenth 
 
103 
 
 chapter of thier "ritual," that the sun mutilated 
 himself, and that from the stream of his blood 
 he created beings. And Moses conveys the 
 same idea in Genesis when he sa3^s that, " God 
 formed man from the dust of the ground, and 
 breathed into his nostrils the breath of life." 
 
 The Assyrians, Babylonians, Phoenicians, 
 Hebrews, Syrian tribes, Arabs and Carthage- 
 nians all belonged to the Semitic race. It is 
 the only race that was ever a rival of the Aryan 
 race. The Semitic race has been great on land 
 and sea. From the valley of the Euphrates 
 and that of the Tigris, its sons carried their 
 peculiar civilization west to the Mediterranean 
 sea, whose commerce at one time was under 
 the control of the Phcenicians, whose ships ex- 
 plored the coast and made settlements at Car- 
 thage and Cadiz, and sailed as far north as 
 Great Britain, and circumnavigated Africa two 
 thousand years before Vasco de Gama. 
 
 The languages of the Semitic nations is very 
 closely related, being almost the dialects of a 
 single tongue, the difference between them be- 
 ing hardly greater than between the different 
 dialects of the German race. 
 
 The Phoenician language is almost identical 
 with that of the Hebrew, and the Phoenicians 
 had the Jewish love of commerce, trade, and 
 making money. By some historians they have 
 been called the ancient Jews of the Mediterra- 
 nean. This race has given to man the alpha- 
 bet, the Bible, the Koran, commerce, and the 
 greatest military genius of the past, Hannibal. 
 
 The peculiarities of these races have been in 
 the structure of their language and the forms of 
 their religion, which consisted mainly of mono- 
 theism — a belief in the existence of one per- 
 sonal God only — while the belief of the Aryan 
 races was that of polytheism — a belief in the 
 plurality of the gods or invisible beings supe- 
 rior to man, and having an agency in the gov- 
 ernment of the world, and who could assist 
 mortals, a kind of ancestral worship of the 
 spirits of ancestors, friends, heroes and states- 
 men, who became gods. 
 
 "The highest God [of the Aryans] received 
 the same name in the ancient mythology of India, 
 Greece, Italy and Germany, and they retained 
 that name, whether worshiped on the Hima- 
 layan mountains (Olympus) or among the oaks 
 of Dodona, on the Capitol, or in the forest of 
 
 Germany. * * * ^y^ j^^^^g i^ ^}^g Vedas 
 the invocation Dya?is-pitar, the Greek, Yev- 
 iiarep, the Latin Jupiter, which means in all 
 three languages what it meant before these 
 languages were torn asunder — it means Heav- 
 enly Father. It did not mean idolatry, or 
 nature-worship, but the Great Spirit that dwelt 
 in the sky, the source of all life and light, from 
 which all intelligence and good has emana- 
 ted." (See Max Muller's " Science of Reli- 
 gion.") 
 
 The ancient Greek and Roman religion is 
 evidently of Aryan origin, as it is illustrated in 
 Homer, ITesiod and Virgil. They believed in 
 tutelary and ancestral spirits, though their 
 religion had become much mixed with that of 
 Egypt and with the Semitic religion, which 
 they introduced into their mythology. 
 
 There have been two streams of religion 
 flowing through two channels; one the Aryan 
 and the other the Semitic; one from the plains 
 of the Euphrates to the Jordan and to the 
 Mediterranean, while the other has flown from 
 the Indus to the Thames, through the middle 
 of Europe, among the blonde race, while the 
 former has been engrafted in the dark races in 
 the south of Europe, in a modified form of the 
 monotheistic Semitic religion — the Roman 
 Catholic religion. 
 
 While, in a still more modified form, it has 
 spread over the whole of middle and northern 
 Europe, where it is known as Protestantism, 
 w^hich is more liberal in its views and loses 
 much of its monotheistic nature and becomes 
 more spiritual. The anthropomorphic idea of 
 an individual God meets with but little favor 
 from the Indo-Germanic races, who are fast 
 falling into the spiritual belief, which was the 
 original religion of the Aryan race, before it 
 became engrafted on Christianity, which was a 
 departure from the monotheistic belief of the 
 Semitic races. As the Christian religion is 
 more Brahminical than Mosaical, it is a rein- 
 carnation of Chrisna or Buddha, and it is more 
 humane and not tyrannical, like that of the 
 Mosaic. 
 
 The Hindoo branch of the Aryan family, 
 like the Hebrew branch of the Semitic family, 
 has produced two religious books, or two reli- 
 gions, one being the outgrowth of the other. 
 The Hindoos have given rise to Brahminism, 
 
104 
 
 and Buddhism is its outgrowth. The He- 
 brew religion had its origin in Mosaicism, and 
 its outgrowth is Christianity. The Irae- 
 nians — the ancient Persians — a branch of the 
 Aryan race, had another religion known as Zo- 
 roasterism, which is found in the Zend-Avesta, 
 and draws much from the old Vedas, the sacred 
 books of the Brahmins. There is still another 
 branch of the Semitic race, the Arabs, which 
 has given to the world another religion known 
 as Mohammedanism, the outgrowth of the 
 old Bible, or rather the old Testament, which 
 has respect for Christ as a prophet, but differs 
 with Christianity as to his divine origin. 
 
 The old monotheisthic doctrine of Moses, 
 taught in the old Testament, that there is but 
 one God and Moses is his prophet, is now em- 
 braced by the entire Semitic race, so that prac- 
 tically this race has again returned to its orig- 
 inal belief in one God — a man-like God, as 
 Moses says, "God created man in his own 
 image," and it can therefore be claimed that 
 he is in the shape and form of a ;;m;z, and this 
 man-like God punishes as well as offers rewards 
 and grants forgiveness of sin through the influ- 
 ence of the Prophet. So thousands flock to 
 Mecca, as Christians do to Jerusalem, to do 
 homage to these sacred places. 
 
 Christianity was an improvement on Mosaic- 
 ism; so was Buddhism an improvement on 
 Brahminism; and both tended to purify and 
 better the condition of the religious sentiment 
 of the people. Christ, though a Jew, was 
 rejected by the Jews, but his religious senti- 
 ment found lodgment among the gentiles — the 
 Indo-European races — but never was very pala- 
 table to the Semitic races, which clung to the 
 monotheistic idea of a man-like God. The 
 doctrine of the trinity was something they 
 could never comprehend, and so they readily 
 fell into the Mohammedan religion, as enun- 
 ciated by its great prophet, who said, "There 
 is but one God and Mohammed is his prophet," 
 while the Jews claim there is but one God and 
 Moses is his prophet. 
 
 The Assyrians, Babylonians, Phoenicians and 
 Carthagenians had a similar religion. They 
 believed in a Supreme God, called by different 
 names — Ira, Bel, Set, Hadad, Moloch, Che- 
 mosh, Jaoh El, Adon and Asshur. All be- 
 lieved in subordinate and secondary beings 
 
 emanating from this Supreme Being, who were 
 his manifestations to the world, and who were 
 the rulers of the planets. Like other panthe- 
 istic religions, the custom prevailed among the 
 Semitic nations of promoting first one and then 
 the other deity to be the supreme object of 
 worship. Among the Assyrians, as among the 
 Egyptians, the gods were often arranged in 
 triads, as that of Anu, Bel and Ao. Anu or 
 Aannes wore the head of a fish, Bel wore the 
 horns of a bull, and Ao was represented by a 
 serpent. Moses is frequently represented as 
 having a ram's horn on the side of his head. 
 
 Brahminism, like the Church of Rome, es- 
 tablished a system of sacramental salvation in 
 the hands of a sacred order. Buddhism, like Pro- 
 testantism, revolted and established a doctrine 
 of individual salvation, based on personal char- 
 acter. Brahminism, like the Church of Rome, 
 teaches an exclusive Spiritualism, glorifying pe- 
 nances and martyrdom, and considers the body 
 the enemy ot the soul. But Buddhism and 
 Protestantism accept nature and its laws, and 
 make it a religion of humanity as well as of 
 devotion. There may be some exceptions, but 
 the rule generally applies. 
 
 The Roman Catholic Church and Brahmin- 
 ism place the essence of religion in sacrifices. 
 The daily sacrifice of mass is the central fea- 
 ture of the former, while Protestantism and 
 Buddhism save the soul by teaching. In the 
 Roman Church the sermon is subordinate to 
 mass, while in Protestantism and Buddhism 
 sermons are the main instruments by which 
 souls are saved. 
 
 Brahminism is a system of inflexible castes; 
 the priestly order is made distinct and supreme. 
 So in Romanism the priesthood alone consti- 
 tute the church, while in Buddhism and Pro- 
 testantism the laity regain their rights. Bud- 
 dhism in Asia, like Protestantism in Europe 
 and America, is a revolt of nature against spirit, 
 of humanity against caste, of individual free- 
 dom against the despotism of an order, of sal- 
 vation by faith against salvation by sacrament. 
 
 While Buddhism is often called the Protest- 
 antism of the East, it has many of the forms 
 and ceremonies of Romanism. The chanting 
 of prayers, counting of beads, burning of in- 
 cense and candles before the image of the vir- 
 gin Mary, called the queen of heaven, having 
 
105 
 
 an infant in her arms and holding a cross. 
 While Buddhism makes God or the good and 
 heaven to be equivalent to nothing or repose, 
 it intensifies and exaggerates evil. Though 
 heaven is a blank, hell is a very solid reality. 
 It is present and future too; everything in the 
 thousand hells of Buddhism is painted as viv- 
 idly as in the hell of Dantes. God has disap- 
 peared from the universe and in his place is 
 only the inexorable law, which grinds on for- 
 ever. It punishes and rewards, but has no 
 love in it. It is only dead, cold, hard, cruel, 
 unrelenting law. Yet Buddhists are not athe- 
 ists any more than a child who has never heard 
 of God. A child cannot be either deist of 
 atheist, because it has no theology. 
 
 The platonic philosophy was able to grasp 
 and hold the idea of God and man, the infinite 
 and finite, the eternal and the temporal. 
 Christianity recognizes God as the infinite and 
 eternal, but recognizes also the world of time 
 and space as real. Man exists as well as God; 
 we love God, we must love man too. Brahmin- 
 ism loves God, but not man; it has piety, but 
 no humanity. Buddhism loves man, but not 
 God; it has humanity, no piety; if it has piety 
 it is by a beautiful want of logic, its heart being 
 wiser than its head. 
 
 Christianity takes all the good there is in the 
 Buddhist doctrine and gives man a live God, 
 a soul, a heaven, and a hereafter. Buddhism 
 makes man struggle up to God, Avhile Christian- 
 ity makes God come down to man, and unites 
 all in one vast brotherhood. 
 
 For further information I refer you to the 
 "Esoteric Buddhism," by Sinnett: 
 
 "The one universal spirit comprehending 
 eternal matter, motion, space and duration, 
 evolves the boundless cosmos, comprising 
 countless solar systems, each consisting of seven 
 planetary chains of seven planets each. 
 
 "Evolution takes a like course through each 
 planetary chain, the members of which are 
 intimately bound together, by subtile currents 
 and forces. The passage of individual spiritual 
 entities round this chain constitutes the evolu- 
 tion of man, which is still in progress. There 
 are seven kingdoms of nature. Of the three 
 lowest Western science knows nothing. The 
 mineral, vegetable, animal and man complete 
 the list, the latter including beings of higher 
 
 organization than we are yet familiar with. 
 The wave of existence makes seven rounds 
 through the planetary chain, each sphere being 
 fitted for a different phase of progress, regarding 
 both animate and inanimate nature. Darwin's 
 'Missing Link' is picked up here. Man, 
 whose destiny is the principal object of inquiry, 
 on each round develops in each sphere seven 
 great root races, each producing seven sub- 
 races, again divided into seven branches, and it 
 is well enough to know that we are of the 
 fourth round, fifth race and seventh sub-race; 
 or, in other words, just beyond the middle 
 point of our cyclic career. Considering that 
 the individual nomad makes its progress by 
 successive incarnations of not less than two to 
 each branch race, and that the evolution of our 
 present root-race began about one million years 
 ago, the magnitude and duration of the scheme 
 begins to dawn upon the mind, and on learning 
 that beyond the seven rounds of each planetary 
 chain lies the solar, and beyond that universal 
 cycle, imagination retires baffled from the at- 
 tempt to realize the plan. 
 
 "Seven distinct principles enter into the 
 constitution of man; the body, vitality, the 
 astral body, the animal soul, the human soul, 
 the spiritual soul, and spirit. The first needs 
 no explanation. The second is matter in its 
 aspect as force. Though immaterial, its affinity 
 for gross matter prevents its separation from it 
 except by instant translation to some other 
 particle or mass. We get the idea in the 
 modern theory of the ' Persistence of Force.' 
 The astral body is the eternal duplicate of the 
 physical body — its original design. It guides 
 vitality in its work on the physical particles, 
 and causes it to build up the shape which these 
 assume. Query: Has this any bearing on 
 that stumbling block of modern biology, the 
 subsequent determination of apparently identi- 
 cal embryos.? These three lower principles are 
 of the earth earthy, perishable in their nature 
 as a single entity, and done with by man at his 
 death. The animal soul is the first of the 
 principles which attaches to man's higher 
 nature. It is the seat of the desires and the 
 vehicle of will, influencing, and influenced by 
 the fifth principle, the human soul. This is 
 the seat of reason and memory, and in the 
 majority of mankind is not yet fully developed. 
 
106 
 
 It follows as a matter of course that the sixth 
 principle, the spiritual soul, is yet in embyro. 
 Yet the sixth and also the seventh principle, or 
 pure spirit, inheres in man's nature, and the 
 human soul is capable of assimilating them in 
 its progress to perfection. This seven-fold 
 nature of man is the key to his destiny. At 
 death the three lower principles are finally 
 abandoned by that which is really man himself, 
 the Ego, and the remaining principles escape 
 to Devachan, the world of spirits. A contest 
 ensues, the fourth principle drawing the fifth 
 earthward, while the sixth and seventh attract 
 it upward. The lower instincts, impulses and 
 recollections of the fifth adhere to the fourth, 
 while its most elevated and spiritual portions 
 cling to the sixth and seventh. Devachan is a 
 state, not a locality, in which the soul experi- 
 ences a subjective existence. The karma of 
 physical existence, that is, the affinities for good 
 and evil, generated by man during objective 
 life, determine the duration and character of the 
 subjective life. Like earthly existence it has 
 its season of infancy, prime and exhaustion, 
 passing through oblivion, not into death, but 
 birth, reincarnation and the resumption of 
 action which begets a new karma, to be worked 
 out in another term of devachan. So the 
 process goes on from race to race, from sphere 
 to sphere, from round to round, until perfected 
 humanity attains its destiny in the repose of 
 Nirvana; not the Nirvana of popular miscon- 
 ception — annihilation — but the sublime state of 
 conscious rest in Omniscience. 'The dew- 
 drop slips into the shining sea.' 
 
 "Fantastic and absurd as much of this 
 ' Theory of Nature' may appear, it cannot fail 
 in some respects to arouse earnest attention. 
 Is it nothing that ancient religion and modern 
 science clasp hands across the interval of thirty 
 centuries } 
 
 *'The most prominent and yet unsettled 
 theories of modern thought, the nebular 
 hypothesis, evolution, the descent of man, du- 
 bious problems in biology, ethnology and kin- 
 dred sciences are incorporated with and made 
 a part of an ancient religo-philosophic system, 
 and besides the grand sweep of these Oriental 
 generalizations, the speculations of modern 
 science seems timid, tentative and feeble. 
 
 **Is it possible that our Western civilization | 
 
 does not embrace all that is known of nature 
 and man ? That along other lines of inquiry, 
 and following methods strange and unsatisfactory 
 to us, other men have through centuries pushed 
 their investigations and stored up the results in 
 the archives of secret associations; and that 
 now, when modern thought, released from 
 mediceval fetters, is preparing the way for the 
 recognition of truths in nature, hitherto un- 
 known or denounced, these stores are to be 
 opened to our view to prove the coherence of 
 all truth?" 
 
 The religions of Persia, Egypt, Greece and 
 Rome have come to an end, having shared the 
 fate of their civilization, and while Brahma, 
 Buddha, India and Islam have been arrested, 
 Christianity has taken a milder form, and a 
 new religion called modern Spiritualism has 
 sprung up, which in the last quarter of a century 
 has spread over the whole civilized world, mak- 
 ing inroads upon all other religions. It now 
 numbers not less than twenty-five millions, of 
 the most intelligent advanced thinkers of the 
 age, .while the Christian religions vary from one 
 hundred and twenty to one hundred and seventy 
 millions, the Buddhist from two hundred and 
 twenty-two to three hundred and twenty mill- 
 ions, the Mohammedans from one hundred and 
 ten to one hundred and sixty millions, the 
 Brahmins from one hundred and eleven to one 
 hundred and thirty millions, the Jews from 
 four to six millions. That of the Chinese re- 
 ligions we have no figures to go by. 
 
 M. Hubner gives the following religious sta- 
 tistics, comprising the leading religions of the 
 world: 
 
 CHRISTIANS, 400,000,000. 
 
 Roman Catholics 200,000,000 
 
 Protestants 110,000,000 
 
 Greeks 80,000,000 
 
 Various other sects 10,000,000 
 
 NON-CHRISTIANS, 992,500,000. 
 
 Buddhists 500,000,000 
 
 Brahmins 150,000,000 
 
 Mohammedans 80,000,000 
 
 Israelites 6,500,000 
 
 Unknown different religions. . . . 240,000,000 
 
 Unknown relictions 16,000,000 
 
 Total 1,392,500,000 
 
107 
 
 It is generally conceded that the teachings 
 of Confucius, which are rather a philosophy 
 than a religion, are among the oldest we have 
 record of, while that of Lao-tse and Tao-ism, 
 its contemporary, was founded on that of spir- 
 itism. Herodotus, who traveled in Egypt 450 
 B. C, gives us an account of the monuments 
 in that country, in which were found China 
 . ware, with Chinese mottos, which RoselUni 
 believes to have been imported from China by 
 kings contemporary with or before the time of 
 Moses. There have been similar vases found 
 in the ruins of Troy, that go to prove that 
 China was a highly civilized nation long before 
 the siege of Troy, and if Chinese history is to 
 be relied on, it will take us back into the gray 
 mist of the past some twenty-five thousand 
 years, and it is now generally admitted that 
 Confucius lived at least five hundred and fifty 
 hears before the Christian era. 
 
 Chronologi.sts differ as to which is the oldest 
 civilization, Egypt or India. The Greeks and 
 Romans trace back to Egypt, and for a long 
 period of time it was thought that Egypt was 
 the cradle of civilization. But learned philol- 
 ogists and ethnologists contend that India is 
 the oldest in the arts and has the oldest reli- 
 gions. Others again claim that they are differ- 
 ent and, perhaps, spontaneous developments. 
 Plato gives us an intimation that the Egyptians 
 had knowledge of the submerged continent of 
 Atlantis. And from the similarity of the tem- 
 ples and pyramids in Central America it might 
 have been possible, at a very remote period, 
 that these countries had intercourse with each 
 other. 
 
 Every religion has been an outgrowth of pre- 
 ceding religious faiths. Back of all religions 
 and civilizations there is an older religion and 
 civilization. Palestine had been colonized by 
 Arab tribes from Idumea and Phoenicia Ions 
 before it was invaded by the children of Israel 
 under the leadership of Joshua and Moses. 
 Eventually they became more or less consoli- 
 dated as the kingdoms of Samaria and Judea. 
 Their fables, legends, traditions and family 
 religions were more or less amalgamated and 
 nationalized under the name of Judea. 
 
 " The greater part of the gods of all nations 
 were ancient heroes, famous for their achieve- 
 ments and their worthy deeds, and were such | 
 
 as kings, generals and founders of cities. To 
 these some added the splendid and useful ob- 
 jects in the natural world, as the sun, moon 
 and stars, and some were not ashamed to pay 
 divine honors to mountains, rivers, trees, etc. 
 The worship of these deities consisted in cere- 
 monies, sacrifices and prayers. The ceremo- 
 nies were for the most part absurd and ridicu- 
 lous, and thoroughly debasing, obscene and 
 cruel. The prayers were truly insipid and void 
 of piety, both in form and matter. The priests 
 who presided over this worship basely abused 
 their authority to impose on the people. The 
 whole pagan system had not the least efficacy 
 to produce and cherish virtuous emotions in the 
 soul, because the gods and goddesses were pat- 
 terns of vice, and the priests bad men, and the 
 doctrines false." (See Mosheim's "Church 
 History.") 
 
 The narrow creeds excluding God, the Fath- 
 er, from any communication with the great 
 majority of human beings, is revolting to com- 
 mon sense and humanity. Selecting a few of his 
 chosen children to be saved and leaving the 
 rest to perish in their ignorance, is an extremely 
 selfish view of an intelligent God. He caused 
 some to be born in India, some in China, and 
 others in Europe, Africa, America, and in the 
 far-distant islands of the sea; they are all 
 His children and they are all as dear to him as 
 are the Jews. He speaks to each of them 
 through the same channel, whether he be a 
 Brahmin, Buddhist, Chinese, Mohammedan, 
 Christian, pagan or heathen; " In Him we live 
 and move and have our being." He is above 
 all, and through all, and in all. 
 
 "Abraham," says Max Muller, "was the 
 first we have any record of who could raise his 
 soul to the contemplation of a Perfect Being 
 above all, and the source of all. With pas- 
 sionate love he adored this Most High God, 
 maker of heaven and earth." The mind of 
 Abraham rose to a clear conception of the 
 unity of God as excluding all other divine be- 
 ings; yet if we will examine the expressions of 
 this great Arab chief, as described in the book 
 of Genesis, we can see at once that he was a 
 great medium and a theosophist, who held con- 
 verse with the spirits, the same as our modern 
 mediums. When they told him to sacrifice 
 his son Isaac he was ready to do it under the 
 
108 
 
 firm belief that it was the voice of God, when 
 he heard another voice that told him not to 
 kill Isaac, that there was a lam tangled in the 
 vines near by. This was a clear case of clair- 
 audience. 
 
 Mr. Renan says the Indo-European race, 
 distracted by the variety of the universe, never 
 by itself arrived at monotheism. The Semitic 
 race, on the other hand, guided by its firm 
 and sure sight, instantly unmasked divinity, 
 and without reflection or reasoning attained the 
 purest form of religion that humanity has ever 
 known. The Hebrews, like the Assyrians and 
 Babylonians, were divided between monothe- 
 ism and sabacism or star-worship. The Se- 
 mitic, like the Aryan races, had a confused 
 idea of one Supreme God behind all the sec- 
 ondary deities. 
 
 Pure monotheism appears to be a direct reve- 
 lation to Moses; and even in Jehovah we are 
 led to believe that Moses gave him more of the 
 attributes of a big Moses or man than that of 
 an All Wise and Supreme God. 
 
 Christianity, as soon as it became the reli- 
 gion of a no-Semitic race, lost much of its mo- 
 notheism and tended to pantheism. They 
 added to God *'all above," and the God 
 "with all," the God "in us all." The new 
 Testament is full of this kind of pantheism, 
 God in man as well as God with man. Jesus 
 made the step forward from God with man to 
 God in man; " I am in them, thou in me." 
 The doctrine of the Holy Spirit is this idea of 
 God, who is not only will and power, not only 
 wisdom and law, but love of God, who desires 
 communion and intercourse with his children, 
 and who, therefore, comes and dwells with 
 them. Mohammed teaches a God above us; 
 Moses teaches a God above us and yet with us; 
 Jesus teaches God above us, God with us and 
 God in us. 
 
 Christianity teaches of a Supreme Being who 
 is a pure spirit. It is a more spiritual religion 
 than Brahminism, for the latter has passed on 
 into polytheism and idolatry. Christianity is 
 
 more flexible and is more capable of becoming 
 able to supply the religious wants of all races 
 of men, therefore it is fitted to become the 
 universal religion of man, it being a composif i 
 made up of all the previous religions; and cor 
 sequently it is an improvement on all the othei 
 religions. <. 4.-^C /; ^/( /f "" 
 
 Jesus Christ was a man born a seer, a pro- 
 phet and endowed with remarkable mediumis- 
 tic gifts, which were improved by development 
 by the assistance of the spirits. He was mis- 
 understood by his immediate followers, and 
 w^as imputed to be something superior to man, 
 and his deeds were exaggerated by their unrea- 
 soning credulity. Elevated above the multi- 
 tude by his superior spirituality, he was quali- 
 fied to be a teacher of the sublime inspirations 
 which flowed into his receptive mind from wise 
 and pure spirits, who made him their mouth- 
 piece to the masses. Pure and spiritual in his 
 life, he was prepared for rapid progress as a 
 spirit; and now, with other ancient prophets 
 and exalted men. he holds a place among celes- 
 tial spirits, having experienced his seconc^s^ir- 
 itual birth and become a dweller in the thi 
 sphere. 
 
 Peter, in Acts ii: 22, says: "I see in J 
 of Nazareth a man approved of by God ar 
 you by miracles, wonders and signs that L 
 did in him." " I and my father are one;" Oi 
 in purpose, one in spirit. He woishiped in 
 spirit, and he never lost sight of the spiritual 
 w^orld. God did not speak to him from with- 
 out. He feels that God is in him. He needed - 
 no sound of thunder, like Moses; no revealin. V 
 tempest, like Job; no familiar oracle, like t' 
 Grecian sage; but he consciously lived in a 
 with the Father in the spiritual, as he was c 
 rapport with the Divine mind, which permeatec 
 all the whole universe. If man would live a:; 
 Christ directed, and in harmony with natural 
 laws, he could converse with angels (spirits) as 
 they did in the days of Abraham, Christ and 
 the apostles, ^o ^^_^^^ ^ ^^ 
 
I 
 
 WHO SHALL WE ELECT 
 
 U. S. SENATOE ? 
 
 Sacramento, January 3d, 1881. 
 
 To the Honorable llembers of the Legislature of the State of 
 California : 
 
 This is a question that every honest member should ask 
 himself, as a representative of a free people who have dele- 
 gated that power to him. Had it been left to the voice of 
 the people, it would have been a man in sympathy with 
 them. But, owing to a change in the J^ew Constitution, 
 and a split in the Democratic ranks arising therefrom, the 
 Republicans have got a majority on joint ballot ; it gives 
 the minority party the power of choosing the man, which 
 is one of the evils arising out of this form of electing 
 * United States Senators, and the Constitution should be 
 changed, for it has outlived its usefulnes, and has become a 
 fruitful source of corruption. It would remove the choice 
 from a few Legislators, who have often become tools in the 
 hands of partizans, to be used in the election of men not 
 pre-eminently known for carrying their ideas in their head, 
 but in their pockets, so that the election of a U. S. Senator 
 now is a question of the longest purse and the richest 
 backers. In these contests the interest of the people arc 
 lost sight of, and the highest and proudest position be- 
 comes a place of barter and trade. This has tended to drive 
 out of politices the ablest and purest men, and opened the 
 door for a class of second rate men, who by accident, ras- 
 cality, or being the servitors of Railroad rings, monopolies 
 who put up the money to buy seats for them in the U. 8. 
 Senate ; for hired attorneys are placed there to look after 
 their interest, and not that of the people. This class of 
 Senators, whether Democrats or Republicans, pool their 
 issues, so that it is difficult to get any Legislature that will 
 benefit the people and restrict their corporate powers. 
 
 There is an able article in the December number of 
 Scribner's Magazine, in which it is shown that there are 
 
[2] 
 
 four great Railroad Kings, that gathers all the wealth of the 
 country into their coffers and controls the Legislature and 
 Congress. 
 
 They may at any time and for 2inj reason satisfactory to 
 themselves, by a single stroke of the pen, reduce the value 
 of property in this country hundreds of millions of dollars; 
 
 ^ ^ ^ ]^o Congress would dare to exercise so vast a 
 power, except upon a necessity of the most imperative 
 nature; and yet these gentlemen exercise it whenever it 
 suits their supreme will and pleasure without an explana- 
 tion or apology. With the rapid and inevitable progress of 
 combination, these colossal organizations are daily becom- 
 ing stronger and more imperious. The day is not far 
 distant, if it hns not already arrived, when it will be the 
 duty of the statesman to inquire whether there is less dan- 
 ger in leaving the property and industrial interests of the 
 people thus wholly at the mercy of a few men, who recog- 
 nize no responsibility but to their stockholders, (and they 
 pay little attention to them), and no principle of action, but 
 personal and corporate aggrandizement than in adding some- 
 what to the power and patrinage of a Government directly 
 responsible to the people, and under their control." 
 
 See Report of United States Senate Committee on Trans- 
 portation Routes, page 158. 
 
 "Jay Gould in his evidence before the New York Legis- 'j 
 lative Committee in 1873, on the investigation of the af- • 
 fairs of the Erie Railroad openly testified as follows:" f 
 
 " *I do not know him much; I paid towards helping/rzenc?- 
 ly men; we had four States to look after, and we had to suit 
 our politics to circumstances. In a Democratic district, I |v. 
 
 was a Democrat ; in a Republican district, I was a Republi- 
 can ; and in a doubtful district, I was doubtful ; but in ev- 
 ery district and at all times, I have alwaws been an Erie 
 Man, * 5^ * i^y^ could distinctly recall that he 
 
 had iDcen in th^ habit of sending money into the numerous 
 districts all over the State, either to control nominations or 
 elections of Senators and members of the Assembly." ' 
 
 Senator Beck, of Kentucky in a speech, said : 
 
 "It is impossible to have an honest Legislature, State or 
 Federal, so long as representives are sent who owe their 
 election to, or are personally interested in great moneyed 
 corporations or monopolies, no matter whether they call 
 themselves Democrats or Republicans; they are not the rep- 
 resentatives of the people ; they are simply the agents and 
 attorneys of those who seek, by taxing the masses, to enrich 
 themselves, whenever they owe their election to monopolies 
 or are themselves interested .in class legislation." 
 
[3] 
 
 And so bold have these hired tools become, that they talk 
 of bribery without even a blush. Mr. F. B, Cowen said: 
 "I have heard the counsel of the Pennsylvania Railroad 
 Company, standing in the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, 
 threaten that Court with the displeasure of Ms clients if it de- 
 eided against them, and all the blood in my body tingled with 
 shame at the humiliating spectacle,'' 
 
 It is hoped that the comraision has modified the Burlin- 
 game Treaty so as to stop Chinese immigration; if not we 
 will have to resort to "Boycotting." 
 
 Secession has been crushed, and slavery ended, old issues 
 are dead, and let them be buried; no longer let us howl over 
 the past and keep up sectional strife, for political purposes, 
 and array a solid North against a solid South, but let us 
 start new issues that will infuse new thoughts and new ques- 
 tions of state and national policy. The tariff, free trade and 
 free ship that will revive our commerce, that has been driv- 
 en from the sea. Let us discnss the great questions of cur- 
 rency and the propriety of withdrawing $800,000,000 of legal 
 tender, and issuing National Bank notes, by which the gov- 
 ernment loses $28,000,000, yearly ,»that goes into the hands 
 of the Capitalist. Let us discuss the right of the Railroads, 
 and the restriction of the gigantic corporation in which co- 
 losal fortunes are made out of the poor farmer, miner and 
 laborer, who can only get a bare living. 
 
 Let us discuss the rights of labor, capital and land 
 questions; whether it is best to encourage the growth of mo- 
 nopolies, which hold and control large tracts of wild land 
 for speculation and hunting purposes, to the detriment of 
 the settler and pioneer, who has made " the desert to 
 blossom as the rose." It cost France rivers of blood to 
 break up the Feudal Tenure. It is now convulsing Ireland 
 and England. What right has one man to monopolize the 
 soil, when thousands are destitute of homes, a place to draw 
 nourishment from the breast of mother earth ? A fee in 
 the soil makes man patriotic and law abiding, it gives per- 
 manacy, order and prosperity. 
 
 Let us discuss the propriety of amending the Constitu- 
 tion so that the President and U. S. Senators could be 
 elected by the people, for it is their right to vote direct for 
 them, and is in accordance with the age. It will remove the 
 corrupting influence around Legeslatures, and men of brains 
 and principle will have a chance before the people. It 
 will bring back to the Senate such men as Webster, Sumner, 
 Clay, Calhoun and Benton. It will prevent a minority Pres- 
 ident being forced upon the people, which came near bring- 
 ing on another civil war. Thoge are live questions that will 
 
[4] 
 
 divide up the people in the different States, and draw their 
 minds from secional hatred. 
 
 We want hve men to come to the front with new ideas 
 that will bury the past, who will look to the interests of 
 the people and nation, and not to individuals. 
 
 For we are one and inseparable nation, bound together 
 by the ties of blood, history, association ; by rivers, lakes, 
 seas, and oceans ; by railroads telegraph wires ; and if we 
 are true to ourselves and our country, a bright furture awaits 
 us. The only enemy that now stares us in the face, is fraud 
 and corruption in high places. It is fiast spreading its bane- 
 ful, gangrene influence over the people. It is high time 
 it was cut out, or it will bring on mortification and death to 
 liberty and freedom in America. 
 
 Phillip's gold had more influence over the corrupt Athen- 
 ians, than the burning eloquence of Demosthenes, who was 
 forced to flee to the temple for protection. Cicero was un- 
 able to save the Roman Eepublic from a corrupt Senate, 
 and was forced to flee, and was assassinated by his freed 
 man. 
 
 Montesque says : "Of What avails is the best Code of Laws 
 if the people are too corrupt to enforce them." 
 
 The 67th section of our Penal Code is ample to protect 
 the people, but it remains a dead letter upon our statute 
 books. Who has the manhood to enforce it ? There has 
 been but few U. S. Senators elected in this State without 
 the illegitimate use of coin and it is time it was ended ; 
 there is no honor in buying an office. 
 
 So long as the people suffer themselves to be divided 
 into political factions, whose leaders lose sight of the best 
 interests of the people, and fight over dead issues and their re- 
 presentatives bind themselves by King Caucus, they can never 
 expect any reform in the National Government which has 
 become one of the most corrupt, where hired loblyists live 
 in splendor, and women of doubtful character line the halls 
 of Congress and fill places in the Departments. 
 
 A VOICE FROM THE PEOPLE. 
 
SPEECH OF J. P. DAMERON, 
 
 BEFORE THE 
 
 Printers' Hancock and English Club, 
 
 SAN FRANCISCO. 
 
 I always like to talk to the printers ; they are a wide-awake, in- 
 telligent set of fellows; well posted on all questions of the day. 
 They set up all the news before daylight, so it comes to us second- 
 handed in the Morning Call, Alia, and Chronicle, etc. 
 
 The press is far mightier than the sword, it reaches all, and forma 
 the public opinion. It talks with everybody that- reads, and the 
 man that don't read the papers is a natural curiosity, or very ig- 
 norant. The press is the most powerful engine ever invented. It 
 is revolutionizing the world, driving back ignorance and supersti- 
 tion, and advancing the cause of democracy and humanity. It ele- 
 vates man and makes him a free man and in favor of elective 
 government. 
 
 There is something grand and glorious in the thought of coming 
 together once every four years, at the ballot box, to elect our Pres- 
 ident, who is the commander of the army and navy— of 45 millions 
 of the most intelligent and enterprising people upon the face of the 
 globe. He should be the best, the purest, the bravest and the 
 wisest that could be found, as he represents the choice of the whole 
 people. He holds in his hands the reins of government, and shapes 
 its future course, that brings happiness and prosperity or discord and 
 decline ; a nation's greatness, prosperity and happiness is dependent 
 on the justness of laws and the fairness of their administration, and 
 the wisdom and honest}^ of its rulers and legislators. They set the 
 example, the people follow. But when the rulers and office holders 
 become corrupt, the nation declines, and a race of freemen sinks in- 
 to a banditti of robbers murderers thieves, beggars and slaves. Like 
 Greece, which was once a free and prosperous nation; so long as the 
 highest aspiration of the people was their love of liberty and country 
 there was no power on earth that could subdue them ; but their 
 leaders became corrupt, and used gold to carry elections, 
 which debauched the public mind so that Phillip's gold had 
 more influence over them than the burning eloquence of Demos- 
 thenes, who fell a victim to the rabble which was led by such 
 designing demagogues as Kearney, who is used to divide up the 
 people into factions, so that they can be controlled by the few 
 who are prompted by selfish ambition, and they will resort to 
 
[2] 
 
 any measures to carry their point. In this way the masses are 
 kept in slavery and ignorance. 
 
 In all free governments there will be two great parties — the ins 
 and the outs. Like the old Whig and Democratic parties, they 
 held each other in check, and forced the opposition to put up their 
 best men or the people would fire them out. These two noble old 
 parties were like the two eyes of Greece — Athens and Sparta — they 
 watched over the liberties of the people. 
 
 "The old whig party in the northern States," says Mr. Everet, 
 "was absorbed by the Republican party, which gave Bell and 
 Everet a small Union vote." 
 
 In the Presidential election oflSGO the parties were divided as 
 follows : 
 
 NORTH. 
 
 Republican. Opposition. 
 
 N. E. states 296,797 184,854 
 
 Western States 854,315 803,198 
 
 Middle and non-Seceding States 713,501 979,497 
 
 Total 1,864,613 1,967,549 
 
 Majority 103,026 
 
 SOUTHERN SECDINQ STATES. 
 
 Pro-Slavery Democratic. Opposition. 
 
 436,949 419,246 
 
 Majority 17.703 
 
 Mr. Lincoln received 1,865,913 votes; Douglas received 1,374,664 
 votes ; Breckinridge, 847,404 votes ; and Bell received 591,900 
 votes — making a majority against Mr. Lincoln of 2,818,968. And 
 the united vote of the Douglas and Breckenridge democracy was 
 2,222,068 votes. Mr. Lincoln did not receive a vote in Georgia, 
 Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Texas ; 
 and a very small scattering vote in Missouri, Kentucky and Virginia. 
 
 It left the Democratic party— the only national party— -to with- 
 stand the storm of fanaticisms that had been inaugurated in the 
 North, that had no respect for the constitution or constitutional 
 rights. Said an eloquent orator of the north: *'Tear it in shreds and 
 fire it at the South, and let us get rid of slavery." Burlingame 
 said: "It was a league with the Devil and a covenant with Hell." 
 They advocated a Higher Law. They are willing to destroy every- 
 thing that don't comfbrm with their idea of right, which is self, 
 and self-aggrandizement. *'They regard the government," says Judge 
 Black, "as a mere commercial machine, out of which they could 
 make much ' gayneful jpillage.' They employ all manner of device 
 and rhetoric to glority the modern abolitionist, and throw foul scorn 
 of traitor and rebel, not only on the Southern people, but the 
 whole democracy of the country which had the manhood to oppose 
 them." 
 
C3J 
 
 The secessionist of the South and the abolitionist of the l^orth 
 inaugurated the war which they have ever since kept up, waving 
 the bloody shirt as the matador does the red flag to enrage the 
 bull. Not that they loved the Union any better than the Demo- 
 crats ; for nearly all the leading generals, like McClellan, Han- 
 cock, Hooker, Kosencrans, Seigel and all the best fighting men 
 in the Union array were democrats, who, like true and brave 
 soldiers, said, when the armies of the South surrendered, "we are 
 friends and will forgive you, let the past be forgotten;" so now let 
 us unite the blue and gray like the noble house of Lancaster and 
 York, entwine the red and white roses around one common stand- 
 ard, and bear it aloft to victory and to greatness, to be divided no 
 more ; for we are and one inseperable nation, bound together by 
 all the ties of blood, association, history, interest and patriotism 
 by railroads, telegraph wires, rivers, lakes and oceans, speaking the 
 same language, governed by the same common law, and worship- 
 ping the same God. 
 
 The Federal Union must be preserved at all hazards, for its 
 greatness has only begun. If we prove true to ourselves and our 
 country a bright future awaits us ; our fathers have laid the founda- 
 tion broad and deep for the Temple of Liberty. They have given 
 to us a Constitution that is capable of being extended over the 
 whole American Continent under the interpretation of such men as 
 Jefi:erson, Madison, and Chief Justice Marshall. They have given 
 to us a flag that every State can be represented on until the whole 
 field is covered over with one galaxy of stars. They have given to 
 us the best and most liberal form of government ever devised by 
 mortal man, if this cursed Republican j)arty don't ruin it ; the blood 
 of the nation has cemented the Union. The 14th and 15th Amend- 
 ments to the Constitution have forever settled the question of seces- 
 sion and the southern debt ; so let us go to work like good citizens, 
 and look to the interest of the people, and not the politicians who 
 inaugurated the last war. 
 
 There are really but two forms of government, a Democracy and 
 a Monarchy. All others are intermediate shades. The Republican 
 party leans toward a strong government — a one man power — a cen- 
 tralized government, a concrete notion, which means the destruction 
 of States and the supremacy of the Federal government, which in- 
 vests Congress and the Supreme Court with full power over the life 
 and property of the individual ; which removes the power from the 
 people and places it in the hands of a few who reside at Washing- 
 ton, thus paving the road to centralization and the destruction of 
 the liberty of the people. With a large standing army and a host 
 of United States Marshals, they can say who shall vote, who are 
 legal voters, what votes shall be counted, and who is elected. 
 
 There has always been, and is now, nearly as many democrats 
 iu the Northern States as republicans. There was 2,669,970 dem- 
 
[4] 
 
 ocratic votes cast in the Northern States for Mr. Tilden, while Mr. 
 Hayes got 2,936,555, so there was a difference of 266,585 votes in 
 the I^Torth, yet the Kepublican party would have you believe that 
 all these men are copperheads and traitors. Though Tilden had a 
 majority of over 250,000, he was swindled out of the election, which 
 is a disgrace to the nation, and ought to cover up the Republican 
 party with infamy. Any attempt to destroy the purity of. the 
 ballot box, the American people must put their condemna- 
 tion upon, for such disgraceful conduct has shaken the pillars 
 of freedom, and the repetition of such a fraud will lead to civil 
 war and the destruction of our free government; for when men 
 can't have a fair election they will resort to arms. Man will never 
 willingly submit to a wrong. It should be made treason to tamper 
 with the ballot box, or bribe men to vote. 
 
 The only way a free government can be run is by acting fairly 
 and squarely, and abide the wish of the majority at the ballot box, 
 and spurn any attempt at fraud to carry the election. ]^ow there is 
 no honest fair-minded man who will claim that Hayes was honestly 
 elected by the majority of the free voters, or that he was entitled to 
 the office. But by rascality and returning boards, and the 7 by 8 
 Commission, he was counted in ; and for this insult, for this wrong, 
 the people are determined to teach the Republican party that they 
 are the sovereigns, and intend to elect Hancock and English by such 
 a majority that there will be no eftbrt made to count them out. 
 
 DEMOCRACY IS THE TENDENCY OF THE AGE. 
 
 "For the ultimate end of all creation," says Dr. Draper, " is to pro- 
 duce individualized intelligence, man" — a democrat, capable of 
 thinking and acting for himself, and willing to allow his fellow-man 
 to do the same. And the end of all government should be to ele- 
 vate him to the exalted position of self-government. I am a. man, 
 and you are another ; we are equal before the law and should be 
 willing to be ruled by the voice of the majont3\ Vox populi vox Dei, 
 
 The Democratic Party was born in the bosom of Jefferson, the 
 author of the Declaration of Independence, nurtued and reared to 
 manhood by Jackson. It is the party of the people. It believes 
 in trusting in the honor, patriotism, and manhood of the American 
 people. It believes in open, free and fair discussion, and not ap- 
 pealing to local prejudice and sectional issues, but treating all 
 alike and respecting them in their rights guaranteed utider the 
 Constitution. 
 
 It has made this country what it was before the war, and had 
 acquired every foot of soil outside of the thirteen original colonies, 
 except Alaska, which is a fair specimen of what the Republican 
 party would make the whole countiy. The Democracy is the 
 only national party. The principles of the Democracy are innate in 
 the hearts of the American people. So lay aside your local differ- 
 
[6] 
 
 ences and stand up for the old Democratic party, for the tendency of 
 the age is in that direction. So let us rally around the old flag of 
 Democracy and elect General Hancock President. The Eepub- 
 licans can't And anything against him. They have looked into his 
 past record and find him a clean man, full of patriotism and devo- 
 tion to the Union, the hero of forty-one battles in the defence of his 
 country, his person covered with scars. His blood has been poured 
 out on the soil of his own native State, which will honor him with 
 her electoral vote this Fall. He loves his country with the devo- 
 tion of an affectionate child for his mother. JSTature has been 
 bountiful in her gifts, and made him great in body and mind. 
 Brave as a lion in battle, yet as gentle as a girl in the time of peace. 
 
 The Democratic Convention with one voice said he w^as the right 
 man, and they gave him the nomination. The American people 
 will this Fall say, come up Gen. Hancock, and take command of 
 the army and navy, and be President of the whole United States. 
 Your gallantry saved the Union army at Gettysburg, and we believe 
 that you can bring peace and prosperty to our distracted country. 
 The North knows that he is sound on the Union, and the South 
 that he is brave, just and generous, as he showed himself while in 
 command of the Southern Department, when he said to the people 
 of that distracted country, when Gens. Sheridan and Mowry had 
 failed, "Go about your business, obey the civil laws of your country; 
 that the military was subordinate to the civil." And his course 
 brought order out of chaos, and the people of the South love him. 
 His letter to Governor Pease of Texas showed that he was a states- 
 man as well as a General. His letter to General Sherman confirms 
 it, and places him along with the great Generals and statesmen of 
 the past. 
 
 Now for a moment let us contrast the leaders of these two great 
 political parties. There is something historic in the name of Han- 
 cock ; there is none in Garfield. If there is anything in being a 
 general, Hancock is a bigger general, a " Westpointer,** while Gar- 
 field is only a political general. If there is anything in old scars, 
 according to the Roman idea of bravery he has got him again. 
 This political general Garfield had a better liking for the specula- 
 tive department of the army than at the head of columns in battle. 
 As an executive officer, Hancock has shown himself a statesman 
 without a stain ; while Gen. Garfield has been mixed up in the 
 slime of the Credit Mobilier, where millions were stolen. Yet, the 
 Republican party say he would not compromise his honor for so 
 small a sum as $329. Lord Bacon and Marks were found guilty for 
 a less sum. It is only evidence, capable of proof — not what they 
 got away with. The Good Book tells us, "the way of the trans- 
 gressor is hard;" for there is an Invisible Power behind the ^screen 
 that shapes and directs the destinies of men and nations, and if He 
 used and exerted his influence in throwing around Washington a 
 
[6] 
 
 shield, and giving to him a charmed life, He has done the same to 
 Gen. Hancock. His clothes were riddled with bullets, his horse 
 time and again shot from under him; though covered with wounds, 
 his life was spared ; and his political head saved from the machina- 
 tions of this man Garfield, whose instincts has been turned to him 
 by some iiend. Three times has he failed to remove him from the 
 army : in each attempt the hand of death struck down a republican 
 general, which promoted Hancock to a higher grade. First, was 
 the death of Gen. Thomas ; second, the death of Mead ; third, the 
 death of Gen. Hal leek. You can't defeat the will of God. 
 
 What is the record of Garfield and Arthur. One mixed up in 
 the Credit Mobilier, the De Golyer contract, the Louisiana Return- 
 ino- Board,''the back-pay dodge, defrauding Mr. Tilden out of the 
 Presidency — which ought to bring the blush of shame to every man- 
 ly Republican — for the ballot box is the mc^t sacred right a free- 
 man can enjo3^ Garfield has also lent his influence in defeating the 
 bill to restrict Chinese immigration, which ought to damn him with 
 every true Californian. As to Arthur, he was fired out by Hayes 
 for corrupt practices under the civil service reform. A sweet pair 
 of ducks to be President and Vice-President of this great Republic. 
 But they are in keeping with just such men as has run the govern- 
 ment for the last decade of years — whose highest aspiration is to 
 2:et an oflSce, so they can steal themselves rich, as tliey all have 
 done • and they wish to elect these men as a reward for the price of 
 
 their infamy. 
 
 The Repubhcan party has changed the entire policy of the gov- 
 ernment, and created a money aristocracy that rule the land by bri- 
 bery fraud and corruption. They take advantage of the poor man s 
 necessity, which know^s no law; and he is often forced to take the 
 bribe, the price of his liberty. They boldly assert that they ean 
 raise $20,000,000 by assessments on 100,000 office holders, which 
 will buy up enough votes to carry the election. In this way a moneyed 
 aristocracy has become dangerous. The love of money, and what it 
 can purchase, has proved the destruction of all free governments, by 
 corruptino- the people's representatives and ofiice holders, so that its 
 efi:ect is felt in the halls of legislation, and, in some cases, has cor- 
 rupted the Courts of Justice. They liave made it the ruling power 
 to reach the hearts of the people ; they have made it king. They 
 have so debauched the public mind, that many who claim to be 
 respectable will not vote or work without pay, and that it is hard to 
 t^et an ofiice now merely on merit ; and the palms of many hands in 
 hio-h position has now to feel the weight of the golden ducat, before 
 they will act or vote. 
 
 When the Republican party went into power, this was a free 
 and happy country, out of debt, and the annual expenses of the 
 government was not over $60,000,000. Now they have run it up to 
 $350,000,000, one-half of which goes into the pockets of the bond- 
 
[7]- 
 
 holders, who pay no tax. They say that these bonds were made to 
 pay the expense of the war, which they made to cost over 
 15,000,000,000, with a destruction of as much more property. 
 
 The census of 1860 shows tliat the real and personal estate of the 
 United States was only $16,000,000,000 ; of that amount the pro- 
 ducing industry was ?7, 000,000, 000, while that owned by the capi- 
 talist was $9,000,000,000. The census of 1870 shows that the wealth 
 of the United States had advan'ced to $30,000,000,000— nearly 
 doubling itself in that time, although $10,000,000,000 had been 
 wasted in the war. But the most remarkable thing is, that while 
 the producing industry had only increased to $11,000,000,000, that 
 of capital had increased to $19,000,000,000— that the United States 
 had got rich on her own indebtedness. That every State, county, 
 town, and the general government were loaded down with bonds 
 that bad been issued to pay the expenses of the war, which the 
 dealers in shoddy clothes, arms and provisions had bought up at a 
 large discount, which they set down as capital — the bonded indebt- 
 edness of the country. 
 
 Stewart Mills says that "capital is labor stored up; it is some 
 thing saved, not destroyed." It is not bonded indebtedness^ which is, 
 like what Mark Twain said : "He had got rich, got married, and 
 built a fine house and ornamented it with a cupola and mortgage ; 
 but the most difiicult thing to get rid of was the cursed mortgage." 
 
 All WEALTH is the product of labor, whether dug out of the soil or 
 mines, or snatched from the sea. Each and every thing that bears 
 the mark of civilizatien is the product of labor, by which nature 
 has been subdued and forced under the control of man. The forests 
 that have been cleared ; the rich prairies that have been converted 
 into fields of corn, that bow their golden heads to the sickle or 
 reaper ; the iron, the gold and silver, all the minerals that have 
 been dug out of the earth and refined, and converted to the use of 
 man, is wealth, is capital, and should be held in reserve to assist and 
 advance the interest of labor, and to open up new industries ; but, 
 instead, it is invested in bonds, and the interest spent in foreign 
 countries, which is a direct tax on the energies of a tax-ridden 
 people. 
 
 The net earnings of the people are about $20 a year per capita, 
 which, after all expenses are paid, goes to the credit side of capital, 
 and is stored up to supply any deficiency tliat might arise the next 
 year ; but $16 per capita of this fund is now absorbed to pay taxes 
 and the interest on these bonds, so instead of a reserved fund of $20 
 per capita, the people have only a reserved fund of $4 per capita to 
 fall back upon in case of a deficiency; so that labor has increased 
 faster than tlie capital to develop new industries ; and as bonds pay 
 better than anything else, all the money goes into them ; conse- 
 quently there is no demand for labor, which has to go begging for 
 want of employment, and the laud is full of idle men and tramps 
 huntino^ work. 
 
[8] 
 
 Capital is always avaricious and demands more than its share, 
 and in every contest it gets the best of labor. While labor is toil- 
 ing to make more, capital is scheming how to get it. While labor 
 is at rest, capital is compounding its interest. Labor won't keep ; 
 a day's labor lost is gone forever. ]^ot so with capital; as the price 
 of labor goes down, capital goes up. Labor is left to take care of 
 itself, while capital is locked in strong iron vaults for safe keeping. 
 Labor can knock capital down and destroy it ; but capital is wise, 
 and gets laws passed to protect it, and it can hire poor labor to fight 
 for it rather than starve ; for there are always a set of fools ready to 
 bow down and worship tho golden calf. Capital knows how to draw 
 itsalf from circulation and produce hard times. Everything declines 
 but the rates of money and the price of bonds, which goes up ; so 
 capital, which is the aggregation of labor, is often made to oppress 
 the sons of toil. But, in doing so, it brings destruction to both. 
 The degradation of labor renders capital insecure ; there should be 
 no antagonism between labor and capital ; their interest is the 
 same ; the farmer looses nothing by feeding and housing his work 
 horses well. Labor has a right to demand a fair compensation for 
 work ; labor has a right to good, wholesome food, comfortable shel- 
 ter, warm clothes, pure water and fresh air ; this much it has a 
 right to demand, before capital should build palaces to live in, or in- 
 dulge in fine raiment to wear, sumptuous food to eat, sparkling cham- 
 pagnes to drink, and traveling abroad in foreign countries — like the 
 Chinaman, taking the money out of the country, which should be used 
 to build up factories and open up new industries to give employment 
 to labor. The capitalist finds that it pays best to invest in bonds, 
 so that he has nothing to do but to clip his coupons and travel in 
 Europe, ape foreign flunkyism, and boast what a great goverment 
 Old England is, which rests upon a money indebtedness, and sup- 
 ports a lot of Barons, Dukes and Lords, all living on the product of 
 the man of toil. 
 
 Whenever I see one of these degenerate sons of America, who 
 want this noble government changed to that of Monarchy, it 
 makes my blood boil to think that man is so selfish, willing to 
 sell his manhood, his libert^v,* for the sake of wearing a title that a 
 king might confer; willing to marry his daughter to a no-Count 
 80 that he may get a little blue blood injected in the family veins. 
 
 The Republican party have been weighed in the balance and 
 found wanting. They have done all in their power to degrade 
 labor, and corrupt the people. They have, by their treaty made 
 by Burlingame (an abolitionist, who did much to bring on the late 
 war) made a treaty with China that is now overrunning the Pacific 
 slope with cheap labor — another engine in the hands of the rich to 
 oppress labor and reduce it down to starving rates on which no 
 white man can subsist, much less raise a family. 
 
 Now it behooves every man, whether he be Democrat, Working- 
 
[9] 
 
 man or Bepublican to come out and show his hand and by his 
 ballot proclaim to the world that the Third Ward was opposed to the 
 Chinese invasion which had entered it, by crossing Kearnv street, and 
 had almost reached the heart of the Ward If not checked, it will 
 soon reach the water front and drive every white man out of 
 the ward. Like the Canadiai] thistle, wherever it has got a hold 
 nothing else will thrive. The squalor, filth and stench will drive 
 before them all other nationalities, that even Mr. Hayes and his suit 
 could not stand it, in their visit to the Sixth Ward, but were forced to 
 return to the Palace Hotel after a short trip to Spoflbrd alley and the 
 Chinese quarters. Now I want you all to remember that to-night the 
 grand parade of the anti-Chinese takes place that is going to give 
 Mr. Hayes a review, an expression of their opinion on the Chinese 
 question, and what the people in San Francisco "think of the brother- 
 hood of man, so that he may be able from the demonstration to form 
 an idea of what we thought of his action in the matter. A Roman 
 General, after he had devastated a great city was driven into exile. 
 Id his wanderings he revisited the ruins. His conscience smote 
 him and he sat down and wept like a child over the misery and 
 wretchedness that he had caused to gratify a blind ambition. As 
 Mr. Hayes rides around our city may he not read on thousands of 
 buildings "To Let." All of which reproach him for his cruel act 
 in vetoing the Bill to restrict Chinese immigration. 
 
 Nature has so provided in her wisdom, that her noblest and brav- 
 est animals are carniverous, and if we wish to keep up the standard 
 of the An^lo-Saxon race, we must not bring them down to vege- 
 table diet, so as to compete with Mongohans, who for ages have 
 been accustomed to live on rice. No meat-eating race can compete 
 with them. They have learned to live on any and everything that 
 comes in their way, even on fi.lth and ofial. They are our antipodes 
 in every sense of the word. They started from the table-lands of 
 Asia and went East, while the Anglo-Saxon race went West. These 
 two races have met on our shores, having evolved exactly the op- 
 posite ideas about everything. There is no similarity, there is no 
 hope of ever making them adopt our civilization, and we have no 
 disposition to adopt theirs. They have lived in this State for more 
 than a quarter of a century; they have never shown a disposition 
 to assimilate with us. They have their laws and customs the same 
 as in China. One side of the street is as perfect a China city as 
 that of Canton — while the other is Anglo-Saxon; but slowly and 
 steadily they encroach. They are willing to work for wages on 
 which no white man could live and support a family. And if the 
 Government does not offer some solution — some restriction — the 
 white man will have to emigrate or make war on them. Many 
 have already gone — and we will all have to go. It is only a ques- 
 tion of time, unless we do like the hungry lion. When he can do 
 no better, he will devour a negro for breakfast. The superior ani- 
 
[10] 
 
 mal will always prey upon the inferior and weed them out. We 
 have taken possession of this country and driven the Indians out — 
 are we to tamely submit and let the Chinese starve us out? So if 
 the General Government wants to keep peace in the family it must 
 modify the Treaty which ought to have been done long ago. 
 
 There is a mistaken idea of many about the brotherhood of man 
 and Chinese equahty. They have no idea of liberty or a free gov- 
 ernment, honesty or morality. Cold and selfish, they are ready to 
 sell liberty and virtue for gold. 
 
 It is unwise and unjust to expect the white mart to be driven out 
 by this peaceful invasion of the Chinese. Vattel says "that any 
 community has the right to resist a peaceful invasion as well as 
 when they come with arms, when it will endanger their institutions 
 and government." And what fool is there who will deny this fact, 
 that, if the Chinese are not prevented from doing so, they will soon 
 overrun this State and reduce it to an Asiatic province. For they 
 are quietly getting control of our manufactures, commerce, mining 
 and agriculture. With the ballot-box in their hands they would 
 soon be able to control the elections and place Ah Tuck in the 
 Gubernatorial Chair. Oil and water will never mix. We must all 
 become Chinamen or Americans. We will have to starve, tight or 
 emigrate, if Congress does not modify the Treaty and check im- 
 migration. "It is not numbers that make a great country," says 
 Lord Bacon, "it depends on the bravery, the virtue, the intelli- 
 gence, the industry of her peasantry." A nation with forty-five 
 millions of inhabitants wants no further immigration of inferior 
 races. It has a right to select from the best. It is time that we 
 were beginning to crystalHze and form a national character of our 
 
 own. 
 
 Elect Gen. Hancock and English, and you will see a mighty tidal 
 wave sweeping over the country that will revive our commerce, 
 trade and manufactures, which can be done as cheaply here as in 
 Europe. It is easier to bring over the operators, than to send food 
 and raw material three thousand miles to get it worked up. There 
 is no reason why we should pay the manufacturers of the Eastern 
 States 50 or 100 per cent, profit on the goods we use. We want 
 free trade, a ready exchange for our wheat and raw material. It 
 will give the people a chance to have the books overhauled and see 
 how much has been stolen; there is nothyig like a settlement now 
 and then, a general purification and renovation. It will let the outs 
 in, and it will give the democrats a chance to pick up a few crumbs. 
 "For," said an old democrat, "we can beat Dr. Tanner, we have 
 been starving for twenty years and ain't dea3 yet." 
 
 Above all, it will bring peace and harmony ; it will end this in- 
 fernal cry about the negro and the solid South which will never be 
 ended so long as the Republican party is in power. It will unite 
 the blue and the grey once more into a band of brothers who will 
 
[11] 
 
 shake hands over the bloodj chasm, and fall into line under the 
 gallant Hancock. They will then bury the bloody shirt, and leave 
 the people of the North and the South to discuss other and nobler 
 questions of state policy. It will leave the South free to attend to 
 their own domestic relations, and the North to do the same, and it 
 will enable us to say, "John you must go ; we dont want you ; you 
 won't adopt our civilization and we are not ready to adopt yours ; 
 we don't want any more disturbing element to involve us in another 
 civil war." 
 
 We wish to inaugurate the reign of peace and prosperity, and to 
 mold the heterogeneous elements that now represent all the white 
 races into one homogeneous type known as America, whose love of 
 virtue, honor, liberty and patriotism is the admiration of the 
 civilized world, speaking one language, having one common country 
 that reaches from the Lakes in the north, to the Gulf of Mexico in 
 the south ; that spans the continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific 
 Ocean, embracing every variety of climate, soil and production, 
 mountains full of mineral wealth that the bountiful hand of Provi- 
 dence has scattered to meet the wants of civilization as it presses 
 up to the high and exalted position of a free and independent people, 
 capable of choosing the best man to govern us — a sound democrat 
 — General Hancock. 
 
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