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Britter, William
ART MAGIC,
Mundane, Sub-Mundane and Super-Mundane
SPIRITISM.
OR
A TREATISE
IN THREE PARTS AND TWENTY-THREE SECTIONS,
DESCRIPTIVE OF ART MAGIC, SPIRITISM, THE DIFFERENT ORDERS OF
SPIRITS IN THE UNIVERSE KNOWN TO BE RELATED TO, or in
COMMUNICATION WITH MAN; TOGETHER WITH DIRECTIONS

FOR INVOKING, CONTROLLING, AND
DISCHARGING
SPIRITS, AND THE USES AND ABUSEes, dangerS
AND POSSIBILITIES OF MAGICAL ART.
DER
CH
PROGRESSIVE TH

יי
.
1
HE.
Entered according to Act of Congress, by
WILLIAM BRITTEN,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington, DC.

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A

1
ART MAGIC
GOD
C
ENDERE
INDS
PERS
STA
SPIRITISM
We
مجمل
The Progressive Thinker's
PREMIUM.


Commence at once to form a Spiritualistic
or Occult Library, and thus keep in the front
ranks of the advancing column of Progress.
O
CHI
KEEP YOUR BRAIN VIBRATING!
YOU CAN ALWAYS DO SO BY READING
SCIENCE, MORALITY,
THE BIBLE DE
The PROGRESSIVE THINKER-
IMPERIAL
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There is nothing that will so perfectly keep your brain in
a healthy condition as to think well and wisely. Hence you
should not only read The Progressive Thinker, but the various
Occult Premium Books it offers. They will quicken your brain
vibrations, and enable you to maintain a position in society as
a well-informed person. Send all orders to J. R. FRANCIS,
40 Loomis street, Chicago, III.
ร
189 8
B8G





Gupt
Mrs. H. H. Highe
12-22-$3
CONTENTS.
AUTHOR'S PREFACE.
EDITOR'S PREFACE.
INTRODUCTORY.
•
PART FIRST.
SECTION I.
CONSTITUTION OF THE SOLAR UNIVERSE-MATTER-Ex-.
TENSION-DIVISIBILITY-IMPENETRABILITY-ETHER-
FORCE-ATTRACTION AND REPULSION.
Madden
•
M
SECTION II.
THE SCHEME OF THE SOLAR UNIVERSE-THE FALL OF MAN
BUT THE SHADOW-THE FALL OF SPIRIT-MAN THE
MICROCOSM OF BEING HIS PRE-EXISTENCE.
SUPPLEMENT TO SECTION II.
ARGUMENTS DEVISED CHIEFLY FROM ANCIENT HISTORY
IN SUPPORT OF THE PHILOSOPHY AFFIRMED IN THE
PRECEDING PAGE, WITH EXTRACTS FROM THE VEdas,
SECTION III.
IS THERE ONE OR MANY GODS-WHO CAN KNOW THE UN-
KNOWABLE—MAY NOT THE KNOWN LEAD UP NO WHAT
HAS BEEN DEEMED THE UNKNOWABLE?
SUPPLEMENT TO SECTION III..
OPINIONS OF ANCIENT AND MODERN PHILOSOPHERS AND
SPIRITUALISTS CONCERNING THE NATURE AND IN-
DIVIDUALITY OF ONE SUPREME BEING.
SECTION IV.
THE MOST ANCIENT FORM OF WORSHIP-THE ASTRO-
NOMICAL RELIGION, QR THE SUNBEAM SYSTEM-SOLAR
AND ASTRAL GODS.
то
SUPPLEMENT TO SECTION IV.
BIOGRAPHIES OF CHRISHNA AND BUDDHA SAKIA, SHOW-
ING THE NATIONS OF ANTIQUITY THAT HAVE
WORSHIPED THE SUN-GOD AS AN IMPERSONATION,
PAGE
9-11
13
15-17
18-23
21-23
24-30
21-33
34-41
42-53
54-56
6
CONTENTS.
1
SECTION V.
SEX WORSHIP-ITS ANTIQUITY AND MEANING-THE CON-
NECTION OF SEX, SOLAR AND SERPENT WORSHIP-THE
SPIRITUAL AND MATERIAL IDEAS OF ANTIQUE FAITHS
ILLUSTRATED,
(1
SUPPLEMENT TO SECTION V.
SEX WORSHIP CONTINUED-SIGNS, SYMBOLS AND EM-
BLEMS OF THE THREE SYSTEMS-SCRIPTURAL NAMES
AND MEANINGS.
F
•
ļ
ļ
SECTION VI.
SUBORDINATE GODS IN THE UNIVERSE-ANGELS, SPIRITS,
TUTELARY DEITIES, SOULS AND ELEMENTARY SPIRITS
OPINIONS OF THE ANCIENTS-JEWISH Cabala.
!
Magy
SUPPLEMENT TO SECTION VI.
THE JEWISH CABALA-FRAGMENTS FROM THIS CURIOUS
COMPENDIUM OF IDEALITY AND TRUTH-QUOTATIONS
FROM CLASSICAL AUTHORS.
PART SECOND.
SEČTION VII.
MAN'S EARLIEST COMMUNION WITH SPIRITS-SPIRITISM
AND MAGIC-MUNDANE, SUB-MUNDANE AND SUPER-
MUNDANE SPIRITISM-THE MYSTIC LADDER.
{
SECTION VIII.
MAN THE MICROCOSM OF THE UNIVERSE-MAN THE TRIN-
ITY OF THE ELEMENTS: SOUL, SPIRIT, MATTER— ROSI-
CRUCIANISM-THE ASTRAL SPIRIT, ASTRAL LIGHT.
1
SECTION IX.
ANCIENT PRIESTS AND PROPHETS-SPIRITUAL GIFTS—
WOMAN AS PRIESTESS AND SYBIL-CLASSIFICATION
OF SPIRITUALLY ENDOWED PERSONS.
-
SECTION X.
ART MAGIC-GENERAL SUMMARY OF THE CONDITION AND
PROCESSES OF MAGICAL PRACTICES-THE LINE BE-
TWEEN ANCIENT THEOSOPHY AND OCCULTISM.
SECTION XI.
ART MAGIC IN INDIA-BRAHMINICAL ORDER-WHENCE DE-
RIVED FOREST ANCHORITES FOUNDATION OF THE
PRIESTLY ORDER AND CASTE.
SUPPLEMENT TO SECTION XI.
W
1
ART MAGIC IN INDIA CONTINUED-ILLUSTRATIONS OF
MAGIC IN INDIA
INDIA-NARRATIVES OF DISTINGUISHED
TRAVELERS-RECORDS OF PERSONAL EXPERIENCES—
THE HOWLING DERVISHES.
57-64
65-70
70-80
81-84
85-93
94-107
108-125
126-138
138-153
Į
153-174
"
{
4
CONTENTS.
7
SECT ON XII.
MAGIC AMONG THE MONGOLIANS-THE CHINESE'S GREAT
DEVOTION TO MAGIC-SPIRITISM OF TWO DISTINCT
KINDS-PERFORMANCE OF EXTRA MUNDANE FEATS.
SECTION XIII.
MAGIC IN EGYPT-SISTRUM-VIRGIN'S
SYMBOL-CELES-
TIAL MOTHER-MOSES CLAIMED BY THE JEWISH PEO-
PLE-ANUBIS-EGYPTIAN AMULETS.
•
SUPPLEMENT TO SECTION XIII.
THE GREAT PYRAMID OF EGYPT-ITS POSSIBLE USE AND
OBJECT-MAN, THE MICROCOSM OF THE UNIVERSE-
HINDOO AND EGYPTIAN THEOSOPHY-TOWER OF BABEL
SECTION XIV.
SPIRITISM AND MAGIC AMONG THE JEWS--ANTIQUITY OF
THE JEWS DISPUTED—ABRAHAM, MOSES, THE PRIESTS
AND PROPHETS-CABALA-BIBLE-EZEKIEL'S WHEEL.
SUPPLEMENT TO SECTION XIV.
IDOLATRY AND ANCIENT SCRIPTURE-SOME OF THE MODES
OF DIVINATION, BOTH LAWFUL AND UNLAWFUL,
PRACTICED AMONG THE JEWS.
SECTION XV.
MAGIC AND SPIRITISM AMONGST THE CHALDEANS-THE
TOWER OF BABEL-QUOTATIONS FROM ENNEMOSER'S
HISTORY OF MAGIC-THE WHIRLING DERVISHES.
SECTION XVI.
POETRY OF LIFE'S STERNER PROSE-MAGIC AMONG THE
GREEKS AND ROMANS-THE MYSTERIES OF SAMOTH-
RACE AND ELEUSIS.
PART THIRD.
SECTION XVII.
MEDIEVAL THEOSOPHY-ELVES OR FAIRIES-ELEMENTARY
AND PLANETARY SPIRITS, OR THE SUB-MUNDANE AND
SUPER-MUNDANE SPIRITISM-THE JEWISH CABALA.
SECTION XVIII.
WITCHCRAFT-SPIRIT OF PERSECUTION IN CHRISTIAN
CHURCHES - CAUSES OF THE UNPOPULARITY OF
SPIRITISM-ALCHEMISTS-STONE HENGE.
SUPPLEMENT TO SECTION XVIII.
ALCHEMISTS AND PHILOSOPHERS-HISTORY OF THE SEV-
ENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES
UNIFORMITY OF THEIR OPINIONS,
GENERAL
175-182
184-195
196-207
207-219
219-224
225-236
237-252
253-269
270-279
280-282
00
CONTENTS.
SECTION XIX.
HEPTAMERON, OR MAGICAL ELEMENTS OF PETER D' ABANO
-CIRCLES AND THE COMPOSITION THEREOF-SIGNS,
SIGILS, NAMES OF ANGELS, ETC.)-
SECTION XX.
CORNELIUS AGRIPPA'S PHILOSOPHY--PARACELSUS-THE
POWER OF THE MAGNET AND WILL-WEAPON SALVE-
WITCHCRAFT-THE CASE OF JANE BROOKS.
|' SECTION XXI.
"
DIVINATION-BELOMANCY-ELISHA AND THE ARROWS—
CRYSTAL SEEING BATH
KOL-CHIROMANCY-THE COLOR DOCTOR.
SUPPLEMENT TO SECTION XXI.
THE MAGIC MIRROR-ITS COMPOSITION-COMMUNICATION
FROM A PLANETARY SPIRIT-FORMULE OF NOSTRA-
DAMUS.
CLEOMANCY GEOMANCY
*
·
―――▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
2
J
K
SECTION XXII.
HISTORY OF MAGNETISM-PSYCHOLOGY-CLAIRVOYANCE-
THEIR CONNECTION WITH ANCIENT MAGIC THE
GREAT MODERN TRIAD-PARACELSUS.
S
My
SECTION XXIII.
SPIRITUALISTIC LITERATURE-HARMONIAL PHILOSOPHY
AND ITS FOUNDER, ANDREW JACKSON DAVIS-MODERN
SPIRITUALISM-ITS UNIVERSALITY OF PHENOMENA.
EPILOGUE TO THE DRAMA OF ART MAGIC.
233-299
300-310
311-326
327-334
335-316
346-364
365-366
AUTHOR'S PREFACE.
The following pages were written at the solicitation of highly
esteemed European friends, who deemed that the author's long
years of experience as a student and adept in the Spiritism of
many lands might furnish to the world some valuable information
concerning the mysteries of that spiritual communion now so
prevalent throughout the civilized world.
In order to gratify these too partial advisers, the author at
first collated his personal experiences into a series of autobio-
graphical sketches, the few first chapters of which were published
under the title of "Ghost Land; or, Researches into the Realm of
Spiritual Existence," in Emma Hardinge Britten's high-toned
American Magazine, the "Western Star." As the calamitous
fires which devastated the city of Boston some five or six years
ago caused the suspension of Mrs. Britten's excellent periodical,
the author determined to lay his papers aside, for any use poster-
ity might derive from them, but the same friendly spirit of ap-
preciation which had dictated the transcription of the autobiog-
raphy subsequently pleaded for its continuance, or the prepara-
tion of a still more occult work, in which the much needed desid-
eratum of a comprehensive philosophy, covering the principles
which underlie spiritual existence should be given to the world,
as a basis on which to found the superstructure of spiritual
science.
A
This suggestion was too much in accordance with the au-
thor's habits of thought to be lightly rejected. A hasty and
fragmentary sketch of the work was drawn up, but when com-
pared with the vast fields of untrodden revelation that yet re-
mained to be gleaned, the author would fain have committed his
abortive attempt to the flames, and trusted to time to unfold that
mighty realm of magical philosophy which can never be disclosed
Th
PUBLISHER'S PREFACE.
-A
In sending out Art Magic to the readers of The Progressive
Thinker, we do so with the firm conviction that we are presenting
them with a most remarkable book, one that will not only prove
very interesting, but highly instructive. While many will not
endorse by any means all that it contains, yet they will find there-
in a vast fund of historical, spiritual, philosophical and occult in-
formation, which will prove of priceless value.
Readers of Art Magic will find in its pages much "quaint,
queer and curious" lore relating to occult subjects and occult for-
mulas and practices during all past history and among the various
esoteric cults that have flourished in the ages gone. Some of
these cults are being revived, in some degree, at the present day.
The student who wishes to delve into the ancient mysteries,
as traced in occult lore, will find this volume invaluable; for here
is condensed a vast fund of information that could not otherwise
be obtained, without many years of patient research, and with
access to rare and scarce sources of knowledge.
Į
There has been for several years a great demand for this work
by thinking minds, as high as $25 being paid for a single copy,
and even at that price the supply fell far short of the demand.
The copyright having nearly expired, Mrs. Emma Hardinge Brit-
ten gave us the privilege to republish the work, thus giving to the
many what was only possessed by a select few. We are profoundly
thankful to this estimable lady for the privilege; the great good
that will be accomplished thereby will redound to her credit.
Just think of it, about 12,000 Ghost Lands distributed in one
year, and even more than that number of Art Magic will be sent
forth as gifts to the subscribers of The Progressive Thinker on
conditions set forth in that paper.
J. R. FRANCIS, Publisher.
ļ
AUTHOR'S PREFACE.
11
in a single life-time, much less condensed into one volume. But
the all-too-appreciative friends to whom the author's despair of
purpose was revealed thought otherwise.
They deemed the broken gleams of light submitted to them
were all-sufficient for the age in which they were to be given,
and urged that the suggestions rendered, belonged to humanity,
and could not fail to throw light upon many of the mysteries of
spiritual manifestations.
Whilst wandering incognito through the cities of the United
States, still seeking to add fresh records of Spiritualistic interest
to an already full treasury of facts, the author had the pleasure
of meeting with his highly esteemed English friend, Mrs. Emma
Hardinge Britten. In addition to urgent appeals from this au-
thoritative source to publish his book of magic, the author was
farther tempted by the generous promise that he would be re-
lieved of all the vexations and technical details of the publication.
Shrinking with unconquerable repugnance from any en-
counter with those butchers of human character, self-styled
"critics," whose chief delight is to exercise their carving-knives
upon the bodies of slain reputations, without regard to qualifi-
cation for the act of dissection, and equally averse to entrusting
the dangerous and difficult processes of magical art to an age
wherein even the most sacred elements of religion and Spirit-
ualism are so often prostituted to the arts. of imposture, or mean
traffic, the author's reluctance to the proposed publication, even
with all the advantages of his English friend's invaluable co-
operation, would hardly have been conquered, had not loved and
trusted spirit friends taken the helm of the storm-tossed mind,
and advising the excision of such passages as would be dangerous
to the half-informed spirituality of the present age, these well-
tried counselors themselves suggested the conditions of publica-
tion which they deemed most in harmony with the author's
wishes and position, conditions subsequently embodied in the
circular which announced the publication of this volume.
The reception which that circular met with, the unworthy
jibes, sneers, and cruel insults which have been leveled against
the excellent lady who volunteered to stand between the author
and his shrinking spirit, have caused him the deepest remorse
for having placed her in such a position, and induced a frequent
solicitation on his part that the publication of the book should be
abandoned. In confiding the management of this work to his
friends, the author had entire confidence that the invaluable
services rendered by the noble editress to the Spiritualists of
12
AUTHOR'S PREFACE.
America, would have been sufficiently appreciated to protect her
against misrepresentation and unjust attack.
That these expectations have been so rudely disappointed,
only proves how much better the spiritual intelligences who dic-
tated the conditions of publication understood the elements to
be dealt with than the trusting mortals they counseled.
That Emma Hardinge Britten has found five hundred friends
in America, who put faith alike in her judgment and honesty, is
deemed by her as a sufficient triumph for one lifetime. Should
the author of "Art Magic" find five hundred readers who can
appreciate its occult pages, that shall be esteemed as an equal
meed of recompense for his share of the work.
Having already made confession of inefficiency to cope with
so vast a subject in so small a space, acknowledging that a mere
sketch is here presented instead of the full length portrait of Art
Magic the author's mind had conceived, and given to all whom
it may concern, the rationale of how this publication came to be
launched upon the world, we shall conclude in the quaint words.
of Robert Turner, the translator of Cornelius Agrippa's fourth
book of "Occult Philosophy" into English, who, in presenting
his introductory words to the public, says:
"There be four sorts of readers-sponges, which extract all,
without distinguishing; hour-glasses, which receive and pour out
as fast; bags, which retain only the dregs of spices, and let the
wine escape; and sieves, which retain the best only. Some there
are of the last sort, and to them I present this Occult Philosophy,
knowing that they shall reap good thereby." A conclusion in
which Dr. Robert Turner is cordially joined by
THE AUTHOR.
i
EDITOR'S PREFACE.
In presenting the following pages in an English dress, I feel
it necessary, in my capacity as editor, to excuse the many short-
comings to be found in its context, on the following grounds:
The author of this work, although a perfect master of the
English language in conversation, fails to render his glowing
thoughts in writing with equal perspicuity.
In preparing these writings for the press, I found many
Latin quotations and numerous foot-notes encumbering the text,
and to render the first into English, by the aid of a better scholar
than myself, and embody the second into the sense of the page,
obliged me in many instances to sacrifice the construction of the
sentences I interpolated. In much of the idiomatic phraseology
which appears in this work also, I could have wished to effect
changes, but the pressure on my own professional duties leaving
me but little time for literary occupation, and the haste enjoined
upon me by the author, who desired to complete the work with as
little delay as possible, induced me to trust that the sublimity of
the sentiments, the grandeur of intention, and the high-toned
philosophy which pervades this noble work, will make ample
amends for errors in orthography, or foreign modes of expression.
Trusting also, that the warmly cherished friends who have
so generously and confidingly stood by me during the preparation
of this work will derive as much pleasure from its perusal as the
self-appointed critics, who have never read it, seem to have de-
rived from attacking its unknown contents and well-known ed-
itor, I close by commending it heartily to that brave five hun-
dred who dare advance without fear or favor to the investigation
of Art Magic.
New York.
EMMA HARDINGE BRITTEN.
-
Jad

ART MAGIC
UNDER
GOD
SANDS
SPIRITISM
Heler
SPIRITUALISTS DIVIDED IN OPINION.
They are divided very widely in opinion. The most prominent
authors, speakers and mediums do not agree even in reference to one
exceedingly simple question-the existence of animals on the spirit
side of life. Some emphatically deny that animals survive the death
of the body, while others as earnestly declare they do. They differ
equally as widely in reference to reincarnation and various other sub-
jects too numerous to mention. Seeing this exceedingly wide diversity
of opinions and conflict, Art Magic calmly steps in with its diversified
theories, statements, opinions, etc., simply demanding a hearing, and
while no one person will probably endorse all it contains, the reader
will find therein an exceedingly valuable mine of occult lore that
will prove interesting and instructive, and that, too, at a nominal cost.
:
ART MAGIC.
PART 1.
INTRODUCTORY.
Standing as we do upon the sublime heights to which the
progress of ages has elevated us, we are enabled to look back upon
the footprints left by the ascending feet of those who have pre-
ceded us, and take account of every obstacle they have sur-
mounted, every impulse that has swayed them to the right or the
left, and almost hear the pulse-beats of the pilgrim hearts that
have throbbed in response to the eternal cry of Life's Marshals,
"Onward and Upward!" The piercing and analytical eye of
science can investigate these footprints, and determine almost
with mathematical precision the physical characteristics of the
beings who have made them. The species or class to which the
toiler belonged, becomes a letter in that alphabet, whereby science.
as clearly unravels the unwritten past, as the scale of a fish, or the
fossiliferous imprint of a vanished organism can interpret the
species and class to which the relic belonged; but the far more
penetrating gaze of the soul looking into the metaphysical causes
which underlie all physical effects, beholds an outstretched pano-
rama of being, which transcends those spheres of knowledge
bounded by physical horizons; hence it can pierce not only the
causes, but master also the ultimates and controlling forces of
mortal existence.
S
To arrive at a complete apprehension of truth, or that which
is, we must call up the witness of that which was, that which
shall be, and that which moves, as well as that which is moved
upon. The anatomist who numbers up the bones, recites the
16
ART MAGIC.
names and describes the forms and functions of the tissues, organs
and apparatuses which constitute the physical structure, explains
nothing of the true man except the house he lives in.
The physiologist who explains the motions which proceed
throughout the wonderful housekeeping processes of human life,
supplements in one degree the science of anatomy, but does no
more than his contemporary by way of unveiling the mystery of
that being which inhabits the many-sided structure. Oh, how
long! how wistfully, and yet in what agonizing yearning for light
-light upon the mystery of self-knowledge, light upon the prob-
lems of who am I? what am I, whose am I? whence do I come?
and whither am I bound?-has the I am of mortal existence
waited! Can the answer ever be rendered? If so, it must come
from the realm of true knowledge, the esoteric innermost, from
whence and to which the exoteric is but a temporary pilgrim!
Those who have stood face to face with this esoteric sunbeam,
who have beheld it vanishing behind the clouds of matter for
the span of a mortal term of existence, but emerging again into
the clear noonday radiance of a day which knows no night, a
firmament whose unbounded vistas enshroud no mysteries, a
realm of being limited only by the capacity of finite perception-
such an one surely has the right to say, I know, and such an one
writes and alleges he will reveal the order of Divine wisdom as
manifest in human existence, an 1 declared by the souls who have
lived and struggled behind the veil, broken their way by the
sword of death through its misty envelopment, and finally at-
tained to that breadth of vision where cause and effect cohere like
pearls on the unbroken thread of destiny, where past and future
lie outstretched in the boundless panoramas of a never begin-
ning, never ending present.
1,
"
Any attempt to elucidate the problems of being, conducted
in one direction, and by one method alone, must fail.
Those philosophers who reason from induction alone, only
arrive at a mayhap perception of truth, nor do they fare any bet-
ter who conduct their arguments through the half-declared pro-
cesses of deduction. Both methods are essential to master the
entire situation.
Theory must prompt the possibility of new discoveries, and
facts must goad us on to the evolvement of new theories—even
phenomena are needed to startle our self-conceit from the arro-
gant assumptions of half-enlightened, half-blind belief, and fail-
ures must follow on the heels of successes ere we can presume to
erect a milestone on the path of destiny for the guidance of oth-
When every method has been exhausted, and all avenues to
ers.
the way of light have been carefully traversed, then, and not till
then, can the soul of man venture to affirm, I know; then, and
not till then, are we in a position to challenge the bigoted adher-
ents of a single school, or a solitary method, and say, "I have en-
tered upon a grander vista of truth than you-follow me!"
Emerging from the many branching avenues of knowledge which
the study of spirit and matter, fact and theory, intuition and phe-
nomena afford, let us lay out our scheme of the Universe, and
then proceed from its underlying principles to such results as
their action have given shape and organic life to.
18
ART MAGIC.
t
SECTION I.
SPIRIT THE GREAT FIRST CAUSE, THE CORNER STONE.
THE CONSTITUTION OF THE SOLAR UNIVERSE-MATTER—EXTEN-
SION-DIVISIBILITY- IMPENETRABILITY ETHER-FORCE-
ATTRACTION AND REPULSION-SPIRIT PRIMORDIAL—WILL.
The Solar Universe, of which the earth is a part, consists of
Matter, Force and Spirit.
Matter is an aggregation of minute, indestructible atoms,
existing in the four states known as solid, fluid, gaseous and ethe-
real. The general attributes which distinguish matter in the
three first conditions, are indestructibility, extension, divisibility,
impenetrability, and inertia.
串
​A
By indestructibility is meant that property which is the an-
tithesis of annihilation, and utterly prevents the assumption that
a single atom of matter, however minute, whether in the finest
condition of air or the hardest of crystal, can ever be wholly put
out of existence.
Extension is the property by which an atom of matter can
be changed so as to occupy more or less space.
Divisibility is the property by which an atom can be divided
or reduced to the smallest known particles, and yet each particle
preserve some capacity for farther subdivision.
Impenetrability implies the impossibility of one atom occupy-
ing the space of another; and inertia is the tendency of matter
to continue either in that condition of rest or motion in which
it has once been set by the application of force, until another
force changes the former direction. There are many other defi-
nitions applicable to matter; such as crystalline, porous, dense,
elastic, etc.; but the five general properties enumerated above,
will sufficiently explain its nature for our present purpose.
Ether is matter in so rare and sublimated a condition, that its
divisibility into particles is no longer possible to man in his pres-
"
}
ART MAGIC.
19
ent stage of scientific attainment. It far transcends the rare-
faction of the finest of gases, hydrogen, and filling up every space
of the solar universe explored by man, not occupied by particled
matter, may with propriety be called unparticled matter.
Force is the life principle of being. It is the second of the
grand Trinity of elements which constitute existence, and ranks,
therefore, next to matter, which it permeates, vitalizes, and moves,
It is motion per se, and though matter is never exhibited without
it, Force, as we shall hereafter prove, can exist without a mate-
rial body for its exhibition.
Its attributes are dual, and should be named Attraction and
Repulsion.
The vast and extended orbits of planetary bodies are marked
out and regulated by Force, with its dual attributes, now attract-
ing the revolving satellite to the centre, now forcing it off into a
relative point of distance, but always maintaing it in a given path
or orbit between the oscillations of its contending motions.
Force is the unresting life which charges every atom of mat-
ter, and fits inorganic masses to become organic. It is Electricity
in the air; Magnetism in the earth; Galvanism between different
metallic particles-cohesion, disintegration, gravitation, centrip-
etal and centrifugal forms of motion; Life in plants, animals, and
men, the aural, astral, or magnetic body of spirits.
Spirit is the one primordial, uncreated, eternal, infinite Alpha
and Omega of Being. It may have subsisted independent of
Force and Matter, evolving both from its own incomprehensible
but illimitable perfection; but Force and Matter could never have
originated Spirit, as its one sole attribute comprehends and em-
braces all others, must antedate, govern, and surpass all others,
and is itself the cause of all effects. That attribute is Will.
As there are but two attributes of Force, namely, attraction
and repulsion, yet many varieties of modes in which attraction
and repulsion are perceived, so, whilst there is but one attribute
of Spirit, namely, Will, there are many subordinate principles
emanating from Will. Such are Love, Wisdom, Use, Beauty,
Intelligence, Skill, etc. The most marked and distinctive pro-
cedures are, however, nine; namely, Love, Wisdom, and Power;
Creation, Preservation, and Progress; Life, Death, and Regener-
ation.
In Matter, Force, and Spirit, then, is the grand Trinity of
Being, which constitutes the solar universe and its inhabitants.
Reasoning from analogy, and still more, founding upon the
assertions of wise teaching angels and the vague shadows of an-
20
ART MAGIC
tique beliefs, founded in a spiritual enlightenment far in advance
of the present, we have authority for supposing that the astral,
and all other universes included in the illimitable fields of being,
may have proceeded from and include the same primordial Trin-
ity of elements, and that Spirit, Force, and Matter form that stu-
pendous Ego, the totality of which, to finite beings, is vaguely
called God, the separated units of which include Astral and Solar
Systems, Suns, Satellites, Worlds, Spirits, Men, Animate and In-
animate Things, and Atoms.
ART MAGIC,
21
SECTION II.
SPECULATION REGARDING THE ORIGIN OF MAN.
THE SCHEME OF THE SOLAR UNIVERSE-THE FALL OF MAN BUT
THE SHADOW-THE FALL OF SPIRIT-MAN THE MICROCOSM
OF BEING HIS PRE-EXISTENCE.
All human beliefs that are derived from oral, traditional,
monumental, or sacerdotal sources, incline to ascribe the origin
of man to a purer and more spiritualized cause than that of human
generation.
The favorite and widely diffused idea of the ancients, that
man incurred the penalty of mortal birth and the discipline of a
mortal existence by disobedience, pervades so universally the
foundations of all religious systems, that it demands from phil-
osophy some more rational explanation than the contemptuous
stigma of "myth." Whence comes myth, and can it any more
explain the origin of ideas than a shadow can account for form
without a substance? We can accept nothing, learn nothing,
hope for nothing, from modern theology; for it teaches no phil-
osophy, owns allegiance to no science, and is amenable to no re-
quirements of reason or justice. And yet even she cherishes, in
her usual materialistic way, the dogmas of original sin and the
fall of man from a state of primeval innocence.
>>
Who can render account of these opinions? And since time
cannot quench them, nor the devotees of classical lore and an-
tique philosophy blot them out from the "wisdom of the ages,
why not seek to harmonize them with those glimpses of an inner
and higher life with which all human records are so mysteriously
illuminated?
The Fall of Man is but the shadow of a still diviner truth,
the substance of which is-The Fall of Spirit. All existence
originates in Spirit. As the curious mechanism of the clock,
the ship, the steam-engine, are all creations first of the mechan-
22
ART MAGIC.
ical mind, in which their several parts are contained ere they can
become reduced to a material expression, so the clockwork of the
sidereal heavens, the worlds which sail through the oceans of
space, and the mechanism of every organized form, from the
rounding of a dewdrop to the complicated structure of a man,
must have had their origin in mind. Since mind is but an attri-
bute of Will, and Will is Spirit, we cannot escape from the conclu-
sion that the creation of the physical universe is but the expres-
sion of a spiritual idea. The creation of a physical man is no
more, no less. The human race is the external expression of a
spiritual idea, because ideas must originate with spirit ere they
can be expressed in matter. The watch, the ship, the steam-
engine are as much genuine creations of the soul before as after
they are modeled out in matter. Should they never be thus in-
carnated, they have been, and are, and ever will remain, in the
imperishable realm of spiritual entities.
1
Matter creates nothing. It is only the mold which Spirit
uses to externalize its ideas for the sake of external uses.
The things which will appear as new inventions, the methods.
of science which will take their places as new discoveries on earth
in ages yet unborn, are all in imperishable existence now and ever
have been in the eternal realms of spirit. Can man be exempt
from this universal law of procedure?
Man, who is the microcosm of being, the conservator of all
forms of force, all varieties of matter-can he be the sole excep-
tion to the all-embracing order of Divine procedure? Only in
the superstitious and unscientific belief of the bigot, or the scarce-
ly less unreasonable blindness of materialism. Man was a spirit.
ere he was born into matter.
In the primordial conditions of planetary life, creatures so
finely organized as man could not be sustained, hence long ages of
preparatory growth were essential to fit this or any earth for his
reception.
When matter had been sufficiently laborated by the success-
ive births and destructions of millions of generations of organ-
ized beings in the vegetable and animal kingdoms, the earth
awaited the advent of a still higher and nobler creature than any
that had yet appeared; one who should in its perfection and mi-
crocosmic powers finish the work of creation, cap the climax of
animated being, and close up the succession of mortal forms by
the introduction of an immortal being. The earth called for
man, and he came. He was already an immortal existence, a
spirit; not a perfected, self-conscious, individualized entity, but a
bright, luminous emanation of the Divine mind. He was the
ART MAGIC.
23
Divine idea in the shape of the man that should be. Angelic in
essence, spiritual in substance, he lived in a paradise appropriate
to him, pure and innocent, but still wholly lacking in those ele-
ments of love, wisdom, and power which can be perfected alone
through incarnation in a material body, and progress through
probationary states.
L
That man existed as a pure spiritual being, a sinless para-
disaical unit, previous to his incarnation in a material body, is
not only the opinion of those sages of antiquity who studied from
the original books of life, rather than from records made and
altered to suit the purposes of successive generations of interested
priests, but it is the witness of the human spirit itself ere it be-
came bent and perverted by theological myths, or its memories
were dimmed by time and the more vivid impressions of mortal
experiences. In every primordial condition of the human family
the belief in a fall or descent of the spirit from heaven to earth,
from purity to transgression, is an unquenchable element in man's
nature. Belief it can scarcely be called; it is a memory, growing
fainter and fainter as it recedes from its source, but still an inde-
structible link of connection in that chain of destiny which has
finally incarnated the soul in a mortal body.
We shall close this section by citations from some few out of
the countless host of authoritative minds who have favored the
opinions herein announced as the rationale of the first act in the
Divine drama of human existence.
24
ART MAGIC.
SUPPLEMENT TO SECTION II.
HINDOO VEDAS-THE OLDEST WRITTEN SCRIPTURES.
ARGUMENTS DERIVED CHIEFLY FROM ANCIENT HISTORY IN SUP-
PORT OF THE PHILOSOPHY AFFIRMED IN THE PRECEDING
PAGES, WITH EXTRACTS FROM THE VEdas.
'
The oldest written Scriptures in existence are supposed to be
the Hindoo Vedas.
They repeatedly affirm the original and independent exist-
ence of spirit as the sole creative cause of Being, and claim that
man was an emanation from this divine element, that he was
originally pure and good, and that his existence on earth and his
successive transmigrations through various animal forms are sim-
ply designed as purifications through which his soul may regain
that alliance with Brahm, the Supreme Being, which he has lost
by a descent from a spiritual to a material existence.
EXTRACTS FROM THE VEDAS.
"That spirit who is not matter is one; He is the incompre-
hensible Being from whom all proceed, to whom all must return.
He is Brahm-The Spirit."
:
'As ten thousand beams emanate from one central fire, thus
do ten thousand souls emanate from Him, the one Eternal soul,
and return to Him."
"May this soul of mine, which is a ray of perfect wisdom,
pure intellect, and eternal essence, which is quenchless light and
eternal heat, fixed within a changeful, created body, be re-united
by devout meditation and divine science, with the Spirit, su-
premely blest and infinitely wise."
In all clear and thorough analyses of the Egyptian mysteries,
the corner-stone of belief rests on the assumption that the First
ART MAGIC.
25
;
Great Cause is a Spirit. That the first and only element of Being
was Soul-that it existed eternally, and filled infinity. By its
power of will it separated itself into emanations and elements,
and by its own inherent capacity for creation, the unresting ele-
ment of force was evolved; then came matter, and by the action
of force on matter, the unspeakable wisdom of the uncreated
soul, moving on the ocean of chaos, created Form and evolved
order. The fiery particles of matter ascended to form luminous
bodies, the heavier descended and aggregated into earths, seas,
plants, animals, and the bodies of men.
From the eternal soul proceeded successive emanations of
spiritual beings, more or less elevated according to their status of
ascent or descent in the grand scale of the Spiritual Kingdom.
Herodotus affirms that the Egyptians were the first people
who distinctly taught the immortality of the human Soul, but
the same doctrine, and in all probability, the original of all re-
ligious systems, was enunciated in India, when the Egyptian
Dynasty was yet in its infancy. More of the specialty of belief
in both these monumental nations will hereafter be given when
treating of their magical ceremonies; but it is in order to observe
here, that the foundation of their famous mysteries was laid in
the belief that the soul had fallen from an original state of purity
and innocence, had gravitated from a spiritual essence to a mate-
rial body, and that the chief end, aim and scope of earthly being,
was to conduct the soul through successive stages of purification,
back into original alliance with Deity.
This is the central doctrine of Plato, Pythagoras, Jamblichus,"
Plutarch, and, indeed, of all the most renowned sages, philoso-
phers, and historians who flourished from the beginning of his-
toric times, to those of the early Christian fathers. The Cabal-
ists, Gnostics, Essenes, Therapeuts, the Mystics of the mediaeval
ages, and some of the seers of the eighteenth and nineteenth cen-
turies, cherished similar opinions concerning the origin of soul,
and its probationary experiences.
In this category of testimony we cannot exclude the witness
of those, who, as spirits themselves, freed from the materialistic
shadows which obscure our vision and darken our intuitions, must
be more qualified than we are to disclose the realities of past and
future states of spiritual being.
Amongst all the latter-day revelations claiming to originate
with the enfranchised souls of those who had once lived on earth,
none come to mortals with more untrammelled freedom from
human intervention, than the revelations of Kerner's Seeress,
Madame Hauffe, commonly called "The Seeress of Prevorst," and
26
ART MAGIC.
the Somnambules of Alphonse Cahagnet, a working man of Paris,
once a materialist; a mere curious experimenter in the outset, with
the modern marvel of animal magnetism, but one who, as an im-
partial and intelligent interpreter of unlooked-for revelations re-
ceived through the magnetic sleep, constitutes one of the best and
least questionable of the witnesses for spiritual truth and revela-
tion in the nineteenth century.
4
About the year 1846 or 7, Mons. Cahagnet, having become
very familiar with somnambulistic revelations from the world of
spirits, and enjoying the privilege of this communion through
several of the most remarkable and lucid subjects that the age
afforded, received a number of communications affirming the fact
of the soul's existence anterior to its appearance upon earth.
Whilst denying emphatically any belief in the doctrines of the
Re-incarnationists, and declaring against it in the most positive
terms, the communicating spirits uniformly alleged that, when
freed from the trammels of matter, they all remembered having
lived in an anterior state of purity and innocence as spirits; that
they perceived how truly and wisely their earthly lives were de-
signed for probationary purposes, and meant to impart vigor and
knowledge to the soul; but that once undergone, it was never
again repeated, and the return of the soul to its former spiritual
state was never interrupted by re-incarnations on earth. These
spirits, too, alleged that the sphere of eternity afforded the souls
of evil or unprogressed, men all the opportunities necessary to
purify them from sin and its effects, through innumerable stages
of progress.
A witness so unexpected as these spirits afford, and revela-
tions so full of evidence of their genuine character, cannot be dis-
missed without a few examples of their style of teaching.
A spirit communicating with the ecstatic Bruno, says: "We
are born and die but once; when we are in heaven, it is for eter-
nity."
Q.
A. "Yes, and our anterior one also."
"Do we recollect our earthly existence?"
Q.
"What anterior existence?"
A. "Before appearing on earth, man lived in a spiritual
world similar to the one in which he lives on quitting earth. Each
awaits his turn in this world to appear on earth, an appearance
necessary, a life of trials none can escape."
Through the best of all Mons. Cahagnet's Lucides, Adele, in
an interview with the spirit of the illustrious Swedenborg, these
words were given: "The life anterior which we have all passed
through, was, so to speak, a life of nothingness, of childbirth, of
ART MAGIC.
27
happiness like that which we enjoy on our exit from the earth;
but this happiness cannot be comprehended, because it is not ac-
companied with sensations to prove its sweet reality, therefore
God has deemed fit that we should pass through these successive
lives, the first, on the globs of which I speak to you-a life un-
known, of beatitude, devoid of sensation-the second, the one
you enjoy, a life of action, sensation-a painful life placed be-
tween the two, to demonstrate through its contrast the sweetness
of the third—the life of good and evil, without which we should
not be able to appreciate the happy state reserved for us."
Many more spirits communicating through different media con-
firmed these opinions and elaborated upon their truth and reason-
ableness, but the limitation of our space forbids further extracts.
In one of the principal cities of Hindostan, there resides, in
the very focus of religious and political conservatism, a noble.
Hindoo, whose official rank and standing is by no means com-
mensurate with his extreme poverty. Bound by the latter re-
striction and a careful observance of the forms and ceremonials
which belong to his nation, he is compelled to hide in the depths
of his highly spiritualized and intellectual nature the extraordi-
nary revelations that have been made to him from invisible au-
thors through the mediumship of his little niece, a child of some
twelve years old. In the presence of this little one, whole quires
of blank paper are rapidly filled up by no visible hands and with-
out even the ordinary appliances of pens, pencils or ink.
It is enough to lay the blank sheets on a tripod, carefully
screened from the direct rays of light, but still dimly visible to
the eyes of attentive observers. The child sits on the ground,
and lays her head on the tripod, embracing its supports with her
little arms.
In this attitude she most commonly sleeps for an
hour, during which time the sheets lying on the tripod are filled
up with exquisitely formed characters in the ancient Sanscrit.
Over four volumes of these writings have been thus produced,
and that in something less than a period of three years.
Questions are often laid in simple Hindostanee on the tri-
pod, when information is sought by the family of the Hindoo.
and the responses are always found embodied in some portions
of the next writings received.
-
In answer to several questions concerning the origin of Soul,
and the doctrine of its transmigration through the forms of ani-
mals, one of the Sanscrit writings contained the following sen-
tences:
"That the Soul is an emanation from Deity, and in its origi-
nal essence is all purity, truth, and wisdom, is an axiom which the
28
ART MAGIC.
J
disembodied learn, when the powers of memory are sufficiently
awakened to perceive the states of existence anterior to mortal
birth. In the Paradises of purity and love, souls spring up like
blossoms, in the all Father's garden of immortal beauty. It is
the tendency of that Divine nature, whose chief attributes are
Love and Wisdom, Heat and Light, to repeat itself eternally, and
mirror forth its own perfections in scintillations 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 life
also illuminates into light, hence the soul emanations from the
Divine are all love and heat, whilst the illumination of light,
which streams ever from the great central Sun of being, irradiates
all souls with corresponding beams of light. Born of love, which
corresponds to Divine heat and warmth, and irradiated with
Light, which is Divine wisdom and truth, the first and most pow-
erful soul emanations repeated the action of their Supreme Origi-
nator, gave off emanations from their own being, some higher,
some lower, the highest tending upward into spiritual essences,
the lowest forming particled matter. These denser emanations,
following out the creative law, aggregated into suns, satellites,
worlds, and each repeating the story of creation, suns gave birth
to systems, and every member of a system became a theatre of sub-
ordinate states of spiritual or material existence.
"Thus do ideas descend into forms, and forms ascend into
ideas. Thus is the growth, development, and progress of cre-
ation endless, and thus must spirit originate and ever create worlds.
of matter, for the purposes of its own progressive unfoldment.
"Will the mighty march of creation never cease? Will the
cable anchored in the heart of the great mystery, Deity, stretch
out forever?
"Forever!' shout the blazing suns, leaping on in the fiery
orbits of their shining life, and trailing in their glittering pathway
ten thousand satellites and meteoric sparks, whirling, 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. From whence? As the earths groan for the lordship of su-
perior beings to rule over them, the spirits, in their distant Edens,
hear the whispers of the tempting serpent, the animal principle,
the urgent intellect, which appealing to the blest souls in their
distant paradises, fill them with indescribable longings for change,
for broader vistas of knowledge, for mightier powers; they would
be as the gods, and know good and evil; and in this urgent appeal
ART MAGIC..
29
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 earth,
and only to regain its paradise again by the fulfillment of that
pilgrimage.
"When spirits lived as such, in paradise, emanations from a
spiritual Deific source, they knew no sex, nor reproduced their
kind. . . . . When they fell, and the earth, like magnetic tract-
ors drew them within the vortex of its grosser element, they be-
came what the earths 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 genera-
tion. To people these earths, man, like the other living crea-
tures, must reproduce his kind. All things in matter are male
and female; minerals, plants, animals, and men. 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 per-
forms its pilgrimages ere he reaches the large and shining planet
named the Earth, 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 part, of the high imprisoned soul shines forth; a rudi-
mental shape with rudimental functions, ever living, dying, sus-
taining a fleeting, spiritual existence, as rudimental as the ma-
terial shape from whence it emerged; a butterfly springing up
from the chrysolitic shell, but ever as it onward rushes, in new
births, new deaths, new incarnations, anon to die and live again,
but still stretch upward, still strive onward, still rush on the
giddy, dreadful, toilsome, rugged path, until it awakens once
more-once more to live and be a material shape, a thing of dust,
a creature of flesh and blood, but now-a man.
"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 being that antedate its appear-
ance on this earth as a man, that the belief in the doctrine of the
metempsychosis (transmigration of souls through the animal
kingdom) has arisen.
"Yet it is a sin against divine truth to believe that the ex-
30
ART MAGIC.
!
alted soul that has once reached the dignity and upright stature
of manhood should, or could, retrograde into the bodies of creep-
ing 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 existence 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 possi-
bility of what we may be.
"After the soul's birth into humanity, it acquires self-con-
sciousness, 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 farther purifications
of the soul commence anew; commence 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 conquest over sin,
and prophetic sight stimulates him to aspire until he shall attain,
by well-directed effort, the sublime heights of purity and good-
ness from which he fell, to become a mortal pilgrim.'
>>
·
"The triumphant souls who enter Heaven by effort are God's
ministering angels. Angels of power, wisdom, strength and
beauty. The dwellers in the primal states of Eden are only Spir-
its. The first are God-men-heavenly men-strong and mighty
Powers, Thrones, Dominions, World-Builders, glorious hierar-
chies of Sun-bright Souls, who nevermore 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 spiritual existence an Elementary
Spirit."
·
•
ART MAGIC.
31
* HERE TO THE INTE
SECTION III.
DEITY-THE SUPREME BEING OF BEINGS.
IS THERE ONE OR MANY GODS-WHO CAN KNOW THE UNKNOW-
ABLE-MAY NOT THE KNOWN LEAD UP TO WHAT HAS BEEN
DEEMED THE UNKNOWABLE?
It is easier for the imagination to rest upon the idea of one
God than many, and still more natural for the soul of man to
accept of Polytheism than Atheism.
The utter insufficiency of any argument which attempts to
shut out an idea because its magnitude baffles the finite mind,
has never been more completely demonstrated than when man,
the puny, shadowy phantom who flits through a few sand grains.
of time, and then disappears for an eternity, attempts to argue
against the existence of any higher being than himself, simply
because, he, by his sensuous perception, cannot apprehend it.
No man can, by sensuous perception, apprehend the exist-
ence of his own soul. Socrates well understood this truth when
he said, "I respect my soul though I cannot see it," and the Apos-
tle Paul equally well appreciated its force when he declared that
the spiritual man alone could judge of the things of the spirit.
From the revelations of spirits who are in the experience of
spiritual entities, and the sublime imaginings of those who in the
childlike faiths of antiquity were nearer to God than are the
mammon-worshipers of to-day, will we erect our scheme of the
Divine Godhead, surrounding the noble temple with such a scaf-
folding of testimony as will enable every reader to climb to the
highest pinnacle of thought which the finite mind can reach.
That "God is a Spirit," and the eternal, uncreated, self-
existent, and infinite realm of Spirit is God, none can deny who
profoundly analyze the depths of being pointed to in our first
two Sections; but as to the mode in which God can be appre-
32
ART MAGIC.'
2.
hended, or whether there be one or many Gods, remain questions
open to much broader fields of speculation.
Were it not more in the order of these writings to present
the results of vast mental struggles, and the conclusions drawn
from researches which have only permitted the panting Soul to
pause
for breath at the gates which lead from one stage of infinity
to another, we should precede our own definitions of Godhead,
by the opinions of the authorities we propose to cite; but the
responsibility of affirmation is ours, and surrounded as we are
"by a cloud of witnesses," who wave the lustrous banners of spir-
itual truths above our page, how can we hesitate, or, in the cold
world's materialistic phrase, why fear to commit ourselves to
opinions we know in our Scul to be Divine truth?
The Solar System of which our earth is a part, moves around
the physical sun as a centre of light, heat, and attraction.
By well defined astronomical laws we know that this Solar
System forms only a part of a larger and far grander aggregation
of starry worlds, called the Astral System.
The exact centre of this system is not arrived at, yet all the
observations of astronomy point to such a pivotal centre, and the
known laws of Science determine that in the visible universe, all
motions proceed in and are sustained by the dual modes of cen-
trifugal and centripetal force. That the stars discovered by
astronomical Science are only a part of an array of systems which
occupy the spaces of infinity, is an axiom universally acknowl-
edged; hence, indeed, the terms "infinity" and "boundless," as
applied to the sidereal heavens; but in the midst of that unknow-
able which stretches away into vistas where the glass of the
astronomer cannot penetrate, and the mind of the most aspira-
tional becomes palsied, even there, the steadfast helm of physical
science guides the ship and prophesies of an inevitable port of
knowledge yet to be reached.
"The law which rounds a dew-drop shapes a world," and the
principles which inhere in one System prevail throughout space.
We cannot find a telescope that will pierce into the Astral Centre
nor resolve all the floating masses of nebulae that crowd the
galaxy into blazing Suns; but we know by analogy that that
Centre and those Suns exist, and that the only horizon that shuts
them out from human discovery, is human ignorance and
incapacity.
In the midst of all our baffled wisdom and enlightened igno-
rance, physical Science and spiritual revelation supplementing
each other, assure us there is one grand central Sun of being.
ART MAGIC.
33
Physical Science tells us it must be so. Spiritual revelation
affirms it is so. That central Sun is God. This perfection of
being exists in the form of a globe, the only point of union
between mathematics and geometry, and occupies the centre, the
only position whereby revolving universes can live, move, and
have their being and life, be born, sustained and renewed.
God is the dispenser of heat and light, the two elements in
being which account for generation and revelation, love and wis-
dom, life and sense. This Spiritual Sun throws off from the cen-
tre the elements of new-created worlds by centrifugal force, and
draws them back and keeps them in determinate orbits by cen-
tripetal force. Its nature is Spirit; its attribute, Will; its mani-
festations, Love, Wisdom, Power. This is God.
34
ART MAGIC.
•
SUPPLEMENT TO SECTION III
EARLY CONCEPTIONS OF THE HINDOOS.
OPINIONS OF ANCIENT AND MODERN PHILOSOPHERS AND SPIRIT-
ISTS CONCERNING THE NATURE AND INDIVIDUALITY OF ONE
SUPREME BEING.
The best of Philologists agree in attributing to the nations.
or peoples called Aryan, or Indo-European, the first linguistic
records we possess:
"Men do not invent names for things of which they have no
idea."
"The Word has always been recognized as the fittest Symbol
of Truth, and the purest manifestation of Deity." The Aryan
name for God was Div, which signifies "The clear light of day;"
and this word has become the root-word of all worship for untold
ages, until we arrive at its modern appellative, Deity.
In fragmentary accounts given of the most early historic
people, classified as Aryan, it is asserted that they kept fires con-
stantly burning as their chief element in religious worship. Fus-
tel de Coulanges, in his fine epic (for such it is), entitled "La
Cite Antique," published in Paris, in 1870, clearly proves that
the Aryan's religious belief, recognized in fire the symbol of God
-in light his wisdom-in material forms an expression of his
potential word-and in Guardian Spirits his Ministering Angels,
or tutelary deities.
When we trace the early conceptions of the Hindoos-that
most ancient of contemplative men, those children of the Spirit,
who communed with Nature's God through the profoundest study
of Nature herself-we find they cherished ideas so exalted of the
First Great Cause, that they ventured not to embody their
thought of Him in any form, symbol, or even to assign Him a
name.
ART MAGIC.
35
The Supreme Being was with them, the Unknowable, and
only became typified as Brahm, which, interpreted, signifies The
Void, The Silent Region which cannot be pierced-the unfath-
omable which cannot be gauged or understood. That the human
mind might rest on a Providential scheme, the Sages of India
taught that there were three Subordinate emanations from the
First Great Cause, who embodied the Grand Trinity of his Deific
attributes. This primordial Trinity consisted of Brahma, the
Creator; Vishnu, the Preserver; and Siva, the Destroyer and Re-
producer.
•
Each of these Deific emanations were so intimately con-
nected in the Hindoo mind with the attributes of heat and light,
that the earliest Hindostanee worship may with truth, he
assumed to have laid the foundation of that stupendous system
known, in later ages, as the astronomical religion. A large pro-
portion of the Vedas-the oldest of the Hindoo Scriptures-con-
sist of epics in praise of Light; accounts of the miracles out-
wrought by the mighty Sun-God; invocations to the spirits of the
air, moon, stars, the sacred fire, and different elements. Many
are the prayers addressed to Indra, the starry-robed Ruler of the
constellated heavens, as well as to the spirits of different depart-
ments of the Universe. Fire was held sacred in every household,
and employed in all sacerdotal rites. The very shape of the
pyramidal Temples, or the blunted pylons, signified the all-per-
vading reverence of the Hindoo mind for the symbol of the taper-
ing flame.
In one of the most ancient of the Vedic hymns, addressed
to the Heranyagarbha, occurs the following passages:
"In the beginning there arose the Source of golden light.
He was the only born Lord of all that is. He established the
earth and the sky. To what other God shall we offer sacrifice?
He through whom the sky is bright, and the earth is firm; who
measured out the light in the air. To what other God, etc., etc.
"Wherever the mighty water clouds went; where they placed
the seed and lit the fire; thence arose He who is the only life of
the bright Gods. To what other God, etc., etc.
There was neither entity, nor non-entity then- neither
atmosphere nor sky beyond. Death was not, nor therefore
immortality; nor day nor night. That One breathed breathless
by itself. There was nothing different from it, nor beyond it.
The covered germ burst forth by mental heat; then first came
Love upon it, the Spring of mind. The rays shot across, and
there were mighty powers producing all things. Nature beneath,
and Energy above.'
>>
36
ART MAGIC.
The Vedic hymns are nearly all in yocations to the Solar and
Astral sources of light and heat; the Vedic philosophy, specula-
tions on the origin of Being, ever re-affirming the influence of
Solar and Astral agency in Creation.
The following passage, descriptive of the Hindoo's God, will
convey an idea of his sublime conceptions of Deity:,
"Heaven is his head; the sun and moon are his eyes; the
earth his feet; space his ears; air his breath. He is the Soul of
the Universe. The Sun of all luminaries. All Creation derives
light from him alone. The wise call him the Supreme Light-
giving Spirit."
In the Egyptian and Persian Theogony, the direct acknowl-
edgment of one Supreme Being corresponding to the Sun and
its attributes, is as marked as in the Aryan and Indian records.
The elaborate woof of Grecian and Roman Mythology partake
of the same golden threads of belief, and whilst ramifying into
a complete system of Polytheism, still refer back to the Indian
and Egyptian idea of Creation springing from one Supreme
Source, and this a spiritual centre of heat or creative energy, and
light or creative wisdom.
In the Orphic Songs, the one first Great Cause celebrated
as Zeus is more completely associated with the Egyptian idea of
a Sun-God, a spirit "without parts or passion, sex or nature,"
than in the theories of later philosophers. Orpheus, the Sage,
to whom the introduction of Egyptian Theogony into Greece is
mainly due, chants thus of the Supreme Being:
"Zeus is male, Zeus is female. Zeus is the spirit of all things.
Zeus is the rushing of uncreated fire. Zeus is the king; he is the
sun and moon. Zeus is the mighty power, the demon, the one
mighty frame in which this universe revolves. He is fire and
water, earth and ether, day and night. All things unite in the
body of Zeus."
Pythagoras, Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, and other of the most
distinguished Grecian sages, taught more directly of God as a
Spirit, and as the source from which all subordinate gods pro- -
ceeded.
I
Passing on to the mediaeval, and still later ages, we find the
most illuminated of the Mystics either reaffirming the ancient
beliefs of India and Egypt in the Great Central Sun, or claiming
to receive confirmation of this truth from spiritual inspiration,
direct revelations, or intercourse with superior orders of being.
Cornelius Agrippa, Paracelsus, Jacob Behmen, and Sweden-
borg, taught this idea of Deity with more or less distinctness.
Swedenborg, in particular, who elevates his conception of Jesus
ART MAGIC.
37
Christ into the Lord, from whom, and to whom, all the activities.
of the Created Universe proceed and return-clearly teaches that
"the Lord" is only seen as a Sun. In his essay on "Creation by
Two Suns," he affirms that "The Sun of Heaven is the Lord, the
light there is Divine truth, and the heat there is Divine good,
which proceed from the Lord as a Sun. From that origin are all
things which exist and appear in the heavens." Again he says:
"That the Lord actually appears in heaven as a Sun, has not only
been told me by the angels, but has also been given me to see
several times, wherefore what I have seen and heard concerning
the Lord as a Sun, I would here describe, etc., etc.
Of still more recent date are the teachings of certain spirits
claiming to have had a mortal existence, many thousands of years
ago, but who found themselves impelled to return to earth during
the great spiritual outpouring of the last quarter of a century, in
the United States of America. We shall quote from those who
manifested their presence at the spirit house of Jonathan Koons, a
farmer residing in the remotest wilds of Athens County, Ohio,
and who gave their testimony, speaking through trumpets with
an audible voice, under circumstances which defied the probabil-
ity of collusion or imposture, and with a power and spirituality
of tone and presence acknowledged by all who heard them to have
been truly sublime and authoritative.
The communications given by these spirits orally were tran-
scribed by those present, and subsequently corrected by them-
selves-others were written by spirit hands in the presence of
many witnesses, or found in locked drawers. From the MSS.
preserved of these wonderful writings, the history of the Athens
County manifestations are elaborately described in "Hardinge's
Twenty Years' History of Modern American Spiritualism," and
it is from the pages of this highly authentic work that we submit
the following excerpt.
The author says:
"These spirits declare that there is an electric element,
divided through space by another element, which bears no affinity
to it; that spirits, at least such as communicate with earth, cannot
themselves penetrate this interior element; in fact, to their appre-
hension, no one in the universe can do so, save only God; and this
mysterious innermost, with all its hidden and impenetrable glo-
ries, is called by the spirits the subter fluid.' They declare that
the electric element forms the various paths in which planets
and all other known bodies in space travel and move in their re
spective orbits, but that nothing visible to spirits, or comprehen-
38
ART MAGIC.
sible to them as of an organic nature, can penetrate the realms
of the 'subter fluid,' yet it divides and permeates all space, and
seems to hold in control the infinite realms of the electric ele-
ment. 'Rays of light,' however, they say, 'can and do penetrate
the 'subter fluid,' as they appear to issue from and return to it
incessantly.' Also, 'There is a grand central territory in the uni-
verse, known to exist by all spirits, and in all worlds. It embraces
illimitable though unknown realms; yet its position as a vast cen-
tral point is defined, from the fact that from thence, and to
thence, seem to trend all the illimitable lines of attraction, gravi-
tation, and force, which connect terrestrial bodies, and link to-
gether firmaments teeming with lives and systems. All the
innumerable firmaments, spangled with an infinitude of solar and
astral systems, seem to revolve around, and derive attractive and
living forces from this unknown centre. Sometimes it is called
'the Celestial Realm.' Again "The Central Sun,' 'Heaven,' 'God,"
"The Infinite Realm,' "The Eternal Life!' While firmaments
thickly sown with suns and revolving satellites, appear but as
specks of light in comparison with the inconceivable vastness of
this celestial laboratory, invisible and boundless as it is, from
which flows out, through all universes, the centrifugal and cen-
tripetal forces of being."
In Cahagnet's "Celestial Telegraph," several spirits, commu-
nicating through celebrated Somnambules, startled their hearers'
preconceived opinions on the subject of Deity, by affirming posi-
tively that he was seen and known by highly exalted angels as a
Grand Central Spiritual Sun.
A
Through the ecstatic Bruno it was asked: "Do angels, such
as you describe your Guardian Gabriel to be, see God?" A. "Yes."
Q. "In what form?" A. "In that of the Sun." Q. "Is it our ter-
restrial Sun?" A. "No; there is in the heaven of heavens but one
Sun, which is the Spiritual Sun, the form in which God appears.
Our terrestrial sun is but the reflection of the rays dispensed from
the great Central Spiritual Sun, which is God."
-
The Hindoo child seeress Sanoma, heretofore referred to
also affirmed, when in ecstatico, at the tender age of five years,
when her infant mind had never been impressed with one single
idea of theology, that the God of the universe was a Spiritual Sun,
whilst all the suns and stars, visible or invisible to the naked eye,
derived their light and heat only from Him. When questioned
by Sir James Mackintosh, the eminent astronomer, whether the
sun of our solar system was not an incandescent body, and the
originator of all the light and heat received by his satellites, she
ART MAGIC.
39
emphatically denied that it was so, and exposed, with wonderful
acumen, in her lisping, child-like tone, but with penetrating
scientific arguments, the fallacies of those astronomers who en-
deavor to defend the incandescent theory of the sun's body.
This youthful ecstatic affirmed that all the light and heat in
the universe proceeded from the great Central Spiritual Sun, and
was reflected from thence to every body in space, according to its
size, situation, and the energy of the centrifugal and centripetar
forces operating between suns, satellites, and systems.
1
During an unbroken system of communion, extending over
a period of nearly half a century, between the author of these
pages and spirits of various degrees during perceptions of
angelic spheres observed by his liberated spirit amongst the
realms of the wise and blest, similar testimony to the existence.
of a Deity who is no mystery to His creatures, has been rendered.
It seems strange, and not in the order of the Providential
scheme, that the one sole mystery of the universe should be the
Being most capable of originating revelation, namely, a First
Great Cause. But has this Supreme One been a mystery from the
beginning? or would He have continued so, if man, in his ego-
tism and pride, had not flattered himself with the assumption
that subordinate beings, tutelary spirits, and even specially in-
spired men, were the real Gods of the Universe, condescending
to come and minister in person to humanity? Did not the first
men of the earth, fresh in their primitive inspiration from Deity,
rightly apprehend Him in the beginning? Have not the Proph-
ets, Seers, Magians, Mystics, and modern Ecstatics, ever per-
ceived and known God in gleams of the original brightness,
dimmed by ages of materialism, and perverted by gloomy, earth-
made theologies? Wherever the voices of the angels find rever-
berating echoes in human inspiration, there this Great Mystery
of God is solved in the revealment of the uncreated, self-existent,
infinite, and eternal Spiritual Sun, from which emanate, and to
which return, all rays of life, light, heat, germinative, creative,
and sustaining power.
Wherever we see the people of earth straying away in search
of human idols, striving to discover in their God man-made, man-
shaped, and man-like personalities; wherever we see an interested
ignorant and selfish priesthood, enslaved by their own passions
and prejudices, aiming to keep the people enslaved to their
opinions-there look to find the face of the Infinite veiled in
mystery; the truths of Godhead, natural science and spiritual
inspiration crowded back into the realms of mystery; and mys-
tery, the mother of all abominations, setting up idols for human
40
ART MAGIC.
worship, which change with the customs of the age and the fash-
ion of the hour. To drown the voice of Spiritual science, and that
reason which insists that the most obvious existence in Creation
must be Creation's Author, the epithets of "Pagan, Heathen,
Infidel, Heretic, Fire Worshiper and Blasphemer" have been
shouted through the highways of life's common places, and still
echo in our ears even in this analytical nineteenth century; for
the rule of Mystery, Babylon the Great, The Mother of Harlots
and Abominations of the Earth, is not yet broken, and until it is,
her votaries will fight for her, and perish soul and body for her;
and all the while the light will be "shining in the darkness,
though the darkness comprehendeth it not."
Man, in his primitive appearance on earth, came only as a
poor, untutored savage, the mere form of the being he was to be-
come-only a prophecy of the Lord of Creation he should be.
As he emerged from savagism to the dawn of an intellectual
morning, the perception of his descent from an antecedent sphere
of spiritual existence possessed his memory, and a perception of
his return to that blest state of purity and happiness inspired his
power of prevision.
↓
His gradually awakening intellect taught him to analyze and
understand himself. Casting about for the causes of existence,
the supports on which it rested and the aims for which he lived,
man dedicated all his earliest powers of mind to religion. Even
his earliest triumphs in the arts of civilization were but used as
means to the one end. His superb temples of worship, his solemn
preparations for another life, and his colossal monumental records
of his religious beliefs, remain almost imperishable evidences of
his deep and undivided interest in the problems of religion; whilst
of his social and commercial pursuits, only the most fragmentary
and unimportant vestiges can be found. India, Egypt, Arabia,
the recesses of the mighty Himalayas and the giant Koh Kas, the
lovely vales and smiling plains of Asia-vales blooming like
glimpses of the fabled Eden, and savage wilds, deserted now, deso-
late and ruined-all bear witness to the unquenchable devotion
of the early man to his religious belief; all are thickly strewn over
with colossal remains of that stupendous system in which that
belief found expression. The burning lands of the Orient are one
vast Bible overwritten with distinct asseverations that to the early
man God was not the Unknowable, and religious faith was no
mystery. Whence came this faith if not from man's intuitive
knowledge and the obvious facts of creation? Sun, moon, stars,
the constellated glories of the heavens, their eternal order and
their majestic march through infinity-these were scriptures in
ART MAGIC.
41-
which the natural instincts of an unspoiled nature recognized
God's own writing, and interpreted it without failure or effort.
The ancient man did not vainly exhaust his intellect to dis-
cover God. Untrammelled by creeds, unfettered by priestcraft
and unbiased by inherited prejudices, he did not seek God, he
simply found Him-knew Him in the love which engenders life;
the wisdom that sustains it; the power that upholds it-knew
Him in the sacred flame, which is heat; the splendor of light,
which is revelation. He discovered the reflection of his dwelling-
place in the majesty of the blazing sun, and perceived his own des-
tiny-God's Providence and Nature's profoundest harmonies-
in the constellated paths of the starry heavens and the move-
ments of the fiery legions of space.
Priestcraft, Kingcraft, Artificial Civilization, with their long
train of crime and disease, want and woe-an over-strained devo-
tion to the idols of ecclesiasticism and physical science, have
alienated the soul of man from pure, natural, spiritual religion,
interrupted the precious communion which pure, spiritual natures
alone can enjoy with angelic spheres of existence, and driven the
soul off into the baneful mysticisms of idolatrous faiths or blank
materialism.
It is a hopeful and significant sign to behold the spiritual
standards once more set up on earth. It is a hopeful and signifi-
cant fact to note how the best of the modern Seers tend towards
ancient faith in the Divine Spiritual Law as the Author and Cen-
tre of being, and the prophecy of a better, more truthful, just and
reasonable theology is continually renewing itself in the air, as
the lips of the most inspired teachers of the time re-affirm the
sublime utterances of old: "God is a Spirit, and they who worship
Him, must worship Him in spirit and in truth."
42
ART MAGIC.
SECTION IV.
HOW TRADITIONS BECOME SCRIPTURES.
THE MOST ANCIENT FORM OF WORSHIP THE ASTRONOMICAL
RELIGION, OR THE SUNBEAM SYSTEM-SOLAR AND ASTRAL
GODS.
A
The shelves of any ordinary sized library could be entirely
filled with fragments of literature concerning the worship of the
ancients, and the peculiar character of those myths which have
been preserved from the remotest days of antiquity, and now
underlie all the present systems of theological belief. It is a re-
markable fact that, notwithstanding the vast collection of writ-
ings extant on this subject, there is no one compendious and
accessible text-book from which the masses generally could derive
reliable information and assimilate the knowledge thus widely
diffused; and it is no less worthy of observation that, whilst the
mythical character of early worship is stamped with unmistakable
fidelity upon every form of modern theology, this damaging fact
seems to make no difference in the idolatrous veneration with
which the modern worshiper clings to the items of his faith; on
the contrary, whilst the evidence accumulates around him, that
the ideas to which he renders divine homage are paraphrases of
ancient fictions, he all the more sturdily battles for his idol, and
denounces every attempt to shake the authenticity of legends
which he translates into divine revelations.
Perhaps it is for want of an authentic text-book; perhaps
because the literature of the subject is too widely diffused and
broken up into too many scattered fragments, that this apathy
of idolatry prevails so universally, and that the common sense and
intelligence of the nineteenth century is contented to bow down
with purse and person before lifeless husks from which the spirit
has departed; the husks which at best only contained in their
original form the spirit of an impersonated myth.
ART MAGIC.
43
It is not for the sake of converting one single idolator of the
nineteenth century that we now write. It is not with the desire
of proving to any sincere worshiper of the name of Christ that
he is adoring the Sun-God of the ancients, that we now collect
the forn fragments of the great Osiric body, and present a con-
crete, though necessarily microscopic view of the original struc-
ture. When the idolatries of fire-worship have done their work,
their perversions will die the natural death which the divine order
of the universe demands; until that time arrives we write for the
truth's sake alone; let who will accept or reject us. Truth is
"the Master's Word," which unlocks all mysteries, furnishes the
clue to all religious beliefs, underlies the magical history of the
race, and therefore its free enunciation is demanded in this work.
At what period the early man first commenced to worship
the starry host of heaven, or in what nation the germ was first
planted of that stupendous system which overlaid the earth with
temples and survived all the wrecks of chance, change and time,
none can say. We find the manifestation of its completeness only
when humanity had acquired the art of recording its opinions
in picture-writing, symbolical engravings, hieroglyphical and
alphabetical Scriptures.
Traditions come wafted down the ages on the tongues of men
with an impress as authoritative as graven Scriptures; for, ere men
had learned to record their thoughts, they depended on memory
for their preservation; hence they cultivated and strengthened
this faculty, held its integrity sacred, and hence the perpetuity
and universality of oral traditions.
Tradition affirms that when the mind of man rose out of the
lethargy of savagism to the dawn of reason, and became fired with
all those anxious inquisitions into the nature of cause and effect
which reason prompts, he began to perceive that all the grand
machinery of nature was coincident with the apparition and dis-
appearance of the resplendent lights which spangled the canopy
of the over-arching heavens. The God whom his earliest percep-
tions recognized in the majestic Sun, was unquestionably the
source of those climactric changes which formed the principal
theme of his primal studies.
To cultivate the ground, feed and protect his flocks, and
determine the best times to perform the simple duties of agricul-
turist and herdsman, it became necessary to study the succession
of the seasons, and consider not only the familiar alternations
of night and day, but the equally important order which marked
the changes in tides and times, together with all the variations
of climate, and their effects in heat and cold.
44
ART MAGIC.
None could fail to observe that every change on the face of
nature kept step with the succession of certain solar and astral
phenomena.
From the early dawn of these perceptions, up to the maturity
of the stupendous astronomical religion, man learned to read the
fiery Scriptures of the skies, and the ever mobile face of nature,
with a profound depth of understanding.
How many ages it required to outwork a complete theology
from the book of nature and the starry heavens, man may never
determine.
4
Thought grows fast or slowly according to the amount of
momentum that is imparted to it. The world is very old in rela-
tion to that succession of changes we call time.
Millions of years have been consumed in laying down the
rocky walls that extend from the circumference to the interior
of the earth's crust. It occupied the world builders untold ages
to develop a spear of moss or a tuft of lichen, from a mass of
primary granite. Time is nothing in the issues of divine pur-
poses; a second or a billion of years are but indices on the dial
plates which mark the rounds of eternal progress, and since the
first human worshiper veiled his adoring eyes in the passion of
his soul's communion with the Spirit who dwells in the orbs of
primal light, up to the age when reverend scholarly men were set
apart by the busy multitude to watch the order of marching
worlds from the high towers of the early "episcopacy," many suc-
cessions of times, seasons, generations and ages had come and
gone. The constellated heavens had been studied out; charts had
been drawn; numerical Bibles written. The starry legions had
been divided into geometrical proportions, and their motions cal-
culated with mathematical precision. Even the forward move-
ment of the entire solar system around what science now asserts
to be an undiscovered but inevitable centre, had been perceived,
and the precession of the equinoxes was understood. The whole
grand scheme, involving the awful majesty of the Sun-God, the
mild radiance of the moon, the glory of the fixed stars, the erratic
motions of the wandering planets, the terrific apparition of fiery
comets, flashing meteors, and the deep and unfathomable mystery
of floating nebulae-all these, no less than their influence upon
the fair, green earth, with its lofty mountains and shoreless seas,
its sombre forests and quiet vales, its half-savage, half-divine
inhabitants-all this realm of power and mystery, sublimity and
littleness, solemn silence and restless eloquence, the ancient mind
discovered, by thousands of years of patient and untiring study,
to be all in motion-motion of one continuous and corresponden-
ART MAGIC.
45
tial order-motion which swept "the heavens, and the earth, and
all that in them is," through regions of space, unknown and un-
knowable, but still defined to the piercing intelligence of the
astronomical priesthood as one grand and interblended universe
of Love, Wisdom and Power.
From the results of our forefathers' sublime discoveries, from
the mass of varied records they have left, and the fragmentary
collections that we have gathered up of their wisdom, we give in
the following pages a brief and most imperfect compendium of
their religious belief. It is only necessary to consult the diagram
of the heavens, as mapped out on any common almanac, school
atlas or celestial globe, to perceive that the apparent path of the
sun is laid down in an imaginary waving track called the Ecliptic.
This path (assuming, as did the ancients, that the sun moves
around the earth), crosses the equator or fanciful belt encircling
the earth at two periods of time, which, by the relative positions
of the sun towards the earth, divide up the solar year into winter
and summer, and place the sun in the aspect of south and north
towards the earth.
The path of the sun on the Ecliptic was defined by ancient
astronomers between two lines, parallel to each other, sixteen
degrees apart, the sun's march being between them.
This space was, and still is, called the Zodiac. The Zodiacal
circle was divided into three hundred and sixty degrees, these
again into four right angles of ninety degrees each, and the whole
into twelve signs, consisting each of thirty degrees.
These signs were, with the ancients, arbitrary divisions of
certain groups of stars called constellations. They were named
chiefly in accordance with the climactric changes transpiring on
the earth at the period when the sun was passing through them.
In January, now called the first month of the year, the sun
passed through the constellation or group of stars called, from the
season of storms and heavy rains that then prevail, Aquarius, the
washer, or the Greek Baptizo. In February he enters the sign
of Pices, or the Fishes, a time of famine, dearth, and distress,
when the fruits and roots are consumed, and little is left to the.
primitive man but the spoil of the accumulating waters.
In March the sun enters Aries the Lamb, significant of the
young and tender products of the approaching Spring. In April,
when the energy of the agricultural season is to be typified, the
constellated group through which the sun passes is called the
Bull. In May, when Summer and Winter are reconciled, and the
the sweet genial period of flowers and bloom seems to knit up the
opposing seasons in fraternal harmony, the constellation then pre-
46
ART MAGIC.
1
vailing is called Gemini, or the Twins. In June, when the sun
appears to undergo a retrograde motion significantly explained
in astronomy, the sign in the ascendant is termed Cancer, or the
Crab. In July, the raging heat of the burning Summer suggests
for the ascendant sign the significant title of the Lion, whilst the
Virgin of August, the Scales of September, the Scorpion or Great
Dragon of October, the Archer of November, and the Goat of
December, are supposed to have somewhat more direct reference
to fancied resemblances in the shapes of the constellations, than
for the physical correspondence between their names and the cli-
mactric conditions of the earth. Besides these subdivisions of the
Zodiacal path, there were two other methods of marking the
astronomical year. The first was the division of the whole twelve
months into four seasons, each of which contained ninety degrees,
and were symbolized by a special emblem, as-an Ox, a Lion, an
Eagle, and a Man. The Ox denoted the agricultural pursuits of
the Spring, the Lion the fierce heat of the Summer, the Eagle
was adopted for certain symbolical reasons as a substitute for the
Scorpion of Autumn, and the Man was still retained as the Winter
emblem of Aquarius, or the water- bearer. Added to this quater-
nial division of the year, were the two primal and opposing condi-
tions of Summer and Winter, always held significant by the
ancients of good and evil principles.
The most solemn and important periods of the astronomical
year were when the Sun descended from the North at the close
of Summer to cross the plane of the autumnal equinox, and that
when he ascended from the South in the Spring to cross the ver-
nal equinox. The first motion heralded death to the great light-
bringer, famine and desolation to the earth; the second inaugu-
rated the rejuvenating power of his triumph and glory in the
promise of Spring, and the fulfillment of Summer.
Slight as seems this foundation for a theology, it is on this
only, that the superstructure of every theological system of the
earth has been upreared.
Besides the general titles assigned to the twelve Zodiacal con-
stellations, each separate star visible in the heavens, had its name,
and was supposed to exert an influence peculiar to itself for good
or evil upon mankind. Thus all the stars through the plane of,
or near which the sun passed in Summer were deemed to be benef-
icent and in harmony with the celestial traveller of the skies,
favorable also to the inhabitants of earth to whom they aided in
dispensing seed-time and harvest, fruits, flowers, and all manner
of blessings. On the other hand, the stars of Winter were assumed
to exert a malignant influence not only on the mighty Sun-God,
ART MAGIC.
47
whom they opposed, but also upon man and his planet, causing
storms, tempests, pestilence, and famine. By these malignant
astral influences the gracious Sun was shorn of his heat-dispens-
ing powers, and the hours of his illumination upon earth were
shortened. The majesty of Day was so obscured by the hosts of
malignant Spirits, supposed to inhabit the wintry stars, that he
vainly strove to contend against them. On the opposing spiritual
forces inhabiting the Summer and Winter constellations, was
founded the apocalyptic legend of "the war in heaven," and end-
less flights of visionary astronomical myths.

In this celestial scheme every star became a symbol of some
good or evil genius; every constellation was a realm, peopled by
innumerable legions of beneficent or malignant angels, and the
entire field of the sidereal heavens was made the battle-ground
of infinite squadrons of opposing angelic influences.
On the earth the solar year was mapped out into grand sub-
divisions of time, in which the impersonated stars and their rival
influences enacted a mighty drama with the Sun-God for its hero,
the inhabitants of earth for an adoring audience, and a royal
astronomical priesthood for its historians.
These ancient priests, called from their custom of studying
the face of the heavens from high watch-towers, Episcopacy,
became in ages of practice familiar with every phase of the sub-
lime epic they wrote. They occupied centuries in correcting their
calendars and amending their Zodiacal charts. They invented
thousands and tens of thousands of allegorical fables descriptive
of the scenes, incidents and angelic personages of the celestial
drama. They varied names, images and symbols to suit the pro-
gress of ideas in revolving ages, and invested their astral Gods
with all the attributes which fervent Oriental fancy could suggest.
As an example of the leading ideas which prevailed through-
out this stupendous system, it is proper to recite some of the main
features which clustered around the supposititious history of the
magnificent Sun-God. When this light-bringing luminary en-
tered the sign of Aries, or the Lamb, in March, he was assumed to
have crossed the vernal equinox and become the Redeemer of the
world from the sufferings and privations of Winter. Then the
earth and its inhabitants rejoiced greatly. The young Savior
had entered upon his divine mission, bringing the earth out of
darkness into light; miraculously healing the sick; feeding starv-
ing multitudes, and filling the world with blessing.
This triumphant career culminated to its fullest glory be-
tween the months of July and August, which, in the figurative
48
ART MAGIC.
language of the astronomical religion, was sometimes called the
betrothal of the Virgin, sometimes the marriage feast of the
Lion, of July, and the Virgin, of August. This was the season
of the grape harvest, the time when the Sun converted, by his
radiant heat, the waters which had desolated the earth in Winter
into the luscious wine of the vintage. Then it was, as the ancient
astronomers proclaimed, that the great miracle of the solar year
was performed, and the Sun manifested forth his most triumph-
ant glory.
From thence the constellation of the Scales, or the Balances,
seemed for a time to maintain the celestial hero in a just and even
path; his miraculous power and life-giving presence was hailed
with feasts and rejoicings, which lasted until the fatal period
when the Great Dragon of the Skies, the mighty Scorpio, of Octo-
ber, appears in the ascendant. Then sorrow and lamentation pos-
sessed the earth. The Savior of men must cross the autumnal
equinox and from thence descend into the South-the Hades,
Acheron, Sheol, Hell, Pit, of many ancient nations.
To announce the dire calamity at hand, the Dragon, of Octo-
ber, is preceded by a bright and glorious star called in the Spring
Vesper, or the evening star; in autumn, Lucifer, or "the Son of
the morning." In the sweet vernal season this splendid luminary
is the herald of Summer, the brightest and most beautiful of all
the heavenly host. Then it appears high in the heavens, and
occupies what is significantly called the seat of pride. Appearing
in the boding season of Autumn, low on the edge of the horizon,
and shining only in the early dawn, its name is changed with its
station-it is now the fallen Angel; the mighty rebel, who
seduced by pride and vaulting ambition, has been dethroned and
cast down to the ominous depths of the lowest hell. Transformed
into Lucifer, "Son of the Morning," this star becomes the herald
of the darkest ill that can beset the path of the celestial Savior.
As it appears in advance of the great constellation of the Dragon,
it is assumed to be the rebel Angel that incited "a third of the host
of heaven to disobedience;" hence it is often confounded with the
Dragon, of which, however, it is only the prototype.
The constellation of the great Dragon is the most powerful
of the entire Zodiac. From its peculiar form, and the immense
group of shining stars that extend in the convolutions of its
resplendent train, it has been called the Starry Serpent of the
Skies. Its attendant luminaries are assumed to be that third of
the host of heaven seduced by the rebel Angel from their allegi-
ance, and its position as the inaugural constellation of the much-
ART MAGIC.
49
dreaded wintry season impresses upon it the ominous name of
Satan, or the adversary. And thus, from the position of a group
of stars, and their apparition in the season deemed fatal to the
prosperity of earth and its inhabitants, has arisen that stupendous
myth, that legend of world-wide fear, the supposititious existence
of an incarnate spirit of evil, the Satan of the Persians, the Ty-
phon of Egypt, the Pluto of the Greeks, the old Serpent of the
Jews, and the most popular of all objects of alternate fear and
worship, the Devil of the enlightened Christians.
Following up the astronomical, legend, we find the great
Dragon of October waging its annual war against the Sun-God.
By the influence of its leader, Lucifer, the celestial Sun-God has
already been put to death in his crossifiction of the autumnal
equinox; from thence he is cast down into the power of the two
evil months-November and December-who are crucified with
him on the autumnal equinox.
It is just at midwinter when Capricorn, the Goat-signifying
in ancient mythical language the renewer of life-is in the ascen-
dant, that the Sun-God reappears as a new-born babe.
In the fanciful imaginings of the astronomical historians,
the cluster of stars which appear in the midwinter sky bear a
resemblance to a manger or stable, whilst the fertile minds of the
"episcopacy" discover the reappearance of the Virgin of Summer,
with her companion, Bootes, or the constelllation called Joseppe,
or Joseph. For three days at midwinter the feeble radiance of the
Sun appears to remain stationary, yet so greatly obscured, that
the legend declares he descends to the nethermost parts of the
universe and is lost to sight.
(
In the Greek theology this three days of solar obscuration
is accounted for by the descent of Orpheus into the realms of
Pluto, where, by the magic of his sweet music, he is supposed
to rescue lost souls from the very jaws of Hades. In the astro-
nomical legend the vanished God is represented as going on a mis-
sion of mercy, to illuminate with his radiance the darkened souls.
who have been held captive in the realms of perdition. At length,
on the 25th day of December, he reappears, and amidst the fig-
urative paraphernalia of constellated stars then in the ascendant,
he is declared to have been born in a manger through the mater-
nity of the Zodiacal Virgin.
The women who have wept for Tammuz, the Syrian Sun-
God, the mourners who have lamented with Isis for the Egyptian
Osiris, the Greeks who have wandered with Ceres in search of the
lost Proserpina, the devotees who have wailed for the slain
50
ART MAGIC.
Chrishna, one of the Sun-Gods of the Hindoos, and the Marys
who weep at the sepulchre for the Christ of the Jews, all the
nations of antiquity throughout the Orient-each of whom,
under many names and in many forms, have adored the Sun-God,
and believed in his annual birth, life, miracles, death and resur-
rection-all have united to celebrate the new birth of their idol
on the 25th of December, the period at which the solar orb act-
ually passses through the constellation of the Zodiacal sign Cap-
ricorn, or "the renewer of life." After the 25th of December,
the legend again loses sight of its new-born Savior.
In all Eastern theogonies Egypt is represented as the land
of darkness and the symbol of obscurity. During the prevalence
of the two constellations of January and February, it is supposed
that antagonistic influences threaten the young child's life. The
royal power of Winter, with its storms and tempests, is in the
ascendant, hence the world's Redeemer is in danger from a
mighty King. To avert the evil, the young child is carried by
stealth to the land of Egypt; there in concealment he remains
until the season of danger is passed, when he recrosses the equator
at the vernal equinox, ascending from the southern depth of
Egypt into the light and glory of an acknowledged worker of
miracles. Again the earth rejoices in the presence of the young
Lamb of Spring, who "taketh away the sins of the world," and
redeems it from the famine, desolation and evils of the past Win-
ter. From this time forth the Sun-God proclaims "peace on
earth, and good will to men," and fulfills his promise in miracles
of healing, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked and bringing
life and plenty to all.
On taking a retrospective glance at this famous myth, it will
be seen that the Sun-God is its central figure, and his passage
through the constellated stars of the Zodiac, together with the
peculiar changes of atmosphere, climate, and natural productions
effected on earth by solar and astral configurations, form the con-
nected woof of the celestial drama.
Next in importance in the mythical history is the imper-
sonation of the Virgin Mother of the Sun-God. This constel-
lated figure is assumed to hold in her hand a sprig, flower, or
fruit, which she extends in the attitude of invitation to a minor
constellation, named Bootes, Jo-seppe or Joseph, who from its
proximity to the Virgin of Summer, is sometimes impersonated.
as her betrothed, sometimes as the Father of men, Adam, yielding
to the seductions of Eve, tempting him by the extended fruit she
holds in her hand. The next, and not least important figure in
the legend is the impersonation of the evening star of Spring,
t
T
ART MAGIC.
51
transformed from an angel of light into Lucifer, the leader of
the rebel hosts and the morning star of Autumn.
This evil star is followed by another important actor in the
Astral Drama, namely, the great Dragon, the antagonistic power
of all systems, by whom the beneficent Sun-God is put to death
on the cross of the autumnal equinox; crucified between the two
evil wintry constellations prevailing in November and December.
According to an ancient Sabean tradition, one of these evil angels,
symbolized by the Goat of December, repented him of the wrong
done to the sinless God who was crucified with him, hence he be-
comes at first the hoary sign of Winter, the Goat, who participates
in the death of the beloved Sun, and then the friend of the dying
God, sheltering him in his manger, and protecting the fruitful
Virgin in her hour of parturition. This phase of the legend, like
thousands of others, is doubtless an attempt to reconcile the an-
tagonistic characteristics of the wintry sign, during which the
Sun is lost, with the favorable aspect of the same constellation
in the last part of his month of power, when he is represented as
ushering the new-born God into being, under the title of the
renewer of life.
PR
Endless are the fantasies of this kind interwoven with the
Zodiacal legend. The discoveries of each succeeding age afforded
to the astronomical priesthood a boundless field for the exercise
of their favorite method of symbolical expression, thus, whilst we
always find the main ideas of the scheme preserved intact, the
divergent branches of ideality which spring forth from the parent
root are in truth a realization of the parable of the mustard seed
of the Jewish Scriptures. In the paraphrase of the Christian his-
tory of the Sun God, the writers represent one of the thieves cru-
cified with the Savior of mankind as becoming penitent at the last
dread hour of death-Jesus, in allusion to his approaching new
birth, answers him, "to-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise."
This is a highly ingenious and creditable mode of disposing of
the difficulty which ancient astronomers experienced in represent-
ing the constellation of December at once antagonistic and favor-
able to the dying God. The Capricorn of Winter shares the Sun-
God's evil fate, but becomes favorable to him in the hour of his
new birth in "Paradise." We have now brought the legend up
to that point when it is to recommence with the renewal of the
Zodiacal history.
The Sun of righteousness is now to be re-born in the stable
of the Goat, through the maternity of the immaculate Virgin,
and thus the light of the world, the Lamb of Spring, the Lion
of the tribe of Judah, the good master of the twelve Zodiacal
52
ART MAGIC.
Apostles, is ever sacrificed, that he may take away the sins of the
world, and ever restored to life, that all may have hope of immor-
tality in his resurrection, etc., etc., etc.
It would indeed be "vanity and vexation of spirit" to attempt
to discover the exact order in which the antique mind first
clothed the starry heavens with these fantastic symbolisms, and
yet we must not suppose that the exoteric meaning of which we
have given a brief sketch, is the all of this ancient and most won-
derful faith. Later on in this volume we shall see that every
symbol has a correspondential spiritual meaning, and that the
esoteric philosophy veiled under this mass of symbolism is the
real heart of its religious significance. These explanations, how-
ever, we must reserve for the present. How the ancients ulti-
mately evolved an exoteric scheme from the external face of
nature and its correspondential relations to the spangled heavens,
can be no marvel to those who will consider their wisest and best
minds as devoted, during the course of thousands of years, to this
one grand field of observation. The origin, growth and perfec-
tion of such a system is far less problematical than is the conduct
of modern theologians in reference to it. So long as the famous
astronomical religion was practiced and taught amongst those
nations whom Christians contemptuously denominate "the
heathen," it was denounced by them as the vilest of idolatries,
but at the point where they attempt to build up a theology of
their own, they first begin by stealing the astronomical myth,
then transpose its origin to a far later date, rechristen its person-
ages, locate them in fresh birth-places, declare them to be genuine
personalities, invest them with the most sacred names and attri-
butes, fall down and worship them, and then call upon the name
of the Most High God as a witness to the credibility of their auda-
cious fictions.
Y
In consideration of the vast and cumulative mass of testi-
mony which the discoveries of archaeology and philology supply
us with, concerning the foundation of all theological systems, the
idolatry of the nineteenth century puts to shame the devotion of
humanity's infancy to myth and mysticism.
The antique man would blush for the mendacity of the
modern Priesthood, who not only steal the images of their fore-
fathers' creation, but, reclothing them with the tinsel and var-
nish of ecclesiastical trumpery, set them up in shrines to wor-
ship as the legitimate offspring of divine inspiration.
With those who have dared to dispute the authenticity of
these monstrous fabrications, the Christian world has offered no
ART MAGIC.
53
other arguments than fire and sword, torture and denunciation;
and as the culminating point of the monstrous wrong which mod-
ern Priestcraft has perpetrated on the people, by foisting on them
the myths of antiquity as genuine subjects for worship, it hesi-
tates not to affix the awful name of that God who is a spirit, not
only, as above stated, in witness of their blasphemous plagiarisms,
but as an actual participator in a Drama, which, if removed from
the realm of myth to actuality, would subvert every law of reason,
decency, justice, or morality, that has ever been promulgated
since time began.
We commenced this section by affirming that if all the frag-
ments that have been written on the history of the Sun-God
and the order of the astronomical religion were gathered
together, they would fill a library.
Our only regret is, that the present hour does not furnish
us with the opportunity to give to the world a thorough but com-
pendious aggregation of these severed fragments in one concrete
body of testimony. We can only glance at them now; but we
may not altogether omit to notice them, for, ere we can describe
the origin, progress and development of the spiritual idea of
which Art Magic is, in part, the external form, we must give the
outlines of that religious system in which the human spirit took
shape, as in a matrix; in which its conceptions were first unfolded,
and from which its aspirations radiated forth in the insatiate
demand for spiritual bread. At this present writing, we only feel
justified in raising the veil sufficiently to show the first point of
contact between God and Man, the Creator and the Creature,
Religion the Body and Spiritualism the Soul of the Universe;
but we reserve to ourselves the duty (God inspiring and mortal
span of life permitting) of inscribing a volume in the future,
wherein shall be shown, in its completeness, how the Teraphim of
the ancients were fashioned, and how the moderns have stolen
and worshiped them: when, and in what mode, ideas descended
to man in the past from the starry heavens, and in what absurd
perversions the Priesthood of the present endeavor to plant those
ideas in divine soil, until the abomination of desolation sits in
the holy places of human thought, and scientific, reasoning men,
and pious, pure-minded women, worship a God whose example,
if imitated, would fill the earth with monsters of injustice, impu-
rity and wickedness.
督
​54
ART MAGIC.
SUPPLEMENT TO SECTION IV.
¦
}
BIOGRAPHIES OF CHRISHNA AND BUDDHA SAKIA.
SHOWING THE NATIONS OF ANTIQUITY THAT HAVE WORSHIPED
THE SUN-GOD AS AN IMPERSONATION, AND ACCEPTED HIS
HISTORY AS DISPLAYED IN THE ASTRONOMICAL ORDer of
THE STARRY HEAVENS.
The Hindoos-the oldest nation that possesses scriptural as
well as monumental records, dating back to the highest antiquity,
even to pre-historic ages-believed in one Supreme Omnific Cen-
tral Source of Being, and from Him descending emanations cor-
responding in many respects to the mythical personages of the
astronomical religion.
The biographies of two of their principal Avatars or incar-
nated God-men, Chrishna and Buddha Sakia, are closely accord-
ant with the history of the Sun-God. The births of these Avatars
through the motherhood of a pure Virgin, their lives in infancy
threatened by a vengeful king, their flight and concealment in
Egypt, their return to work miracles, save, heal and redeem the
world, suffer persecution, a violent death, a descent into hell, and
a reappearance as a new-born Savior, are all items of the Sun-
God's history, which have already been recited, and maintain in
every detail the correspondence between the Hindoo faith and
the Sabean system. The feasts, fasts, seasons of lamentation and
rejoicing, the reverence paid to fire, flame, heat, light, and even
the minutest details of ceremonial rites practiced in the most.
ancient astronomical worship, are scattered through the varying
forms of Hindoo theology, until the parity of the two systems
cannot be questioned. An equally faithful adherence to the
Sabean legend is to be found in the story of the Indian Dyonisius,
subsequently repeated in Egypt, and forming the basis of the
Osiric legend.
}
ART MAGIC.
55
Egypt taught the Sun-God's history, and that in a series of
myths and mysteries still more elaborate than those of India.
The stories of Osiris, Isis, Horus and Typhon, are direct
transcripts of the astronomical scheme. The myths of the Gods
Zulis and Memnon, the worship of Heliopolis, the gorgeous order
of the famous mysteries, and the mythical personages scattered
throughout the wonderful woof of Egyptian Theogony, are but
elaborations of the Zodiacal fable, and the worship of the powers
of nature.
The sublime system of Zoroaster recites the history of the
Sun-God in that of Mithra, finds in Arimanes, the great Dragon
of the skies, and in all the sacred times and seasons, ceremonials
and traditions, a complete transcript of the astronomical religion.
The Chaldeans, Ethiopians, Phoenicians and the most set-
tled of the Arabian tribes, taught the same basic idea in their
varied systems of worship.
The disinterred ruins of the once mighty city of Nineveh,
is one complete inscription of the Sun-God's history and worship.
The most ingenious and varied symbolisms of Astral and
Solar worship, speak in unmistakable tones of evidence from the
magnificent remains of Babylon, from the ruins of Tadmor in the
Desert, and in innumerable groups of once famous, though now
unknown, vestiges of human habitation, scattered throughout
Central Asia. Even the Troglodyte remains bear witness to the
prevalence of Solar worship, in rude carvings and grotesque imi-
tations of the heavenly bodies.
From the ruins profusely scattered throughout Asia Minor,
from the land of the Phascanna, Iberians, Albanians, Phrygians
and Ionians, the author of this work has collected an immense
number of photographic representations of planetary and Solar
worship.
The Scythian nations generally worship fire, and preserve
traditions of a crucified Sun-God. They celebrate the Sun's
birthday on the 25th of December, and amongst some tribes of
the Tartars the author has attended all the festal ceremonies
described as appertaining to the astronomical religion.
The religions of China and Japan were originally founded
on the mythical history of the Sun-God. Many additions and
interpolations upon the basic legend have obtained in Chinese
and Japanese worship, but the foundation is unique, and the
feasts, ceremonial rites and seasons of observance, all prove the
parity of worship amongst these people, with the Sabean system.
In the Islands of Ceylon, Java, the Phillipine and Moluc-
56
ART MAGIC.
cas, various forms of Solar and Astral worship have existed for
ages.
The Druidical system of worship, though largely inter-
spersed with other ideas, to be hereafter described, was firmly
planted on the Sabean system, and recognized a Sun-God Medi-
ator with a complete Zodiacal history in the incarnated deity
they called Hesus.
The entire of the splendid imagery of Grecian and Roman
mythology was but a paraphrase of Egyptian Solar worship, en-
larged, embellished and beautified by the poetic mentality of
Greece and Rome.
The idea of the Great Spiritual Sun of the ancients, the
unknown and unknowable, finds its perfect correspondence in
the Greek Zeus-the God who dwells alone, and from whom pro-
ceed, as subordinate emanations, all the impersonated powers of
nature, planetary and astral spirits, who figure in the famous
Pantheon. Apollo, Mercury, or Hermes, Bacchus, Prometheus
and Esculapius were Sun-Gods, Mediators, Saviors; Ceres, Pro-
serpina and Pluto played their special parts in the Astral Drama,
but all derive their names and histories from the same source.
Hindoos, Egyptians, Arabians, Parsees, Greeks and Romans, all
drank at the same celestial fountain, and only varied their rites,
ceremonials, names and figures to suit the ideality of the land
whose age or climactric influence determined their intelligence.
{
The Jews, whose records of war, bloodshed, violence, laws,
customs, dresses, upholstery and cuisine, the Christians hold
sacred as the inspired word of God, worshiped a Deity who was
only one of the Eloihim or astral tutelary spirits of the Egyptians.
Bel, Belus,Baal, Baalpeor, Moloch, Dagon, Jehovah, Jah, I Am,
etc., etc., etc., these, and the names of the various other Gods,
or tutelary Deities worshiped by the various nations of Arabia
and Asia Minor, including the Jews, are only so many synonyms
of the one Mediatorial Sun-God, who, under every conceivable
variety of form and title, reappears in the stupendous system of
Astral and Solar worship, itself an external expression of the sub-
lime and harmonious order of the universe.
:
ART MAGIC.
57
SECTION V.
THE
SEX WORSHIP-ITS ANTIQUITY AND MEANING,
THE CONNECTION OF SEX, SOLAR AND SERPENT WORSHIP
SPIRITUAL AND MATERIAL IDEAS OF ANTIQUE FAITHS CON-
TRASTED-THE DEGRADATION AND DEATH OF MATERIALISTIC
WORSHIP, AND THE TRIUMPH OF THE SPIRITUAL.
Ever interpenetrating the signs and symbols of the astro-
nomical religion, ranging beside its emblems, yet never entirely
losing its own individuality, or merging its identity in that of its
companion, appears a system of worship, looming up from the
antique ages, whose origin and meaning has, until recently, been
involved in mystery. The repulsive nature of the subject has,
in all probability, caused even the philosophers who had mastered
its meaning and understood its symbols, to shrink from exposing
their knowledge to the vulgar mind. This will be better under-
stood when we intimate that the esoteric system, to which we
allude, is sex worship, or religious belief founded on the assumed
sacredness of the order of generation.
Amongst the emblems most commonly seen in this connec-
tion are the Phallus or Lingham, the Triangle, all the different
methods of exhibiting the Cross, the Serpent with his tail in his
mouth, and a vast number of such geometrical signs as include
the triangle, cross and circle. Many learned archaeologists are
of opinion that sex worship, if it did not actually antedate, is
still of as ancient an origin as that of the stars.
The author of this work deems that the primal faith of hu-
manity was unmixed solar and astral worship, but the authorita-
tive reasons for this belief are of little consequence to the gen-
eral reader. It is enough to say that the emblems of solar and
sex worship are so constantly combined in the same monumental
remains, that we must infer both were understood, and in a
58
ART MAGIC.
measure reduced to systematic expression, at the earliest period
when man began to leave records of his thoughts.
There are no shadows without a substance, no fables with-
out a genuine idea to allegorize upon.
The fable of the Garden of Eden, the temptation and fall
of man, is very generally assumed by materialistic writers to have
a purely astronomical origin, and to have been founded on the
following astral order. The August constellation of the Virgin,
represents a woman holding a flower, sprig or fruit in her hand,
beckoning to Bootes or Joseph, the constellation a little to the
north of the Virgin, but in close proximity to her. This config-
uration of the heavenly signs, it is alleged, may be as often inter-
preted into the fabled relations of Adam and Eve as the Virgin
Mary and Joseph. The radiance, bloom and beauty of the season
in which these constellations appear, signifies the earthly Eden.
The astral woman tempts the astral man, she herself is tempted
by the Serpent, who presently appears in the skies as the Great
Dragon. The woman gives of the fruit she holds to man, he eats
and falls. The Cherubim and Seraphim of the skies (the typical
signs of constellated stars), drive them forth from the Eden of
Summer into the gloom and famine of Winter. To restore the
fallen man to a future paradise, a Savior must be found, and this
is effected in the birth of the Sun-God, at midwinter, and his
renovating influence during the succeeding Spring and Summer.
To accept of this fable without allowing for a spiritual sig-
nificance concealed beneath it, is equivalent to the assumption
that the ancients actually worshiped the sun, moon and stars as
personal Gods; but the ancients never enunciated sacred ideas
except in allegorical forms of speech, and never mapped out the
scheme of an allegory without a profoundly spiritual meaning
veiled by it.
"As it is above, so is it below," "On the earth as in the
skies," were the sentences by which the mystics of old were accus-
tomed to affirm the universal correspondence between the har-
monies of the natural and spiritual in every department of being.
To understand how the ancients interpreted these astral
hieroglyphics into such a system as would explain the fall of man,
and yet preserve the correspondence between his estate on earth
and the movements of the heavenly bodies, it is necessary to revert
to the theory enunciated in Section I, where it was shown that
the Soul originally dwelt in a purely spiritual state of existence;
but being tempted by the craving desire for earthly knowledge,
it became attracted to this planet-incarnated in the form of man
ART MAGIC.
59
!
-and hence "the fall" of spirit into matter. With all that rev-
erence which finite being must feel when it presumes to speculate
on infinity, we may imagine that the form of the highest spirit-
ual existences may admit of no parts or angles, but may be, in-
deed, like the perfection of the spiritual Sun, a Globe; but all
organic forms are sections of the perfect sphere, and man is obvi-
ously a complex assemblage of lines and circles, uniting in him-
self all the details of mathematical proportion, subordinate to
the perfection of figure assumed to exist in the Spiritual Sun.
In taking on a material existence, therefore, and changing
from a purely spiritual entity to become an organized material
being, the first principle of earthly life to be evolved must needs
be the means to produce and reproduce it.
This, in an earthly state of being, is just as sacred and para-
mount a theme as the formation of worlds, and the birth of suns
and systems in the aggregate of the Universe.
As the function of creation is the highest and most won-
derful with which the mind can invest Deity, so the imitative
law must become the noblest and most sacred function of God's
creatures. In the beginning of earthly existence, we believe it
was thus esteemed, and in those remote ages when sex worship
was incorporated into a religious system, the highest and noblest
elements of human thought clustered around the subject of gen-
eration, elevating it to the topmost pinnacle of human worship.
As the clear intuitions of the early man carried him back
to his state of primeval, spiritual innocence, and recognized in
his birth into matter a descent in the scale of being synonymous
with the idea of a fall, so he imagined he perceived the order of
this scheme mapped out in the constellated Zodiac of the skies.
As he recognized the generative functions to be the immediate
means of the Soul's birth into matter, so he elevated them into
divine significance, and set up their emblems as fit subjects for
religious reverence. In process of time the instinctive appetites
of man's sensual nature stimulated sex worship into excess, and
degraded a holy idea into gross licentiousness. But this was the
abuse, not the true origin of sex worship. Physical generation
was once esteemed as the gate by which the Soul entered upon
the stupendous pathway of progress, and became fitted for its
angelic destiny in the celestial heavens; but, like all sacred ideas
when translated into matter, the law of physical generation came
to be regarded as mere physical enjoyment; it sank into sensual-
ity, and hence the necessity which the wise and philosophic
priesthood of old perceived, of veiling all teachings on this sub-
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ART MAGIC.
ject in mysteries, and expressing all ideas in its connection in
obscure symbolism.
There are marked evidences in the vestiges of antiquity as
to how the sexual idea encroached upon the forms of Solar wor-
ship.
The primitive conceptions of creation were exalted, sublime;
but when the idea of sex worship became universal, even the
Astral religion became imbued with its materialistic influence.
The impersonations of the stars and the powers of nature were
divided into male and female.
The story of creation was woven into romantic legends of
amorous Gods and Goddesses; the emblems of generation were
profusely interspersed with astronomical signs and any descrip-
tion of animal, however loathsome, so long as it was remarkable
for procreative power, became deified as a type of the creative
energy.
To those who esteem the spiritual idea as antagonistic to the
material, and believe with the most exalted of the Essenes, that
in heaven, angelic essences are pure and free from all the im-
pulses and attributes of matter, it must indeed have seemed a
fall for the Soul to descend to earth and become incarnate only
through the process of physical generation. And yet such is obvi-
ously the law of physical being. In the order of the Universe,
spirit is the primal essence in which there is neither sex, age, sin,
nor capacity for pain.
With the descent of Soul into physical life, man becomes
dual, male and female, with sex as the dividing line between
them. Then, too, ensues that mysterious transformation of the
soul's faculties which converts spiritual love into material pas-
sion, intuitional knowledge into human reason, boundless per-
ception into dim memory and vague prescience, eternal things
into temporal, and a creature without parts or passions, into one
all organs, and swayed by every emotion that ranges from the
depths of vice to the heights of virtue.
The brief race on earth run, spiritual spheres of progress
opening up fresh avenues of purification to the pilgrim Soul,
still preserving all the faculties acquired by its birth and asso-
ciation with matter, the celestial Angel stands related to the germ
spirit, as the fully unfolded blossom to the embryonic seed. In
this order of progress it is clearly shown that the means whereby
the spirit-dweller of the original Eden becomes the perfected
Angel of a celestial heaven, are: mortal birth, a pilgrimage
through spheres of trial, discipline and purification, and an or-
ART MAGIC.
61
ganism made up of separate parts with appropriate functions,
the due and legitimate exercise of which constitute the methods
of progress. In such a scheme, every trial and suffering has its
meaning, and every passion (even the tendencies to vice and
crime), their use in shaping the rudimental Angel, through re-
morse and penalty, into ultimate strength and divine proportion.
A familiar but apposite illustration of the relative difference
between the germ spirit that descends from realms of primeval
innocence to be born into matter, and that same spirit unfolded
through spheres of discipline into the perfected Angel, is found,
if we liken the two states to those of the acorn and the full-grown
cak.
The one is still the oak in germ, but the noble proportions
of the tree, its overshadowing branches, the vast girth of its
mighty trunk, the splendor of its Briareus arms wide-stretched
to the winds, with its ten thousand leafy hands tossed abroad
on the ambient air; its rich harvest of countless germs, and the
unborn forests that are to be furnished from their reproductive
powers, all grow out of the association of the primal acorn with
the formative matrix of earth.
Even so is it with the Soul. To become an Angel it must
first be a Man, then a Spirit, struggling on through spheres of
graduated unfoldment, and when all is done, the Soul originally
expelled from its Eden of innocence and ignorance will regain it
with the strength, wisdom and love which alone can constitute
it an Angel of God.
It was with this perception of the Soul's destiny that the
ancients esteemed the generative functions as divine, and the
deification of their emblems as an act of religious duty. Whilst
we believe this view of the origin of sex worship the true one,
those who regard it simply from the standpoint of results, and
contemplate the abominations practiced in its celebration, might
well believe it to be the offspring of man's merely animal and
instinctive nature; such it undoubtedly became when it sank into
that corruption and abuse which too often attends the decadence
of ideas, however exalted in their source. There was much, too,
in the Jewish Theogony to favor the tendency to excess in sex
worship.
Throughout the writings of the Pentateuch the utmost im-
portance is attached to the production of offspring. Every means
was adopted by the priestly law-givers to promote the propagation
of the species.
Childless women were branded with the bitterest reproach.
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ART MAGIC.
Eunuchs or persons afflicted with personal blemishes were for-
bidden to hold sacred offices. Every inducement which a strin-
gent law could hold out to compel the people to "multiply and
replenish the earth" was an essential of the Jewish religion. On
the other hand, the prophetic writings of the Jews abound with
fulminations of the Divine wrath against those who carried their
ideas of sex worship to excess and sensualism. The unsparing
denunciations of the Hebrew prophets against the practice of
sacrificing to "strange Gods," are accompanied by the plainest
descriptions of what those sacrificial rites were, and give color
to the belief that the religious veneration which had once sancti-
fied the idea of the generative functions as a divine mystery, had
sunk into an all-pervading and soul-corrupting sensualism.
In comparison with Egypt, Chaldea, Assyria and Hindo-
stan, Judea was but a modern nation.
The nomadic tribes of the Jews had made no mark on the
world's history when Egypt was hoary with age, and India had
recorded cycles of time, lost in the night of antiquity. The exo-
teric remains of solar and sex worship, together with all their
signs and symbols, presented to the Jews only a dying vestige of
faiths of whose resplendent maturity no historic epoch, however
remote, can show an authentic record.
We only know it must have been so. Maps of the heavens,
and perfected charts of astral motions, involving intricate calcu-
lations, which must have required thousands of years to arrive
at, were all handed down from pre-historic to the commencement
of historic times, and that with a completeness which fully sus-
tains the enormous claims of the Hindoos for the existence of
their dynasty during cycles of time which baffle the human mind
to conceive of.
How many times have the silent but most eloquent cata-
combs of the old earth, in the form of upturned plains, the beds
of rivers, the depths of artesian wells, and the recesses of newly-
discovered caverns, brought to light conclusive testimony that
man lived, labored, wrought in clay, stone, pottery and metals,
tens of thousands of years ago, on the face of the earth!
The author has himself spent years in India studying out
that wonderful system of numerals which point to the antiquity
of man, and the fact that he commenced astronomical calcula-
tions more than twenty thousand years ago. Some of these silent
voices indicate axial changes in this planet which could not have
transpired in less than a hundred thousand years. Others prove
ART MAGIC.
63
that the Hindoos clearly understood the precession of the equi-
noxes ages before the Christian era.
About the commencement of that period the colossal forms
of the mystic Sphinx might have been found in long and majes-
tic rows in the various temples of old India, and yet the mystery
of the Sphinx could only have been solved by a people who had
correctly understood the precession of the equinoxes. To effect
a change in the position of the sun in the Zodiacal path from
one sign to another must occupy at least 2140 years; and yet such
changes had occured, been fully calculated and recorded in the
astronomical riddle of the Sphinx, a composite figure, designed
to celebrate the sun's passage from the sign of the Virgin to that
of the Lion, when the Jews were unknown as a people.
What amount of intellectual power had the mind of man
arrived at ere these records of astronomical lore, mechanical skill
and artistic power were achieved?
The remains of tropical plants now found amidst the awful
desolation of the Arctic and Antarctic regions-the constant
stream of revelation silently but surely upheaving its mystic
writings from the superincumbent debris under which the earth
of a million years ago lies buried-the stony voices that thunder
through the colossal remains of ruined cities, and the swift but
immutable footprints of the fiery squadrons whose march through
the skies, the mind of man has followed up through ages of unre-
corded time, all proclaim that the movements of the Universe
transpire in spiral and ever-revolving cycles.
Like the path of the sun on the Ecliptic, now ascending
on the royal arch of the northern hemisphere, now descending
into the southern bow, but ever moving in gyrating circles up-
ward, typifying the march of planets, nations, ages of time and
human souls, so that those who study the part may comprehend
the whole, all these stupendous witnesses figure out the law by
which cycles of civilization are born, grow, ascend to their cul-
minating point of splendor, then turn the hill of time, descend
lower and lower into engulfing depths, lower and lower into cor-
ruption, degradation, death! And yet they rise again, and, Phoe-
nix-like, spring from the funeral ashes of their pyre, to be reborn
in nobler, higher forms of younger civilizations.
So has it been with man and his religious beliefs. Solar and
sex worship, born of man's highest conceptions of the Divine
plan, rose into an almost perfect science, the science by which the
antique man perceived the correspondence between the earth and
the heavens, the Creator and his creatures. This famous era
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ART MAGIC.
of ancient civilization culminated, crossed the equinox of pro-
phetic death, descended into the night of corruption and sensual-
ism, and perished with the closing up of Oriental dynasties.
The real spiritual truths of antiquity have never died; but
yet their exhibition has only at times illuminated the ages with
corruscations of light, so little understood that their holy radi-
ance has been mistaken for the baleful glare of "Supernatural-
ism." They have never died; but, as yet, they only give promise,
not a full assurance, of the resurrection that is at hand.
Mankind, absorbed in its devotion to the pursuits of material
science, has ignored its spiritual interests, or carelessly committed
them to the charge of an ignorant and selfish Priesthood; but
when the day of true spiritual awakening comes, when the Soul
of the Universe shall be known and felt in the Souls of His Crea-
tures, the light of this spiritual revelation will shine upon husks
and figments of the dead past, of which reason, no less than intui-
tion, will be ashamed. It will show the lifeless bodies of ancient
faiths, from which the soul has long fled, leaving nothing but
dust and ashes, forms and ceremonies, surplices and shaven
crowns behind.
It will show the painted Clown and many-colored Harle-
quins of an ecclesiastical circus still performing their dreary
tricks in an amphitheatre from which the stately personages of
the grand Drama have vanished, where the curtain has fallen, the
lights are quenched, on which the eternal midnight of a dead age
has set in, with nothing to relieve the silence but the fluttering
wings of the spectral ideas which already begin to flit forth into
the morning of a new day, seeking the resurrecting life and light
of a new Spiritual religion.
ART MAGIC.
65
SUPPLEMENT TO SECTION V.
SEX WORSHIP CONTINUED.
SOLAR AND SEX WORSHIP INTERBLENDED-NATURE AND ORIGIN
OF SERPENT WORSHIP-SIGNS, SYMBOLS AND EMBLEMS of
THE THREE SYSTEMS-SCRIPTURAL NAMES AND MEANINGS.
The explorers of ancient India, Egypt, Greece and Rome
have wisely distrusted the propriety of giving very graphic rep-
resentations or close descriptions of their monumental remains.
Most of the popular writers on these lands have contented
themselves with hinting that Phallic worship prevailed amongst
the ancients, and that its emblems are abundantly interspersed
with other records; but the truth is, that all the records are
overlaid with emblems of Phallic worship, and that there is
scarcely a monument or inscription of antiquity which does not,
in some form or other, perpetuate the idea of Solar or Sex wor-
ship, or both.
Nearly all the Scriptural names have a direct bearing upon
sexual ideas. Every title, including the syllables El, Om, On,
Di and Mi, signify the same ideas. The titles ascribed to the Sun
and the Generative Gods are mutually convertible, and both are
continually bestowed upon the Gods of the ancients.
Adonis, Elijah, Elisha, El, Bael, Belus, Jehovah, Jah, Abra-
ham, Samson, Jachin, Boaz, Adam, Eve, Mary, Esau, Edom, Zeus,
Jupiter, Thor, Odin, Sol, Helios, Asher, Dyonisius, etc., etc.,
etc., are all names significant of sexual ideas.
Most of the names bestowed on Hindoo, Egyptian, Greek,
Roman and Hebrew Gods bear the same interpretation, or else
are applicable, in a double sense, to Solar and Sex worship. The
names of the twelve tribes of Israel have direct reference to the
generative functions; and thus are Bible names and Bible terms
put into the mouths of innocent, lisping children as "the word of
God," a word which, if interpreted in all the fullness of its mean-
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ART MAGIC.
ing, would crimson the cheek of every virtuous matron with
shame.
¦
Up to the days when European civilization prevailed, and
the influence of a temperate, equatorial climate moderated the
excessive energy of that emotional nature which man inherits
from his association with matter, stimulated to immense activity
in the fervid heat of tropical climes, his religious aspirations were
all tinctured with the idiosyncrasies of his physical nature. He
deemed of his God as of himself.
The sublime beauty of the spangled heavens, the obvious
correspondence of heat, light and planetary influence with his
material well-being, and the final mystery and power of the gen-
erative functions, were the most direct and natural appeals that
he could find in the universe to his sense of reverence and his
ideas of power. Is it any marvel that he worshiped the heavenly
host and deemed the laws of generation the most direct represen-
tations of Deific action in creation?
The chief symbols of these interblended systems are found
in the various forms of crosses extant; in the Phallus or Ling-
ham, and the Yoni, the male and female emblems of generation;
in the triangle or Tau, the origin of the cross, the Serpent who
in so many ways was esteemed as a deific emblem, and every ob-
ject, natural or artificial, which bore the least resemblance to
the figures enumerated above.
As regards the cross, it has frequently been attempted to
show that it owes its sacred character to the instrument of pun-
ishment upon which the Christian's God was supposed to have
suffered death.
Ages before the Jews were known as a nation, the cross was
regarded all through the East as a sacred symbol.
To remove the obscenity of the idea attached to its original
meaning, from the image, which modern civilization so devoutly
cherishes, it has been urged that it was reverenced by the Egyp-
tians, because it was used as a Nileometer or measure of the river
Nile. Granting this, and admitting that, the Nile was held sacred
by the Egyptians as the source of plenty and irrigation, hence,
that the Nileometer, with its upright post and cross-piece to mark
the height to which the waters attained, was also held sacred as
an emblem of redemption from famine, or a sign of possible
destruction, still this does not account for the prevalence of the
cross nor the reverence attached to it in lands where no Nileome-
ter was required, and in distant ages ere Nileometers were in-
vented.
ART MAGIC.
67
Sculptured over every temple of the East, the cross in many
forms was used to signify the generative power.
It was originally designed to represent a Trinity, and thus gave
rise to the sacredness attached to the number three, with all its
multiples, and in all the varieties of form in which the cross is
found from the plain letter T, the Tau of the Scandinavians, or
the hammer of Thor, to the eight-sided cross of the Templars,
and in all its variousness it signified and does signify, nothing.
more or less than the fertility, fecundity and creative structure
of the masculine principle of generation. The fact that the sun's
two chief incidents of Zodiacal travel were the crossings of the
Ecliptic plane at Spring and Autumn, deepened the reverence
which antique nations cherished for this all-prevailing symbol,
but instead of removing it from the earth to the skies, it simply
showed in this dual significance, the unity of design expressed
throughout the cosmic motions of the universe.
The female emblem was signified by an unit, a circle, a boat-
shaped shell, a lozenge, or any object, animate or inanimate, that
resembled these figures, or implied receptivity, fruitfulness or
maternity. The union of the female unit with the male triad,
was designated by the sacred and mystic number 4, or symbol-
ized by a serpent with his tail in his mouth, two fishes bent to
form a circle, the rite of circumcision, and many other symbolical
rites and figures.
The origin of Serpent worship arose first from the universal
prevalence of these creatures throughout the Orient; the extreme
subtlety of their natures implying wisdom, their custom of cast-
ing their skins denoting renewed youth and immortality, their
tremendous and deadly powers of destruction, analogous to the
"wrath of God," their supposed healing virtue indicative of the
life-giving power of the sun, the glory of their shining scales
imitating light; but, above all, the Serpent was deified as the
antagonistic power of the skies, defined in the great constellation
of the Dragon, which did annual war with the heavenly legions
of the sun.
Endless were the fables invented to typify the wisdom and
life-giving properties of serpents; endless the myths in which
they figured as the representatives of good and evil Genii.
Serpent worship is, in all probability, as old as Sex and Solar
worship, and a thorough understanding of the three systems
forms a clue to all the signs, symbols, allegories and mysteries
of all the ancient faiths that prevailed before the Christian era.
The ideas indicated by these symbols, and the legends at-
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ART MAGIC.
tached to them, underlie all those stupendous rites, solemn mys-
teries and gigantic monuments of art that have overlaid the once
splendid Orient with ruins that will remain the mystery and
admiration of the race till time shall be no more. The myths
and symbols of these interblended systems prevailed indeed long
after the Christian era, and were preserved by the Gnostics, Mani-
cheans, Neo Platonists, and many of the early sects amongst
Christians and Philosophic Greeks; they are preserved and pre-
vai amongst the most civilized of sects to-day, but alas! without
any real appreciation of the ideas that once vitalized the images.
Much of the mysticism of the "Divine Plato," and the
numerical wisdom of Pythagoras, owed their ideality to the
esoteric meaning veiled in Oriental symbolism.
The famous mysteries of Eleusis, the Bacchic and Dyoni-
sian rites, the feasts in honor of Ceres, the orgies of Cybele, and
other mythical personages of the Greek Pantheon; ancient ma-
sonry, both speculative and operative, and its degraded and imbe-
cile descendant, modern masonry, founded their origin upon the
basic principles of these ancient systems of worship, and the mass
of legendary lore to which they gave rise.
Curious as would be the tracery of these primitive roots
through all the tendrils, branches and reproductive germs that
have overlaid the world with theological systems, the work must
be reserved for another place and time, and this part of our sub-
ject must close with a few words in evidence of the lamentable
tendency to degeneracy which all great ideas suffer when they
outlive their day and usefulness; whilst the ark of the tabernacle
survives though the sacred flame that of old dwelt between the
Cherubim and Seraphim is quenched in eternal night.
Throughout the churches of Christendom, the name of the
Most High God, the Alpha and Omega of Being, the Great Spirit
who dwells alone and unknown in central orbs of primal light, is
scarcely remembered, and ever subordinated to the worship of
the Cross, with all its varieties of expression and form.
The myth of the Sun-God reappears in every phase of the
Christian's creed.
The surplices, robes and fantastic adornments of high eccles-
iasticism, are simply imitations of the women's garments which
the priests of antiquity wore to indicate that God was both male
and female.
The bells and holy candles, the Lambs, Bulls, Eagles, Men,
Lions, and twelve apostolic personages, the Serpents, etc., etc.,
which cast their prismatic glory from costly painted windows
ART MAGIC.
69
h
on the chequered marbles of the floor beneath, are all but so
many astronomical signs of antique fire worship, or emblems of
sexual religion. The very shape of the steeples that crown the
"houses of God" are mementos of the reverence accorded to the
sacred flame, or veiled effigies of the "divine Lingham."
It would be equally painful and humiliating to analyze the
mythical character of every sign and symbol of modern ecclesias-
ticism, were we not deeply, reverentially conscious that the spirit
that no longer vivifies the dead husks of extinct faiths, still per-
vades the earth, still manifests its undying love for poor, idola-
trous humanity, still illumines the heart, and sustains the droop-
ing tendrils of that religion which erects its altar in the soul, and
finds its most imperishable shrine in the depths of man's spiritual
consciousness.
Witnesses, too—witnesses on the sensuous plane of life—are
not wanting to the truth of this undying spiritual influx, perme-
ating every age, and adapting its revelations to all forms of faith
that recognize spiritual existence.
Like the waving lines of the shining Ecliptic, ever bounding
yet ever sustaining the sun-like progress of human destiny, comes
down the ages the tracery of an all-pervading realm of spiritual
existence, at once the cause and effect of earthly being.
Soul and spiritual essence is the God and the procedure, the
Creator and the creature; all things else are phantasmagoric
shapes, born of the hour, as formative moulds in which soul
essences grow, perishing with the hour when their office is ended.
Were it not for the assurance that there is a realm of spirit
adequate to produce, sustain and guide the tangled woof of crea-
tion, the pictures we have drawn, however faithful to the exoteric
history of the race, would be but a temporary assemblage of dust
and ashes heaped together into grotesque and incomprehensible
images. With this compass to steer our way through the restless
billows of life's storm-tossed ocean, we may rise and sink, drift
far and wide of our mark, stagnate for awhile on the sluggish
sea of materialism, or seem to founder amidst the foam-crested
upheavals of convulsed opinions, but we are in the hands of that
Love that will never forsake us, that Wisdom that is all-sufficient
to direct us, that Power that is almighty to save us.
"God lives and reigns!" said stout-hearted Martin Luther,
when, standing alone, he bore testimony to his faith before
princes, potentates and the opposing force of earth's assembled
great ones.
His strength is ours, and in that strength we can afford to
<
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ART MAGIC.
stand by and watch the wreck of empires and dynasties, ecclesias-
tical faiths and man-made dogmas.
We are immortal parts of the immortal Soul of the Universe,
and we never can be lost, or perish out of his hand.
SECTION VI.
SUBORDINATE GODS IN THE UNIVERSE.
ANGELS, SPIRITS, TUTELARY DEITIES, SOULS AND ELEMENTARY
SPIRITS OPINIONS OF THE ANCIENTS THE JEWISH CAB-
BALA-CLASSICAL AUTHorities.
When the Spiritual in human history first dominated the
mind, is as impossible to ascertain as who was the first man.
A celebrated materialistic writer of the eighteenth century
says: “The idea of subordinate Gods becomes a necessary sequence
to the acknowledgement of deific existence at all, and it would
be as useless to search for the country or time when Gods, Spirits
and Angels were first believed in, as to attempt ascertaining the
locality and period where and when religious worship began."
This is essentially true, though an adversary writes it.
The origin of man's belief in Deity must be supplemented
by his acceptance of intermediate spiritual existences, for the
Soul which is the witness of the one, proclaims the other, and
the chief difference between the opinions on these points is, that
whilst the deepest and most incommunicable emotions of the
Soul rest on its Author and Finisher, Deity, the senses may bear
witness to the presence and operation of subordinate Spiritual
existences in the phenomena that attend their ministrations.
It is enough to affirm that the vestiges of humanity in every
country and age, bear testimony to man's belief in the ministry
and interposition in human affairs of orders of beings both supe-
rior and inferior to mortals, operating for good and evil, but
always through methods beyond the power of mortal achieve-
ment, appealing to the senses through modes of action not pos-
sible to man without their aid, and after a fashion which proves
them to be limited by none of the known laws of nature.
From the days when the most ancient Sanscrit writings laid
down modes of invoking spirits, described their qualities and in-
:
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ART MAGIC.
fluences, and prescribed the conditions under which mortals
should hold communion with them, up to the nineteenth century,
when the "Spiritualists who permeate every land of civilization,
print their little tracts descriptive of the best means of forming
circles' for the purpose of evoking spirit presence and com-
munion, there never was an age or time when man in some form
or other did not believe in Spiritual existences subordinate to
the Deity; in the means of communing with them, and in their
influence on human action for good or evil.”"
From the collected opinions of the Hindoos, Chaldeans, Per-
sians, Jews, Hebrew and Oriental Cabbalists, Talmudists, Greeks
and Romans, as well as from the author's own personal experi-
ence with spirits of different orders and grades, we present the
following general summary of ideas concerning the various de-
grees of Spiritual existences in the Universe.
Whilst nearly every nation of antiquity deemed of God as
the Demiurgus; neither male nor female, yet both; as of a Central
Source of life, light, heat and creative energy, one alone, yet in-
comprehensible, uncreated and indestructible, all taught of sub-
ordinate procedures from Him. The first of these was a Divine
Being corresponding to the Bramah of the Hindoo Trinity, the
Osiris of Egypt, the Ormuzd of Persia, the Logos of Philo, the
Adam Kadman of the Cabbalists.
The idea embodied in this Theogony was that in the Deity
resided the masculine principle of Power, and the feminine of
Wisdom, called by the Cabbalists En Soph and Sophia. From
the incomprehensible union of these two proceeded a third, the
Logos, or Word, through which the will of God became mani-
fest in expression-that is, in the evolution of forms-worlds,
suns, systems, reproductive germs, and realms of progressive be-
ing. In this stupendous system, the superior emanations were
Gods, directing the birth, formation and destinies of worlds;
then came Archangels, charged with missions of Almighty power
and wisdom. To them succeeded legions of Angels, some en-
trusted with the direction of Planets, Earths, Nations, Cities and
Societies, hence called "Tutelary Angels," and worshiped as Gods.
Others, exercising rule in specific groups, and classified by He-
brew Cabbalists as "Thrones, Dominions, Powers."
The division of Angels and Spirits into grand Hierarchies,
Legions, and specific offices of divine ministration, would occupy
a volume, and give a vast and exalted perception of the antique
view of Spiritual existence. Descending from the grander scale
of angelic ministration recited above, we notice that the Sages
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ART MAGIC.
and Seers of antiquity identified certain spirits as the inspiring
agencies of art, science, different branches of industry, and all
the occupations of social, artistic, and even commercial life. The
Hebrew Scriptures continually declare that God put it into the
heart of such and such individuals to work in brass or wood, fine
linen, or rich colering. In the direct and intuitional communion
with Spiritual existences enjoyed by the Hebrews, it was assumed
that all good or exceptionally great powers resulted from inspira-
tion, and, as explained in the New Testament, those were called
Gods, to whom the word of God came; so when the terms God,
or Lord, were made use of to signify the source of the idea, Spír-
itual influence was the kernel implied in the expression..
Below all the inspiring agencies for good were assumed to
exist legions of evil spirits, almost as numerous, and scarcely less
powerful to tempt and destroy, than good Angels were to bless.
Between these two realms of opposing powers were ranged
human Souls, not only in their incarnate forms of mortal being,
but also as disembodied spirits, vast realms of spiritual existence
being assigned to them, interpenetrating and surrounding the
earth, through which, in successive stages of growth and progress,
the pilgrim Soul was permitted to win its way back to the celestial
state from which it had fallen by mortal birth.
Every human Soul was supposed to attract to itself from the
moment of birth two Spirits, the one powerful to influence for
good, the other for evil. These Spirits were called by the an-
cients good and evil Genii; and the natural proclivities to vice or
virtue in the individual to whom they ministered were supposed
to be stimulated or exalted, according as the Soul gave heed to
the inspiration of the tempter, or the counsellor.
Besides the realms of being above enumerated, it was
claimed that other orders existed, neither wholly good or purely
evil; neither entirely spiritual, nor actually material in their na-
tures; creatures of the elements, corresponding in their state,
power and function, to the different elements in the universe,
and filling up all the realms of space with uncounted legions of
embryonic and rudimental forms.
These beings were, by reason of their semi-spiritual nature,
invisible to man, and, because of the gross tincture of matter in
their composition, unable to discern any orders of being but
themselves, except through rare and exceptional rifts in their
atmospheric surroundings. They corresponded to the ether, air,
atmosphere, water, earth, minerals, plants and different elements
of which the earth and the universe generally is composed. Some
ART MAGIC.
73
¡
of these beings were malicious and antagonistic to man, and
others harmless and good. All exerted power, especially in the
direction of the element to which they corresponded; they were
said to be endowed with graduated degrees of intelligence, and to
have bodies subject to the laws of birth, growth, change and
death.
From being invisible to man, except through rare or pre-
pared conditions, they were termed spirits; from being embry-
onic, rudimentary and attached only to certain fragments of the
universe, they were termed Elementaries. Every plant and every
world, every dew-drop and every sun, sustained swarms of this
parasitical life, so that there was not an atom of matter but what
was redolent of it. Had the ancients been acquainted with the
powers of the microscope, they would doubtless have classed the
infusoria and animalculae revealed by this wondrous instrument
with the realms of elementary spirits. Be this as it may, it was
assumed that, as their existence was only rudimentary, and the
evidences of that divine trinity which in man constitutes an im-
mortal being, namely, matter, force and spirit, was lacking, so
they had no soul, and were not immortal. It was also taught of
the Elementaries, that though they propagated their species, were
animated by will and some share of intelligence, lived their term
of life, and died, still they possessed no concrete, self-conscious
principle of being sufficiently developed to enable the spiritual
essence that escaped at death to become individualized, and re-
tain a recollection of its past, or a personal consciousness of its
own identity. Thence it was taught that the spiritual essence of
the disintegrated organism was gathered up in death and passed
into some more advanced form of being; that each successive
birth purified its nature and enlarged its capacity; in fact, that
it was life, instinct, and matter, in progressive stages of existence,
and that this progress continued until the most rudimental
sparks of spiritual being expanded into fully developed spiritual
blossoms, attained to the glory and dignity of self-conscious spir-
itual entities, gravitated to spiritual spheres, and from thence
became attracted to earth, entered into the Soul principle of man,
and thus united him in essence with all the lower forms of being,
and themselves commenced a self-conscious and immortal stage
of fresh ascending pilgrimages.
"The spheres of elementary existence," says a famous Ori-
ental Cabbalist, "are as numerous and their orders as rife with
variety and function as are the earth's planets, suns, systems, and
realms of ether,"
A
74
ART MAGIC.
There cannot be a grain of matter but has its corresponding
spiritual counterpart. Ranging from the infinitely large to the
infinitely little, from a world to a monad, all things in the uni-
verse of matter are supplemented by an universe of spirit, and it
is as unreasonable to suppose that mighty suns and resplendent
planets should be destitute of Providential law, order, guidance
and maintenance, through deific tutelary Angels, as that a sand-
grain or a dew-drop should be left to the direction of its own
unaided and non-intelligent movements. All, all, are but exter-
nal expressions of the immortal soul, which, in fragments and
atoms suited to the thing it vitalizes, animates, permeates and
sustains all being, even as the Soul of man vitalizes his material
structure."
We have given this teaching as a compendium of antique
and chiefly of Oriental thought; but we now preface all farther
attempts at elucidating the subject matter of this work, by claim-
ing every iota of this philosophy to be the truth, as it appears to
the mind of the author.
From long years of communion with spirits of every grade,
high and low, perfected and rudimental; from the privilege of
wandering in their spheres in the clairvoyant condition, from
visits made spiritually to the realms of elementary being where
the poor, imperfect dwellers beheld in the astral body of their
visitant an imaginary God, from dreams, trances, visions, open
and oral communion with angelic beings and ministering spirits,
the author insists that the doctrines herein enunciated are tran
scripts of the order of the Universe, as clearly laid down as the
half-prophetic, half-bedimmed vision of humanity can appre-
hend it, and that, whether accepted or rejected, it contains holy
truths, which belong to the best interests of humanity to compre-
hend; revealments which our fathers understood, and we have
lost sight of, from our undue devotion to material interests, and
our blind fanaticism in ignoring all spiritual research save such
as comes through an effete and materialistic ecclesiasticism.
We are quite aware that if this volume should fall into the
hands of one-idead, self-styled scientists, the avowal of faith just
recorded will amply justify such readers in committing the work
to the flames as the ravings of a lunatic. Should it be read by
any of those presumptuous and narrow-minded Spiritualists who
assume that there is no other realm of spiritual being than that
occupied by their own particular familiars, we anticipate the wail
of denunciation they will raise, insisting that no theory can be
true, or worth studying, that has not been spelled out by their
ART MAGIC.
75
rapping spirits, declared in doggrel rhymes through their semi-
tranced media, or lisped out in comical broken English, by the
spirits of "little Indian maids," or "big braves," once renowned
for eloquence and wisdom, but transformed through medium-
istic witchery, into imbeciles and buffoons. Should it be read by
the too devoted followers of the soul-illumined Seer of Sweden,
who cannot admit of any truth which the mind of Swedenborg
failed to grasp, they will say, these writings are dictated by lying
spirits, and that, because he, the conservator and revelator of
all truth to the minds of the bigoted, affirmed, that all angels,
even the highest that moved around the throne of God, "had once
been men."
Should these pages fall into the hands of the intelligent
modern Spiritualist whose incessant watch-word is "light, more
light!" his comment will be, "this may be true or false, but be-
cause I don't know it to-day, I will endeavor to prove it to-mor-
row, and accept or reject it, only as I can prove it."
Should the work fall into the hands of a learned "Pagan,"
well-read "Heathen," or instructed Orientalist, he will say,
"Surely this writer has heard the voices of the Oracles; beheld
the glories of the mysteries; and sat at the feet of the Sages, who
quaffed from the eternal fountain of revelation!
"He is an initiate—a Hierophant-a Brother who speaks the
word of truth known only to the few; the Master's Word is whis-
pered in these pages, thrilling through the bones to the very mar-
row of humanity."
CO
According to some, but not by any means the most intelli-
gent or best educated of the American Spiritualists, there is
no God at all, only "a principle," and nothing higher in the seale
of being than the spirits of their deceased friends and kindred;
but these materialistic philosophers form but a small part of that
intelligent nation of thinkers, and their teachings have but little
weight beyond a few score of poor people, who gather together,
and in grandiloquent phraseology congratulate each other on be-
ing the great I Ams of the Universe.
The majority of persons convinced by wonderful signs and
tokens in America, that the souls of men live and communicate
to their friends on earth, have seemed to the author to be wait-
ing for some philosophy or revelation that should carry them be-
yond this one isolated fact, and reduce spiritual existence and
human life to correspondential and appreciable doctrines of
science,
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ART MAGIC.
Would that these humble writings might aid to practicalize
their noble aspirations!
The sacred books of Hermes, once supposed to have been
the most ancient writings in the world, but now more generally
deemed to have been copies of the Hindoo Vedas, transplanted
from India into Egypt, give most elaborate accounts of the differ-
ent orders of angelic beings in the Universe, and render descrip-
tions of the spiritual counterparts of every plant, mineral, rain-
drop or speck of dust in the earth and its atmosphere.
Eusebius, the Christian Bishop of Caesarea, who wrote in
the fourth century of the Christian era, claimed to have been
familiar with these famous Hermetic writings. He says they
often repeat the question: "Have you not been told that all spirits
are sparks from the Divine Soul of the Universe; Gods, Demons,
Souls, yet in their variousness all emanations from Him?"
Jamblichus, quoting from the same source, writes: "From
this one came all Gods that be; all souls, all spirits, good and
bad, and many that be neither very wicked nor yet good.
"There be many kinds of spiritual essences besides souls,
as spirits of the earth, the sea, running waters, and even some
that do inhabit the holes of reptiles that live on the banks of riv-
ers, or the depth of mines......Their abiding places can-
not so much as be named, without enumerating all the secret
corners of the earth......That these spirits are often under
the dominion of man, is as true as that they may be transformed
by the arch enemy of mankind into instruments of ill, to work
the deeds of darkness, in which he delights."
Lao-Kiun, a cotemporary of the great Chinese Sage Con-
fucius, founded a school, which, for the spirituality of its doc-
trines, far transcended the teachings of Confucius. His text of
religious faith was: "Tao (meaning God) produced one; one pro-
duced two, two produced three, and three produced all things.'
>>
During the lifetime of this philosopher, a book containing
the names and offices of innumerable companies of spirits was
found, as it was asserted, suspended on the royal gate of Pekin,
placed there by no mortal hand, and supposed to be full of direct
revelations from heaven.
This miraculous volume is said to have contained magical
formulae for the evocation and control of spirits; directions how
to cast out devils and heal diseases; also the profoundest secrets
of alchemy, namely the composition of the philosopher's stone
and the elixir vitae.
To satisfy the bigotry and superstitious fears of succeeding
ART MAGIC.
Myn
generations, this book, together with all other magical writings,
was destroyed. Still, it was asserted, that private copies had been
made and circulated of its contents. From a curious and very
ancient roll of MSS., in the royal library of Pekin, the author
has had the privilege of copying a fine astrological chart, and a
magical evocation of elementary spirits, assumed to have been
first written in the aforesaid book.
In Chaldea, the only great nation of antiquity in which
Phallic and Yonic emblems are not found, proving by the
universal prevalence of pure astronomical symbols, the extreme
antiquity of the worship there practiced, a belief in various as-
cending and descending grades of spirits and angels, everywhere
speaks out from the mighty and stupendous ruins. The same
belief, only on a much more elaborate scale, was cherished
amongst the Medes and Persians, and taught in all its minutiae
by Zoroaster.
The universal prevalence of image worship throughout the
East is due to the idea that the spirits of Stars, Planets, Angels,
Seraphs, Cherubs and Elementary Spirits could be attracted to
their images, when consecrated under magical formulae, and not
only fix the worshipers' minds upon the spirits represented in
the images, but actually draw them into those material recepta-
cles. The strange and grotesque forms of consecrated images
may thus be accounted for.
The winged Bull of Nineveh was the personification of the
Cherubim. The winged Serpent represented the Seraphim.
The immense number of insects, birds and animals esteemed
as sacred, and rendered homage to in animal images, were all sup-
posed to be attended by spiritual essences, whose power resided
in the particular shape of the creatures venerated.
The Persian Theogony not only includes all the ideas we
have dwelt upon in other systems, but is divided by Zoroaster
into interminable chains of Spiritual existences, two of whom,
one good and another evil, is assigned as an Attendant "Ferver,
to every living creature. Besides these, are hosts of Elementary
Spirits, assumed to exert a beneficent or malignant influence
upon every particle of the vegetable and animal kingdoms. Zo-
roaster's system, like that of the ancient Hindoos and Egyptians,
was full of high moral teachings, and, save for the cruelty and
reckless waste of life manifested in its system of sacrificial rites,
forms a code of ethics not inferior to the sweetness and beauty
of the teachings ascribed to Jesus of Nazareth. Here as in Cab-
balism, Spirit is assumed to be a primal essence, containing the
13
*
778
ART MAGIC.
¦
archetypes of all ideas. God is the one central source of light.
Ormuzd the first Divine emanation, the King of Light. Mithra
and Arimanes, the next procedures, are representatives of the re-
splendent God of Light, heat and goodness, and the terrific
prince of cold, darkness and evil. All created forms are pat-
terned after the archetypal ideas existing in the Divine Mind,
and endless chains of good and evil Spirits, Angels, Genii and
Elementaries, fill up all spaces in the invisible realms in which
matter floats.
As in Chaldea, the most renowned methods of interpreting
the will of God were by soothsaying and divination, so in Persia
the favorite resort was to Astrology. The Persians claimed that
the Stars were divine Scriptures, in which the order of visible
nature was plainly mapped out; that the numerous changes and
configurations of the heavenly bodies produced relative changes
in the simplicity of the scheme indicated on the path of the Zo-
diac. That each star had its special influence upon the plant or
living creature which was born during its ascendency.
Minerals, earths, waters and places, were directly governed
by planetary influence. The mind was governed by the phases
of the moon. All colored objects or glittering stones by the sun
or one of the six planets; in fact, the rise and fall of nations
and the destinies of individuals were spelled out by Persian As-
trologers on the starry heavens, and he would have been consid-
ered an ignoramus or an audacious skeptic, worthy of death, who
should presume to dispute the prophetic dictum of any well-
versed Persian Astrologer..
T
The Priests of this nation were called Magi, and it seems
probable that this term, signifying Wise men, was used for the
first time in this connection. Besides the Art of Astrology and
Soothsaying, in which the Persian Magi were instructed as part
of their education, they practiced in later days enchantment and
divination, and as these arts began to be used popularly in other
nations, and were often combined with Sorcery, Necromancy and
phases of Magic of the most questionable character, the term
Magician was at length applied to those who abused the power
of Magic, exercised it for unholy purposes, or by aid of evil spirits.
It was in this sense that the writers of the Pentateuch designated
those Priests of Egypt who contended with Moses. They called
them Magicians, whilst Moses in their phraseology was the Ser-
vant of God. They (the Magicians) acted under the influence
of "Demons," Moses under that of the Hebrews' Tutelary
"Deity." It is thus that we learn how the title of Magician--
ART MAGIC.
79
originally synonymous with superior wisdom and divine knowl-
edge-may be used as a term of reproach by rival practitioners.
To the egotistical translators of the Septuagint, the perform
ances of Moses with frogs, serpents, lice and other abominations
were the work of "God," acting through his chosen servant; that
of the Egyptian Priests, "Magic," a word as abominable in Jew-
ish lips as it was honorable amongst Egyptians or Persians.
There is a Sanscrit word signifying worship, which some-
what resembles Magus, or Enchanter, a term synonymous in Chal-
daic, with the Persian Magian. The translators of the Septua-
gint allege that the Babylonian High Priest was called Rab Mog,
or Mag; hence it seems that Magic, Magian, Magician, and all
their derivatives were, in the first instance, significant of deep
religious meaning; but subsequently became corrupted into base
and injurious terms, by the misuse that was made of the power
they referred to
In a curious old treatise, by Godwyn, on the manners, times
and theological worship of the ancient Romans, published in
1622, there are the following items of information concerning
the subdivisions of their Gods and Spirits, etc.:
"Though Satan had much blinded the hearts of men in old
times, yet was not the darkness so great, but that they did easily
perceive that there was some gouvernour, some first mover, as
Aristotle saith; some first originall of all goodnesse, as Plato
teacheth; so that if any made this question whether there was a
God or no, they were urged to confess the truth that there was a
God; yet were they very blind in discerning the true God, and
hence hath been invented such a tedious catalogue of Gods, that,
as Varro averreth, their number hath exceeded thirty thousand.
The second kind of Gods were called Semides id est demi-
Gods; also, Indigites id est Gods adopted or canonized, or, men
deified. For, as the select Gods had possession of heaven by
their own right, so these Gods canonized had it no other way
than by right of donation, being, therefore, translated into
heaven, because they lived as Gods upon earth."......Then fol-
lows a description of the rights of canonization, unnecessary to
quote. The author goes on to say: "But that we may understand
what is meant by these Semones (Gods of the third order), we
must remember that by them are signified-not the Gods that
appertain to us-but the necessaries of man's life, as his victuals,
cloathing and the like-to the which well-being of man were
Gods of good and evil fortune, inclining to give or withhold.
"We read, likewise, of divers names given to many Gods
80
ART MAGIC.
who did severally afford help unto many, so that they were called
tutelares, such as had undertaken the protection of any City or
Towne, and thence are named for the City or Towne, as St.
George, of England; St. Denis, of France; St. Patrick, of Ireland,
etc., and the Romans, being fully persuaded of this kind of
guard, held by tutelares, when they went about to besiege a
Towne by certaine enchantments or spells, they would first call
out the Tutelar God, because they deemed it impossible to cap-
tivate the City as long as these Gods were within, and least
others might use the same means in beseiging Rome, therefore,
as divers authors, have thought, the true name of the Roman City
was never known, least thereby the name of their Tutelar God
might be descryed... ... And as they supposed some Tutelar
spirit to have the charge of whole countries, so did they believe
that others had the charge of particular men, and that so soon as
any man was born, two spirits did presently accompany him in-
visibly, the one tearmed the good Angell, or bonus Genius, per-
suading him to that which is good; the other called the Malus
Genius, or evil Angell, tempting to that which should be hurtful,
insomuch that they thought all the actions of men were guided
by these Genii, so that if any misfortune befel a man they would
say, 'We have grieved our Genius,' or 'Our Genius being dis-
pleased with us, or opposed to us."" ......"These Genii were
thought to be a middle essence between Gods and men.".
"They appear in divers forms, but oftener as a fierce tragicall
man, as did the evil Genius who warned Brutus of his fate, or a
decrepit old man, or a sad one, or in many such forms of anger
or woe as mankind doth assume."
11
?
ART MAGIC.
81
SUPPLEMENT TO SECTION VI.
THE JEWISH CABBALA.
FRAGMENTS FROM THIS CURIOUS COMPENDIUM OF IDEALITY AND
TRUTH-QUOTATIONS FROM CLASSICAL AUTHORS.
One of the most curious compendiums of ideality and truth,
allegory and veiled mysticism extant, is to be found in the ancient
Cabbala of the Jews.
This celebrated work is a collection of writings and allu-
sions to traditions of still more authority, supposed to have been
communicated by God to Adam, by Adam to Seth, by Seth lost or
parted with in some mysterious manner, but renewed again in
oral teachings from the God of Sinai to Moses, from him revealed
to Joshua, thence given to the seventy Elders, and thus trans-
mitted to divers of the learned Jews, who dissented from the more
direct assertions of the Talmud. There is another collection of
writings and traditions bearing the title of Cabbala, attributed to
Oriental scholars, but as this remarkable work is of little or no
value without a key which can only be furnished by certain Ori-
ental fraternities, its transcript would be of no value to the gen-
eral reader.
Passing over the sources from whence the Jews pretend to
derive their Cabbala, it is well to notice one peculiarity in its
mode of inscription which may serve to explain the many con-
fused and contradictory statements to which it has given rise.
The writers of the Jewish Cabbala evidently labored, and
with remarkable success, too, to conceal the true meaning of what
they wrote.
Thus some letters are so shortened as to leave the word in-
tact, but the meaning masked; others are lengthened, crooked,
or interpolated with seemingly unmeaning points, all with the
same design; for example, in the sentence, Abraham came to weep
for Sara, the letter Caph is smaller than the others, by which
82
ART MAGIC.
Cabbalistic readers understand that as Sara was old, her spouse
only wept for her a little.
In a certain passage the syllables Isch, signifying a man,
and Escha, a woman, will be found with a point against the word
man, absent in writing the word woman; next there occurs a
point in the word woman, lacking in writing the word man; when
the two points are combined in the same sentence, they signify
God; when one alone is there, the word fire is implied. Without
the pointing the idea conveyed is, man and woman do agree well
together. With the interception of the subtle points in the
peculiar mode of Cabbalistic writings, the sentence would read,
When man and woman agree together, God is with them; when
they disagree, fire is between them.
The study of a lifetime would fail to master all the subtle-
ties with which these writings abound, and the determination
which the authors of the Jewish Cabbala manifest to veil the
meaning of their sentences under the mask of cypher; and hence
it is doubtful how much the popular translations of this cele-
brated collection can be relied on, especially when they are given
to the world by Mystics, as much interested in reserving Cabbal-
istic ideas, as their original authors.
The Talmud very probably contains a fair digest of the Cab-
bala, although the latter is richer in occult lore. From a com-
parison of the two we may glean the following summary of
ancient Jewish opinions, concerning the Divine order of cos-
mogony.
"God is a Trinity," to-wit: Light, Spirit and Life. His first
emanations are also triune, namely: En Soph, the masculine of
Infinity; Sophia, the feminine of Wisdom and the Word, the
divine Activity proceeding from the union of the two. A third
triad of principles is indicated, namely: Matter, the formative
mould; Life, the active principle of formation; and Soul, the
eternal and infinite form of Spirit. Much stress is laid on the
ineffable mystery of Triune being-that is, "Three in one, and
one in three;” also, on the science of numerals, the exact principle
of mathematics, and the immutable order by which creation is
designed, on geometrical proportions. Mathematics and geom-
etry are as inextricably interwoven with Cabbalistic ideas as Spirit
and matter.
The first man-Adam Kadman-is mysteriously mixed up
with the Jewish Christ-the Adam of the fall; King David, and
the original "only begotten Son of God." It would take all the
craft of the unscrupulous Eusebius to disentangle the exact rela-
tions of Adam Kadman with his subsequent appearances on
2
ART MAGIC.
83
earth, and all the faith of the most unquestioning of Christian be-
lievers to swallow the Cabbalistic methods of interpreting the
scheme of unaccountable perdition, and unaccountable salvation
for man.
There is some probability that the wild and unsus-
tained theories of modern reincarnationists borrow their fantasies
from these Cabbalistic ramblings; still, there is much of beauty,
much, too, of scientific value, in the suggestions thrown out con-
cerning the just proportions of the universe, and the profound
mathematical bases on which the structure of creation rests. To
a great extent the scheme of descending emanations in creation,
and ascending spheres providing for the progress of fallen spirits
and elementary existences, agrees with the views of other ancient
Theologians, whose opinions we have cited. Cabbalistic writers
are very diffuse in their descriptions of different orders of "Re-
splendent Angels," Tutelary Spirits, Guardian Angels of every
grade and function, Souls of men, Spirits, and legions of Elemen-
taries, filling all space, crowding all elements, and peopling the
universe with realms of Spiritual existence corresponding to the
Archetypes, Spiritual principles and ultimates of form.
We shall have occasion to draw from the Cabbala again in our
sections on Magic; meantime we close this brief notice by affirm-
ing that the very best and most reliable digests of Cabbalistic wis-
dom are to be found in the songs of Orpheus, the philosophy of
Plato, the doctrines of Pythagoras, Appolonius of Tyana, and the
modern mystics, Van Helmont and Behmen. Many others have
borrowed fragments from this collection of writings, and though
we are unprepared to assert that the celebrated Greek sages
named above derived their ideas from the Cabbala, we are satis-
fied that they all and each drew from the same source, and that
the fountains of wisdom that supplied them, poured forth their
treasures from the grand old ranges of the mighty Himalayas,
and trembled in the dewy chalices of the white lotuses that
fringed the shores of the sacred Nile.
The more we pursue the wisdom of the ancients, through all
their ramifications of varied speech, allegorical forms, and sym-
bolic representation, the more surely we shall come to the con-
clusion that they are all tributary streams from one central
source; that this source was the Book of Nature, written over
with flowers and bloom on the fair green earth, with suns and
stars in the spangled vault of Heaven-that the great School-
master, who first instructed men and angels in the letters of this
divine alphabet, was God, the Father of Spirits; that the means
of teaching were intuition, inspiration, and direct communion
with Angels, the messengers of God;-magic, as the artificer of a
*
84
ART MAGIC.
new form of communion, when the child-like early man lost the
power of intuition, and broke the links of direct communion, by
the corruptions of a materialistic civilization, and all means com-
bined, when the pure heart and the clear brain can elevate the
soul to its native heavens, and learn to master the occult forces
of nature by science, Perhaps we may never return to the sim-
ple and child-like attitude which the early men of the earth sus-
tained towards their God.
They conversed with their tutelary spirits as a man speaks
with his friend. They looked, and saw that God was. They
listened, and God's Angels spoke to them in voices as clear as the
sighing of the breeze or the murmuring of the brook. They re-
flected, and their past spiritual origin and present destiny cast
their images on the mirror of their minds as truthfully as the
limpid waters of the lake reflects the lustre of the stars.
.
Had you asked the intuitional man of old, how he knew these
things, he would have gazed upon you with astonishment, and
questioned back, "How is it possible that you should fail to know
them?" Socrates said, "I respect my own soul, though I cannot
see it."
The men of our purely materialistic and external age doubt
the existence of their own souls because they cannot see them.
How, then, can they expect to see spirits, hear their voices,
or apprehend the nature of that God "who is a Spirit?"
ART MAGIC.
85
PART II.
SECTION VII.
MAN'S EARLIEST COMMUNION WITH SPIRITS.
SPIRITISM AND MAGIC-MUNDANE, SUB-MUNDANE AND SUPER-
MUNDANE SPIRITISM-THE MYSTIC LADDER-AN INTERMIN-
ABLE CHAIN OF LOVE AND HARMONY.
Man's earliest religious history is also the history of Spirit-
ism, or his communion with the realms of Spiritual existence.
To effect this communion, the human organism must be
adapted to the perception of Spiritual entities, or else means
must be found to promote this adaptation.
We have mis-spent our time in sketching out the ancient
forms of religious belief, if we have failed to show that men once
communed with their Tutelary Gods and ministering spirits in-
tuitively, inspirationally, and even directly, but that in process of
time, either by reason of changes in man's receptivity, or from
the altered conditions which civilization imposes, that commun-
ion became interrupted, then more and more difficult; in some
periods it ceased altogether, and finally became limited to a few
exceptionally endowed individuals, in which category (with occa-
sional irruptions of a more diffusive character) it has continued,
down to the present day.
The spontaneous and natural communion with spiritual be-
ings, whether it be exercised by communities or individuals, we
may term Spiritism. The arts by which this communion is pro-
cured through prepared conditions, should with equal propriety
be designated Magic, and whether these arts be practiced for
good or evil purposes, their methods must involve a knowledge
of the occult forces existing in nature, and the means of calling
them forth and utilizing them. If the understanding and ap-
86
ART MAGIC.
}
plication of Nature's laws in any one department of being is a
science, then must all knowledge and all arts, which are but the
applications of knowledge, be included in the term science, hence
magic, however ominous its name may sound in superstitious ears,
and however much it may have been perverted to purposes of
evil, is still a branch of science, and as such, should be studied
and legitimately used.
Magic may be termed the science of Spiritism, and whilst
it would be as idle to tender it to the acceptance of those whose
natural endowments supply them with the art it professes to
teach, as to paint the cheek of the rose, or blanch the lily white,
its careful study may furnish us with a clue to the better use and
guidance of natural gifts, and where these are lacking, instruct
us in the methods of supplying the deficiency. In order to point
out the spheres of power in which magic operates, it is necessary
to define the order of communion which nature permits, through
the exceptional endowments of her most highly gifted children,
the world's Seers, Prophets, Sybils, and Mediums.
The first gift included in the discernment of Spiritual be-
ings is that of vision, or the faculty of seeing Spirits, recognizing
their signs in aerial pictures, their writings when inscribed in
spiritual substances, also of perceiving the spirits of fellow-men,
reading the thoughts and characteristics masked to the mortal
eye, and taking cognizance generally of the spiritual part of
things in the Universe.
›
The second gift of the prophetic order is, the faculty of
hearing sounds, whether in the form of spirit voices, music, or
other vibrations made on the ethereal medium in which spirits
live, rather than on the atmosphere which mortals breathe and
dwell in.
The power of seeing and hearing spirits, opens up two of the
principal avenues of intelligence to our Souls, and in like man-
ner, the spiritual senses of smell, taste, and touch can be operated
upon.
Through one or other of these gates to the inner conscious-
ness, all spiritualistic phenomena must act, but the phenomenal
themselves are very various.
Sometimes the Soul of man itself, looks forth through its
material encasements, acting from within, and sees, hears, tastes,
smells, and touches spiritual entities.
Sometimes ministering spirits produce effects acting from
Both methods are com-
without upon the inner senses of man.
mon, both belong to the one gifted individual.
Sometimes the influx of spiritual ideas is so silent, natural,
ART MAGIC.
87
and unmarked by physical distubances, that their subject knows
not that an Angel speaks, or that the soul has transcended the
laws of sensuous perception, and derived ideas unconsciously
from its near proximity to the realms of spiritual entities.
To account for the operation of the powers described above,
it is necessary to revert to the last section of the First Part, and
bear in mind, that the realms of spiritual being are very near, in
fact, all around and about us; that, though spirits of every grade
and class swarm through the universe, ranged in their different
spheres and orders, yet that the "spirit world," or the spheres.
through which the souls of men are making pilgrimage upwards
and onwards to heaven are approximate to this earth, even as
the soul of man is related to his body; that these spheres inter-
penetrate every atom of matter on this globe with a spiritual ele-
ment, and again, as the disembodied spirits of earth are in the
most direct, natural, and harmonious proximity to their still em-
bodied friends, it is to the spirit spheres of humanity, that the
most ready access to the human soul is obtained, and through
which the most constant influx into the natural world transpires.
To expect that the realms of disembodied human spirits should
be the nearest in atmospheric proximity to man, the most in ac-
cordance with his grade of intelligence, and the most prompt to
serve, bless and instruct him by ties of love, kindness, and adapta-
tion, is just as rational as to suppose that the human mother
would be the first to render aid to her suffering child, or that the
child would be more likely to appeal for that aid to a tender pa-
rent than to some unsympathizing stranger. This phase of inter-
course between spirits and mortals, we distinguish as Mundane
Spiritism, and this we claim to be the most natural, direct, and
spontaneous product of that divine plan which connects all con-
ditions of being, from the highest to the lowest, in one unbroken
chain of love and harmony, the links of which are millions of
spheres of super-mundane, mundane, and sub-mundane spiritual
existences.
There are but few analogies discoverable on the surface of
mundane life, between the laws which separately govern Spirit
and matter, but the closer we pursue our researches, the more
clearly we recognize correspondence, if not actual analogies, be-
tween these elements. Amongst these are the laws of physical
and moral gravitation.
As the heaviest and grossest bodies sink to the centre, so the
least intelligent and exalted conditions of spiritual being obey
the same law, and hence, sub-mundane Spiritism consists in com-
munion with these lowers orders of being, who are in point of
88
ART MAGIC.
position in the Universe, no less than in moral and mental un-
foldment, lower than man, and whom the philosophers and mys-
tics of old have significantly denominated, "the Elementaries.'
It would be impossible to do justice to the immense multi-
tudes of those beings who crowd the elements, and exist in all
grades of semi-spiritual, semi-material bodies, from such pro-
gressed, but still rudimental conditions, as almost impinge upon
the perfection of manhood, down to the "Pigmies," who emerge
from rude, almost inorganic life, evolved from minerals, plants,
water, earth, atmosphere and fire.
There are luxuriant and enormous growths, gigantic forms,
exceeding the proportions of humanity, who abound in forests,
mountains, hills, and desert places; stunted, dwarfish beings who
frequent mines, caverns, and the deep recesses of earth, corre-
sponding to the undeveloped elements of inorganic nature.
Beautiful, though still embryonic existences there are, who
belong to the finer spheres, corresponding to flowers and air.
Fantastic and diffusive shapes of elementary life crowd the wa-
ters, and resplendent globular unparticled essences exist, and can
be detected in the realms of light and heat represented by fire.
All are included in the title of Elementaries. All possess differ-
ent functions, exert power in the particular elements to which
they belong, are neither good nor evil per se, but malignant or
beneficent in part, to those whom they affect or dislike; they pos-
sess, in short, varied powers and characteristics; and conmunion
with them may be classed in the category of Sub-mundane Spir-
itism.
Myriads upon myriads there are in whom special animal in-
stincts prevail, giving to their embryonic forms a similarity to
the creatures whose natures they correspond to. These elemen-
tary spirits are all ranged and classed in the divine order of crea-
tion, under the same law of adaptation that is manifest in the
plants, animals and other products of different countries and
climes. Every creature is as much in its place, and an inhab-
itant of its appropriate sphere, as is the material particle to which
it corresponds. Hanging on the same divine thread of benefi-
cence which binds man to the heart of Deity, these Elementaries
could no more be riven away from the interminable chain of be-
ing, than the Planetary order of the skies could afford to part
with Mercury, the youngest child of the solar system, because it is
not so perfectly developed as Mars, nor yet cast out of the shin-
ing, starry family that circles round the parent sun, the planet
Earth, because it has not attained to the size, lustre and glory of
Jupiter.
-
ART MAGIC.
89
"I number up my Jewels!" says the God of the sparkling
sky; and which of his blazing sons of light could he dispense with,
without throwing the whole scheme of revolving worlds out of
eternal harmony?
"I number up my Jewels!" cries the Tutelary Angel of
Earth, in the tender and merciful tones of divine Fatherhood;
and which of his immortal soul gems could he afford to annihi-
late as his vision ranges, and his justice prevails, from the mon-
arch on his throne, to the dying wretch in the cell of earthly con-
demnation?
**
AM
"I number up my Jewels!" cries the Archangel of the grand
solar system, and which of his minutest sparks of spiritual fire
could he afford to extinguish, whether it blazed in the soul of a
Copernicus, or glimmered in the uncouth form of a pigmy Ele-
mentary, on the lowest round of the ladder of sub-mundane pil-
grimage?
Oh, proud, disdainful man! disdainful and proud only in
your ignorance! Which of you can say from whence you came,
or deny what you might have been, however you may rejoice in
the height to which you have now attained; however you may rest
in the assurance that there is no such thing as retrogression, and
that you cannot sink lower than you will to fall? Which of you,
who so cheerfully accept that vague theory of inductive science,
that teaches you to believe men were once apes, need shrink
back with contempt from the idea that your spirits were as
rudimental as your bodies? Which of you that so fiercely reject
the Darwinian theory, yet offer no better hypothesis for human
origin-who would rather fancy you were nothing, than anything
lower than your arrogance deems worthy of you-which of you
can believe that from nothing sprang something, or that you sud-
denly appeared on the theatre of existence, a full-fledged immor-
tal Soul, with a whitherward, but no whence-a heavenly goal to
attain to, but no beginning to spring from?
The world that sees its Julius Caesars and Napoleon Bona-
partes commence life as helpless, wailing babes, and end it as
Masters of Europe, and Lords over millions of their fellow-crea-
tures, still scoffs at the idea that the race of man ever had a sim-
ilar infancy.
The full-grown man of the nineteenth century repels with
indignation the idea that he could have ever been related to the
world of elementary being, and can see no justice, divinity, beau-
ty, or order in the scheme that sows a germ of spiritual life in the
most rudimental of material forms, and then expands it through
a natural series of births and deaths, until it becomes fitted to
90
ART MAGIC.
take its place as a purely perfected and self-conscious spirit en-
tity, in those realms where it awaits, in common with myriads of
other spirits, a mortal birth on this or some other earth in the
Universe. Yet such is God's plan, at least such does it appear to
the most patient of students; those who have toiled through the
esoteric significations of human history, and learned their spirit-
ualistic lessons from the very beings who are in the experience of
the truths they reveal. Such is God's plan, unless the philosophic
minds, who have gathered up the accumulated wisdom of past
ages, and studied nature and the mysteries of spiritual existence
in their profoundest depths, have learned less than modern theo-
rists, who never study such subjects at all.
Either the wisdom and occult knowledge of cycles of ages
is worth less than the scornful denial of utterly uninformed skep
ticism, or our brief review of sub-mundane Spiritism is a correct
one as far as it goes.
Reserving more particular descriptions of the Elementaries
for future sections, we now proceed to notice the realms of super-
mundane Spiritism.
Here, legions of Archangels and Angels throng the Uni-
verse, of whom the imagination may conceive, but to whose being
and nature the power of language can do no justice.
In whatever realms of spiritual life the entranced soul of the
ecstatic may wander, with whatever resplendent beings that soul
may be permitted to hold converse, the mind is always directed to
higher states, and higher individualities still. Like the revelat-
ing Angel addressing the Apocalyptic writer John, every Spirit
or Angel that has ever communed with man, ignores worship, and
ascribes all power and all glory to something still beyond-to
Deific existences, incomprehensible, but ever felt in the under-
standing, and ever holding that central point of all devotion and
worship, which we vaguely call God. Bear this fact in mind, and
we shall be held guiltless of presumption when we write of what
the eyes of Seers have beheld, of spirits with whom our fathers,
like John of old, have identified even the Lord of life and light,
and striven to worship as God; of mighty Angels, who, like the
spirit that spoke through the thunders of Sinai, or from the midst
of the burning bush, seem to man the last apex of glory on which
the finite mind rests its conceptions of God. Higher and still
higher, ever stretching away where roads are made of star dust,
and paths are strewn with glittering Suns; where time is no more,
and space is lost in infinity; stretching away into hemispheres
where new sideral heavens form the boundary walls and gateways
to new corridors of an Universe wherein, end there is none.
ART MAGIC.
91
Loose the reins of the imagination, and let the fiery steeds of
a new mental Phoebus seek to traverse these high-roads of in-
finity! People them all with Angels ascending and still ascend-
ing in the scale of grandeur, power and immensity, and then
question of the highest still, and still the choiring worlds will an-
swer, "Higher yet! higher yet! There still are realms of being
higher yet!"
We veil our presumptuous eyes against these vain specula-
tions, retreat to our spheres of littleness, content to find that
Angels, Guardian spirits, and Spirit friends, surround us, minis-
ter to our earthly powers and functions only as our minds can
grasp and comprehend them, and thus we may concentrate our
wandering thoughts on the firm assurance that God is, though
man may never know Him, and rest in the certainty that all we
hope and strive for, will yet be ours, as the heirs of immortal
progress.
Super-mundane Spiritism teaches of Tutelary Spirits or
Gods, and Planetary Angels.
The Jehovah of the Jews affords a well marked definition
of the ancient belief in Eloihim, or Tutelary Gods.
The revelating Angels so often described by the Hebrew
Prophets, and He who was claimed by the authors of the Apoca-
lypse to have mapped out the masonic order of creation in that
gorgeous vision, said to have been shown in the Isle of Patmos,
or the isolation of the entranced Soul, clearly illustrate the na-
ture of these celestial visitants who in the Oriental dispensation,
talked with men, face to face. In our degenerate and unspiritual
age, we have little to illuminate our prosaic lives, save the revela-
tions of our Fathers. From time to time, bright beings flash
athwart our path, more glorious than the forms of men or spirits,
and the assurance that the realms of space must be filled with the
messengers of God, induces us to yield acceptance to the Cabbal-
istic division of the higher orders of Angels into "Thrones, Do-
minions, Powers;-Angels of the Planets, Tutelary Spirits,
Guardians of Nations, Cities, Men, the Souls of Ancestors, and
beloved Spirit friends." The reader will remember the descrip-
tion so often rendered by Swedenborg in his ecstatic wanderings
through Celestial spheres, of his having seen God as a Spiritual
Sun. The same statement is made by several of the best modern
Brahmins who are Seers. It was re-affirmed by Cahagnet's Som-
nambules under the control of many spirits who professed to have
beheld the glory of this Spiritual Sun, and it was stated in oppo-
sition to all the preconceived opinions of surrounding listeners,
by the Spirits who spoke with human voices at Koon's Spirit
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ART MAGIC.
room in the opening of the American Spiritual Dispensation.
It has frequently been stated to the author by teaching Spir-
its, that the Tutelary Angel of every planet appears only as a
Spiritual Sun, himself deriving light, heat, force, and being, from
the Central Sun of the Universe; that these stupendous and sub-
lime centres, the Spiritual Suns of Earths, Planets, and Satel-
lites, impart their life-giving light, radiance and gravitating
forces to the Physical Suns of the systems to which they belong;
-that these Physical Suns are the most progressed aggregations
of world matter in the Universe, hence become centres and pa-
rents of revolving Satellites, who derive a certain measure of light
and heat from the Sun of their system, but like that material
body, they would fade, perish and dissolve into their original ele-
ments were they not vitalized by the Spiritual Sun, which is to
that system, as the Soul to the human body.
To the true Hierophant who can connect ancient mysteries
with personal spiritual endowments, those who wear the Proph-
et's mantle, yet analyze its fabric by the light of modern science,
Tutelary Spirits and Planetary Angels reveal themselves as dis-
tinctly now, as when they spoke from between the Cherubim and
Seraphim of the "Ark of the Covenant," or reflected their lus-
trous rays from mimic skies, outstretched above the Hierophants
of ancient mysteries.
Planetary Spirits respond to invocations' from the sincere Spir-
itualist, and often hold watch and ward over the favored ones of
earth to whom, through prepared conditions, they communicate
many of the great truths of the Universe unattainable to mor-
tals without their aid. Few of them are inferior to the highest
of human intelligences, save the Spirits of Mercury and Venus,
who should seldom be invoked or encouraged to commune with
Earth.
Generally speaking, the Planetary Spirits are not attracted
to earth, except on special missions, or by evocations procured as
above stated, through prepared conditions, of which more here-
after.
Ranging under the category of Super-mundane Spiritism, we
place the Souls of men who have attained to the highest condi-
tions of Angelic exaltation, and who are attracted to Earth as
messengers of beneficence, beauty, and goodness.
Souls of men that have enjoyed ages of progress, and at-
tained to radiant conditions of celestial happiness, sometimes re-
turn to earth for material knowledge, to study lower conditions of
being, and gather elements of use, imparting in return the noblest
teachings, and very generally associating their mission with some
ART MAGIC.
93
master mind of earth, through whom they become, by inspiration
and heavenly influence, the promoters of mighty reforms, great
upheavals of human thought, culminating in social, political or
religious revolutions.
On every round of that visionary ladder, whose foot is on
earth, whose apex in heaven-Angels who have once been men,
Spirits who have lived and labored on earth and risen from the
ashes of death, victor-browed, to a triumphant inheritance be-
yond; household "lares"-heart loves who have just left us, but
still hover on the threshold they have crossed to smooth our rough
and rugged path over the stones their torn feet have trod-all
such ministers of love and blessing as these, ascend and descend
on this mystic ladder, forming an interminable chain of love and
harmony between the highest and the lowest, connecting each
and all by the links of sympathy, bearing up the tired hands that
are dropping life's burdens for very weariness-catching at the
outstretched arms that are tossed abroad in the agony of frantic
supplication to the God of many creeds and nations, tenderly
wafting up to heaven the piteous prayers that long ago they lisped
forth in accents as faltering as our own, and returning inspiration
for aspiration, peace and blessing for the incoherent appeals of
human ignorance and impotence.
These are the beings that fill up the sum of man's limited
and finite span of knowledge, concerning Super-mundane
Spiritism.
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ART MAGIC.
SECTION VIII.
MAN THE MICROCOSM OF THE UNIVERSE.
MAN THE TRINITY OF Elements: Soul, Spirit, Matter-Rosi-
CRUCIANISM—THE ASTRAL SPIRIT, ASTRAL LIGHT-THE
ANCIENT AND MODERN Priest.
*
The modus operandi by which the worlds invisible to the
outer senses of man can become so manifest as to convince him
of their existence, must depend first on some element resident in
the human organism, and next upon correspondential means op-
erating upon man, from the invisible realms of being.
Were there not such operations mutually subsisting between
the worlds of spirit and matter, all man's imaginings however
sublime, all his intuitive faculties, however penetrating, and even
the witness of his own interior nature, would never be susceptible
of demonstrating God in the light of reason, never bring him face
to face with Spirit as the absolute esse of being, never enable him
to construct such a religious belief as the Father could communi-
cate to the child, or the Priest impart to the People. There can
be no doubt that the Soul's deepest and most intuitive percep-
tions of truth, are its own most acceptable witnesses, still these
are incommunicable, and the spirit's witness of itself, its Deity,
and its faith in immortality, can never be fully translated into
human speech. Happily, however, for those blunted natures
which are not developed up to transcendent heights of spiritual
truth, the realms of invisible being approximate to earth, have
found means to establish processes of communion which place
their existence, varied offices of ministry, even their very natures,
beyond all shadow of doubt or denial to those who care to consult
the occult, as well as the material side of human history.
Setting the question of evidence aside, however, or leaving
it only as a subject of warfare between contentious factions of
materialists and creedists, our part is to examine into the methods
;
ART MAGIC.
95
by which the communion between man and the invisible worlds
of being transpire.
Mere opinions concerning the facts of the phenomena, fur-
nish no clue to their means of occurrence.
Spirits come and go, apparently by no law analogous to those
which govern human action.
Beings of an order wholly different in their essential nature,
and similar only in form and intelligence to man, interpenetrate
his atmosphere like the magical appearance of the lightning's
flash, and disappear in the same inexplicable mystery.
Sounds, sight, movements, impressions, sometimes appealing
to man with the subtle semblance of a vision, sometimes com-
pelling him by a force he cannot resist, all captivate his senses,
sway his soul, and fill him with awe and wonder.
The commonplace and secularizing modes of spiritual inter-
course that have prevailed throughout the second half of our
present century, have doubtless tended to strip the world of su-
pernaturalism of its terrors, as well as much of its exaltation and
spiritual beauty, still it has effected a wonderful revolution in
man's intellectual appreciation of spiritual existence, confirming
him in knowledge upon subjects that were before divided be-
tween myth and superstitious credulity, and bringing under the
dominion of reason and judgment problems that were deemed
hertofore insoluble upon any other ground than the assumption
of miracle.
In treating of nature as of the visible and sensuous universe,
and super-nature as of the invisible and spiritual, we are no
longer driven to the necessity of premising our philosophy with
an if, and such events really transpired, or leaning upon the au-
thority of some great Sage or world-renowned Pundit, before we
can demand acceptance for our facts.
However commonplace or even puerile many of the phases of
modern Spiritual communion may be, however foolishly that
communion may have been abused, by making it the shibboleth
for the introduction of all sorts of subversive ideas into social, re-
ligious, and even political life, the immense flood of light it has
diffused upon the great problems of life, death, immortality and
the nature of the human spirit, rank it as one of the most revolu-
ionary and powerful revelations that have been vouchsafed to
man since the closing up of the Oriental and Mythological Dy-
nasties.
It is as much by the positive, sensuous demonstrations af-
forded to us in this great modern Spiritual outpouring, as
through a study of ancient or mediaeval records, that we are en-
96
ART MAGIC.
abled to present the composite but absolute philosophy of Spir-
itism recited in this Section; but here let us premise, that we do
not propose to pause in our definitions to say this is Artephius,
and that is Plato; thus argued the Fire Philosophers of the mid-
dle ages, and thus mused the Cabbalists of antiquity. Now, as
heretofore, our reference to authority must be sought for in the
context of the work, rather than in the list of names cited.
Man is a Microcosm or Universe in little-as such, he is the
conservator of all forces, the image of all objective forms, the
embodiment of all subjective ideas, and the connecting link be-
tween all existences, higher and lower than himself.
In himself, taken to pieces by chemistry and analyzed by the
display of his powers and relations to the invisible world, he is a
trinity of elements, namely: Body, spirit, and soul. His body is
a conservator of all the powers and functions of matter; his spirit,
the animating principle, is made up of all the forces we vaguely
call life; his soul is the pure Deific, and immortal essence whose
attribute is Will or Intelligence. It is the attempt to analyze
these three elements, which has formed a groundwork of philos-
ophy, and a theme of learned speculation, for thousands of years.
Judging from effects rather than assumed causes, may we
not believe with the "Fire Philosophers" of the middle ages, that
the soul is like its source-the Central Sun of being-in its na-
ture and essence pure, unalloyed, Spiritual Light?
That it is the invisible and infinitely sublimated Spirit of
Fire-not the gross visible element that can be seen, felt, and ap-
prehended by the senses-but that wonderful innermost light,
which, whilst it reveals and proves all things in its own manifes-
tation, is itself invisible, unknown, and uncomprehended?
It is this essential, innermost and divine principle of soul
which survives all change, which is neither subject to decay nor
disintegration; which is the spark derived from Deity-the Alpha
and Omega of being-and the link which unites the Creature to
the Creator.
Ampl
Encompassing this divine essence of soul, and clothing it as
a spiritual body, is the subtle and refined element which, in its
effects, is force; in its action, through organic bodies, is life; and
in its all-pervading influence throughout the realms of space, is
vaguely termed magnetism and electrictiy.
It is the second of that grand trinity of principles, whose
union constitutes man a living being.
It is this element which we described in our first section, as
recognized throughout the Universe, by the apparent duality of
its modes, called attraction and repulsion, or centrifugal and cen-
ART MAGIC.
97
tripetal force. As it is in the realm of this all-pervading life
principle that we find our sole explanation of the various magical
operations of spirit power. we must dwell somewhat at length
upon a description of its character and functions.
It has often been stated by Seers and illuminated "Sensi-
tives," that there were many layers or strata of this spiritual
body, of more or less attenuation, in proportion to their distance
from the soul, or nearness to the physical body. These rings, or
spheres, are called, collectively, the Astral Spirit, from the fact
that the element itself is derived, like the pure essence of the
soul, from the great Spiritual Sun of the Universe, from whom
emanate, and to whom return all rays of light, heat, force, mo-
tion, power and being that fill the Universe of forms. This As-
tral Spirit is often mis-called in modern phraseology, the "mag-
netic body," the "nerve aura," "magnetism," "electricity," etc.
Paul, the Apostle of the Gentiles, who writes equally in the spirit
of ancient Cabbalism, and still later Gnosticism, terms this ele-
ment in man, "The Spiritual body," a phrase which corresponds.
well to the still more correct expression of "The Astral Spirit."
In organic bodies we shall continue thus to term it; in the realms
of space it is more proper to speak of it as the "Astral light." It
is to the Universe of inorganic forms, what the Soul is to the
body, its spirit-life or animating principle.
The Rosicrucians a sect who obtained much notoriety
about the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, but of whose actual
origin, tenets and very existence, no reliable information has ever
been generally circulated-maintained that the last analysis of
the Supreme Being would fail to discover any other existence
than that of a Central Spiritual Sun-an Infinite, Eternal, un-
created and incomprehensible One alone, whose attributes were
light and heat, whose manifestation was the Universe, revealed
by light, energized into forms, suns, systems, worlds, men and
things, by that spiritual heat whose last gross external exhibi-
tion is fire.
My
In this sense, the term repulsion, which has been treated as
an attribute of matter, is accounted for by the energy with which
heat burns, consumes, disintegrates, and drives off one particle
from another; whilst attraction, also supposed to be an attribute
of matter, is but the natural cohesion of particles, upon which
the restless energy of heat either does not act, or becomes modi-
fied by the solidarity of the masses acted upon. Thus then, re-
pulsion is the one universal law of motion, which itself is pro-
duced by heat; and attraction is only the absence of heat, not a
true force.
98
:
ART MAGIC.
Inertia
the only property of matter in this category-heat
or repulsion its counteracting force attraction, the exhibition of
the vis inertia of atoms.
g
We do not care to dismiss these propositions without a far-
ther elaboration of their basic idea, and for this purpose we pro-
pose to offer a few excerpts from one of those writers who has as-
sumed the office of describing the principles of the Rosicrucian
Brotherhood. As far as the opinions of this remarkable associa-
tion can be defined in language, the quotations selected will give
a fair idea of their views on the subject under discussion:
"If the above abstractions are caught by the thinker, it will
appear no wonder that the ancient people considered that they
saw God, that is, with all their innermost possibility of thought --
in Fire-which Fire is not our vulgar, gross Fire, neither is it
even the purest material or electric fire, which has still some-
thing of the base, bright light of the world about it; but it is an
occult, mysterious, supernatural Fire-not magnetic-and yet a
real, sensible mind. It is the inner Light, the God, containing
all things, the soul of all things, into whose inexpressibly intense,
all-consuming, all-creating, divine, though fiery essence, all the
worlds in succession will fall; back into whose arms of Immortal
Light on the other side, as again receiving them, the worlds
driven off into space and being heretofore, by the Divine energy
will again rush back to him.".
ty
1
"The hollow world, in which that essence of things called
Fire, plays, in its escape in violent agitation-to us combustion--
is deep down within us, deep sunken inside of the time stages of
which we are, in the flesh, rings of being, subsidences of spirit."
"Narrowly considered, it will be found that all religions
transcend up into this spiritual Fire-floor, on which, so to speak,
the phases of time were laid. Material Fire, which is brightness,
as the matter upon which it preys is darkness-is the shadow of
the true Spirit Light, which invests itself in fire as a mask, in
which alone it can act possibly on matter. Thus material light
being the opposite rather than the expression of God, the Egyp-
tians who were undoubtedly acquainted with the Fire revela-
tion-could not represent God as light-material light. They
therefore expressed their idea of Deity by darkness. Their ador-
ation was paid to darkness, for in this they bodied forth the im-
age of the Eternal.”. . . . . . "Though fire is an element in which
everything inheres, and of which it is the life, still it is itself an
element existing in a second non-terrestrial, non-physical, ethe-
real fire, in which the first, or terrestrial coarse fire, flickers,
waves, brandishes, consumes, destroys. The first is natural, ma-
၊နှံ
ART MAGIC.
99
terial, gross; but this familiar element, seen and known in the
natural world as fire, is contained in a celestial, unparticled, infi-
nitely extended medium-which celestial fire is its matrix, and of
which, in this human body, we know nothing."
We here interrupt these excerpts-rendered chiefly as frag-
mentary representations of Rosicrucian ideas on the Deity-to
interpret the obscure language of the writer, and state that the
celestial fire referred to in the above passage, is the all-pervading
element we have described, which, in its action through space, is
termed the Astral Light, and in its investiture of the soul as a
spiritual body, is termed the Astral Spirit. The innermost of the
Rosicrucian Celestial Fire, like that of the human spirit, is the in-
comprehensible essence of light, not its substance, Soul. Robert
Fludd, a Rosicrucian mystic of the middle ages, teaches that the
Macrocosmos, or great Universe of intelligible and intelligent
forms, is divided into three principal regions, which are denomi-
nated the Empyreum, the Aethereum, and the Elementary re
gion. Each are filled with Celestial Fire, and traversed by in-
numerable oceans of Astral Light, but the quantity and quality
of these divine elements diminishes as these subdivisions of space
recede farther from the Central Source of all.
It is the union of the Celestial Fire and Astral Light which
constitutes the Soul of the Universe.
The Rosicrucian biographer proceeds to say:
"There are three ascending Hierarchies of beneficient An-
gels whose nature is of the purer portion of the Celestial Fire, and
these are divided into nine orders.-These threefold Angelic Hi-
erarchies are: The Teraphim, the Cherubim, and Seraphim; also,
there is a correspondential realm of darkness, divided into nine
spheres the residuum of being, peopled with mighty but adverse
Angels, who boast still, of the relics of their lost or eclipsed con-
dition, once all light and heavenly glory." "The Elemen-
tary region includes the earth, man, and his belongings, also the
lower creatures. This sphere is the flux, subsidence, ashes, of the
ethereal fire, and man himself is the microcosm or indescribably
small copy of the macrocosm, or great world. This earth having
been produced by the contention of light and darkness, has dense-
ness in its innumerable heavy concomitants, which contain less
and less of the original divine light and heat, and thicken and so-
lidify, until it is rent apart, torn, disintegrated and distributed
into forms, by the still prevalent action of the Divine element of
invisible fire.
Vig
"The inner jewel of light is never absent, even from the
grossest atom, and though it may take ages to evolve, still will
100
ART MAGIC.
Mi
this divine light, ever tending to purify, refine, and elevate, al-
chemically convert base things into fine, gross matter into ethe-
real, and the earth itself into a radiant and gloriously spiritual-
ized planet. Unseen and unsuspected, there is a divine ethereal
spirit, an eager fire, confined as in prison, struggling through all
solid objects, which are imbued with more or less of this sensitive
life, as they are more or less refined, through the changing purga-
tions of fire. Thus all minerals in this spark of light have the
rudimentary possibility of plants, and growing organisms; plants
have rudimentary sensibilities, which might in distant ages trans-
mute them into locomotive creatures, and all vegetation might
pass off, into new and independent highways of being, as their
original spark of life-light,thrills, expands, and urges nature for-
ward with more informed force, and directed by the unseen An-
gelic Ministers of the Great Original Architect."... ..."It is with
terrestrial fire that the Alchemist breaks asunder the atomic
thickness of visible nature, which, yielding up its secret destiny,
of unlimited progress, sinks into the fiery furnace, in its basest
proportions, to arise thrice purified, and forced upwards on the
pathway of a higher round of the ladder.
"It is with the celestial fire that the Rosicrucian bursts
asunder the bonds of error and darkness that hold the soul in a
material prison-house. He becomes the Pontifex (bridge maker),
which conducts the Soul across the dark waters of ignorance
from the realms of the known to the unknown, from the gates of
matter to the bright roads of Spirit; from earthly blackness to ce-
lestial light, from the visible fires of purgation to the invisible
soul light of eternity."
Our readers may pardon us for interblending so many frag-
ments of Rosicrucian musings with the practicalities which we
profess to aim at, but to the genuine student of the occult sci-
ences, it may not be uninteresting to learn something of the real
opinions of a sect to whom so much that is false and mythical has
been attributed. As God is the solvent for all the problems of
pious ignorance, so electricity plays the same part in the realm of
unexplained phenomena. The name of the Rosicrucians seems.
to have been borrowed in the same sense, and applied by supersti-
tious and utterly misinformed babblers to cover up all the occult
mysteries which science could not explain, and bigotry feared to
tamper with.
It is something to know ourselves-not less to be truly known
by others.
We do not press these fragments of Rosicrucianism on the
reader's attention for the mere purpose of citing abstract opin-
ART MAGIC.
101
ions with which we have especial sympathy, but we feel that, to
the interior sense of the profound thinker, they have a deeper
significance than any other theories that have yet been advanced
concerning the wonderful phenomena of Deity, life and being.
Allowing for the varied modes of expression which prevail in
different countries, and at various epochs of time, these opinions
present a very fair, though necessarily condensed abstract, of the
philosophies of the Cabbalists, Gnostics, Pythagoreans, Platon-
ists, and many of the most enlightened of the Greeks, Romans
and early Christians.
In giving a brief and practical summary of these theories,
we find that, whilst the soul or innermost of the man is a Divine
emanation from Deity, the body or outermost is an aggregation of
material atoms, vitalized by the Astral Spirit, which serves as
the life principle to the body, the ethereal body of the soul, and
forms the connecting link between the soul and body. This
Astral Spirit accompanies the soul at Death, when the union of
the two forms the spirit. The more sublimated portions of this
Astral body adhere to the soul, the grosser and coarser layers form
the outer covering or body of the spirit.
It is in this luminous Astral Spirit, this concentration of all
force, life, heat, motion and imponderable essence, this invisible,
"supernatural fire," as the ancient Theosophists termed it, that
the power resides to make spirits visible to mortal eyes, to exhale
force, so that they can lift bodies, make sounds, and produce all
the manifestations by which spirits and mortals commune with
each other. The heat generated in this Astral Spirit gives life
and motion to the body; the light, which is its substance, colors
the various tissues and fluids, and causes them to reflect the
grosser rays of light in the atmosphere, so that they can become
visible.
落
​Once more we will suggest, that the Astral Spirit in the
human structure is analogous, though differing in degrees of at-
tenuation and force, to the Astral light in the realms of space.
It is the spiritual principle of the earth, galvanism, magnetism,
motion throughout its rocks, plants, minerals, waters, and gases.
It is the restless, ethereal fire that forces asunder the most
mobile particles of fluid, and disperses them into gases; it separ-
ates the still finer particles of gases, and distributes matter into
ether. It is not, as some have asserted, ether per se, but it is the
principle of motion which rolls oceans of ether into undulatory
waves, and causes it to become the carrier of light and heat.
When its swift winged rays encounter opposite currents, when
moving with inconceivable energy through one body it meets
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ART MAGIC.
with its counterpart in opposing motion, the fierce concussion re-
sults in combustion; this mighty shock eliminates flame or light-
ning, and in the all-devouring action of the material fire, the sur-
rounding particles are consumed. Destruction by fire, or what is
called electricity then, is the material exhibition of two contend-
ing bodies, moving in opposite directions under the energetic
action of the spiritual fire. In its primal condition, the Astral
light of the Universe is like that of the Spiritual body in man,
invisible, latent, inscrutable, unknown, except by its effects in
life, warmth, and motion. In its external and last analysis, it is
the consuming fire, and its action is to reduce all things back
again into their own invisible essence; thus is it the Alpha and
Omega of being, the first and the last; Deity.
The Astral Spirit in man is not a single original element,
like the Soul, it is a combination of all the imponderables of the
Universe. Its first derivation or original essence is from the Sun
and planetary system. Ether, air, atmosphere, earth, with all
its freight of organic and inorganic life, combine to send off ema-
nations which make up the sum of the wonderful structure called
the Astral Spirit in man. It is a true cosmos of the Universe,
and upon its exterior form is engraved all the sand grains of char-
acter, motives, powers, functions, vices, virtues, hopes, and mem-
ories, which the Soul has gathered up in its process of growth
through the material body; hence it is as much a perfect micro-
cosm of the individual's mind within, as of the visible and invis-
ible Universe without. Not a deed, word, or thought which has
helped to make up the sum of a human life, but what is photo-
graphed upon the spiritual body of the man, with as much fidel-
ity as the mind of the Creator is written, in starry hieroglyphics
upon the glittering skies. It keeps as faithful a record, as true
a doomsday book, and pronounces as sure a judgment upon hu-
man life and conduct as ever the Egyptian Osiris could have done,
in his sternest moods of God-like justice.
Its many layers of graduated ethereal essence are felt by
Sensitives as rings, or spheres. Those nearest the body are per-
ceived as life spheres, and these change with the body's changes,
and in its decay and death, recede, and become the outermost of
the new born Soul's envelope. Those most interior to the body,
and nearest the Soul, are the Sun spheres, and connect the Soul
with the Solar and Astral influences, under which the individual
was launched into being.
These interior spheres, too, change in response to Solar and
planetary changes, and thence they affect the mind, influence the
character, and constitute the links of connection by which the
ART MAGIC.
103
stars act upon the individual's destiny. As man's Astral Spirit
is aggregated from so many forces in the Universe, so it is subject
to the influence of changes occuring in every department of Na-
ture.
The state of the earth, atmosphere, and aromal emanations
given off in different seasons of the year-all these, with their
changing influences, contribute to form the essence of the embry-
onic being ere it sees the light. The inherited tendencies of
mind, body and spirit imposed by parental law, impart to the life
germs their own peculiar idiosyncrasies. The physical suste-
nance, mental temperament, the very employments and thoughts
of every mother, combine, also, to impress, with fateful images,
their unborn offspring; but above all, the order of the planetary
scheme, and the conjunction which every star sustains, first to the
Sun, next to the earth, and finally to each other at the moment of
mortal birth, must determine the nature of every spirit, and shape
the springs upon which hinge the framework of human character.
Admitting then, the Soul's origin in Deity, and the Astral
spirit's origin in the solar system, how vastly momentous upon the
newly-born being's character and organization must be the solar
and planetary influences which prevail in the hour of the germ's
inception, through every stage of embryonic life, and at the very
moment when, drawn by solar and planetary influence from the
darkness of its embryonic prison, it is launched in space as a
living creature!
Ages ago, the ancient astronomer discovered that all the
vast crystal vault of the skies, the illimitable fields of space dotted
over with millions of fiery blossoms, seemingly so fixed, so calm,
so immobile in their solemn silence and mysterious beauty, were
all moving! Moving on in constant but still ever-changing or-
bits. The certainty of these stupendous changes was absolutely
determined by the discovery of that remarkable motion called
"the precession of the equinoxes," a motion which, in a given pe-
riod of time, varying between two and three thousand years,
swept the blazing sun of the solar system, with all its planetary
hosts, from one sign of the Zodiac to another. Later on-in fact,
up to our own time-astronomical observations have determined
that all the stars of the sidereal heavens, gorgeous fields of space,
filled with the march of suns and systems, speed on with a mo-
mentum so tremendous, that the mind of man shrinks back, awe-
struck, at the attempt to trace, those footprints of fire through
spaces, wherein millions of miles arè measured by hours and min-
utes. Whilst the external aspect of these spangled heavens.
changes but little to the eye of the observer during many centu-
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ART MAGIC.
ries of time, the real permanence of the scheme is only apparent.
"Only constant in eternal unrest," might be traced in every glit-
tering point of the sidereal heavens. Ever the same in the fixidity
of matchless order, ever changing in the spiral circles of ascending
progress. If this be so, as Science proves it is, how inevitably
must the endless changes of the Macrocosm affect the nature of
the Microcosm, and man, the world in little, partake of the infi-
nite variousness which discourses so eloquently through the epic
of the starry skies!
--
There cannot be two planetary conjunctions in the field of
space which, in all respects, exactly duplicate each other; and this
is the reason why those creatures, launched every second into hu-
man life, under the influence of ever-varying astral changes, must
differ so widely from each other in all the essentials of physical,
mental, intellectual and spiritual states. As the planets seem to
return to stated points, and re-enact their mystic conjunctions in
the shining pathway of the Zodiac, so there seem to be recurrences
of certain types of character, and duplicates of certain facial lin-
eaments.
TA
Viewing the valley of the then from the mountain heights
of the now, we are fain to give up this stereotyped opinion, and
own that history only repeats itself in generalities, not in par-
ticulars, and that there is not a wave which beats on the shores of
earth that ever returns with just the same force. as those that
have gone before-no, never! And all this change in the planet-
ary order is effected by the unceasing energy of the life that is
throbbing, and burning, and blazing on in its mad career of eter-
ual unrest, in the midst of every starry road, and thrilling down
and pulsating through the very central heart of every starry
world; and all this ceaseless movement, heard in the echoing feel
of the tramping ages, is due to that same life spirit, burning up,
shrivelling into ashes, and scattering into dust the forms of the
past, in order that their liberated spirits may become incarnate
in the fresher, fairer forms of the ages that are to be!
T
W
The consideration of these diffusive generalities are not irrel-
evant to our subject; on the contrary, they need to be thought out
and appreciated ere the unaccustomed thinker can apprehend
why the motions of a single point of fire, gleaming through the
immensity of space, can affect the character and destiny of an in-
dividual removed from its orbit by incalculable sums of dis-
tance; why all nature, animate and inanimate, moves, acts and
speaks with an universal chord of sympathy connecting the whole;
why flights of birds, wheeling high in air, the motions of a dan
cing butterfly, a quivering sunbeam, a crawling worm, humming
ART MAGIC.
105
insect, or even the falling of a leaf, or the murmur of wave, may
discourse deep meanings in the ear of a true student of nature,
and utter portents of immutable fate to illuminated scholars who
have learned to interpret all the undertones of creation, and spell
out its hieroglyphical inscriptions.
When we hear how Chaldean Soothsayers perceived the des-
tinies of nations, in the smoking ashes of the burnt offering; how
Roman Augurs interpreted the issues of life and death from the
flight of birds; how Persian Magi read the words of fate inscribed
on the starry pages of the skies; or Hebrew Priests discovered
mystic meanings in the glittering lustre of Urim and Thummim;
we know that these men were simply natural philosophers, and
had studied the occult side of nature with as much understanding,
and perhaps more devotion, than the nineteenth century Scien-
tists accord to the mastery of the known and the visible.
For thousands, perhaps for tens of thousands of years, it was
the office of the best and wisest men of every succeeding genera-
tion, to devote a lifetime to the study of nature, and that in her
profoundest depths, and through all the mazes and windings of
her supernatural relations with the visible and invisible spheres
of being around her. Ever let it be remembered, too, that the
ancient philosopher brought to this sublime study a body as thor-
oughly prepared as a mind; a physique fitted by temperance, chas-
tity and purity to allow full sway to the mind which inhabited it,
and is so often cramped by inharmonious physical states.
When we come to lay down the conditions under which
alone magical rites can become effective, and describe the life-long
discipline which the powerful magian must pursue, in order to be-
come one, we shall put to shame the self-indulgent, intemperatc,
and too often dissolute habits of the present age-habits which
not even the sacred assumption of the Priestly office seems al-
ways to impose restraint upon. And yet this same self-indulgent
and luxuriant age, looks back with contempt on the asceticism of
the ancient Priest, whilst those who profess to believe in all the
miraculous records of Jewish history, treat those of every other
nation of antiquity with scornful denial. As to Magic, why as
something which can be taught, "it may be true," and perhaps
even become a fashionable amusement, provided always that
book-learning, and a superficial digest of the opinions of others,
can point out the royal road to power, and convert tinsel drawing-
rooms into the halls of Walhalla, wine and cigars into the Alem-.
bic of Alfarabi, gilded mirrors into the divining crystal of Dee,
and extrait de bouquet into the elixir vitae of St. Germain. A
few pages of Cornelius Agrippa, which no modern "Exquisite"
106
ART MAGIČ.
would take the trouble to translate himself, ought, in modern
estimation, to be quite sufficient to make a magician, and teach
fine ladies to summon Sylphs and Undines for the amusement of
an idle hour, just as a few pigments of Latin, an essay done into
bad Greek, and worse Hebrew, by a professional college drudge, for
the benefit of his rich paying patron, is sufficient passport to those
holy orders of our modern priesthood in which God, Angels, Spir-
its, the immortal soul's origin, destiny, and powers, together with
all the glories, marvels and mysteries of the boundless and eternal
Universe, are the themes which demand interpretation.
The most superficial retrospect of the lives, education and
preparatory methods of discipline enforced upon the ancient
priesthood, invest that body with the true dignity of men in "holy
orders;" but how do these compare with the careless, lax system
tem of mere book-learning, which in our own time is deemed all-
sufficient to grind out a priest, the man who, of all others, should
be bound by his sacred office to interpret the mysteries of being,
nay, who should be deemed unworthy of that office, so long as
mysteries remain unsolved.
Nature has no secrets from her true votaries. She sternly
veils spiritual entities from the rude gaze of materialism, and re-
fuses to render up any knowledge beyond the plane from which
the inquiry originates. The Chemist, Geologist, Astronomer,
and other disciples of the natural sciences, coldly set to work to
examine Nature through her known formulae of physical laws;
aught that transcends these they will none of, hence the occult
side of Nature is an unexplored realm to them, and yet they are
prompt enough to acknowledge that that occult side exists,
though their sneer is loud and long against those who claim to
have mastered its mysteries.
It is because the experience of past ages, conducted through
thousands of years of study, by aid of carefully prepared condi-
tions, has been devoted to the occult in Nature, that the ancients
transcend the moderns in this respect, as much as modern sci-
ence, in the direction of utilitarianism, transcends the colossal but
cumbrous grandeur of antique civilization. There lives not now
upon the face of the earth, one human being, save perchance, a
solitary adept of the old order, or a very pure and highly endowed
spirit medium, who, in respect to the understanding of true The-
osophy, Theurgy, and every department of spiritual science, is fit
to hold the office of Priest to the people, or instruct humanity in
those grand truths which lie beyond the ken of physical science.
It is to show the results of opinions which arose from countless
ages of research into occult truths, that this section has been
ART MAGIC.
107
written. It is to present to the candid and bold thinker, the
fruits of that knowledge which was gathered in through the disci-
pline of asceticism, fasting, and prayer, and the study of the
whole Universe, not less in the realm of soul and spirit, than in
body and function, that we now write. Despise these treasures of
mind, garnered up through thousands of years, if ye will, but it
is thus alone that the Universe has ever yielded an answer to the
soul's urgent questioning; thus alone can man ever solve the mys-
tery of his being, and that of his planet.
To point the way, we have written; to show the kernel of
the mighty fruit of the tree of occult knowledge, will these pages
be devoted. But he who would eat of that fruit understandingly,
must first plant the tree with his own hands, tend and culture it
with a philosopher's patience, and then, and then alone, will it
vield to his taste the true knowledge of good and evil, then only
will he eat for himself, and not through the senses of another.
We shall conclude this section by another brief excerpt from
the pages of the author whose definitions of Rosicrucianism we
have given above:
"Is it reasonable to conclude, at a period when knowledge.
was at the highest, and when human powers were, in comparison
with ours at the present time, prodigious, that all these indomi-
table physical efforts such gigantic achievements as those of the
Egyptians, were devoted to a mistake? That the myriads of the
Nile were fools, laboring in the dark, and that all the magic of
their great men was forgery? or that we, in despising that which
we call their superstitious and wasted power, are alone the wise?
Not so.
There is much more in these old religions than in the
audacity of modern denial, in the confidence of these superficial
science times, and in the derision of these days without faith, we
can in the least degree suppose.
"We do not understand; then why should we venture to de-.
ride these ancient times?"
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ART MAGIC.
SECTION IX.
ANCIENT PRIESTS AND PROPHETS.
SPIRITUAL GIFTS-WOMAN AS PRIESTESS AND SYBIL CLASSIFICA-
TION OF SPIRITUALLY ENDOWED PERSONS-MAGNETIZERS, ME-
DIUMS, THEIR SPECIALTIES-POWER OF THE HUMAN SPIRIT.
.
The chief duties of the ancient Priesthood were first, to find
out the points of contact or unity between man and higher ex-
istences than himself; next, to discover the laws of man's being,
and teach him to adjust his actions to the will of those higher ex-
istences; and finally, to invoke or solicit their aid for man in the
performance of his earthly mission. These were the duties of the
ancient Priest, and should be no less obligatory upon officials of
the same order to-day, but whilst we see some attempt in the ex
ternal rites of ecclesiasticism to perform the third part of these
priestly offices, we look in vain to discover any religious body
which faithfully emulates the ancient Priest in the performance
of the two first named duties.
It is enough for the historian to record that it has been done,
and show that it was upon the performance of the solemn offices
of spiritual ministry, that the structure of ancient Priesthood was
upreared.
Amongst the Hindoos, Egyptians, Chaldeans, Persians and
Hebrews, frequent mention is made of the Prophets, as a class
distinct from the Priesthood, although at times associated with it.
When the Prophets did take part in the temple services, they
were esteemed the most honored of the Priestly order, and their
dictum was received with unquestioning reverence as the voice
of Deity.
Some authoritative writers intimate that it was upon the
foundation of true prophetic gifts, that the Priesthood was in-
stituted, and when it was found that Spiritual gifts belonged to
special individuals-not to an office or caste-artificial means
ART MAGIC.
109
6
-
were resorted to, to supply the deficiency of natural endowinents.
Nature has studied to find out occult means of inducing vision,
trance, seership and prophecy. The Priests were carefully in-
structed in astrology, theurgic rites, and the occult virtues of
drugs, minerals, plants, words and ceremonial observances, and
hence arose the art of magic, an art practiced simply as a substi-
tute for spiritual gifts.
{
Amongst the Hebrews, the Prophets, as a class, acted inde-
pendently of the Priesthood. They were often persons outside
of the consecrated tribe of Levites, to whom the Priestly office
was limited, when they were not only excluded by their birth
from temple service, but they frequently acted in opposition to
the Priesthood, and included them in their bold and unsparing
denunciations against the corruptions of the time. Nothing can
be more aggressive than the diatribes of Isaiah, Jeremiah and
Ezekiel, against the abominations sanctioned by a corrupt and
idolatrous Priesthood. Isaiah particularizes even the ceremonials
of the Jewish faith, such as the observance of new moons, Sab-
baths, fasts, feasts, times and seasons, as "abominations before the
Lord," when they were practiced for impure or unholy purposes.
The contrast between the bigotry and conservatism of the
Jewish Priesthood, and the bold, high-toned morality of the He-
brew Prophets, is one of the most remarkable specialties of the
books of the Old Testament, and speaks in most significant lan-
guage of the universal faith in good works inculcated by true
Spiritism, and the dependence upon magical rites of mere cere-
monial religions.
It will be observed that whilst several of the most renowned
of the Greek Philosophers, such as Orpheus, Thales, Solon, Py-
thagoras, Appolonius, and others, studied in Egypt, or claimed
to have obtained their occult knowledge in that land, their biog-
raphies prove, that they were naturally endowed with the true
prophetic afflatus before they graduated in Egyptian Magic, and
this is a comment upon the difference between natural and ac-
quired gifts, which we desire our readers to bear in mind.
The Greeks must have fully recognized the superiority of
natural over acquired gifts of the spirit, when they were so con-
stant in selecting women to serve as the oracles between Gods
and men. Women made famous the oracles of the Pythian
Apollo, and the responses of Dodona. Women's special gifts, of
inspiration, have transmitted the fame of the Sybils to all ages,
and made their name synonymous with spiritual gifts. Even
amongst the conservative Jews, whose contempt of women is one
of the chief blots on their national credit, women were perforce

110
ART MAGIC.
admitted to certain prophetic offices in the temple, and several
ladies of rank amongst the Romans and Egyptians, including the
daughter of the famous Egyptian Monarch, Sesostris, were re-
nowned for their prophetic endowments.
W
The elevation of woman to conditions of perfect equality
with man, is now acknowledged to be the highest evidence of a
true and rational 'civilization, but whether we are treating of an-
cient or modern conservatism, God in nature has proved through
the unbroken lines of history, that spiritual gifts are innate, in-
tuitional, and feminine in quality, and belong to those more rare
and precious attributes of being, which particularly distinguish
the female sex. If Soul essence is unique, and matter is shaped
and determined chiefly by the energy and quantity of the Astral
Spirit, it is to that realm of being that we must look, in order
to analyze the specialty that constitutes natural prophetic en-
dowments, or spiritual gifts, whether in the male or female sex.
we find two specialties of
organism which more commonly belong to the male than the fe-
male, the study of which is important to a clear understanding of
our subject. The first of these representative physiques, discloses
an individual with a compact self-centred, well-knit frame, in-
clining to the nutritive in temperament, and the adipose in tissue.
In manner these individuals are generally straightforward, some-
what authoritative, occasionally egotistic, and fond of display;
kind-hearted, benevolent, and especially attracted to sick persons.
They generally have a clear eye, direct glance, and some-
times a piercing expression withal. With such peculiarities of
temperament, the Astral fluid exists in excess, endowing the indi-
vidual with good health, a vigorous frame, a moderately active
mind, and a general tendency towards social life and material en-
joyments.
At the very outset of our ?
These persons are almost always what is popularly termed
"good magnetizers," and the excess of Astral fluid which develops
itself in the above described idiosyncrasies, ordinarily induces the
wish to use their gift, and impels them to magnetize sick people.
It was from this class, that the ancients selected their Thera-
peutic healers and the Priests who were employed in the magnetic
healing rites of Temple service. The eye as the window of the
Soul, and the hand as the prime conductor of the Astral fluid, are
always well developed in these natural mesmerizers.
Where the first is full, clear, and luminous, and the second
soft and warm, the astral fluid is invariably of a healthful and
vivifying character.
Where the eye is piercing, brilliant, or distinguished by the
ART MAGIC.
111
long Oriental shape of the almond, and the hand is danıp and
moist, or hard and dry, look to find a stronger mental than physi-
cal impression produced, but in all varieties of this type of man,
the person may be esteemed as a good mesmerizer, and the more
expansive the frontal region of the brain, the better will be the
effects, and the more healthful the power produced.
As the magnet or loadstone only yields up its potency to the
direction of skill, so these magnetic structures require the action
of well-informed mind, and concentrated will, to render them
serviceable; with these mental attributes to guide their powers.
and direct the projection of the Astral fluid, they may become ad-
mirable healers of the sick, or skillful "biologists" over sensitive
subjects.
Ma
The second individuality to which we would introduce our
reader, is a more concentrated and energetic type of the first, and
one in whom the intellectual temperament prevails over the nu-
tritive or social.
In the type of man now under consideration, a vast amount
of the Astral fluid circulates, but it clusters chiefly about the
crowning portions of the cerebrum, elevating the cranial apex in
a remarkable degree. The cerebrum and nervous system absorb
the surplus of the Astral fluid, rather than the fibrous and mus-
cular tissues. Such persons exhibit many varieties of form and
feature; but their speciality is a large and finely-developed head.
Persons of this type become fine psychologists, or in ancient
phraseology, such are "Adepts, Master Spirits, or Priestly Hiero-
phants." In both types described above, it is the abundance of
the Astral spirit, infused by inheritance and planetary and solar
influence during embryonic life, and at the period of birth, which
determines their characteristics; and it is the distribution of this
Astral fluid, in the one, throughout the whole system, and in the
other, in certain regions of the brain, which constitutes the differ-
ence between the mere magnetic healer and the psychologist.
Neither of these individuals may technically recognize the pecu-
liarities with which they are endowed, but the one will always
bring a powerful and soothing influence to the sick, and the other
prove a controlling and masterful mind in whatever spheres of
life he may be placed. If these persons understand their soul's
capacities, they will know that, by mustering the excess of Astral
fluid, permeating their systems, to the dominion of the will, they
can induce a self-magnetized condition, in which the body sleeps,
and the soul goes forth and traverses space, as in the phenomenon
of somnambulism, natural clairvoyance, or in the exit of the spirit
from the body when it is seen and termed the "Double," or
7
LA
112
ART MAGIC.
"Wraith." They can induce these powers in others by magnetic
and psychologic contact, and it only needs self-knowledge and the
exertion of strong and concentrated will to call them into exercise.
There are no phenomena produced by disembodied spirits,
which may not be affected by the still embodied human spirit,
provided a correct knowledge of these powers is directed by a
strong and powerful will. The conditions will be described in
our sections on Art Magic, but the potency of the will can never
be too strongly insisted upon in all Spiritualistic operations. In
the physique above described as No. 1, the excess of the Astral
fluid generally clusters around the epigastric and cardiac regions,
rendering the person thus endowed highly powerful in physical
magnetization and healing operations, but, as before hinted, the
cerebral development is rarely proportionably marked, and the
best of physical magnetizers are not the giants of intellect and
psychological control.
The reverse of this position obtains in the organisms classed
as No. 2. In them, the Astral fluid inheres more closely to the
soul than the body; exalts the top of the cranium rather than the
front; compels a predominance of the organs of command and
ideality; projects its sphere of indomitable influence on all
around, and unfolds the intellectual faculties into singular prom-
inence, in whatever direction they exist, rendering the individual
remarkable as a Statesman, General, Author, Priest, Physician,
or, if devoted to the study, irresistible as an "Adept," Magician,
and controller of mundane and sub-mundane spirits. Such indi-
viduals are generally as eager as they are capable of penetrating
into nature's profoundest depths.
We might rank the amiable and highly gifted Anton Mesmer
as a type of the organism No. 1, and the noble sages of Greece,
Apollonius and Pythagoras, as shining illustrations of the type
described as No. 2.
Prophets, or Mediums, are persons in whom, from inherited
causes and Astral influences prevailing at birth, an immense
amount of the Astral fluid exists, but who, by the peculiar con-
formation of the tissues which make up their physical structures,
are too ready to part with their super abundant life principle. In
the types of organism already described as good magnetizers and
powerful psychologists, the Astral fluid is concentrated, the tis-
sues of the body firm and compact, and the efflux of magnetic
power is due only to its superabundance. The medium with the
same excess of magnetic force, is totally lacking in the concentra-
tion and solidarity which distinguishes the other class. The one
in physique as in character is wholly positive; the other purely
ART MAGIC.
113
The
negative. The one the operator, the other the subject.
physical structure of the two may present little or no external
signs of difference to those who do not study physiological types,
rather than surface varieties, but the arrangement of the mole-
cules in the two organisms, are structurally dissimilar, and this
dissimilarity exhibits itself thus:
The magnetizer imparts strength from the abundance of his
strength. The medium exhales the life principle to depletion,
and, in the loss sustained, insensibly draws upon the forces of
others. The medium is emphatically a "Sensitive." Every
nerve is laid bare, every pore is a conductor of the too rapidly
ebbing life fluid. When the brain is small, and the generating
power of this life fluid is weak (the brain being its source), the
intellectual faculties are limited and dull; the mind, incapable of
drawing from the brain, becomes inactive, and the nature is stolid
and unimpassioned. It is from such types as these that the super-
ficial remark has arisen, that media should be, or always are,
"very passive," unintellectual persons. These, however, are only
one type of the class. A great many persons, highly charged
with the Astral fluid, and losing it in such rapid streams as to
constitute them good mediums, are in consequence exceedingly
sensitive, restlessly nervous, and susceptible to every influence
they come in contact with. The life principle flows off all too
rapidly through their tissues, leaving them irritable, weak and
despoiled.
As nature abhors a vacuum, these organisms necessarily at-
tract the Astral spirits of all things and persons around them,
hence others in their presence often experience a sensible diminu-
tion of strength, whilst the media themselves are frequently af-
fected painfully or pleasurably by the mere approach of certain
individuals, realizing also the special influences which attach to
scenes, places, houses and garments, which would produce no ef-
fect upon less susceptible persons. It is this extreme susceptibil-
ity and the negative condition produced by the loss of Astral
fluid, which renders such persons fine instruments for the control
of spirits.
These beings, clothed with the same Astral element which
forms the spiritual body of mortals, readily effect a rapport with
the class of organisms we have described. This rapport, how-
ever, most generally transpires between the spirits who are in the
nearest proximity to earth.
It must be remembered that the atmosphere is as full of spir-
itual life, as the water is of animalculae. The Astral fluid-the
element in which spirits live, and of which their external bodies
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ART MAGIC.
are composed, permeates this atmosphere, like oceans of light,
hence spiritual life. is to this planet, what the Soul is to the body,
only that the strata of spiritual life nearest the earth are gradu-
ated from the spirits of those who are most in rapport with earth,
to elementary beings, who in reality constitute no inconsiderable
portion of the earth itself, hence it is, that mediumistic persons
-susceptible to the influences of varied life that swarms around
them are often moved by nameless and incomprehensible moni-
tions of danger, the presence of evil, or the tendency to actions
from which their own better natures and judgment would revolt.
The chief points of difference between the ancient Prophet,
the Mediaeval Witch, and the modern Medium, consist in the aims
and influences which severally actuated them, and inspired the
spirits that surrounded them. The prophetic men and women
of old were intensely religious persons. They lived in devotional
ages, too, when their exceptional gifts marked them out for a
species of reverence which almost amounted to worship. Sep-
arated from their fellow men by the peculiar sanctity attached
to the prophetic character, their religious aspirations, and the
asceticism of their lives, attracted to them beings of a far higher
order than those whom we now invoke in the communion with
family spirits and kindred ties.
Most of the ancient Prophets, Seers, and Sybils, prepared for
the communion with higher intelligences than earth, by methods
to be hereafter described, hence their powers were more concen-
trated, and phenomenally greater than those of the work-a-day
trading media of the present time.
As to the Spiritism of the mediaeval ages, unless it existed
in the persons of learned mystics, who cultured it after the ancient
fashion, or it fell as a mantle of inspiration on poets, painters,
musicians, inventors, religious reformers, etc., it degenerated into
ugly and often injurious obsession, by ignorant spirits, attracted
to media of a character kindred with themselves. Thus the study
of different phases of spiritual influx proves how much its rep-
resentation is determined by the age, spirit of the time, and char-
acter of the communicating intelligence.
Europe and America are at present in the heyday flush of
materialistic civilization.
Utilitarianism is the genius of the nineteenth century. If
religion could be put to some practical use, or reduced to a scien-
tific analysis, it would be as much the fashion now as it was five
thousand years ago; but whatever comes in the shape of religious
belief, even scientific discoveries concerning the occult side of
nature, must conform to the materialistic and utilitarian spirit of
ART MAGIC.
115
the age, or the age will none of it. Such is the crucible of human
opinion through which the Spiritism of this century has to pass,
and hence mediumship is a trade, an amusement, or a curiosity;
Spiritism, a marketable commodity, or a fashionable mode of
beguiling an idle hour. As inspiration invariably descends from
the same plane to which aspiration ascends, spirit answers spirit
from correspondential realms of thought and intelligence.
As it is below, so is it above; in the skies as on the earth.
Having briefly depicted the general characteristics of those
through whom spirits communicate, we shall proceed to classify
the groups into which prophetic or mediumistic gifts resolve
themselves.
Premising that each mediumistic person is so by inheritance,
or the awakening of latent but still functional powers, and that
we are not now treating of that magic which compensates by art
for the lack of natural endowments, we shall render such defini-
tions of our subject, as practical experience suggests.
The Trance state ranges from that of Ecstasy, in which
visions of the highest and most transcendental nature are re-
vealed, through all the various stages of Somnambulism, to that
semi-conscious sleep-waking condition, in which the ego is not
lost, but wherein the origin of the thought, whether from the sub-
ject's own mind, or the impression of another's, is not clearly
discerned.
Inspiration is the addition of higher mentality to that of the
subject's own individuality. It does not necessitate any abnega-
tion of self-consciousness; it only stimulates that consciousness
to extraordinary exaltation.
In all these states the influence of spirits is more than likely
to be the superinducing cause. That influence is exerted in pre-
cisely the same fashion as the simply human processes of electro-
biology, and by operators, who have either practiced this method
of control on earth or been endowed with the power by nature to
do so. The spirit projects his Astral spirit in the fashion of the
earthly magnetizer upon his mediumistic subject; by this fluid
the system becomes charged and the magnetic sleep, semi-con-
scious trance, or the exaltation of inspiration is induced.
These graduated conditions represent the amount of passiv-
ity or mental activity of the subject-total unconsciousness usu-
ally falling upon a very receptive and passive mind, and inspira-
tion stimulating rather than subduing the powers of an already
highly unfolded intellect. When the system is sufficiently satu-
rated with the spiritual magnetizer's Astral fluid, as to be subject
to control, the operator, by strong will, infuses his thought into
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ART MAGIC.
the subject's mind; but whatever the specialty of thought may be,
it becomes shaped, tinctured and not unfrequently marred to a
greater or less degree by the idiosyncrasies of the medium's habits
of speech and methods of expression. There must always be an
adaptation between the subject on earth and the operator of the
spheres. A spirit of a totally foreign and unsympathetic nature
to the medium could not obtain control, except in the case of
obsession, and that transpires through the brutal and resistless
power of a gross, strong, earth-bound spirit, acting upon a gen-
erally frail, susceptible and most probably sickly organism.
In the ordinary exercise of spirit control, the spirit acting
as a good magnetizer, chooses a well-adapted subject, whose mind
and physique are calculated to assimilate with his own, and thus
presents his ideas through the aid of a borrowed vehicle of
thought. This mode of influence corresponds in many respects
to the vaticinations of the Sybils and Prophetesses of old, only
that the utterance of the Spirits termed Gods, or Demons, com
monly took place in bodies which had previously been prepared,
by fastings, ablutions and sometimes by the inhalations of vapors,
which subdued the senses, stimulated them to "mantic frenzy,
or prepared the system for the infusion of a superior conscious-
ness to their own.
"1
These modes of control by spirits, speaking through the lips
of entranced or inspired media, are not limited in their effects to
the exhibition of merely curious mental transformations. In
ancient, as in modern times, these oracular utterances have been
productive of a far wider range of good and revolutionary thought
than is dreamed of by those who listen, go hence, and deem they
have simply been interested for the moment, and will certainly
forget the ideas they have heard.
The Soul never forgets. The over-laden brain of humanity
retains the impression of every image presented to it. As each
fresh succession of images photographs itself on the mind's tab-
lets, the last seem to crowd out and efface the impress of the earl-
ier ones. They vanish from sight truly, but they are still there,
and there they remain forever. Unconsciously to their possessors,
they enter into every phase of character. They linger like a
subtle perfume in the sphere of unconscious cerebration, pervade
the sentiments, enter into the mental structure, shape the motives,
externalize themselves in words which linger in others' ears, in
deeds which affect others' destinies, and silently interweave them-
selves into invisible but indestructible images, reflected upon the
Astral light of the Universe. Could this most subtle, but most
potential realm of being be thoroughly explored, all the thoughts,
ART MAGIC.
117
words, and deeds, that have ever moved the race would be found
in ineffaceable pictures engraved upon the billows of Astral light
that heave and swell through the oceans of infinity. Nothing
is lost in nature, nothing blotted out in eternity, and future gen-
erations, living, moving and breathing in the Astral realms of
life imprinted with the Soul images of vanished ages, inhale them,
grow in them, re-combine them into the elements of their own
characters, and thus live over again, in ever rolling, but ever
ascending cycles of time, every sand-grain of ideality that has
ever been launched into space. Hence, too, the universality of
ideas; the spontaneous affection of two kindred minds unknown
to each other, and removed apart by long intervals of distance,
and yet how often are such at the same moment of time inspired
by the same thought, moved to execute the same work, and even
construct the same, yet apparently original, piece of mechanism;
write the same stanzas of poetry, or arrange the same strains of
melody into duplicate forms! This is the source of thought epi-
demics, mental contagions and infectious opinions.
The gross atmosphere of earth traversed by the seas of Astral
light cannot but become charged with the images they bear, and
wherever two waves of this Astral fluid unite to form an idea,
some receptive mind seizes upon it. The wave flows on, the idea
strikes another, and yet another mind, until the force of one lead-
ing thought sweeps on its grand career of influence, from pole
to pole, and traverses the mental girth of an age, although, per-
chance, none but the constructive genius of a few can assimilate
and utilize it. Trance mediums of the New Dispensation-
Prophets of the old! Nothing is lost in Nature. Fear not for
the results of thy labors! Whatever is false or worthless will fade
and perish the beautiful and true never die!
The next class of media who represent the power of spirits
to communicate with earth, are those impressed with artistic and
intellectual ideas. They are moved to draw strange patterns,
groups of flowers, portraits of deceased persons, symbolical or
emblematical pictures, to write messages, words of love, poems,
often containing tokens of memory which identify the controlling
power with some individual who once inhabited a mortal body.
Music totally foreign to the medium's mind or capacity has been
thus given; foreign languages spoken and written by those un-
acquainted with them; pantomimic representations have been
made, depicting the peculiarities of some deceased friend; and
thus every sense is used, and every faculty brought into play, to
prove the presence and influence of a world of being rising up
like immortal blossoms from the ashes of the vanished dead.
A gen
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ART MAGIC.
Spirits making use of the Astral light which permeates all
space, sometimes impress upon it visionary pictures of future
events; sometimes shadowy representations of their own forms,
and always in such shape as will identify them with those who
have been deemed dead, and laid away in the quiet grave.
Spirits are full of ingenious resource, highly constructive,
and far more widely informed upon the arcanum of nature than
mortals, hence can produce a greater variety of effects, and in
much shorter periods of time than we can conceive of, hence their
methods of representation strike us as abnormal and magical.
They are simply due to magnetization of the medium's spirits by
the invisible operator, and psychological impressions produced
through will upon the medium's spiritual consciousness.
The third order of media who specially distinguish them-
selves in the modern spiritual movement, are those through whom
strong, powerful, earthbound spirits can act upon material
bodies, and cause them to become telegraphic signs of their pres-
ence.
The persons through whom these theurgic signals are made,
for the most part absorb the Astral fluid which is their life,
through the cerebellum, the epigastric nerves, and the great solar
plexus. Though not necessarily deficient in cerebral develop-
ment, they are rarely distinguished in this region, and, in some
instances, the preponderance of nervous force in the ganglionic
or sympathetic system is greatly in excess of the cerebro-spinal,
thus stimulating the instinctive appetites, especially those which
correspond to animal tendencies.
This is not invariably the case, but it has and does character-
ize much mediumship of this order. It is also a significant fact,
and one which should commend itself to the attention alike of the
physiologist and psychologist, that persons afflicted with scrofula
and glandular enlargements, often seem to supply the pabulum
which enables spirits to produce ponderous manifestations of
physical power.
Frail, delicate women-persons, too, whose natures are re-
fined, innocent and pure, but whose glandular system has been at-
tacked by the demon of Scrofula, have frequently been found sus-
ceptible of becoming the most remarkable instruments for physi-
cal demonstrations by spirits. In some instances mediums for
this class of phenomena are persons in the enjoyment of rude
health and vigorous constitutions. The author has witnessed
manifestations of the most astounding character eliminated
through the mediumship of rugged country girls and stout men,
especially the natives of Ireland and Northern Germany; but a
ART MAGIC.
119
close and careful scrutiny of these remarkably endowed media,
will often reveal a tendency to epilepsy, chorea and functional de-
rangements of the pelvic apparatus, which proves that the cere-
bellum and the ganglionic system of nerves are unduly charged,
and that the magnetism of spirits of a similar temperament to
their own may exaggerate these constitutional tendencies into ex-
cess and disease. It is a fact, which we may try to mask, or the
acknowledgement of which we may indignantly protest against,
yet it is a fact nevertheless, that the existence of remarkable me-
dium powers, argues a want of balance in the system; and whilst
the theory of too rapid ebb of the life forces and their excess, and
unequal distribution, renders physical and scientific causes for
this structural inharmony, it also proves what is the character of
the pabulum which spirits use to produce the magnetic, psycho-
logic and physical effects which are rendered through these un-
evenly balanced organisms.
-
It has frequently been asked whether there is any philosophy
to explain these aberrations of nature, to which we reply, as-
suredly there is. The Astral fluid becomes characterized by every
material atom through which it passes.
It is at once the cause
and effect of all varieties in nature. Its abundance, and the en-
ergy of its action, is determined by the quantity and quality of
the atoms through which it flows; but once incorporated in or-
ganic bodies as their attribute, its own quality becomes materially
affected by the quality of the particles it vitalizes; and here it is
proper to recur to the opinion of many illuminated Seers, namely,
that there are several layers, or strata, of these Astral currents,
forming as a totality one spiritual body. Those nearest the Soul
are the finest in quality and represent the spheres related to the
Solar and Astral system. Those layers on the outer surface of
the spiritual body, most nearly inhering to the material atoms,
form the life spheres, permeate the body, partake of its quality,
deteriorate or improve with it, are gross, coarse or dense, as the
body's habits or mind's tendencies characterize it; in a word, it is
this portion of the Astral spirit, which streams forth from the
medium in a flood of emanation, and hence becomes the exact
gauge of the medium's physical and mental state. It is particles
of this latter description which form the life principle of plants
and minerals.
It is these fiery elements of universal life force, which are
struck out in radiant sparks from the hard flinty rock, or crystal-
line iron. Violent action will drive forth the lambent flames of
life from every solid body, and cause them to quiver between the
strokes of every concussion. They stream forth in odic lights
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ART MAGIC.
from shells, crystals, magnets, and all magnetic bodies. They
reach out their fingers of latent fiery force, to gather up kindred
particles around the loadstone. They stream up in pencilled rays
of many colored glory, painting over the northern skies with gor-
geous illuminations in the wonderful Aurora Borealis. They
form the electric paths in which rolling worlds, suns and systems
are held in innumerable lines of force. They flash in the wild
fires of contending cloud armies. They discharge solemn peals
of heavenly artillery in the roar of the battling tempest.
They shout their anthems of power in the heaving billows,
and sob away the last echoes of sound in the murmur of the half
slumbering waves. These invisible, latent, all-pervading flames
of life, these direct emanations from the Central Sun of all being,
connect suns and planets, earths and satellites by the stupendous
chains of force, and fill all space with oceans of invisible, but ever
living fires. They fill all creation with life, but take on the pro-
tean forms of every atom through which their living currents are
forever ebbing and flowing.
GND
Then need we not marvel that the Astral fluid which flows
through the refined particles of a pure and healthful human or-
ganism, might afford intellectual spirits an opportunity of im-
pressing the brain with high inspirational ideas, yet fail to give
off that superabundance of quantity or denseness of quality, which
is requisite to produce manifestations of a ponderable character-
on the other hand, remembering the almost infinite varieties of
exhibition which the Astral fluid assumes in accordance with the
variousness of the particles through which it flows, we need not
feel surprised that a human body abundantly endowed with this
same life fluid, so constituted as to eliminate it through every
pore, but giving off a quality which is especially redolent of influ-
ences generated in the vital and nutritive system of nerves, should
furnish that pabulum which enables spirits to construct forms,
and produce manifestations of a purely physical character.
In this scheme of natural order, disease must impress itself
upon every imponderable particle of the Astral sphere, and since
the body laboring under disease is really being disintegrated, and
parts too rapidly and freely with its life principle, so do sick per-
sons give off in the most abundance, and of the most dense qual-
ity, the element which spirits can use for the production of strong
physical manifestations.
The same philosophy with certain modifications, applies to
the mediumship of little children.
Endowed with a superabundance of that vital force which
is necessary for the purposes of growth, young children dispose
:
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ART MAGIC.
+
1
of this excess in general by violent exercise, exercise which would
exhaust more mature bodies, but which nature impresses them to
undertake as a safety-valve, for the escape of the vital currents,
with which their young fresh frames are charged to repletion.
Unscrupulous spirits who perceive the powerful aromal essences
which flow forth so freely from the young, take advantage of its
existence, to produce manifestations of their presence, and thus
it so often happens, that children, like sick persons, become po-
tent media for spirits. It should be added that the practice of
permitting children thus to be exercised as mediums, should only
be indulged in to a very limited extent, the excessive draught pro-
cured from their tender and susceptible frames, rendering them
liable to lose health, strength, and perhaps life itself, under ils
action.
¦
We do not now enlarge upon the good or evil results of this
kind of rapport between spirits and mortals, we simply write of its
modes, and the means of ready access which spirits find for its
performance.
The physical force medium is often endowed with a great va-
riety of gifts, because the Astral fluid, charging the whole body to
excess, and flowing through every pore with a profuse expenditure
of the life principle, constitutes all the organs mediums. The
skin is charged, rendering it liable to be impressed with fleshly
letters. The eye becomes a ready conductor to the spiritual eye
beneath, imparting the faculty of clairvoyance. The entire of the
spiritual senses find ready expression through a physique which
is all mediumistic, and a complete battery for the action of con-
trolling spirits. Let it be remembered that in all magnetic oper-
ations every particle of the life fluid represents the whole; thus a
sensitive by coming in contact with a lock of hair, a handkerchief,
or the smallest piece of fabric touched by another, can psychomet-
rically discover the entire of that other's nature. This alone.
would prove (were other facts wanting), that one particle of the
subtle fluid of life represents the whole, and this can only be ac-
counted for by acknowledging the truth of a curious hypothesis,
presented to the world by a celebrated physiologist, who says:
"Through the perspiratory ducts, and all the other methods
by which nature supplies to the organism an apparatus for the
dual functions of absorption and evaporation, the human body
exhales the imponderable portions of blood, bone, nervous and
muscular tissue, even the effete exhalations of hair and nails
which go to make up the totality of the structure.
"All these vaporized elements are in the atmosphere, carried
by the gases, exhaled from the lungs, and swept off from the pho-
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ART MAGIC.
tosphere of the human body, into the atmosphere that surrounds
it. If we could arrive at any method of separating the organic
from the inorganic particles that fill the air, and charge the at-
mosphere with living emanations, where human life abounds, we
might crystallize them back again into human bodies, and hence
the claim of the Spiritualists to have found in spiritual magnetism
that crystallizing element by which they can re-clothe the spirit.
with a material body, gathered up from the atmosphere which
surrounds a circle of investigators, is neither so wild or improb-
able after all."
It would be a fact in spiritual phenomena, even if it were
"wild and improbable" in hypothesis; but to those who are ac-
quainted with the nature of the Astral fluid-its identity with the
universal element we call force-its existence in man as a spiritual
body, in the spirit's organism as an external body, and in the at-
mosphere as force per se; it only needs an appreciation of the phys-
iological idea above suggested, as to the character of our emana-
tions, to understand why spirits, having at command a dense and
powerful stream of the Astral fluid exhaled from peculiar organ-
isms, can easily use that as a force for crystallizing the imponder-
able elements, which abound in the atmosphere, into a temporary
physical covering for themselves.
The medium's very flesh, and all the fluids and solids of his
physique, are given off by exhalations, and remain in the atmos-
phere. These exhalations from the physical medium are abund-
ant in quantity, powerful and magnetic in quality, and so long as
they can be extracted by the magnetism of attendant spirits, and
sustained by the combined magnetisms of other human beings,
their crystallization by the aid of spiritual chemistry, can be read-
ily effected, and spirits can thus temporarily re-clothe themselves
in atoms of actual flesh and blood. They pass sparks of electric-
ity through these imponderable exhalations, just as chemists can
crystallize gases into fluids, and fluids into solids, by the same.
process. By aid of strong will, and having all the elements held
in solution in the atmosphere, spirits can even communicate ob-
jective solidity to the images in their minds, and thus present
again the ponderable semblances of ornaments, clothes, and
other physical fabrics; nay more, by imparting to these tempora-
rily formed substances a sufficient amount of the Astral fluid to
produce cohesion, they can be kept in being for a considerable
time after the first formative process has been effected.
There is no witchcraft or sorcery in these transformations,
although they may with propriety take rank as spiritual magic;
ART MAGIC.
123
!
the Spirit is the Man; the Soul the designer; the Astral body the
force, the mover, the motion, the executant.
The material body is only a vehicle, enabling the Soul
through the Astral body or spirit to come into contact with mat-
In the above necessarily brief description of spiritual phc-
nomena, we only touch on the results of communion effected be-
tween spirits and mortals, where the former find conditions spon-
taneously prepared by nature for their use. We shall conclude
this section by reviewing the possibilities which exist in every hu-
man being for producing extra-mundane effects through the ap-
plication of natural laws to spiritual forces.
T
The gifts of the spirit are spiritual sight-hearing, taste,
smell and touch, wholly independent of the material avenues of
sense. The power of projecting the Astral fluid from one indi-
vidual to another, through magnetic manipulations, contact or
will, and the power of impressing the will of one individual by
the superior force of another. The soul also possesses the power
of so concentrating its own astral spirit, as to temporarily subju-
gate the outer senses, steep them in forgetfulness, and then with-
draw from the body, wander forth at will, preserve the body from
death by leaving a sufficient portion of the Astral fluid to main-
tain its integrity, and subsequently return to and resume its occu-
pancy of the body. There are still other powers of the embodied
human Soul of which we shall yet speak more in detail, suffice it
for the present to sum up by saying the Soul cannot only per-
form all the phenomena now executed by the aid of disembodied
spirits, but it can command the assistance of inferior grades to̟
man, and compel their aid in subjugating the forces of matter.
Man can read the hidden things of another's mind, and even
temporarily obsess it, and by aid of inferior spirits, psychologize
many persons at once, compelling them to see, hear, taste or feel
the subjective images of his creation.
G
-
He can envelope some objects in the Astral fluid, rendering
them invisible to the material eye; create disturbances in the at-
mosphere, or calm them by the same means; promote rapid and
spontaneous growth in the vegetable world; wound the body and
heal it in the same minute of time; render himself insensible to
pain, fire and the effects of gravitation, and so float in mid-air;
cause himself to be buried alive during entrancement, and resume
the functions of life when disinterred.
All these things we positively affirm man can do, through
the operation of his own will, and the aid of powerful spirits, and
all these things the author positively affirms he has witnessed,
and proposes in the forthcoming sections to give the philosophy
124
ART MAGIC.
of, as gathered from personal experience, and the descriptions of
Fakeers, Yogees, Dervishes, Bramins, and the adepts of Oriental
systems of magic.
Whether our readers will observe the conditions necessary
for the performance of these extra-mundane acts of spiritual
power, is a question which we do not propose to decide upon; but
we commend our closing remarks to special consideration.
The Soul is an emanation from Deity; therefore Deific in
power and attributes. The Astral spirit which clothes the Soul
and vitalizes the body, is a part of all the great motor power of the
Universe, the source and cause of all motion.
The two combined, though temporarily shrouded in matter,
and limited by the encasements of a material body, still form a
Deific, and therefore all-powerful existence, which only requires
the light of spiritual science to render its functions as Deific as its
source. Something of this is shown, when the soul is emanci-
pated from the body, and returns to earth manifesting its aston-
ishing and extended powers through what is called "spiritual
phenomena.
>>
Other glimpses of these powers shine forth, through the lives
of ecstatics, seers and magians; but what illimitable possibilities
yet remain unfathomed and undreamed of!
Who can say where the terminal line is drawn between God
and His creatures, or why man should not manifest as a micro-
cosm, all the creative attributes which belong to his Divine Au-
thor, the Macrocosm?
The superiority of ancient over modern Theosophy, does not
arise from any retrogression in man or his planet. It is no arrest
or backward step in the march of intellect; but it results from
the profound devotion with which the ancient man regarded
spiritual things, and the cold materialism of the present day; from
the unceasing aspiration of our forefathers towards spiritual
light and knowledge, and the universal contempt or indifference
with which such subjects are regarded now.
The people of antiquity generally, and the priesthood in
particular studied into the laws of spiritual forces, and spent gen-
eration after generation in analyzing their principles, and the re-
lations they bear to visible nature.
S
Those thinkers of the nineteenth century, who strive to mas-
ter the occult in nature at all, aim at doing so, by seeking for the
spiritual through the laws of the material, and expect to push
their way upward, from the known, to the unknown, from matter
to spirit.
Let those who would emulate the Divine plan, and work
ART MAGIC.
125
from the center to the circumference, from Deity to His creatures,
and from Soul essence to created forms, despise not the results of
human experience, and the strivings of the human mind for light
and knowledge in any age, ancient or modern. Regarding the
past as a stepping-stone to the present, and the lower chambers
and galleries of the great Temple of humanity as the foundations.
upon which the integrity of the superstructure depends, let us
with humble and reverent spirits avail ourselves of the successes
and failures of our ancestors, as the warnings and encourage-
ments by which our own steps may be safely guided, and boldly.
push on in those transcendent paths of research, in which Angels
are our guides, ministering spirits our strength, the elevation and
culture of the Divine Spirit within us our goal, and God the
Spirit, the quenchless beacon-light, by which our faltering foot-
steps will be ever illuminated, until we find our rest at last in
Him.
126
'
ART MAGIC.
SECTION X.
ART MACIC.
GENERAL SUMMARY OF THE CONDITION AND PROCESSES OF MAGICAL
PRACTICES-THE LINE BETWEEN ANCIENT THEOSOPHY AND OC-
CULTISM-APPLICATION OF THEORIES.
spec-
We adopt the caption of "Art Magic" for this section, be-
cause we desire to draw the line between that vast amount of
ulative philosophy, which is inextricably mixed up with ancient
Theosophy, and the occult practices which constitute much of
that Theosophy in application.
Hitherto we have written chiefly of the theories by which
the ancients explained the order of being, and the elements of
life power and motion, by which being itself becomes operative.
Until the principles thus laid down are thoroughly well digested,
our attempts to show their application to the practices of magic
will fail.
+
With the most sincere desire to explain the modes by which
artificial means can be induced to evoke the occult powers in na-
ture, or in other words, to practice the art of magic, our efforts
will be in vain, if the reader fails to apprehend what nature is;
to comprehend the structure of man in his threefold character as
a material, magical, and divine being; to follow us in our defini-
tions of the Astral fluid which vitalizes all things in nature, and
the Astral spirit, which constitutes the spiritual body of man; of
the connecting links between Men, Angels, Spirits, and Deity,
and the difference between Prophets and Magicians-the adept
who commands spirits, and the medium who is commanded by
them.
Without these preparatory steps for acquiring occult knowl-
edge, magic will remain magic in its lowest and most obscure
sense, and Magic it will be to the end of the chapter.
ART MAGIC.
127
Magnetism and Psychology are the two pillars that support
the Temple of Spiritism.
They are the Herculean columns through which the under-
standing leads the soul into supernal realms of power; the
"Jachim and Boaz" by which the over-arching vault of the heav-
ens is upheld, which canopies the Grand Lodge of Spiritual Ma-
sonry.
By magnetism the imponderable, all-pervading life element
termed Astral fluid is communicated from one body to another.
By psychology the power of one mind subjugates and controls
that of another, and it is in these two spheres of operation that
all the marvels of magic transpire. The difficulties which op-
pose the scholar's mastery of this art, as practiced by the ancient
and mediaeval philosophers, arise from a concatenation of causes,
all combining to darken knowledge rather than to promote it,
and tending to obscure whatever light could be thrown upon the
subject.
In the first place the Priests of antiquity, wno were the
chief repositories of occult science, maintained their authority
over the populace by reserving its understanding exclusively to
their own order. It was not alone that they deemed such knowl-
edge too high for vulgar minds, they felt that their own exclusive
possession of its secrets was essential to the continuance of their
authority, hence it would have been suicidal to entrust the mul-
titude with that reserved force by virtue of which they held their
office.
A
It has often been alleged by modern writers that the ancient
mysteries were the conservatories of all occult science, and that
those alone who became Hierophants therein, could arrive at a
true understanding of Art Magic. It has lately become a re-
ceived opinion, too, that a study of the ancient Caballaho of the
Hebrews and Orientals would supply this much desired informa-
tion, and initiate any patient student of their pages into the arca-
num of magic. Neither of these positions is correct. The mys-
teries indoctrinated their initiates into those theorems of specu-
lative philosophy of which our former sections have given brief
summaries.
The Caballaho have been perused and studied with the most
unwearied care by many a learned scholar, who at the last has ut-
terly failed to enact one single rite of magic successfully.
Let the facts be plainly stated. In all the writings of true
and highly endowed Mystics, whether ancient or modern, it is
distinctly stated in the language of Cornelius Agrippa, that "a
magician must be born so from his mother's womb," and that un-
128
ART MAGIC.
L
less he is so gifted by nature, the processes by which real physio-
logical changes are to be wrought in his system are slow, painful,
and difficult of performance.
¦
-
We have written to little purpose if we have failed to im-
press upon our readers that the source of all spiritual powers and
functions resides in that mysterious combination of imponderable
elements which we have termed the Astral spirit or spiritual body
of man; that it is to the original and constitutional structure of
that Astral spirit, that prophetic or mediumistic endowments are
due, and that when these exist inherently in the organism, man
is a prophet, a medium, and can readily exalt his powers into those
of a magician. The reader may inquire wherein consists the dif-
ference between a medium and a magician? We answer, chiefly
in degree. The medium is one through whose Astral spirit, other
spirits can manifest, making their presence known by various
kinds of phenomena. Whatever these consist in, the medium is
only a passive agent in their hands. He can neither command
their presence, nor will their absence can never compel the
performance of any special act, nor direct its nature. The ma-
gician on the contrary, can summon and dismiss spirits at will;
can perform many feats of occult power through his own spirit;
can compel the presence and assistance of spirits of lower grades
of being than himself, and effect transformations in the realm of
nature upon animate and inanimate bodies. He can control his
fellow-men physically and mentally by will, irrespective of dis-
tance, and even cause changes in the destinies of individuals and
societies. These powers seem in rehearsal fabulous, nevertheless,
they have been achieved, and we know that they are still attain-
able to man. The first great prerequisite, however, is as above
stated, a prophetic or naturally mediumistic organization, and
where this exists, culture will do the rest; where it is not bestowed
by nature, the next step is to change the physique, and so modify
its inherent tendencies, as to afford prepared conditions for the
exercise of magical powers, and it is the recital of these conditions
that will engage our attention during this and the following few
sections.
In the first place let us disabuse the minds of those who
have been informed that magical knowledge was to be procured
only through initiation into the ancient mysteries, or certain
modern branches of those orders that may still be found banded
together in the Orient. This is emphatically a mistake, if not a
wilful perversion of the truth, on the part of those who may be
still interested in throwing the halo of mystery around their cher-
ART MAGIC.
129
ished pursuits. There is absolutely nothing in the initiatory
rites of any ancient order which can promote magical powers or
spiritual afflatus. It is in the discipline enjoined upon initiates,
and the effects of real physiological changes thus wrought in their
systems, that the entire virtue of the initiation consists; further-.
more, if such neophytes as entered upon the preparatory degrees
of their initiation, did not manifest the well-known signs of in-
nate magical power, or if after due preparation, they did not give
evidence of the possession of magnetic or mediumistic faculties,
they were never permitted to take rank as Hierophants, never
elevated to that last degree which constituted them adepts.
-
To be an "Adept," was to be able to practice magic, and to
do this was either to be a natural prophet, cultured to the strength
of a magician, or an individual who had acquired this prophetic
power and magical strength through discipline. The author has
passed many years in India, Arabia, China and other Eastern
lands, and has frequently practiced, as well as witnessed the rites
of initiation in different societies, formed for the study of Magic.
From these, and opportunities suggested by the history of
more remote times, we may confidently allege, that unless in the
persons of naturally endowed mediums, or those whose organi-
zations have been changed by long and persistent methods of dis-
cipline, magical rites have never successfully been enacted,
neither have magical results been obtained by virtue of cabalistic
words, fumigations, incantations, or other ceremonies alone.
There are those now living, whose opinions are entitled to respect,
who take other ground than this, and allege that the mere pro-
nunciation of certain words, superstitiously termed "cabalistic,"
is sufficient to summon spirits of an inferior order to the speak-
er's presence, and that the possession of talismans and amulets
will effect the same results. The author believes he shall be able
to sustain his own fixed opinion to the contrary of these beliefs,
by citing the teachings of the most authoritative Mystics of
ancient and modern times.
For the present we shall argue from the standpoint assumed
above, only adding that from early boyhood, the author has him-
self been both subject and operator in magical practices, and
though often associated with noble minds fully skilled in the
speculative philosophy of spiritual subjects, he has failed to find
any operators in occult lore who depended upon knowledge alone,
or who had not qualified themselves by preparatory discipline,
or been prepared by inherent endowments, for the remarkable
achievements which constitute the Magician.
Anticipating more detailed illustrations of the subject by
130
ART MAGIC.
a few general definitions, we proceed to say, that the first prepara-
tory step for the elimination of magical power is abstinence.
Abstinence not alone in food, but from the indulgence of all ani-
mal appetites. If, for instance, the student proposes to essay the
performance of magical rites at any given period, he should set
apart certain days during several months for total abstinence,
and during a set period of probation observe the strictest laws of
temperance and chastity. The Priests of antiquity were often
married men, but, as we have before stated, they were not always
prophetic men—on the other hand, the Prophets were almost
invariably ascetics, and that of the strictest order-never indulg-
ing in the use of wine, seldom of meat, the society of the female
sex, or the enjoyment of social and conjugal relations.
The more utterly ascetic they were, the more exalted became
their spiritual powers, but without a certain amount of fasting and
asceticism, let none expect to succeed in magical practices, for
the physiological effects which fasting and asceticism produce,
are unalterably essential alike to the male or female sex, in the
development of the power under consideration.
The North American Indians, no less than the Charibs and
South American tribes of poor, uneducated aborigines, compel
their young men to undergo probationary fasts for a period of
some eight or nine days, wandering meanwhile through the for-
ests, and carefully avoiding contact with any of their fellow-men.
These ascetic practices antedate their assumption of the duties
of manhood, or the positions of power and trust, to which the
red men deem their sons may become eligible, and it is claimed
that this discipline is necessary to enkindle the noblest fires of
manhood, quicken their powers of perception, accustom them to
endurance, and above all, stimulate the latent spirituality of their
Souls to perceive and commune with invisible Guardian Spirits.
During these probationary states it is claimed that their Spirit
Guides appear to them, reveal their destiny, instruct them in their
choice of a mission, and establish a rapport between the spirit and
mortal, which is continued through life.
Thus do these children of nature, these poor savages, as the
proud Civilian contemptuously denominates them, instinctively
perform those initiatory rites which it was the boast of the highest
philosophy of antiquity to have instituted.
Every nation of antiquity practiced this species of discipline,
previous to entering on a career of spiritual prowess.
The Sybils of Greece and Rome, the Hebrew prophets, the
Indian Ecstatics and Egyptian mystics; the Chaldean soothsayers
and Roman augurs, the Medes, Persians, Chinese and Japanese,
ART MAGIC.
131
all taught these necessary modes of preparation for prophetic
offices.
All the mystics of the Middle Ages exalt the practices of ab-
stinence, and insist upon its necessity. Of all classes of religions
thinkers, the Christians should be the most faithful in the observ-
ance of this rite, since it was charged upon them both by the ex-
ample and precept of their founder, and prescribed as an essen-
tial of spiritual discipline, both in the Old and New Testament,
and yet the Roman Catholics alone, of all the sects of Christianity,
observe abstinence as a part of their religious duty; and perhaps
it is to this cause that we may attribute the greater prevalence
of spiritual manifestations amongst them, than with any other
religious thinkers of Christendom. Another mode of preparatory
exercise for spiritual exaltation is prayer. Prayer, not in the mere
routine form of verbal solicitation, but sincere aspiration of soul
towards the great Source of all life, light and inspiration. And
prayer must be supplemented by solitary communion with the
inner consciousness, long periods of seclusion from the external
world, and a complete abstraction of the senses from all outward
observances; soul musings on the great I Am, and that deep ab-
sorption of the reflective powers upon the spirit within which
constitutes the triumph of the Soul over matter and its belong-
ings. Ablution, too, is another method of preparing the physique
for the flow of the Astral fluid. By frequent ablutions the skin
-the organ of the dual functions of evaporation and absorption
is prepared for a free transmission and reception of that Ástral
fluid which constitutes the magical element. During the inter-
vals of fasting, the food should be very light, consisting chiefly of
vegetables and fruits, whilst all stimulants or salacious substances
calculated to excite the senses or pamper the appetites, should be
carefully avoided. Tea and coffee have not only been deemed
admissible, but taken in moderate quantities are recommended
by some modern mystics, although the stricter order repudiate
their use. It is quite evident that the ancients understood the
uses of animal magnetism. The temples of the east are covered
with representations of this practice in the treatment of the sick,
and the constant allusion to it in ancient and classical writings
leaves no doubt but that it was the universal method of therapeu-
tic practice.
Animal magnetism was also the method by which the highest
rites of initiation into the sacred mysteries were completed. Using
this term in its modern sense, we find it was the special virtue by
which both in ancient and modern mysticism the potential pow-
ers of the magical element in man is awakened.
132
ART MAGIC.
2
小
​The chief value of the initiatory rites of all secret societies,
lies in the psychological effect they exert on the senses by the
fumigations of incense, the presentation of scenic illusions, the
performance of delightful music, no less than the effect which
the rehearsal of high thoughts and sublime ideas must produce
on the already over-wrought mind. When to all this is added the
magnetic effect imparted by the presence and manipulations of
powerful adepts, whose Astral fluid, charged with magical
strength, is infused into the system of the Neophyte, it can hardly
be wondered at that the final rites of initiation in such societies
as are banded together for the purpose of discovering and practic-
ing the highest and most occult laws of Nature, cannot fail to
send forth Hierophants who feel as did Pythagoras when issuing
from the crowning rites of Egyptian mysticism, "that he had
been in the presence of the Gods, and drank the waters of life
anew from divine chalices."
As a special illustration of our subject, we commend the fol-
lowing item of philosophy, extracted from "Ghost Land," to the
reader's attention. It refers to the experiences of the most pow.
crful order of magicians now in existence:
"They acknowledged that the realm of spiritual being was
ordinarily invisible to the material, and only known through its
effects, being the active and controlling principle of matter; but
they had discovered, by repeated experiments, that spiritual forms
could become visible to the material under certain conditions,
the most favorable of which was somnambulism procured through
the magnetic sleep. This state, they found, could be induced
sometimes by drugs, vapors and aromal essences; sometimes by
spells, or through music, intently staring into crystals, the eyes
of snakes, running water, or other glittering substances; occasion-
ally by intoxication caused by dancing, spinning around, or dis-
tracting clamors; but the best and most efficacious method of ex-
alting the spirit into the superior world, and putting the body to
sleep was, as they had proved, through animal magnetism."
After an experience of more than forty years subsequent to
the period when the author learned the truth of the above quoted
fragments of philosophy, he lives to confirm them in every iota,
and especially the last sentence quoted, which, to his apprehen-
sion, contains the true gist of all magical experiences.
No methods ever have been found so potent for kindling up
the most exalted fires of the soul, or transmuting its latent pow-
ers into active operation, as "the laying on of hands," or the mag-
netic manifestations of powerful, well-intentioned magnetizers,
in a word, the infusion of the vital forces of a mighty and highly
·
ART MAGIC.
133
charged Adept into the organism of a susceptible and receptive
subject.
All other modes are merely preparatory, but they can never
equal the effect of that last, best magical change, which can be
wrought only by the infusion of the Astral fluid of one organism
into another.
This is the last act of initiation in the highest temple rites
of old. This is the potent spell by which Hindoo Fakeers obtain
from their master minds the seal upon their magical studies. The
Patriarchal act of blessing, the initiatory rites of the Jewish
Priesthood, the Apostolic law of communicating virtue, was all
wrought by "the laying on of hands."
The Pentecostal gatherings of the early Christians were sim-
ply means of magnetizing each other by accordance of a common
will, and the focalization of ideas to a common subject.
Paracelsus, Van Helmont and most of the middle age mys-
tics, well understood the virtue of magnetic relations, whether
between animate or inanimate existences. In the citations we
shall have occasion to make concerning their magical formulae
and opinions, it will be seen that they recognized "magnetism
and psychology as the two grand supports of the Temple of
Spiritism."
Assuming that the Neophyte, who desires to exercise magical
powers, has faithfuly prepared himself by the methods prescribed
above, that he has subjected his frame to fastings, ablutions and
strict abstinence; observed periods of seclusion, and disciplined
his spirit by silent communings with Deity, the spirit of nature,
and his own inner consciousness, all that remains for him to do
is to seek out a few harmoniously-disposed persons, who, with
pure aims and high aspirations, shall join with him in the search
for light and knowledge. Let these unite themselves into a select
society, and, after the same order of preparation enjoined above,
proceed to magnetize each other, selecting for the work the most
powerful and well-composed of their number-in fact, the one
who most nearly conforms to the Pythagorean type described in
the last section as "No. 2.". Should there be no chance to form
such an association as is above suggested, let the Neophyte seek
until he finds a magnetizer who corresponds as nearly as may be
to the noble type of manhood required. Let such an one lay his
hands, illuminated with the pure, invisible essence of Soul fire,
on the Neophyte's head. Let manipulations of magnetic power,
accompanied by the infusion of strong aspirational will, be prac-
ticed at given periods of time; let these exercises be conducted
uninterruptedly, steadily, firmly and with high and noble inten-
134
ART MAGIC.
tions, and they cannot fail to perform the last best work of con-
verting the Neophyte into the Adept, the passive subject into the
active operator.
In the final formulae of evocation, the mind must be con-
centrated fully on the purpose and presence most desired. Thus,
if the object be to summon the attendance of beloved spirit
friends, the ordinary methods of waiting, either alone or in a
small harmonious gathering, now so popularly practiced amongst
modern Spiritists in Europe and America, may be sufficient to
ensure the desired results.
The performance of very good and spiritually inspired music
should always precede, or rather form the invocatory process in
such circles, the effect of good music producing as great a differ-
cnce in the atmosphere as on the feelings and sensations of the
listeners.
1
The light on such occasions should always be subdued, as
light is motion in the atmosphere, and tends to promote an en-
ergy of action which is unfavorable to the influence of the Astral
light, in which spirits live and move and have their being.
Material light and Astral light are as antagonistic to each
other as the north poles of separate magnets. They mutually re-
pel each other; hence, avoid as much as possible the action of ma-
terial light. For obvious reasons the custom of sitting in total
darkness should be held equally objectionable, except under strin-
gent test conditions, and where remarkable evidences of physical
power is demanded.
The fumigations of aromatic and fragrant essences contribute
greatly to promote the conditions under which Elementary Spirits
can manifest, but retard the approach of human spirit visitants.
The introduction of streams of ozone into the apartment will be
found a highly favorable condition to promote the communion
between spirits of mortals and their friends in the form. Besides
this, the action of a gentle current of electricity, evolved from an
electro-magnetic battery, should be infused into the systems of
the investigators, as it not only increases the strength and quan-
tity of the Astral fluid present in each organism, but benefits the
health, and prevents the depletion of vital force. The ethereal
character of ozone, and the force of electro-magnetism, are also
strongly in harmony with the Astral fluid which forms the bodies
of spiritual beings, hence their use at spirit circles will be found
effective and beneficial.
As the Spiritists of this age have enjoyed an extended expe-
rience in the constant intercourse, presence, and counsel of their
"household Lares," it is needless for us to offer farther sugges-
ART MAGIC.
135
tions on this branch of our subject at present, save to add that the
methods of intercourse with all spiritual existences will be found
reduced to general principles in this volume, and may, therefore,
be applied universally to all forms of communion between the in-
visible and visible worlds.
The means of awakening latent spiritual forces, or the pro-
cesses of invoking and procuring the presence of spirits, may be
conducted through any of the avenues to the material senses. For
example: the magnetic sleep on the one hand, and the "mantic
frenzy" on the other, may both be produced by appeals to the
sense of hearing. The one is induced by soft and delightful
strains of music, the other by noise and distracting clamor. Civ-
ilized nations are naturally most satisfactorily affected by the for-
iner mode; barbarous or semi-civilized peoples by the latter. Dull,
monotonous, rhythmical intonations act an intermediate part be-
tween these two extremes, and are particularly favorable to the
commencement of all magical ceremonials.
Appeals to the spirit can also be successfully made through
the eye. The sight of frightful objects causes a revulsion in the
entire circulatory system, lowers its tone, and may even suspend
its functions to the point of swooning. The reverse of this action
is produced by pleasing objects, beautiful colors, charming scenes
or persons, all of which sights stimulate and quicken the circula-
tion, tending to diffuse a soothing and healthful glow through-
out the whole system.
Another very effective mode of acting upon the sense of
vision results from gazing intently on mirrors, crystals, precious
stones, shining bodies, or pure fluids. The magnetic rays which
are reflected back into the eye from these objects pierce the brain,
and charge it with Astral light, whilst the fixidity of the action.
induces that self-magnetization which is the first step in somnam-
bulism, trance and ecstasy. Still another mode is in the inhala-
tion of stimulating narcotics or aromatic vapors. As before re-
marked, these processes are essential to the control of Elementary
Spirits, and produce no inconsiderable effect upon the senses of
the magician.
Nitrous-oxide gas, ether and other stimulating and anaes-
thetic vapors are powerful means of inducing either the trance
state or "mantic frenzy." For the evolution of the latter condi-
tion no method has proved so effective as violent gesticulations,
dancing, jumping leaping, spinning around in circles, in a word,
emulating the actions of the Oriental Ecstatics, in whom the
"mantic frenzy" and the exhibition of the most astounding pre-
ternatural powers seem always to require these preparatory pro-
136
ART MAGIC.
cesses. And here we must strictly impress on the reader's mind
the fact, that in describing these abnormal proceedings, we do
not present them as examples for imitation, or commend them
as even possible for the execution of "well-to-do" ladies and gen-
tlemen, moving in the first circles of London, Paris or America.
We are simply answering the oft-repeated question raised by the
admirers of Art Magic, "What can we do to perfect ourselves in
its practice?"
We may have conclusions to draw ere we close this volume,
which will induce the aspirants for magical powers to regard
with more interest and reverence the pearls of spiritual beauty
they are constantly treading under foot, whilst their eager gaze
is directed longingly on some glittering bauble far away up the
mountain heights, whose rugged paths their daintily slippered
feet would essay in vain to climb; but these conclusions can only
be understandingly arrived at when our work is done; to the act of
present duty, therefore, we must now return.
The use of Hasheesh, Napellus, Opium, the Juice of the In-
dian Soma, or Egyptian Lotus plant, besides many other narcotics
of special virtues, constitute a large portion of the preparatory
exercises, by which Oriental Ecstatics produce their abnormal
conditions; but when we name the last essential for the due per-
formance of magical rites, we may confidently assure our readers.
we include all lesser means, and are about to disclose the true
secret of the Philosopher's Stone, and the mystic Elixir Vitae,
nay, we speak of an element more potent than either, for we point
to the source and end of all Deific, no less than human capacity,
the all-omnipotent and resistless power of will.
When the great Essenian Teacher, Jesus of Nazareth, assured
his Disciples if they had faith as a grain of mustard seed, they
could move mountains, and cast them into the sea, he uttered no
myth, spoke in no parable, but enunciated a truth which the
Adept of every country, and every age, will fully confirm.
The power of faith is the power of will, the essence of Soul,
and Soul's action in producing forms and emulating the creative
functions of the Divine Will.
Will is the purpose of the Eternal One, outwrought in ex-
istence, and its operation in the outgrowth of more fully perfected
mind ages, will elevate mankind to the functions of Deity by its
triumphs.
Every Mystic, Sage, Magician and Psychologist, every stu-
dent, ancient or modern, ranges the power of the human will in
the category of all supreme intelligence, and attributes to its ex-
ercise the highest achievements of the true magician. Still it
ART MAGIC.
137
must be borne in mind that our present system of abject sub--
servience to the opinions of our fellowmen, and our slavish de-
pendence on popularity and custom, utterly neutralizes this all-
triumphant and magical power of will.
In our present condition of modern civilization the com-
plete expansion of will power is simply impossible. We require
several generations of culture, and patient experience ere it can
attain to its true proportions, and become the executive power
it ought to be in human life.
There are some abnormal existences that can subsist with-
out food, and others in whom the processes of education are super-
seded by direct spirit teaching, so there are a few highly endowed
minds who attain to their majority at birth, and who, like Jesus
of Nazareth, Plato, or Pythagoras, live in the realm of spirit,
from their first entrance upon the sphere of immortality,
hence they can exercise spiritual functions with the same
ease that others use the external senses; but these rarely-endowed
minds form the exception, not the rule of human life.
We must not trust to the possibilities of miraculous changes
in our own natures, but work for them, and industriously, scien-
tifically and patiently pave the way for their achievement. The
culture of the Will for the execution of abnormal acts of
power
is to be conducted by a regular series of mental processes, all tend-
ing to the subjugation of the senses and the exaltation of the
spirit. Some of these have already been explained in this section,
others will be elaborated as we proceed. The generalities of the
process involve physiological and psychological changes, the
methods of which have been briefly glanced at.
For the processes by which divination can be evolved, we
refer the reader to future sections. All shall be told; but, for the
present, we conclude with a tribute to the power of the human
Will.
}
It is the Alpha and Omega of this mortal life, as the Divine
Will is the Alpha and Omega of Being. It is the royal power by
which matter bends before Spirit, as the leaf bends and sways in
the rushing storm.
A
7
If the result seems to the student who has advanced thus far
worth the cost, let him proceed. If his heart begins to fail him
upon these, the first steps of the mystic threshold, how can he
hope to succeed in ultimates which cost the sages of antiquity
years of study, and half a life-time of faithful self-abnegation to
achieve?
The discouragements which arrest the first steps in the path
of discovery, are but the first trials of that stupendous will power,
138
ART MAGIC.
upon the full exercise of which the magician's triumphs depend.
Fail now, and you fail forever. Cherish but one spark of
hope to light your way through the labyrinthine paths we are
destined to tread together, and every mind of ordinary intelli-
gence and indomitable purpose, may by the perusal of these pages
become an Adept in Art Magic.
SECTION XI.
ART MAGIC IN INDIA,
INDIA THE MOST ANCIENT LAND-BRAHMINICAL ORDER-WHENCE
DERIVED—FOREST ANCHORITES-FOUNDATION OF THE PRIEST-
LY ORDER AND CASTE-RITES OF INITIATION AND METHOD OF
PREPARING FOR THE MAGICAL POWERS.
The very name of Hindostan, with its long descended lincs
of Guroos, Brahmins, Yogees and Fakeers; initiates all into the
highest and most potential of nature's occult powers, is itself sug-
gestive of Magic, and few there are who have glanced superficially
at this subject, or read the extracts from popular literature in the
periodicals of the day relating to it, who do not regard India as
the birthplace of all that is wild, weird and wonderful in the oc-
cult side of man's nature.
The immense antiquity of the Hindostanee dynasty, the in-
vincible tendency of the Hindoo mind to regard the scheme of
being as fixed and unchangeable, and the belief in "Yugs," or
cycles of time, through which mankind must inevitably pass, in
the fulfillment of a destiny as immutable as the Will of Deity,
have paralyzed all effort at advancement, hence the basic princi-
ples of the Hindoo's belief, nay, most of their practices of a
Theosophical character, are as much the stereotyped copies of
what their ancestors believed and did five thousand years ago, as
are their wonderful temples and colossal images the expression
of the same far distant period of time. It is almost impossible to
separate the magical practices of the Hindoos from the elements
of their religion, and the changes which time has wrought in the
aspect of nature and the political institutions which have been
shattered by every description of national calamity, have failed
to affect the deep metaphysical characteristics which soil, scenery,
climate, and the doctrines of fatalism have engrafted on the Hin-
doo mind.
ART MAGIC:
139
Since the tone of ancient metaphysics has changed but little
then with the onward march of the ages, the following brief sum-
mary may be regarded as a transcript of Hindoo magic both in
antique and modern times. Passing over the more sublime prin-
ciples of Theism, the doctrines of the Trinity, Incarnation, Ema-
nations, the Transmigration of Souls, etc., etc., we come to the
direct practices which the highest forms of religious belief im-
posed upon Hindoo Priests and Devotees.
G
The laws of Caste assigned to the ancient Brahmins the su-
preme control over all other classes, and the direction not only
of spiritual ideas and teachings, but also gave them prerogative
rights of succession, by which, through the assumed transmission
of hereditary virtues, their sacred Caste was to be preserved in
certain families, and entailed upon long lines of posterity. There
can be no doubt that the Brahminical order itself sprang from
the natural endowments of those ancient Anchorites, who at the
very edge of historic times, and perhaps long before, had retired
from the busy hum of the cities, and in the depths of the wildest
solitudes, held communion with Nature and Nature's God, and
by the practice of excessive devotion and rigid asceticism, disci-
plined both soul and body into communion with the invisible
worlds of being. The following graphic description of these an-
cient Forest priests is given in the charming and truthful lan-
guage of Mrs. L. M. Child. This gifted authoress says:
"In times Ancient beyond conjecture, there were men who
withdrew altogether from the labors and pleasures of the world,
and in solitary places devoted themselves to religious contempla-
tion. This lonely existence on the silent mountains, or amid the
darkness of immense forests, infested by serpents and wild beasts,
and as they believed by evil spirits, also, greatly excited popular
imagination. The human soul, unsatisfied in its cage of finite
limitation, is always aspiring after the good and the true, always
eagerly hoping for messengers from above, and therefore prone
to believe in them. Thus these saintly hermits came to be ob-
jects of extreme veneration among the people. Men traveled far
to inquire of them how sins might be expiated, or diseases cured.
for it was believed that in thus devoting themselves to a life be-
yond the tumult of the passions occupied solely with penance and
prayer, they approached very near to God, and received direct
revelations of His divine wisdom.
"In the beginning, these anchorites were doubtless influ-
enced by sincere devotion, and made honest efforts to attain what
seemed to them the highest standard of purity and holiness. Their
mode of life was simple and austere in the extreme. They lived
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ART MAGIC.
in caverns, or under the shelter of a few boughs, which they
twisted together in the shadow of some great tree. Their furni-
ture consisted merely of an antelope skin to sleep on, a vase to
receive alms, a pitcher for water, a basket to gather roots and wild
berries, a hatchet to cut wood for sacrifices, a staff to help them
through the forest, and a rosary made of lotus seeds, to assist in
repeating their numerous prayers. The beard and nails were suf-
fered to grow, and to avoid trouble with their hair, it was twisted
into peculiar knots, resembling the close curls of an African.
"In later times they shaved their heads, probably from mo-
tives of cleanliness. However high might have been their caste
in the society of the worid, they retained no ornament or badge
of distinction. They wore simply a coarse yellowish-red garment
made of the fibre of bark. Their food consisted of wild roots,
fruit and grain; and of these they must eat merely enough to sus-
tain life. They might receive food as alms, or even ask for it
in cases of extreme necessity; but they must strive to attain such
a state of indifference that they felt no regret if refused, and no
pleasure if they received it. They were bound to the most rigid
chastity, in thought as well as deed. So far as they coveted the
slightest pleasure from any of the senses, so far were they from
their standard of perfect sanctity.
"Some made a vow of continual silence, and kept a skull
before them to remind them constantly of death.
"In addition to this routine, they prescribed to themselves
tasks more or less severe, according to the degree of holiness they
wished to attain, or had courage to pursue. Some fasted to the
very verge of dissolution. In summer they exposed themselves
to the scorching sun, or surrounded themselves with fires. In
winter they wore wet garments, or stood up to the chin in water.
They went forth uncovered amid frightful tempests. They stood
for hours and days on the point of their toes, with arms stretched
upward, motionless as a tree. They sat on their heels, closing
their ears tight with their thumbs, their eyes with the forefingers,
their nostrils with the middle fingers, and their lips with the little
fingers; in this attitude they remained holding their breath till
they often fell into a swoon.
"These terrible self-torments resulted from their belief that
this life was merely intended for expiation; that the body was
an incumbrance, and the senses entirely evil; that relations to
outward things entangled the soul in temptation and sin; that
man's great object should be to withdraw himself entirely from
nature, and thus become completely absorbed in the eternal Soul
of the Universe, from which his own soul originally emanated.
ART MAGIC.
141
"Penances undertaken for sins committed were supposed to
procure no other advantage than the remission of future punish-
ment for those sins; but sufferings voluntarily incurred, merely
to annihilate the body, and attain nearness to the divine nature,
were believed to extort miraculous gifts from supernatural being,
and ultimately enable man to become God.
"Aiming at this state of perfection, they gradually attained
complete indifference to all external things. They no longer
experienced desire or disappointment, hope or fear, joy or sorrow.
Some of them went entirely naked, and were reputed to subsist
merely on water. The world was to them as though it did not
exist. In this state the words they uttered were considered divine
revelations. They were believed to know everything by intuition;
to read the mysteries of past, present and future; to perceive the
thoughts of whoever came into their presence; to move from one
place to another by simply willing to do so; to cure diseases, and
even raise the dead. Some of this marvelous power was supposed
to be imparted even to the garments they wore, and the staffs with
which they walked. The Hindoo Sacred Writings are filled with
all manner of miracles performed by these saints. There are tra-
ditions that some of them were taken up alive to heaven; and im-
pressions on the rocks are shown, said to be footprints they left
when they ascended. By extraordinary purification and suffer-
ing, some were reputed to have attained such power, even over the
Gods, that they could compel them to grant whatever they asked.
"Thus something resembling monasteries, or theological
schools, was established in the forests of Hindostan, at a very re-
mote period of antiquity. Seven of the most ancient of these her-
mits, peculiarly renowned for wisdom and holiness, transmitted
their privileges to descendants, and thus became the germ of
seven classes in an hereditary priesthood still existing under the
name of Brahmins."
<
It has commonly been supposed that the strong temptation
to assume unlimited power and acquire unlimited wealth which
the reverence paid to these old anchorites opened up to them,
induced the formation of a Priestly order, and the institution of
the law of Caste, by which the immunities and privileges they
enjoyed in their own persons might be secured to their posterity.
Be this as it may, the result was that in process of time, the
Priests, under the title of Brahmins (a name derived from Bra-
mah, the first person of the Hindoo Trinity), exercised unlimited
sway over the entire nation, not even exempting princes or rulers
of armies.
The Brahmins are still the conservators of scientific lore,
142
ART MAGIC.
political influence and religious knowledge to those who have
not protested from their form of belief. Many sects have arisen,
however, dividing up the religious world of India into almost as
many different shades of opinion as Christianity itself; still it is
a curious and significant fact that no class of the community,
not even the famed Buddhist Priests, ever attained as an order, to
such remarkable powers in the realm of magical achievements as
the mighty Brahmins of India.
It is not that their creed teaches any special devotion to mag-
ical art, or aims to develop miraculous powers as an essential of
Brahminical life. In this respect Brahminism differs from Chris-
tianity, whose Founder repeatedly demanded the performance
of wonderful works as a sign of Christian faith.
No such charge is enforced in the education of the Brahmins;
neither are all Brahmins wonder workers; but the truth is that the
ascetic lives practiced by the strictest devotees of the order, their
profound study of nature, and obedience to nature's laws; their
contemplative habits, purity of diet, simplicity of dress, and per-
haps the inherited tendencies bequeathed to them by a long line
of spiritualized ancestors, all tend to endow this caste of men with
the rare and peculiar gifts that distinguish so many amongst their
ranks.
The sacred writings of the Hindoos, which are very numer-
ous and rich in sublime ideality, contain many directions for in-
voking spirits, controlling the inferior orders, and soliciting the
aid and protection of the superior.
Instructions also are given for the preparation of the body by
fasting, chastity, ablutions and self-mortification. The spirit is
to be disciplined by prayer, the singing of hymns, long periods of
silent contemplation, solitary communion with God, nature, spir-
its and perfect soul abstraction from all external things. Seated
in peculiar and far from luxurious attitudes, with the eyes fixed,
and the very respiration regulated by abstract methods, the Atma,
or soul within, is to be continually trained to complete absorp-
tion in Deific ideas to the exclusion of all worldly aims, desires,
pursuits or scenes.
Directions are given in the sacred books for the use and prep-
aration of the Soma drink, of napellus, hasheesh, opium and other
narcotics by which ecstasy and trance are to be induced. Fumiga
tions, also, and the use of spices, gums and aromatic herbs, arc
described; still a large portion of the initiatory rites by which
magical powers are to be evolved, are not committed to writing;
but from time immemorial have been orally communicated by
Adepts to initiates and students.
ART MAGIC.
143
Being versed in those oral traditions, and sufficiently in-
formed upon the methods of initiation to know how far these rites
can be disclosed without fear of misunderstanding, we may ven-
ture to state that every temple of ancient or modern India
abounds with crypts and secret chambers, where devotees may
pass their time absorbed in silent communion with God and
Angels, or engaged in waging fierce mental warfare with the Evil
Spirits who ever beset the path of the Neophyte, and strive to win
him from the kingdom of light to the realms of darkness, in
which their own unblest natures most delight.
**
To combat these subtle but ever-present enemies and guard
their wandering thoughts against the intrusion of vain desires,
also to regain that "internal respiration," which tradition teaches
was once the privilege of humanity, enabling God to fill the in-
terior man, and preserve the breath from pollution by admixture
with the outer air, the devotee is required to suspend his respira-
tion and inwardly repeat sixteen times the sacred syllable A U M
-the ineffable word, which contains the name and attributes of
Deity-and thus, by such methods of mental introversion, it is
believed complete absorption in Divine things may be attained.
Directions are often given for the attitude to be assumed in these
exercises. Sometimes the vision is to be directed towards the
end of the nose; sometimes to the region of the heart, liver or
umbilicus. In each of these points it is assumed special virtues
reside; these are under the government of certain planets, and the
spirits who inhabit them.
▼
By sitting square on four points, that is, resting on the heels,
and so fixing the thumbs and fingers as to exclude the action of
external sight and hearing, the soul concentrated on these several
centers of life and Astral influence, will call down the spirits of
the planets who govern such regions of the body, and thus will
be stimulated into supermundane force, the virtues which abound
in those mystic centers of creative force.
L
Towards the middle ages a strange, peaceful sect arose, who,
from their methods of completely abstracting the senses from all
external objects and concentrating their soul powers in certain
regions of the body, were termed Hesychiasts. They took up
their abode in the region of Mount Athos, where, under the direc-
tion of an Abbot, and laws founded upon the rigid discipline of
monasticism, they devoted themselves to acts of charity, the cure
of the sick, and the complete abstraction of all the senses from
mundane things. Their mode of effecting this mental absorption
is thus stated by one of their writers:
"Sitting alone in a corner, observe what I tell you. Lock
144
ART MAGIC.
"},
your door, and raise your mind from every worldly thing. Then
sink your beard upon your breast, and fix your eyes upon the cen
ter of your body. Contract the air passages, that breathing may
be impeded. Strive mentally to find the position of the heart,
where all the mind's powers reside. At first you will discover only
darkness and unyielding density, but if you persevere night and
day, you will miraculously enjoy unspeakable happiness, for the
soul then perceives that which it never saw before, the radiance
in which God resides; a great light dwelling between the heart
and the soul."
The parity between these instructions and those which oc-
cupy a portion of the Hindoo sacred books, has suggested the
idea that this order of ascetics drew their ideas from the Vedic
writings, especially those directions communicated to the Neo-
phytes aiming to attain to the exalted condition called Nirvana
(the peace of God). The Hindoo teachers say:
"It is necessary, nay due to the soul, to free it from every hu-
man desire; to cut off all sources of delight save those which it
finds in Nirvana.
-
"Avoid contact with those of an inferior caste, the indul-
gence of vain thoughts, or the ascendancy of any habit which
draws the soul down to earth, and away from companionship with.
God. Obey without questioning thy teachers, and follow out each
point in thine initiations, though they seem to lead thee to the
feet of Siva. Abate not one moment of thine hours, nor let thy
sight wander from the points where thy planet rules, or the benef-
icent spirits of the stars do dwell in thee."
Such exercises as these, with incessant periods of fasting,
abstinence, self-mortification of every kind, the severest penances
for the most trifling offenses, especially the least infraction of
probationary discipline, lasted for years ere the devotee was
deemed fit for admission to the higher rites of initiation. These,
too, were communicated very gradually, and occupied months or
years, according to the Neophyte's aptness and willingness to en-
dure more personal suffering than the amount prescribed. In
these, as in the preliminary rites, oral communications preserved
the Temple secrets from the supposed dangers of entrusting them
to writing. Amongst the higher methods of preparatory disci-
pline, the scholar was required to listen to recitations from the
most occult portions of the Vedas, to commit many of them to
memory, and repeat them constantly. He was also instructed in
the principles, as far as they were known, of algebra, geometry
and mathematics, astronomy and astrology. The Hindoos,
though not so expert or devoted to the latter science as the Chal-
C
ART MAGIC.
145
deans, taught the influence of the planets on certain days, months
and periods of time. They reduced the configurations and con-
stellated order of the sidereal heavens to a stupendous system, or
at least laid the foundations of that belief in Astral and planetary
order, which subsequently expanded into the magnificent astro-
romical religion. They were especially attentive to the phases.
of the moon, and attributed benign or malignant influences to
the use of herbs, or the wearing of certain colors or precious
stones during different phases of lunar increase or decrease.
All herbs gathered for magical purposes were to be prepared
during the moon's increase. No great undertakings were deemed
successful unless the order of the planetary bodies was consulted,
and their configurations pronounced favorable. Another of the
higher stages of study in Priestly discipline was instruction in
the use and preparation of narcotics as means of procuring trance
and divine ecstasy. Still another, the exercise of the will in sub-
jugating the lower orders of spirits, and the occult forces in na-
ture.
They were taught the magnetic virtues of plants, minerals,
precious stones-especially the loadstone-the influence of col-
ors, the methods of healing by touch, will, charms, amulets, and
spells; the virtue of words, the methods of invoking spirits, and
finally that form of manipulation called Tschamping, which sim-
ply signifies magnetism, or the infusion of "Akasa," the Astral
Spirit of powerful Adepts, into their subjects by passes, touches,
and contact, exactly on the principles of modern mesmerism.
When the last rites of initiation were effected, it was found
that the most stupendous physiological and psychological changes
had been effected in the Hierophant's system. He had com-
menced as a human being-he was now an Ecstatic; he had been
a creature of parts, passions, emotions, he was now a machine,
bearing about an emaciated frame and an organism in which the
possessor moved, breathed, spoke, but only as in a dream-yet hc
found himself endowed with a soul whose perceptions were as
keenly alive to impressions from the invisible world, as his ex-
ternal senses had become blunted to all earthly things.
An Initiate of many years standing, just emancipated from
training, having faithfully fulfilled all that is required of him,
and elevated through powerful magnetism, into the position of an
Adept, is less of a man than a monomaniac, one who deems him-
self dead, a Soul doomed to carry about with him a lifeless body.
From this supreme condition of ecstasy, it is the duty of his teach-
ers and leaders to arouse him far enough to confer upon him a
special mission in life. If he is of the highest order of Ecstatics,
146
ART MAGIC.
he becomes a Yogee, a degree which excels all others in magical
power. He may become a Brahmin admitted to the first order of
Priesthood, and be permitted to marry, and rear offspring, en-
tering into all the uses and duties which belong to the priestly
class. If his choice inclines him to still higher realms of spiritual
absorption, if he feels that the last stage of divine union with
Deity, called "Nirvana"is yet to be reached, he must conținue
his ascetic practices, nay double and treble their severity, retire
to some dim forest solitude, deep cavern, or temple crypt, and
there continue in the performance of the most terrible austerities,
until his purified spirit is no longer of the earth, until he has ele-
vated himself above the necessity or desire for food, the habitues
of physical being, and then will the triumphant spirit spurn the
dungeon walls of a material existence. The Angels of Siva will
respond to the Soul's cry for liberty, the gates of the emaciated
body will fly open, and let the purified Soul go free!
The narcotics chiefly used by Eastern Ecstatics, to elevate
them to the highest conditions of somnambulism, are first, the
Soma drink, or Asclepias acida.
Cr
This plant is prepared by expressing out the juice either be-
tween two stones, "braying it in a mortar," or pounding it in pre-
pared vessels; the liquid thus obtained is then carefully strained,
mixed with clarified butter, laid for a season on fine fresh dewy
grass, then gathered up and swallowed as occasion requires. In
preparing this drink, many magical ceremonies are used, the value
of which will be discussed in their appropriate place. Still it is
deemed necessary to use exorcisms to evil spirits, invocations to
good, and lunar and astral observations in the preparation of all
materials employed in magical rites. The Soma juice, hasheesh,
opium, the napellus, and distillations procured from two or three
species of acrid fungi, are considered the most effective narcotics
appropriate for inducing the trance condition. A great variety
of anaesthetics are now in use in the East, unknown to the an-
cients. The fumigations made use of were and are very numer-
ous. Myrrh, cassia, frankincense, different preparations of lime,
aloes, aromatic woods, gums and spices, as well as amber, amber-
gris, and other delicate perfumes, constituting a large portion of
the medicaments used.
M
The "Laws of Manu," one of the Hindoo sacred books, al-
leges that there are only three states in which human souls can
exist whilst inhabiting the mortal tenement; these are alterna-
tions of "waking, sleeping and trance." The waking state of the
body is the soul's period of darkness-material light always being
deemed, in Oriental Theosophy, the opposite of Divine light.
-
ART MAGIC.
147
F
In this condition, all the evils which belong to a material
state are perceived and have power to operate. In sleep the soul
oscillates between the attractions of matter produced by the rela-
tions it sustains to the body, and its natural tendency to ascend to
its true home in a spiritual state of being.
The more perfectly the senses of the sleeper have been sub- -
dued by discipline, the more does the soul recede from the body and
gravitate to the Divine light; hence arise those healthful slumbers
from which so much strength and refreshment proceeds; but
where the body is indisposed, or binds the soul in the chains of
earthly attraction, unquiet dreams bear witness to the struggle
between the opposing forces of matter and spirit, and unless
guardian spirits induce the dream for purposes of their own, the
sleeper awakes but little refreshed from the mental strife.
Much is written concerning the philosophy of sleep which
we have not space to quote. Trance is considered to be the com-
plete liberation of the soul from the chains of materialism, as--
except a small portion of the Astral fluid, which inheres to the
body, and maintains the action of instinctive life-the fetters of
matter now become so loosened, that the soul can go forth, and
wander abroad in space. Its spiritual senses have free exercise.
It is all eye, all ear, all perception. It can ascend to the "third
heavens," traverse the spheres, wander over the earth, read the
hidden things of the heart, penetrate into all secrets behold the
past, present and future cutstretched as in a vast panorama, in
short, Atma (the Soul), then becomes the true spark of Divinity,
and enjoys unfettered powers and unlimited functions.
The full perfection of the trance state is very seldom reached
until Death sets the soul at liberty; but even an approximation.
to this divine condition is eagerly coveted by illuminated minds.
Ma
Much stress is laid upon lunar influence in seeking to entcr
the trance state, and hence the real effects which the moon ex-
erts on material bodies, especially in sleep, in lunacy, and in pro-
ducing rapid growth in plants, and decomposition in dead matter,
form the subject of much scientific speculation, and afford mat-
ter for highly suggestive thought.
Besides the processes necessary to prepare a true Brahmin,
the Priesthood admitted other devotees to certain initiatory rites.
There were many classes of ascetics in India, ranging from the
High Priests, or Gurooes, down to the begging Fakeers, who
clamor for alms in every populous city.
The highest class of the Brahminical order, the princely Gu-
rooes, are educated in all the learning the age can bestow, and be-
148
ART MAGIC.
sides being practiced in the rigid school of asceticism above de-
scribed, are disciplined in the noblest of moral virtues.
T
The severe discipline and frightful self-mortifications in-
flicted by fanaticism upon the much-abused body, must not be
understood as enjoined by the sacred writings of India. These,
in many remarkable passages, deny the efficacy of such outward
observances, sternly rebuke those who rely on them for salvation,
and abound with beautiful hymns, admirable precepts and recom-
mendations to the practice of deeds of charity, kindness, purity
and truth. The excessive tendency to asceticism and self-morti-
fication which has obtained for thousands of years in India, re-
sults from obedience to traditional law, and customs which have
increased in stringency by the imitative habits of the people, and
the examples of certain notable Saints and imaginary Avatars.
Besides the Brahminical Priesthood, and often excelling them in
Spiritualistic endowments, are classes of Saints and Ascetics
known as Sanyassis, Nirvanys and Yogys, or Yogees.
These are emphatically the creme-de-la-creme of Indian
Spiritism, and their wonder-working powers resulting from the
most horrible self-inflicted tortures and probationary sufferings,
are almost beyond belief. In a free translation from the Dham-
mapada, the work of a Brahmin writer, who flourished in the first
century B. C., the following description is given of the status of
the Nirvany, or one of these ascetics who had attained to the in-
conceivable bliss and purity of Nirvana-the state of peace almost
amounting to absorption in Deity.
This is the word of the
"Patience is the highest Nirvana.
Buddhas."
"If, like a trumpet when broken, thou art not roused to
speech, thou art near Nirvana. Anger is not known in thee, or
there is no noisy clamor in thee.”
"He who has deepest insight-who knows all right and all
wrong, who has attained to the highest-Him call I a Brahmana.”
"He who has given up all pain, all pleasure, who is without
ground for new birth, who has overcome matter and all worlds—
Him call I a Brahmana.”
Many writers are still more enthusiastic in praise of the Yo-
gees than the Nirvanys. The latter are more speculative, the
former the most accomplished in miraculous gifts of the Hindoo
ascetics. The most exalted of the Yogees are selected as a coun-
cil of Elders, and their decrees are reverenced as the voice of
Deity.
They form no inconsiderable portion of those fanatics, who,
like the Fakeers, wander over the east, subjecting their bodies to
ART MAGIC.
143
*
1
Being versed in those oral traditions, and sufficiently in-
formed upon the methods of initiation to know how far these rites
can be disclosed without fear of misunderstanding, we may ven-
ture to state that every temple of ancient or modern India
abounds with crypts and secret chambers, where devotees may
pass their time absorbed in silent communion with God and
Angels, or engaged in waging fierce mental warfare with the Evil
Spirits who ever beset the path of the Neophyte, and strive to win
him from the kingdom of light to the realms of darkness, in
which their own unblest natures most delight.
To combat these subtle but ever-present enemies and guard
their wandering thoughts against the intrusion of vain desires,
also to regain that "internal respiration," which tradition teaches
was once the privilege of humanity, enabling God to fill the in-
terior man, and preserve the breath from pollution by admixture.
with the outer air, the devotee is required to suspend his respira-
tion and inwardly repeat sixteen times the sacred syllable A U M
-the ineffable word, which contains the name and attributes of
Deity-and thus, by such methods of mental introversion, it is
believed complete absorption in Divine things may be attained.
Directions are often given for the attitude to be assumed in these
exercises. Sometimes the vision is to be directed towards the
end of the nose; sometimes to the region of the heart, liver or
umbilicus. In each of these points it is assumed special virtues
reside; these are under the government of certain planets, and the
spirits who inhabit them.
By sitting square on four points, that is, resting on the heels,
and so fixing the thumbs and fingers as to exclude the action of
external sight and hearing, the soul concentrated on these several
centers of life and Astral influence, will call down the spirits of
the planets who govern such regions of the body, and thus will
be stimulated into supermundane force, the virtues which abound
in those mystic centers of creative force.
Towards the middle ages a strange, peaceful sect arose, who,
from their methods of completely abstracting the senses from all
external objects and concentrating their soul powers in certain
regions of the body, were termed Hesychiasts. They took up
their abode in the region of Mount Athos, where, under the diree-
tion of an Abbot, and laws founded upon the rigid discipline of
monasticism, they devoted themselves to acts of charity, the cure
of the sick, and the complete abstraction of all the senses from
mundane things. Their mode of effecting this mental absorption
is thus stated by one of their writers:
"Sitting alone in a corner, observe what I tell you. Lock
150
ART MAGIC.
It is pure force, cohesion, which divided by the knife can be
replaced, causing the particles, fibres, and all the severed tissues
to cohere again exactly as before they were severed.
It is the cause of growth in plants; hence if a heavy charge.
is poured out on a seed or germ, it can cause that growth in a few
seconds, which a less quantity would cause in the slower pro-
cesses called growth. A vast accumulation of Akasa can cause
when projected by will, the heaviest bodies, even rocks, to move,
transport them through the air, dissolve solids into fluids, fluids
into airs, and recombine them again, for it is force. It can sub-
due the fiercest beasts by stupefying their senses; fascinate the
serpent, charm the Boa, and palsy the Cobra de Capello. It can
be diffused like a gauzy veil all through the atmosphere, and upon
it, the will of a powerful magician can paint any images he
pleases, and thus a whole assembly can see the objects created by
that will at one and the same time. The magician can envelope
himself in Akasa, and thus become invisible or visible at pleasure.
He can ride upon it, sail in it, stand upon it; use it as the
chemist uses airs, fluids, solids; but these stupendous powers are
only given to those who have utterly worn away all bodily impedi-
ments by the severest fasts and penances, who are freed from all
entanglements of sense or sensuous attractions; whose souls can
arise to ethereal spheres and communing with spirits, borrow their
Akasa, (spiritual bodies) to aid in these operations, strengthen
their own powers by those of potent spirits, and thus become at
once a man and a spirit.
A Soul having at command an earthly vehicle in which to ap-
proach matter, is yet, by the subjugation of matter and the exalta-
tion of Soul, at once a man, a spirit—a God.
The reader will now understand the philosophy of the tre-
mendous discipline enjoined and practiced by Hindoo wonder-
workers, yet if they were not genuine wonder-workers, and the
author of these pages had not for years proved them to be such,
and partaken alike of their discipline and their powers, these
enormous claims had never been made for them, and this exposi-
tion of their philosophy had never been written.
All Yogees, all Fakeers, all miracle workers of every age,
country, and caste, summon to their aid the Pitris or spirits of an-
cestors. Bear this in mind, skeptics of every land, careless and
unthinking Spiritists, who so lightly regard the privileges you
have enjoyed, but will soon forfeit, if not more reverently used,
and more intelligently appreciated. These Pitris are generally
loving spirit friends, who delight to answer the summons of the
Illuminee and aid him to ascend to their own divine heights of
ART MAGIĆ.
151
beatitude, or to work those deeds of power which prove the as-
cendancy of spirit over matter.
The Fakeers, amongst whom are far more numerous grades
than amongst the higher classes of ascetics, undergo like them,
the most severe probationary discipline. Many of them, inspired
by ignorant rather than intelligent enthusiasm, far outvie the Yo-
gees in the severity of their rites, the hideous and distorted atti-
tudes they assume, and the life-long miseries to which they con-
demn themselves. Their revolting attitudes, mendicant habits,
and disgusting appearance, have too often formed the theme of
travellers' sketches to need description here. Still there are, as
before intimated, many grades amongst them. Many perform
years of initiatory services in the Temples, and accomplish them-
selves in the learning of the time, and speculative philosophy.
Many of them are intelligent and even handsome men,
though most generally lean, emaciated and erratic. Some of these
men become fire-eaters, serpent charmers, magicians, fortune-
tellers, star-gazers, strikers, dancers, thousand-eyed, finders of
lost property, detectors of thieves-exhibitors of marvels, or men-
dicants. As to the wonders they perform, the greatest mistake
in estimating them, is to attribute their acts to legerdemain. The
true Indian juggler is a man of an entirely different class.
Fakeer in his most degraded condition may become a juggler, but
jugglers are not necessarily Fakeers, and their marvellous powers
are for the most part derived solely from the exaltation of their
"mediumistic" or "magnetic" natures over their sensuous.
ليه
They perform by natural physical magic, marvels which
make the myths of the Arabian tale-teller pale before them, from
the act of burying themselves alive for weeks or months, to per-
forming musical symphonies to an admiring audience of dancing
Cobras and waltzing Boas.
These men, like the Yogees, perform their marvels through
the abundance of the life fluid, their perfect control of it, and the
aid of spirits whom they all insist they can summon at pleasure.
They emphatically allege this spiritual aid is always present
when they perform. They deny that they can work without it,
and though they are often urged by bigoted skeptics, pious mis-
sionaries, or puzzled materialists, to deny that they solicit or can
obtain the aid of spirits, they one and all affirm and re-affirm it,
and insist that without the Pitris (ancestral spirits) they can do
little or nothing.
And now, reader, how like you the training necessary to be-
come an accomplished East Indian magian? and which of our
European or American aspirants for magical power, will subject
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MAGIC.
ART 1
themselves to the discipline above described for half a life-time, in
order that the other half may be spent in performing deeds of
glamour, deeds, too, that will wane in power, without a continual
exercise of the same rigid asceticism by which the power has been
procured? It will be urged that similar if not quite as powerful
endowments exist in organisms that have not been thus trained,
nor subjected to such frightful processes of self-abuse and sen-
suous abnegation.
This is undoubtedly true of those in whom nature has already
planted the seeds of "mediumistic" or magical powers. In those
whom, as we have shown in earlier sections, nature has endowed
with an abundance of the wonder-working Astral fluid, it only
requires skill, some culture and intelligent direction, to turn its
exercise to such account as the possessor desires. Still culture is
needed, and where natural endowments utterly fail, or extra-mun-
dane powers do not exist, art must supply the deficiency, and indi-
cate the way.
We have only to add that in East Indian magic as in Amer-
ican spiritism, in ancient as in modern times, there are good and
bad magicians, pure and impure media. These attract good and
bad Pitris, high and low spirits. Magic no less than spiritism is
divided into white and black, good and evil. The subjects always
attract a class of spirits correspondential to the natures of the op-
erators, and to the purposes designed.
The Hindoos, from the noble Gurooes, to the abject begging
Fakeers, all believe in Elementaries, and all believe that they have
special power to aid in such operations as their natures especially
sympathize with.
There are spirits of the earth, air, fire and water. They vary
in species, class and degrees of power just as mortals do; regard
mankind as their Gods, and seek their aid as means of reaching
higher spheres; desiring to serve them as opportunities of elevat-
ing them selves to the degree of immortality, which the souls of
men alone enjoy. These poor embryonic beings range from the
purely mischievous and evil, to the aspirational and good. They
are the Ginn or Genii of the Orient, who serve mortals in propor-
tion to their power to summon or command them, but we con-
clude with the assurance that-from the very heart of the secret
crypts of initiation, from the lips of noble Gurooes, dreamy-eyed
Purohitas, abstracted Nirvanys and tribes of Fakeers, the same
tale is told.
The profoundest mysteries of initiation are the evocation of
those called "dead," and the power of the magnetic touch, or the
infusion of Astral fluid from one potent body to another. Both
ART MAGIC.
153
methods combined, form the keystone of the arch which unites
the spiritism of ancient and modern India with that of the whole
civilized world.
SUPPLEMENT TO SECTION XI.
ART MAGIC IN INDIA CONTINUED.
ILLUSTRATIONS OF MAGIC IN INDIA-NARRATIVES OF DISTINGUISHED
TRAVELLERS-RECORDS OF THEIR PERSONAL EXPERIENCES-
TESTIMONY OF MORE THAN COMMON PRETERNATURALISM.
In the author's possession is an immense mass of testimony,
sufficient indeed to fill many volumes, concerning the facts of
extra mundane spiritism, kindred or similar to those recited in
this section.
As many if not all of these, seem to draw too largely on the
credulity of ordinary readers, it is our purpose with each narrative
of personal experience, of more than common preternaturalism,
to accompany it with a statement of similar character, verified by
some historical personage, in whom the reader may have more
confidence than in an anonymous writer.
If this method may burden our work with more illustrations
than seems necessary, it will at least show how much more uni-
versal are these gigantic products of spiritual power than mankind
has generally believed.
During the author's residence at Benares-the holy city of
the Hindoos-in the years 1855 and '56, a party of English gen-
tlemen, attracted by interest in Spiritualistic pursuits, frequently
visited him, and assisted in experimenting with the swarms of
Fakeers who crowd the city, and the numerous professing miracle
workers who flock to Benares at certain seasons of periodical pil-
grimage.
One of this English party, Capt. W., an officer of estimable
character and high culture, experienced during his stay in Be-
nares some family bereavements, which fixed his mind with pain-
ful solicitude on the conditions of life in the hereafter. The Fa-
keers, lying on the banks of the sacred Ganges, or crouching in
the city thoroughfares in every conceivable attitude of disgusting
deformity, repelled this refined gentleman, and he refused to avail
himself of their powers as Ghost Seers, deeming the condition of
the dead too sacred to be represented by such unhallowed inter-
€
154
ART MAGIC.
preters. In vain his friends assured him these poor ascetics were
merely instruments through whom the inhabitants of other
worlds might announce their presence, as through the post-office
or telegraph. The mourner required for the manifestation of an
angelic presence, nothing short of an angelic instrument, and in-
sisted that if the dead could return at all, it must be through
means as holy as their own beatified condition.
One morning Capt. W. entered his friend's apartment with
a countenance beaming with excitement, and exclaimed: "Eureka!
the great object of my search is found. A mighty magician is
coming to Benares who can solve all my doubts. Report speaks
of him as the greatest of all wonder-workers; the city is alive with
interest. A Sacred Bokt-
A Sacred Bokt-a veritable Lama, an incarnation, per-
haps, of the Divine Buddha-is expected, and will arrive this very
evening." Anxious to gratify the newly-awakened interest of
their mourning friend, the party above mentioned made inquiries,
and found that a great Thibetian Lama had indeed arrived, and
would give exhibitions of his skill to whoever desired his services.
Without inquiring in what this skill consisted, the party, all too
hastily, engaged the great Mystic, arranging that his first perform-
ance should be given in the private residence of one of their num-
ber in a large Bungalow, in the vicinity of the city. None but
invited guests were to be present, but it was not until some few
hours before the ceremonial was to take place, that the party of
English gentlemen learned to what they had committed them-
selves, and the true nature of the horrible entertainment they had
provided for a set of extremely refined and intelligent visitors.
When the true state of the case was disclosed, the love of the
marvellous prevailed over their disappointment. The Bokt was
no necromancer, no seer or visionist, but a great ecstatic-a Lama
of such stupendous sanctity that he was about to slay himself, die,
and come to life again. Whatever he could or could not do, how-
ever, the engagement had been made, and must be carried out.
The presence of seventy Fakeers of extraordinary power had
been secured, an audience hall improvised, and altar erected, seats
provided, all the arrangements made, and the Bokt now illuminat-
ing the sacred city with his presence, proposed in view of all be-
holders to rip up the abdomen, remove a portion of the intestines,
read in them the decrees of fate, replace them again, and heal up
the wound inflicted without damage to the person of the great
performer. It must be confessed that when the full horror of
this revolting rite was understood some of the party pleaded earn-
estly that the engagement might be cancelled and the scarcely hu-
man crowd of participants be dismissed with the promised fees;
ART MAGIC.
155
but the belief in some that the performance could not be real, but
would end in an act of clever legerdemain, whilst the hope in the
minds of others of witnessing a stupendous triumph of spirit over
matter, determined them all to unite in suffering the ceremonial
to proceed. When the hour of noon arrived, the Lama appeared
and took his seat before the raised altar on which the candles had
been lighted. Behind him was a radiant image of the sun, and
on either side of the altar were grim idols which had been placed
there by the attendants.
The Lama was in person a small spare man, with fixed glit-
tering eyes, an emaciated frame, and an immense mass of long
black hair which floated over his shoulders. He appeared alto-
gether like a walking corpse in whose head two blazing fires had
been lighted, which gleamed in unnatural lustre through his long
almond-shaped eyes.
He was about forty years of age, and report alleged that he
had already performed the great sacrificial act he was now about
to repeat some four times previously.
From the moment this skeleton figure had taken his seat, the
seventy Fakeers who surrounded him, in a semi-circle, began to
sway their bodies back and forth, singing meanwhile a loud, mo-
notonous chant in rhythm with their movements. The party of
spectators, twenty in number, were accommodated with seats in a
little gallery opposite the Lama and so placed as to command his
every motion.
In a few minutes the gesticulations of the Fakeers increased
almost to frenzy; they tossed their arms on high, bent their bod-
ies to earth, now forward, now backward, now swung them around
as if thrown by the hands of others; meantime their monotonous
chant rose into shrieks and yells so frightful, that the ears of the
listeners were deafened and their senses distracted by the clamor.
On every side of the auditorium, braziers of incense were burn-
ing. Six Fakeers swung pots of Frankincense, filling the
air with intoxicating vapors, whilst six others stood behind, beat-
ing metal drums or clashing cymbals, which they tossed on high
with gestures of frantic exaltation. For some time the howls,
shrieks and distracting actions of this maniac crew, produced no
effect on the immovable Lama. He sat like one dead, his fixed
and glassy eyes seeming to stare into illimitable distance, without
heeding the pandemonium that was raging around him. "Can he
be really living?" whispered one of the awe struck Englishmen to
his neighbor, but this question was speedily answered by the series
of convulsive shudderings which at length shook the Lama's
frame. His dark eyes rolled wildly and finally nothing but their
156
ART MAGIC.
whites were to be seen, spasm after spasm threatening to shiver
the frail tenement and expel its quivering life.
The teeth were set, and the features distorted as in the worst
phases of epilepsy, when suddenly, and just as the tempest of hor-
rible cries and distortions was at its height, the Lama seized the
long glittering knife which was across his knees, drew it rap-
idly up the length of the abdomen, and then displayed in all their
revolting horror, the proofs of the sacrifice in the protruding
intestines.
I
The crowd of awe-struck ascetics bent their heads to the
earth in mute worship; not a sound broke the stillness, but the
deep breathings of the spectators. At length one of them who
had witnessed such scenes before, addressing the living creature-
for living he still was, though he uttered no sound, nor raised his
drooping head from his breast-and said: "Man! can you tell us
by what power this deed of blood is performed without destruc-
tion of life?" "The Lama is all Atma now," responded a thin,
shrill voice from the bleeding wreck before us. "Fo keeps the
Manas (senses), until the work is done." "But why is that work
necessary?" rejoined the querist. "Is it right?" "To show that
life and death is his, Fo can withdraw the Atma (Soul) and give
it back; it is his will to show his power." "Is the Lama then dead
now?" "The City of Brahma (the body) is empty; Brahma Atma
has retreated." "How long can the Atma remain absent?" "He
returns even now. See he wings his way hither, and now he must
re-enter the City's gate, or it is closed against him forever." "Yet
a moment; the Akasa (life principle) has it left the flesh that is
severed-cut?" "Not yet-try it-it is warm-but soon the Ak-
asa will ebb away, if your will detains the Pitris who guide home
the Atma." The querist did not, as invited, examine the wound,
nor even approach the ghastly figure, nearer than was requisite
to observe the anatomy of the intestines laid bare. A
dead silence ensued. The living corpse moves. It raises its
quivering hands, and scoops up the blood from the wound, bears
it to the lips, which breathe upon it; they then return to the
wound, begin to press the severed parts together, and remake the
mutilated body. The Fakeers shout, and send up praises to
Brahma; the drums beat, the cymbals clash, shrieks, prayers, invo-
cations resound on all sides. The fragrant incense ascends. The
flute-players, planted on the outskirts of the estate, pour forth
their shrill cadence.
The harps of some European servants, stationed in a distant
apartment and previously instructed, send forth strains of sweet
melody among the frantic clamor.
ART MAGIC.
157
The ecstatic makes a few more passes, and after wrapping a
scarf, previously prepared, over the body as if to cleanse it from
the gore in which he was steeped, suddenly he stands upright;
casts all his upper garments from him, and displays a body un-
marked by a single scar. Gesticulations, cries, shouts subside;
low murmurs of admiration and worship pass through the breath-
less assembly, and then the Bokt, clasping his thin hands and elc-
vating his glistening eyes to heaven, utters in a deep, low tone, faï
different to the shrill wail of the half-dead sacrifice, a short hut
fervent prayer of thankfulness-and all is done.
The man resumes his dress, accepts gravely the presents be-
stowed upon him, dismisses his admiring votaries, and walks away
as calmly as if he had just parted from a gay festivity. Subse-
quently questioned concerning this strange and hideous rite, he
declared he had fasted for six weeks previous to its performance,
partaking of no other sustenance than bread, water and a few.
herbs. During the ceremonial he insisted that he felt nothing,
heard nothing; stated that he had been lifted up to Paradise and
beheld beauties ineffable, and partaken of joys which no other
mortal could ever know. When asked to do so, he exhibited the
parts that had been severed, which only retained a small ridgy
white line about three inches in length. This the Bokt assured
the investigators was unusual and might be attributed to the ex-
cess of Akasa or life fluid which the Fakeers dispensed. There
were too many of them he thought. Had there been less, or those
present had been less zealous, the parts would have cohered
instantly. As it was, the life fluid bubbled up, and caused that
seam by its excess. He expected to reduce it by manipulations.
Wondering to hear this man use Hindoo phrases and speak the
Tamul language with great purity, the inquirers found he had
been born a Hindoo, graduated as a Fakeer, and finally embraced
the doctrines of Buddha. It was doubtful whether he had been
a Lama at all, but such was his performance.
We shall, according to promise, supplement this narrative
with another on the same subject, published in a work entitled:
Souvenirs D'un Voyage dans La Tartarie, et la Chine, par M.
Huc Pretre Missionaire. Published at Paris, 1850. For the
translation of this narrative we are indebted to an excellent peri-
odical, published by Mr.. Jas. Burns, of London, in 1873, entitled
"Human Nature." The date of the narrative is some twenty-five
years earlier. M. Huc says:
"The fifteenth day of the new moon we encountered several
caravans, following, as we did, the direction from east to west.
The road was filled with men, women and children, mounted on

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ART MAGIC.
159
camels or oxen. They told us they were all going to the lamasery
of Rache-Tchurin. When they asked us if our object was the
same as theirs, they appeared astonished at our negative response.
Their surprise roused our curiosity. At a turning of the road we
overtook an old lama who appeared to walk with difficulty, as he
had a heavy package on his back. 'Brother,' we said, 'thou art
old, thy white hairs are more numerous than the black; thou must
be fatigued; place thy burden on the back of one of our camels."
After the pilgrim was relieved of his load, when his walk had be-
come more elastic and his countenance brighter, we asked him
why all these pilgrims were pacing the desert? We are all going
to Rache-Tchurin,' they said, with accents full of devotion.
'Without doubt some great solemnity calls you to the lamasery?
Yes, to-morrow ought to be a grand day; a lama bokt will mani-
fest his power; he will kill himself, but will not die.......We at
once understood the kind of solemnity which had put all these
Tartars and Ortous on the move. A lama was about to rip up his
stomach, take out his entrails, place them before him, and then
return to his normal state. This spectacle, atrocious and disgust-
ing as it is, is nevertheless very common in the lamaseries of Tar-
tary. The bokt who is 'to manifest his power,' as the Mongols
express it, prepares himself for this formidable act by many days
of prayer and fasting. During this time he must forego all com-
munication with other men and keep in absolute silence. When
the day arrives the multitude of pilgrims assemble in the large
court of the lamasery, and an altar is raised in front of the doors.
of the temple. The bokt appears. He advances gravely, the
people saluting him with loud acclamations. He moves to the
altar and there he sits. He draws from his belt a long cutlass
which he places on his knees. At his feet a number of lamas, ar-
ranged in a circle, raise loud invocations. As the prayers proceed
the bokt is perceived to tremble in all his members, and then
gradually to fall into phrenetical convulsions. The lamas become
more and more excited; their voices are no longer measured; their
chants become disorderly, till at length their recitations are
changed into howlings. And it is now that the bokt suddenly
casts off the scarf which envelopes him, detaches his belt, and,
seizing the sacred cutlass, cuts up his stomach through all its
length. While the blood is flowing from every part, the multi·
tude falling before this horrible spectacle, interrogates the fanatic.
concerning hidden subjects, future events, or the destiny of cer-
tain persons. The bokt replies to all these questions by answers
which are regarded as oracles by all.
"When the devout curiosity of the numerous pilgrims is satis-
160
ART MAGIC.
fied, the lamas recommence the recitation of prayers with calm-
ness and gravity. The bokt gathers up, with his right hand, some
of the blood, carries it to his mouth, blows on it three times, and
then casts it in the air with much clamor. He rapidly passes his
hand over the wound and all returns to its primitive state, without
leaving a trace of this diabolical operation beyond extreme lan-
guor. The bokt rolls his scarf again around his body, recites a
short prayer with a low voice, and all is over. And now the pil-
grims disperse, with the exception of the most devout, who stay
to contemplate and adore the blood-stained altar. These horrible
ceremonies occur with sufficient frequency in the large lamaseries
of Tartary and Thibet.
"All lamas have not the power to operate these prodigies.
Those, for example, who have the horrible capacity of cutting
themselves open are never found among the lamas of higher rank.
They are ordinarily simple lamas of bad character, and held in
small esteem by their colleagues. The lamas who are sensible,
generally asseverate their horror of spectacles of this description.
In their eyes all these operations are perverse and diabolical. The
good lamas, they say, have it not in their power to execute things
of this kind, and are careful to guard against seeking to acquire
the impious talent.
"The above is one of the most notable sie-fa, that is, 'perverse
powers' possessed by the lamas. Others of a like kind are less
grandiose and more in vogue. These they practice at home and
not on public solemnities. They will heat a piece of iron red hot
and lick it with their tongues. They will make incisions in their
bodies, and an instant after not a trace of the wound remains, etc.,
etc. All these operations should be preceded by prayers.
In 1870, being on a visit to a friend residing near Paris, the
author was informed that a party of Fakeers, otherwise called
"Fire-eaters," who had been denied the opportunity of exhibiting
their powers in London, might be seen and induced to give a priv
ate performance, by application to their leader, Lala Pokowra.
These men being known to the author, had solicited him to pro-
cure them such patronage as would enable them to return to their
own land. With this view several gentlemen united to arrange
a series of private performances, the first of which we propose to
give a brief transcript of, in the following narrative:
Three of the spectators had already become familiar with
the performance expected; the rest were entirely skeptical as to
the reality of what was described, especially Dr. L., a Corsican sur-
geon, who insisted that he should be able to detect the trick by
his acumen and scientific knowledge.
11
1
EVE
ART MAGIC.
161
It was evening before the party reached the chateau, and
then Mons. de L., deeming they must be fatigued, desired that
they might have refreshments served before commencing. This
they all declined, however, explaining that in order to prepare
for what was to follow, it was necessary to observe a strict fast.
It was near midnight before the arrangements were complete,
and then all were assembled in a large hall, which in olden time
had been used as a refectory. The floor was paved with black and
white marble, and for this reason had been selected by the ex-
hibitors in preference to other rooms where the waxed floors and
carpets might have been injured.
Several braziers exhaling incense and aromatic vapors were
burning around the hall, which was only lighted by a bright fire,
into which were stuck several iron bars, brands and other sub-
stances destined for the proposed exhibition. The spectators,
amounting to about thirty gentlemen, took seats on a raised dais
at one end of the apartment, while the Corsican surgeon, joined
by two others of the French faculty, stationed themselves in the
most convenient position for making their observations.
When all were seated the exhibitors entered, consisting of six
men, four of whom were simply attired in a tunic belted around
the waist and reaching nearly to the knees, their arms, necks and
shoulders remaining bare. The two others were dressed in the
ordinary coarse attire of the lower class of Fakeers. These men
were all excessively emaciated, and the preternatural glare of their
fierce black eyes was wild and repulsive. There was a seventh
personage, not a Hindoo, but an European amateur, who became
for the nonce their Adept, Lala Pokowra yielding up this post to
him by request, and taking a seat with the spectators on the plat-
form.
The four semi-nude men at first seated themselves on mats
prepared for them, whilst the other two were busy in heating
irons and attending to the braziers. The smoke ascending to the
high-vaulted ceiling, and the fitful glare of the fires illuminating
the half-savage figures of the reclining ecstatics, produced a weird
and singular effect in this vast apartment. Branching antlers of
stags' heads, torn old banners, and dim armorial bearings gleamed
forth in the flickering light, contrasting strangely with the Ori-
ental forms that lay stretched beneath them. For some time they
remained motionless, the two assistants, however, stood together,
chanting prayers in a low monotonous tone, and from time to
time striking in rhythm a pair of silver cymbals. It was not un-
til the Adept had sounded a few soft notes on the flageolet, that
the ecstatics exhibited any signs of life
162
ART MAGIC.
1
At the first intonation they raised their heads like sleuth-
hounds scenting game, then began swaying their bodies in time to
the music. Shriller, louder, quicker, rang out the tones of the
flageolet-fiercer sounded the clashing cymbals; louder and
louder shouted the hoarse voices of the singers, and now upspring-
ing from the ground the four Fakeers are seen whirling spinning,
each as it were on his own pivot, arms outstretched, long hair
flying in the circumference of each spinning human column like
a fringe of black cloud around a water-spout at sea. Faster and
faster screams the flageolet-faster and faster spin the human
tee-to-tums, till now first one, then the second, at length the third
sink down in rigid cataleptic swoons. The fourth still spins,
when suddenly, tossing one hand aloft, with a whoop that would
have thrilled the blood of a red Indian, he snatches with the other
a keen knife from his girdle, and dashes it through the fleshy part
of the other extended arm. A torrent of blood follows the
wound, but another and other gash succeed in quick succession,
until the hands, face, neck, breast, and arms are streaming from
the open mouths of gaping wounds. One of the surgeons
springs forth pale and trembling, and at a signal from the Adept,
the ecstatic stops, and the man of science, with a face as while
as the driven snow, examines the hideous gashes. "Great God!
it is all true!" he cries. A few words in Hindostanee from the
Adept succeed, and now the bleeding creature stands motionless,
whilst the Adept's hands rapidly pass from point to point, press-
ing the wounds together, manipulating them slightly, rubbing
them over, making quick passes above them, and lo! the figure
appears a man again.
All the surgeons come forward, even the spectators, those
who have not fled sickened and fainting from the shocking spec-
tacle, and gaze upon the exposed form now intact; not a gash left,
not a wound unhealed, not a cicatrix remaining. A cup contain-
ing a stimulating drink of herbs is handed to the exhibitor, who
quietly wiping the still reeking gore from his person, subsides
upon his mat with an air of stolid indifference.
Meantime the voices of the chanters have sunk to a low
monotonous cadence, yet never ceased. Now they increase in vol-
ume, again the cymbals clash, the flageolet gives out its piercing
tones, when the falling Fakeers upspringing from their trance,
commence to sway, dance, whirl, spin.
One darts to the blazing fire, and seizing a red hot iron, licks
it with extended tongue; another gathers up a handful of burning
coals and chews them as a precious morsel, then whirling the
lighted brands above his head, he piles them up in heaps, lays on
ART MAGIC.
163
them, hugs them, presses them to his naked breast, and dances
with them till he appears a column of spinning fire. Again the
knives flash, the blood springs from gaping wounds, but now ap-
pealing cries and even shrieks sound out from shivering specta-
tors. Shouts of "Stop this hellish play!" ring from many voices.
Some fall insensible, some stop their ears and close their eyes, and
others stand like figures of stone, petrified by some Gorgon's head.
All are unnerved, unmanned, and some weep like frightened
children. The signal to suspend is given in haste and pity; pity
not to the reeking victims, but to the shocked spectators.
Again the Adept and the two assistants busy themselves
about the motionless figures. They stand as passive and unmoved
as logs. The blood dries up; the wounds just breathed upon are
pressed by busy hands, the bodies stroked and wiped, are healed
and not a scar is left. Upright and motionless they stand, whilst
the trembling spectators steal towards them, pass their hands
about them, and turning to each other, exclaim: "This is the
work of fiends and no mistake!" Aye, so it ever is. Any science
which transcends the power of ignorance to explain, is always the
devil's work, and horrible, revolting to humanity and every feel-
ing of nature as such exhibitions are, it needs them to convince
the material scientist that there is a realm of Spiritualism more
tremendously potent than any that matter has yet revealed, and
until this realm is explored, science will be driven to the ordinary
expedient of ignorance and superstition, crying: "This is the work
of fiends and no mistake!"
A narrative so appalling as the above demands like the for-
mer one additional testimony to strengthen it. Let the reader
find this by perusing a sketch written by the Princess de Belgio-
josa, in her charming work, entitled "Souvenirs de Voyage en
Asie Mineure et en Syrie. This narrative was translated and pub·
lished in the London Spiritual Magazine of 1868, from the pages
of which we avail ourselves of an excellent translation.
"Amongst a variety of other wonders, the Count de Gobi-
neau, the Ambassador of France to Persia, a rationalist, but a sin-
cere and good observer, says that everybody in Persia, the Mussul-
mans as well as the rest, assured him that the Nossayris, one of the
principal sects in Persia, perform the following marvels: They
fill with fire a large brazier in the middle of the room, and whilst
a musician plays the tar, a little drum, also called dombeck, the
Nossayri approaches the fire. He is agitated, he is exalted, he
lifts his arms and eyes towards heaven with violent contortions.
Then when he is excited to such a pitch that the perspiration
pours from his face and from every part of his body, he seizes a
164
ART MAGIC.
burning coal, and putting it in his mouth, blows it in such a man-
ner that the flames issue from the nose. He receives no injury
whatever from it. He then seats himself in the midst of the fire,
the flames mount up and play in his beard, and caress without
harming him. He is in the middle of the fire, and his dress does
not burn; finally he lays himself down in the brazier, and receives.
no hurt from it. Others enter a baker's oven in full ignition, re-
main there as long as they like, and issue again without accident.
What these people do with fire, others do with the air. They
throw themselves from rocks with their wives and children, with-
out receiving any damage, from whatsoever height they fall. This
is the manner in which a Purzadeh, or descendant of a Pur, ex-
plained these extraordinary phenomena: 'Since,' he said, 'every-
thing in nature is God, so everything contains, secretly but plen-
arily, the omnipotence of God. Faith only is necessary to put
in motion and make apparent this power. Therefore, the more
intense and complete the faith, the more marvelous will be the
effects produced. It is not merely from the air and the fire that
we can draw prodigies, but from objects in appearance the most
contemptible. If we wish to call our interior virtue, whatever it
may be into action, we have only to apply the irresistible instru-
ment of faith, and then, nothing is impossible.' Such are the
ideas of the Nossayris.
4
-
-
CA
"One fine morning, as reclining on my divan, I endeavored,
but in vain, to shake off the stupor and headache caused by the
fumes of charcoal which issued from a metal stove, and circulated
through my closed room, I saw enter a little old man in a white
mantle, with a grey beard, a pointed cap of grey felt surrounded
by a turban of green; he had a lively eye, and a countenance frank
and good-natured. The old man announced himself as the chief
of certain Dervishes, performers of miracles, whom the grand
Muphti had sent to show me their operations. I offered him my
warmest thanks, and expressed myself perfectly ready to witness.
the spectacle which they proposed. The old man opened the
door, made a sign, and quickly reappeared, followed by his dis-
ciples.
"They were eight in number, and I must confess, that if I
had met them on my journey, at the corner of a wood, their ap-
pearance would have given me little pleasure. Their clothes
were in rags, their long beards untrimmed, their visages pale,
their forms emaciated, a something indescribably ferocious and
haggard in their eyes, all which contrasted singularly with the
open smiling countenance and somewhat gay costume of their
chief. These men on entering, prostrated themselves before him,
ART MAGIC.
165
made.me a polite obeisance, and seated themselves at a distance,
awaiting the orders of the old man, who, on his part, awaited
mine. I experienced a degree of embarrassment, which would
have been still more painful had the seance been of my own or-
dering. Happily I was perfectly innocent, and this consideration
gave me a little self-composure, but I did not dare to make the
sign for commencement of, I did not know what. I exepected a
scene of the grossest imposition, which I should be obliged to ap-
plaud out of politeness, and of which I must show myself a dupe
out of good breeding.
"I caused coffee to be served, to gain time, but the chief only
accepted it. The disciples excused themselves, alleging the seri-
ousness of the trials to which they were about to submit them-
selves. I gazed at them; they were serious as men who expected
the visit of a host rather than a revered master. After a short
silence, the old man asked me if these children might begin, and
I replied that it rested entirely with themselves. Taking my an-
swer as an encouragement, he made a sign, and one of the Der-
vishes arose; he then prostrated himself before his chief and
kissed the earth; the chief placed his hands on his head as if to
give his benediction, and spoke some words in a low voice which
I did not understand. Then arising, the Dervish put off his man-
tle, his goatskin fur, and receiving a long poignard from one of his
companions, the handle of which was ornamented with little
bells, he placed himself in the middle of the apartment. Calm
and self-collected at first, he became animated by degrees from the
force of an interior action. His breast swelled, his nostrils ex-
panded, and his eyes rolled in their sockets with a singular rapid-
ity. This transformation was accompanied and aided, without
doubt, by the music and the songs of the other Dervishes, who,
having commenced by a monotonous recitative, passed quickly
into modulated cries and yells, to which the regular beating of a
tambourine gave a certain measure. When the musical fever at-
tained its paroxysm the first Dervish alternately raised and let
fall the arm which held the poignard, without being conscious of
these movements, and as if moved by a foreign force. A convul-
sive twitching pervaded his limbs, and he united his voice with
those of his confreres whom he soon reduced to the humble role
of assistants, so much did his cries exceed theirs. Dancing was
then added to the music, and the protagonist Dervish executed
such amazing leaps that the perspiration ran down his naked
figure.
K
"It was the moment of inspiration. Brandishing the dagger,
which he never abandoned, and every motion of which had made
166
ART MAGIC.
the little bells resound; then, extending his arm and suddenly re-
tracting it, he plunged the dagger into his cheek so deep that the
point appeared in the inside of his mouth. The blood rushed in
torrents from both apertures of the wound, and I could not re-
strain a motion of my hand to put an end to this terrible scene.
Madame wishes to look a little closer?' said the old man,
observing me attentively. Making a sign for the wounded man
to draw near, he made me observe that the point of the dagger
had really passed through the cheek, and he would not be satisfied
till I had touched the point with my finger.
66
""You are satisfied that the wound of this man is real? he
said to me. I have no doubt of it,' I replied emphatically.
""That is enough. My son,' he added to the Dervish, who
remained during the examination with his mouth open, filled
with blood, and the dagger still in the wound, 'go, and be healed.”
"The Dervish bowed, drew out the dagger, and turning to
one of his companions, knelt and presented his cheek, which this
man washed within and without with his own saliva. The oper-
ation continued some seconds, but when the wounded man rose,
and turned to one side, every trace of the wound had disappeared.
"Another Dervish made a wound in his arm, under the same
ceremonies, which was healed in the same manner. A third ter-
rified me.
He was armed with a great crooked sabre, which be
seized with his hands at the two extremities, and applying the
edge of the concave side to his stomach caused it to enter as he
executed a see-saw motion. A purple line instantly showed itself
on his brown and shining skin, and I entreated the old man to
allow it to proceed no further. He smiled, assuring me that I
had seen nothing, that this was only the prologue; that these
children cut off their limbs with impunity-their heads, if neces-
sary, without causing themselves any inconvenience. I believe
he was contented with me, and judged me worthy to witness their
miracles, by which I was not particularly flattered.
"But the fact is, I remained pensive and confused. What
was that? My eyes, had they not seen them? My hands, had
they not touched them? Had not the blood flowed? I called to
mind all the tricks of our most celebrated prestidigitateurs, but I
found nothing to be compared with what I had seen. I had had
to do with men simple and ignorant to excess; their movements
were made with the utmost simplicity, and displayed not a trace
of artifice. I do not pretend to have seen a miracle, and I state
faithfully a scene which I for my part know not how to explain.
The next day, Dr. Petracchi, for many years the English Consul
at Angora, related many such marvels, and assured me that the
ART MAGIC.
167
Dervishes possessed natural, or rather supernatural secrets, by
which they accomplished prodigies equal to those of the priests of
Egypt."
M. Adalbert de Beaumont, who visited Asia Minor, in 1852,
asserts the reality of the same wonders as the Countess de Bel-
giojoso. He says when the dancing Dervishes have reached the
paroxysm of their excitement, they seize on iron red hot, bite it,
hold it between their teeth, and extinguish it with their tongues.
Others take knives and large needles, and pierce their sides, arms
and legs, the wounds of which immediately heal and leave no
trace.
It is time to bring these extravagant horrors to a close. We
shall offer only one more example of East Indian spiritism, al-
though our repertoire of similar facts, and that in personal expe-
riences, would fill volumes.
At Bengal about the year 1860, there resided a Fakeer, who
had obtained the name of Ali Achmet from a wealthy Arab, in
whose service he had resided for many years. He had been a
renegade to his faith and was little respected in a moral point of
view, but his abilities as a wonder-worker had gained him a great
reputation amongst foreigners who visited the city. At the
death of his patron, Ali claimed that his "father's spirit" revisit-
ing the scenes of earth he had loved all too well, and being bound
to the performance of certain good deeds that he had left undone
in earth-life, once more adopted his favorite, and informed him,
speaking with a voice, that he would enable him to excel every
Dervish in Arabia, every Fakeer in Hindoostan.
This spirit
kept his word. Ali achieved a great reputation wherever he went,
and being the inheritor of his adopted father's wealth he gave his
exhibitions freely, although his excessive vanity prompted him to
tender them wherever he could find appreciative witnesses. Hav-
ing conceived a whimsical friendship for the author, he spent
much time exhibiting to him and his friends his wonder-working
powers.
d
In the presence of this man many spirits of deceased persons
had actually appeared to their friends. Their forms had been
seen standing in the waning light of evening with perfect dis-
tinctness, and remaining long enough to be fully recognized.
Spirit faces, distant scenes, and the presentment of living persons
residing in foreign countries were frequently shown on the sur-
face of a mirror which the author kept in his apartment devoted
to that purpose. The ordinary expedient of calling in a boy from
the street, pouring ink, walnut or fungus juice in his hand, and
then "biologizing" him to see and describe the forms the inquirer
168
ART MAGIC.
wished to summon, were phases of power too petty to engage this
Adept's attention.
וי
After detecting thieves, discovering lost property, being
raised in the air, carried through the grounds on several occa-
sions, producing all manner of sights, sounds and strange phe-
nomena familiar enough amongst modern spiritists, the Fakeer
would often ask his audiences suddenly, if they would not like
some object brought them from distant lands, and when an af-
firmative answer was given and the desired object named, a mut-
tered prayer, a silent invocation to his beloved familiar, or per-
haps a low chanted song, was sure to end in the production of
what was required, though it had to be transported for a thousand
miles or brought across the ocean.
Many persons residing at Benares will still remember the
time, some thirty years ago, when this magacian, exhibiting his
power before the Temple of Siva in the presence of several thou-
sand persons, caused three little half-naked Indian children to
climb up a pole successively, one after the other, and when they
had ascended about half the distance they suddenly disappeared.
In two-minutes after the last was lost to sight, a shout from the
audience announced that the whole three were found on a plateau
a hundred feet removed from the pole, and there they had ap-
peared suddenly out of vacancy. The Fakeer explained the phe-
nomenon by declaring that when the little climbers had ascended
to a point where he had directed a circle of Akasa (life fluid) to
gird the pole, the Pitris, headed by the spirit of his accommodat-
ing friend, had caught them up, concealed them in their own
Akasa (spiritual atmosphere) and only put them out of it again
when they placed them on the plateau above mentioned. The
little ones were entranced and remembered nothing of their
aerial flight.
By sticking a twig broken from a living tree into the ground,
and extending his hand over it, or keeping his fingers pointed to-
wards it, he could cause a fresh tree to spring up, bearing leaves,
flowers and fruit, in less than twenty minutes.
This weird creature being one day alone with the author,
was asked to show something which should prove to his friend,
that he spoke with no double tongue, practiced with no double
robe, that is, no concealed apparatus.
What would my Brother choose to see?" inquired Ali.
"What can Ali do?"
"See! Ali wears no double robe," cried the Fakeer, casting
away his upper garment entirely.
ART MAGIC.
169
;
"Tis well-proceed! Cause the Pitris to show their images
in yon vase of water."
The vase indicated was a large stone tank which stood in a
shady part of the outer court. Ali spoke not, but instantly point-
ing the staff he commonly carried towards the tank-it began vis
It could not have
ibly to oscillate. Its weight was immense.
contained less than six gallons of water, yet as the Fakeer's
knotted staff was pointed towards it-it began to slide along the
court; reach the open glass doors which divided the apartment
from without, to close which, a groove of metal intersected the
floor.
Here the stone traveller paused like a thing of life, then as
if reflection had ensued, it slowly but steadily floated up a foot
above the ground, sailed in through the glass doors, then gently
subsided to the ground, and still sliding on, stationed itself at
the Fakeer's feet. "Will my Brother give the Pitris sweet air to
breathe?" inquired the Fakeer. This remark referred to the use
of Ozone, currents of which passed through an electric battery
had frequently been used in that apartment in the evocation of
spirits. There were several braziers, too, half burnt out, contain-
ing frankincense and aromatic perfumes. These were distributed
in a circular form around the spot where the stone tank was held
stationary.
The battery set in working order, and the braziers lighted,
the Fakeer seemed satisfied, and this is what ensued. The fumes
of the burning incense instead of as usual ascending to vents pre-
pared to receive them, seemed to be bent by some outside power
until they concentrated inwards towards the tank. The Fakeer
now moved around this vessel several times, stretching both his
hands towards it, and murmuring his low chant in subdued tones.
Directing his single witness to stand on the north side of the vase,
but outside the circle of braziers, he assumed a position exactly
opposite to him, and then both perceived that every drop of the
water in the tank had disappeared, the tank was empty!
A
Once more moving around the vessel in circles, stretching
forth his hand which to the eye of clairvoyance streamed with
Akasa( life fluid) like the shells, crystals and fingers of Reichen-
bach's sensitives and lo! the water came bubbling back, forming
under the crystalizing process of spiritual life infused into the
empty vessel, the gases into which the fluid had been resolved,
combining again, until the pool reached the surface, and seemed
to attain the exact level it had before occupied. Again resuming
his place to the south of the vessel, and beckoning his companion
to approach nearer, one hand of each being laid on the edge of the
→
170
ART MAGIC.
tank, figures began to appear on the surface of the unruffled wa-
ter. Seventeen presentations of forms known to the beholder ap-
peared and disappeared in slow succession on the tranquil mirror
of the water. Most of the apparitions represented spirits who
had long been inhabitants of the silent land-some, however,
were friends residing in distant lands, and these were surrounded
with scenery appropriate to the position in which they might then
most probably be residing.
Every picture was clear, distinct, life-like and highly charac-
teristic of the individual presented, and the whole phantasmago-
ria strikingly illustrated those two spiritualistic aphorisms, which
have lately become so popular: "There are no dead-and-"In
spiritual existence there are neither time, space nor obstacles of
matter." The last forms seen were those of the two witnesses
themselves. Neither of them, however, represented the costumes
they then wore, the one being arrayed in an uniform packed up in
a distant wardrobe, the other-that of the Fakeer-appearing in
the Arab dress he had long since cast aside. The unmistakable
fidelity of the likenesses, but the singular change in the costumes
thus presented, convinced the two observers that this manifesta-
tion was designed to show that the whole series of pictures were
creations of the will-acts of attendant spirits, who, by exploring
the minds of the mediums, shaped their representations in accord-
ance with the images there impressed, or stereotyped in the mem-
ories of those they desired to serve.
The letters of European missionaries from India, China, and
other eastern lands, popular accounts of snake-charmers, Indian
magicians, etc., especially the writings of Messers. Salt, Lane,
Wolff, Laborde, Mesdames Poole, Martineau and others, have so
familiarized this age with the magical wonders wrought in the
Orient, that the insertion even of the limited number of narra-
tives this section contains, might be deemed supererogatory did
we not feel the necessity, in a practical and affirmative work of
this character, of saying, we, too, have seen and can testify of
these things, nay more; let us add, we, too, can perform them; but
again arises the question, can such things be done without all the
efforts and initiatory processes above described, or those naturally
occult endowments so rarely conferred? Once more we subjoin
a fragment of philosophy on this subject given by a noble Brah-
min, the father of the little Hindoo girl Sonoma, whose clairvoy-
ance and extraordinary lucidity has been referred to in an earlier
section.
The Brahmin of whom we now speak, a native of Malabar,
was himself an ascetic and celibate up to the age of fifty years,
ART MAGIC.
171
when in the full exercise of his wonderful power, procured by
fasting, abstinence and contemplation, he became a Yogee of the
first degree, and one of the Council of Elders.
At times he was not only levitated in the air, but during the
performance of a solemn service on the banks of the Orissa, he
was floated above the heads of the multitude for a distance of
over a hundred yards. The Brahmin was moved in the direction
of the river, and would doubtless have been carried across it, had
not the great disturbance in the minds of the anxious spectators
broken the currents of Astral fluid in which his spiritual conduct-
ors carried him, and compelled them to lay him gently down on
the river's bank.
After this aerial flight, the Brahmin withdrew from public
life and devoted himself to the duties of his calling as a healer of
the sick, a work he performed solely by the laying on of hands.
He frequently fasted for many hours, sometimes for days to-
gether, for the purpose of curing some notable case of disease, but
these self-renunciations always produced their effect in the inev-
itable conquest the noble physician achieved over the malady,
however severe.
Being present with the author on one occasion when a Fa-
keer who had been buried for eight weeks, was disinterred and re-
stored to life, in the perfection of health and good spirits, the
Brahmin was pressed by a British offiecer whose soldiers had been
appointed to keep guard over the grave, to address the party as-
sembled, and render them some explanation of the phenomena
they had witnessed. The Brahmin without hesitation answered:
"Does not God effect all these magical deeds every day before your
eyes, and yet you marvel not at their occurrence? The only dif-
ference between His procedure and that of the magician is, that
God gives to everything its due share of life, sufficient for its
growth or its maintenance in being. The magician imparts a
greater share of life than originally belonged to the object, and
calling upon the help of spirits good or bad, just as he may him-
self be, they, too, bring a share of their life principle.
"Thus the magician's art consists in accumulating and dis-
pensing more of the life fluid than nature herself yields up with-
out his aid. Whatever nature does slowly by processes of growth
and change, the magician does rapidly by aid of his larger stock
of materials to work with." Here one of the missionaries present
inquired whether such performances were not in direct opposition
to the will of God, since had he designed them for the use of man,
he would have himself effected them by processes of change as
rapid as those which the magician effected,
•
172
ART MAGIC.
"See yonder buildings," responded the Brahmin, pointing to
the city with its glittering domes and Temple ornaments flashing
in the sunlight. "God made the stones and the copper, the brass
and silver, but He did not put them together, nor form them into
a city. He gives the riches of the earth, and by inspiration
poured into the intellect of man, points the way to achievement,
but he leaves man to do the work, and whatever man can do, that
is not hurtful to his fellow man, he ought to do, for the will of
man is only a miniature reflection of the will of God."
"Look at these roses! They were once a small shoot, a mére
petty twig, placed in the ground. Left to the natural processes
of growth, they would slowly raise into the air, gather up nourish-
ment from the earth, light and heat from the atmosphere. All
this they do because their life Akasa works within the shoot, and
expands it into a tree, the tree into leaves, branches, flowers and
seeds; but if that small twig, placed in the earth, is fed and irri-
gated by the Akasa which men and spirits pour out upon it in
vast abundance, then it waits not for the processes of nature, but
springs up at once, shoots flowers, bears seed and dies, and all
within the hour, instead of within the month, as the slowcr
growth of nature would have ordered."
"But the buried Fakeer," questioned the officers.
"He is a man in whom the body, reduced by fasting and years
of penance, scarcely inheres together. Nothing but bone, sinew
and attenuated matter is there. He is all Akasa-all force, all
life. When they laid him in the tomb, his Soul was freed by en-
trancement. His body was left alive, 'tis true, for a small portion
of Akasa remained-enough to keep the particles of matter to-
gether.
"To prevent these from being excited to motion, the ears,
nostrils and mouth were stopped with wax, no air could enter,
and so the body remained intact; its functions were all suspended
at a single point, and no attrition could take place between the
atoms. It was as if a clock had been stopped, and then placed in
an exhausted receiver where no action of the outer air could reach
it or cause its particles to wear; remove it from its encasement,
and it resumes its action just where it was stopped.
"You saw the Fakeer exhumed, the wax removed, and the
natural air admitted to the natural passages. The friction used,
re-awoke the slumbering functions; the Akasa of those around
poured in in streams upon the receptive form. The Soul, warned
of the period when it must return, is attracted back to the unin-
jured body, and so re-entering, the man resumes the machinery of
life just where the clock was stopped. But the officers would
>>
ART MAGIC.
173
know if they could be inhumed or any ordinary man, by such a
process, and then resume their earthly life again?
The Brahmin smiled, and gazing upon their stalwart forms,
replied: "Their souls inhered too closely to their bodies.
Their souls were not half grown, their bodies overgrown.
No; the trance with them could not be complete, and the
life principle of their spiritual bodies was so closely interwoven
with the particles of matter, that the soul could only be com-
pletely removed from the body by death, and anything that closed
up the avenues of life in those bodies would so injure them as to
crush out the soul altogether." "No! no! It was none but the
half dead ascetic to whom such contempt of material laws was
possible."
Every feat of magic was the triumph of spirit over matter.
But the spirit must be very strong and the hindrances of matter
slight before those triumphs could be attained. The officers re-
tired, but no tidings have ever been circulated concerning the
fasts by which any of their number prepared themselves for living
inhumation. This Brahmin teaches that for the performance of
gross ponderous work, the more earthly and earth-bound spirits
are in attendance, whilst to aid in illusory, magical or elementary
feats of power, such as flying, walking on air, resisting fire, pro-
ducing metals, causing plants to spring up suddenly, or transport-
ing objects through the air; elementary spirits called in the East
Ginn or Genii, are always ready to aid, and that the control which
man exercises over them and the labors which they perform in his
service, benefit and aid them to advance in the scale of being.
These beings abound in the elements, are very strong, and
prone to cling to man as a God and a great Ruler. If he delight
in evil, the evil in nature flies to him as the needle springs to the
magnet, whilst pure planetary spirits, good angels, or souls of the
just and true, are equally repelled by the evil influences which
evil men give off.
"Forsaken of God-abandoned by my good angel!” cries the
evil doer. Never so! but evil causes man to flee from God and
repels good angels from him. He shuts the door against them
and retires into the citadel built up of his own bad purposes and
strengthened by the sympathy of equally degraded natures. Man
fear thyself! and tremble only before the Devil of thine own con-
ception! All men, good and evil, can attain to high spiritual
powers by the physical processes so elaborately described in this
section, but few can attain to the highest good which may exist in-
dependently of spiritual power at all. Still, to those who desire
it, the means are herein made plain. No item must be disre-
174
ART MAGIC.
garded or thrown away as an idle superstition. Occult powers
reside in planets, stars, suns, systems, inhere in atmospheres,
plants, stones, minerals, waters, vapors, and living beings. Na-
ture ever demands an equilibrium. Matter or spirit will ever be
in the ascendant in every human organism, and whichever pre-
vails draws from all surrounding objects a quality of force to
match its own.
Thus the gross man, the coarse feeder, the sensualist, the
miser, find throughout nature the quality of element and the
character of spiritual life that feed their specialty and pander to
their tastes. The same law applies to the reverse of this position,
and therefore it is, that a saint or the worst of sinners may each
attain to magical powers; but magic is the sunbeam which gives
life to the blooming rose when it falls on the rose germ, or quick-
ens into being the noisome fungus when its radiance falls on
heaps of corruption.
The forces of spirit are designed for good and use, or they
could not be accessible to man. In ages yet to come, when the
earth and its living freight are all spiritualized, that which is
magic now will be ordinary practice then. The heavens will kiss
the earth, and the thin veil which divides the inhabitants of either
realm will become so transparent that every eye will pierce its
mystery and rejoice in its holy revealments. Until then "knowl-
edge is power," and all men by knowledge may achieve the power
· of practicing art magic.
ART MAGIC.
175
SECTION XII.
MAGIC AMONG THE MONGOLIANS.
THE CHINESE'S GREAT DEVOTION TO MAGIC-SPIRITISM OF TWO DIS-
TINCT KINDS-THE PERFORMANCE OF EXTRA MUNDANE FEATS
AND SPIRIT COMMUNION THROUGH SPIRITUAL GIFTS.
Few nations of the East exhibit a greater amount of devotion
to magic than the Chinese, a people whose antiquity is the prob-
lem of history, whose priority of origin disputes the palm even
with India, yet as far back as history can trace or tradition bear
witness of, up to the present day, China, with all its surrounding
Mongolian sister nationalities, has inseparably blended its relig
ious belief with faith in spiritism. Mongolian spiritism divides
itself into two kinds; the one is the performance of extra mun-
dane acts or feats of magical power, the other, communion with
spirits procured through what is now understood to be natural
spiritual endowments. Although there is the closest resemblance
between the magical practices of the Mongolians, and the East In-
dians, it would be impossible to overlook the spiritism of so vast
a nation as that of China, and one in which its practices are so
widely engrafted in the people's nature. The magic of the Mon-
golians, like that of the East Indians, is in a measure the results
of their religious faith.
Vi
Buddhism, the ruling faith of the Mongolians, is said to be
professed by over four hundred millions of the world's inhabit-
ants, or about one-third of the human race, and to have been im-
ported by Fo, from Thibet, some four thousand years ago. The
doctrines of Buddhism differ widely from Brahminism. It
teaches the total annihilation of Caste, the unity of the whole hu-
man family; it is kind, just, merciful-conservative of life-re-
specting the rights of every creature, from the highest man to the
lowest worm-from the mammoth to the animalculae. It admits
of no superiority except in morals, no difference, save in educa-
tional culture and degrees of civilization. Its sweet and gracious
176
ART MAGIC.
teachings divide the power with Brahminism in India, where in
all probability it originated, and spread over the territory inhab-
ited by the Mongol tribes. The Buddhists allege that to those
who in truth, purity and constancy, put in force the doctrines of
Buddha, the following ten powers will be granted:
1. They know the thoughts of others.
2. Their sight, piercing as that of the celestials, beholds with.
oul mist all that happens in the earth.
3. They know the past and present.
4. They perceive the uninterrupted succession of the Kalpas
or ages of the world.
5. Their hearing is so fine that they perceive and can inter-
pret all the harmonies of the three worlds and the ten divisions of
the universe.
}
6. They are not subject to bodily conditions, and can assume
any appearance at will.
7. They distinguish the shadowings of lucky or unlucky
words, whether they are near or far away.
8. They possess the knowledge of all forms, and knowing
that form is void, they can assume every sort of form; and know-
ing that vacancy is form, they can annihilate and render nought
all forms.
9. They possess a knowledge of all laws.
10. They possess the perfect science of contemplation.
With all this vast claim for occult power, their means of at-
taining it are chiefly moral, and will be found in the following.
transcript of their belief:~
"From its birth to the present moment, true Buddhism
stands alone as a religion without offerings. It is confined to
good works, to prayers, to charity, to meditation, to the presenta-
tion of fruits and flowers in the temples of the Most High. Bud-
dhist priests perform few, if any functions that are sacerdotal;
they are confraternities of pious men who live on alms, who act as
patterns of the sternest forms of self-renunciation, or as teachers.
of the highest and purest morality. They are celibates who de-
vote themselves wholly to religion; who abstain from animal food,
and who drink only water; who live in nervous fear lest they may
destroy even the life of an insect."
It will thus be seen that the contemplative life, the prac-
tices of asceticism, chastity, purity and good works are made the
foundation stones of the extraordinary powers attained to by
numbers of the Buddhist priests, no less than subordinate person-
ages in that beautiful system of belief.
The doctrine which assumes that the soul of their great
-
ART MAGIC.
177
founder, Fo, or Buddha, is not only re-incarnated in the great -
High Priest and Ruler of their nation, the grand Lama, but that
his divine spirit may also be distributed through thousands and
tens of thousands of such subordinates as devote themselves to a
religious life, has flooded China, Japan, Tartary and Thibet with
Lamas, who swarm in every district and city of Mongolian rule.
Like the Fakeers of India, the Dervishes of Egypt, and the Chris-
tian Friars of the Middle Ages, these Lamas represent every grade
of intelligence, every class, from the richest to the poorest, and
every quality of character from the most pious to the most de-
graded and impious. Lamaseries are established all through the
Mongolian Territories, where the good and the true, no less than
the ignorant and vicious, can receive their education and become
fitted for the work, if not the duties of their semi-priestly office,
and thus it is that thousands who are too lazy to devote them-
selves to mechanical toil, or others who are simply ambitious to
excel in the arts of the magician, fortune-teller, or wonder-worker,
enter these lamaseries and spend years in the routine of their dis-
cipline, for the sake of going forth with the coveted prestige of
Lamaism. Many of these disciplinarians prove themselves to be
excellent mediums and natural spiritists; a still larger number
endure frightful penances, and pass years in self-mortification and
abstinence, simply for the purpose of becoming great wonder-
workers, and earning a miserable and precarious living in the arts.
described in our last section, namely in fire-eating, the mutilation
of the body without ultimate injury to the tissues, the execution
of great magical feats, even the power which many of these Lamas
actually possess, of transporting themselves invisibly from place
to place through the air. The capacity to work these marvels,
like the most ponderable and astonishing feats of physical force.
effected in the presence of modern spirit media, are never enacted
through the most refined, or philosophical of the great Brother-
hood. They are assumed to be produced by strong and earth-
bound spirits, also by the Ginn or evil Elementaries, who abound
in the lower parts of the earth, and who delight to serve mortals
as gross and physically inclined as themselves.
<
During the author's residence in Tartary, he witnessed feats
of magic which could scarcely be credited, yet, though the media
through whom they were produced, had led ascetic lives, and
changed their physical systems by long years of self-inflicted tor-
tures, they were never highly intellectual persons, and rarely en-
dowed with qualities which entitled them to much respect.
In the magical practices of these lamas they generally use
fumigations consisting of narcotic or stimulating vapors, and
178
ART MAGIC.
I
drinks of the same character. Also they induce ecstasy by loud
noise, the beating of drums, crashing of cymbals, braying of wind
instruments, shrieks, yells, prayers, and invocations, far more cal-
culated as one would suppose, to scare off the Gods, than to at-
tract them. Sometimes they dance in circles, or spin around un-
til they drop down in foaming epilepsy, or insensibility.
The Chinese sacred books abound with directions for the in-
vocation of spirits, and the use of talismans, spells, amulets, fumi-
gations, and other means of inducing trance, and spiritual vision.
A vast number of both males and females in China are nat-
ural mediums. Writing, rapping, seeing, trance, and even mate-
rializing mediums abound in the Mongol Empire, and in nearly
all the exhibitions of spirit power, the media are more strongly
gifted, more honest and far more reliable, than the professional
spiritists of Europe and America.
Visitors in some parts of the "Celestial Empire" are invited
to witness trials of strength between parties of spirits controlling
rival practitioners.
The author was present on an occasion when a large eight-
oared boat being brought into a public hall in broad daylight,
where about a hundred spectators were ranged around the sides of
the hall, leaving the central space free, four Lamas and their at-
tendants followed the boat, and placed it at one end of the cleared
space. One of the party then read aloud the names of eight
spirits engraved on the oars, and as each name was pronounced,
that one of the oars thus inscribed was tossed up in the air, and
then returned to its appropriate place by invisible power.
Subsequently, certain spirits responding to the cries of the
Lamas who invoked them by turns, began to move the boat; sorne
sliding it the entire length of the hall, others moving it backwards
or forwards a few feet; and others only an inch or two from its
place. After these feats were ended, the four Lamas produced
miniature pagodas beautifully carved and fitted up, in which, as
they claimed four genii or familiar spirits had taken up their resi-
dences. These toy houses being placed each on a stand, and ap-
propriate invocations having summoned the invisible tenants,
one of them commenced by swiftly carrying his pagoda up to the
ceiling, where it remained like a fly adhering to its roof and pin-
nacles for upwards of twenty minutes, when it was as swiftly and
suddenly replaced. At this token of spiritual power, the other
Lamas redoubled their songs and incantations, calling upon their
familiars by name, to put their successful rival to shame by their
superior power. Moved as it would seem by these representa-
-
·
ART MAGIC.
179
tions, one of the invisibles slid his house along the floor, causing
it to gyrate like a dancer; still another responded by jumping his
house about in the air, mimicking the well-known movements of
the grasshopper, after which creature the Ginn supposed to be
operating was named. The fourth spirit who was called after
the sacred Stork, caused his mansion to float majestically some
six feet in the air; there it became balanced, then fluttering like
the wings of a bird it swooped around in a circle, and lighted
back again upon its stand.
At the conclusion of each feat the spectators clapped,
shrieked and uttered yells of commendation, at which the pagodas
were moved to bend with all the grace and aplomb of a popular
dancer receiving the plaudits of a fashionable assembly. During
these performances, the Lamas stood apart, each chanting his
prayer or invocation, whilst the space devoted to the exhibition
was parted off with a rope, making it impossible for any one to in-
tervene with, or disturb the operations of the invisible performers.
In the mountain regions of Burmah, reside a people called
Karens, who dwell in small settlements, or villages, and live lives
of singular temperance, purity and honesty. Their religious
teachers are called Bokoos, or Prophets, and their office is to in-
culcate moral principles, predict the future, and interpret the
will of the Great Spirit. Besides these are an inferior class called
Wees, or Wizards, who cure the sick by spells and charms, fly
through the air, bewitch cattle or exorcise the evil spirit out of
them, besides performing, or professing to perform, other very
wonderful things.
A Christian Missionary, who had long been a resident
amongst these simple mountaineers, assured the author their
faith in the presence and ministry of the spirits of their ancestors
was immovable. They declared they saw them by night as well
as day; they conversed freely with them by signal knockings,
voices, the ringing of bells and sweet singing. They performed
works of good service and warned their friends of danger, death
and sickness. One of the Christian Missionaries, writing to the
New York Examiner, a strictly religious paper, says:
"The Karens believe that the spirits of the dead are ever
abroad on the earth. 'Children and great grandchildren!' said
the elders, 'the dead are among us. Nothing separates us from
them but a white veil. They are here, but we see them not.'
Other genera of spiritual beings are supposed to dwell also on the
earth; and a few gifted ones (mediums, in modern language), have
eyes to see into the spiritual world, and power to hold converse
with particular spirits. One man told my assistant-he professed
180
ART MAGIC.
to believe in Christianity, but was not a member of the church-
that when going to Matah he saw on the way a company of evil
spirits encamped in booths. The next year, when he passed the
same way, he found they had built a village at their former en-
campment. They had a chief over them, and he had built him-
self a house, larger than the rest, precisely on the model of the
teacher's without, but within, divided by seven white curtains.
into as many apartments. The whole village was encircled by a
cheval de frise of dead men's bones. At another time, he saw an
evil spirit that had built a dwelling near the chapel at Matah, and
was engaged with a company of dependents in planting pointed
stakes of dead men's bones all around it. The man called out to
the spirit: 'What do you mean by setting down so many stakes
here? The spirit was silent, but he made his followers pull up a
part of the stakes.
"Another individual had a familiar spirit that he consulted,
and with which he conversed; but on hearing the Gospel, he pro-
fessed to become converted, and had no more communication with
his spirit. It had left him, he said; it spoke to him no more.
After a protracted trial, I baptized him. I watched his case with
much interest, and for several years he led an unimpeachable
Christian life; but on losing his religious zeal, and disagreeing
with some of the church members, he removed to a distant village,
where he could not attend the services of the Sabbath; and it was
soon after reported that he had communications with his familiar
spirit again. I sent a native preacher to visit him. The man
said he heard the voice which had conversed with him formerly,
but it spoke very differently. Its language was exceedingly pleas-
ant to hear, and produced great brokenness of heart. It said:
'Love each other. Act righteously; act uprightly,' with other ex-
hortations such as he had heard from the teachers. An assistant
was placed in the village near him, when the spirit left him again,
and ever since he has maintained the character of a consistent
Christian."
In a series of articles written for the North China Herald,
by the celebrated eastern traveler, Dr. Macgowan, there occurs
the following description of spirit writing-a mode let it be re-
membered, by no means rare in the present day in China, Japan
and Thibet:
•
"The table is sprinkled with bran, flour or other powder, and
two persons sit down at opposite sides, with their hands placed
upon the table. A basket, of about eight inches diameter, such
as is commonly used for washing rice, is now reversed, and laid
down with its edges resting upon the tips of one or two fingers of
ART MAGIC.
181
the media. This basket is to act as penholder; and a reed or style
is fastened to the rim, or a chopstick thrust through the inter-
stices, with the point touching the powdered table. The ghost
in the meantime has been duly invoked with religious ceremonies,
and the spectators stand around waiting the result in awe-struck
silence. The result is not uniform. Sometimes the spirit sum-
moned is unable to write, sometimes he is mischievously inclined,
and the pen-for it always moves-will make a few senseless
flourishes on the table, or fashion sentences that are without
meaning, or with a meaning that only misleads. This, however,
is comparatively rare. In general, the words traced are arranged
in the best form of composition, and they communicate intelli-
gence wholly unknown to the operators. These operators are
said to be not only unconscious, but unwilling participators in the
feat. Sometimes, by the exercise of a strong will, they are able to
prevent the pencil from moving beyond the area it commands by
its original position; but, in general, the fingers follow it in spite
of themselves, till the whole table is covered with the ghostly
message."
Numerous other modes of consulting spirits are in vogue
amongst the Mongols. Where the Prophet, or Bokt, is good,
pious or sincere, such an one works not for pay, and can scarcely
be induced to accept of the presents that are tendered to him. A
faithful devotee of this character having been sent for to cure a
case of obsession from an evil spirit that had befallen a favorite
servant of the author's, commenced by practicing on him with
prayers, invocations, and the usual methods of exorcism. Find-
ing that the demon, who especially manifested his influence
in violent and dangerous attacks of epilepsy, resisted all the good
man's efforts to dismiss him on pious grounds, this true heathen
(Christian, of course, we dare not call him) undertook to fast for
nine consecutive days, in order, as he said, that he might expel
the demon by the spirits of power which Fo would only accord to
the self-sacrificing.
For nine days this angel of mercy shut himself up in a re-
mote chamber, subsisting on very small rations of bread, water and
a little rice, carefully excluding the light of day, and spending
nearly the whole time, except when sleeping from utter prostra-
tion, in long and endless repetition of prayers suitable for his pur-
pose. On the ninth night after his volutary incarceration, he
came forth with a stern countenance, a sparkling glance, erect
form, and a voice which sounded strangely sweet and mellow, as
he chanted his sonorous litanies to his God. The unfortunate
patient happened to be in one of his worst crises as the self-de-
182
ART MAGIC.
voted physician made his appearance. Laying his hands on the
man's head, with a voice of thunder he commanded the demon to
depart from him, and afflict him no more. Almost at the instant
this rite commenced, the sufferer fell into a sound and tranquil
slumber, from which he did not awake till twelve hours after-
wards, when he arose refreshed and well, and never from that
hour was troubled with his tormentor again.
When will our Christian physicians make similar sacrifices,
and produce similar results to their suffering victims?
The processes by which the most stupendous powers are ex-
cited have been already sufficiently dilated on. They vary not
in any land, although in India they become tinctured with the
sublime and metaphysical nature of a great and elevated nation of
thinkers, whilst amongst the Mongols, the more mechanical, and
even childlike characteristics of the people lend to their spiritism
an air of superstition, or blemish it with an appearance of leger-
demain. Jugglery and sleight of hand are accomplishments pe-
culiarly in accordance with the supple forms and imitative na-
tures of these ingenious people, but none can remain long in their
midst, or study their history and manners attentively, without
perceiving that all the efforts of Christians to quench the spirit
that is amongst them, and teach them to despise prophesyings,
have failed, and will fail evermore.
Spiritism ever has, ever will find its most fertile soil in the
magical East. That land of Prophets, Saviors, Avatars, and Ori-
ental Mystics-that land where matter bends and sways in the
grasp of mind as a pigmy writhes in the clutch of a giant; a land
where magic shoots up in every plant; gleams forth in many col-
ored fires from lustrous gems and glittering minerals; where stars
tell their tales of eternity undimmed by the thick vaporous airs
of equatorial lands, and the sun and moon imprint their magical
meanings and solemn glories in beams whose radiance goes direct
to the inner consciousness of awe-struck worshipers.
Let the magic of the Orient combine with the magnetic spon-
taneity of Western Spiritism, and we may have a religion whose
foundations laid in science, and stretching away to the heavens
in inspiration, will revolutionize the opinions of ages, and estab-
lish on earth the reign of the true Spiritual Kingdom.

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184
ART MAGIC.
;
SECTION XIII.
MAGIC IN EGYPT.
Sistrum- Virgin's Symbol,

Celestial Mother.
The immense prestige acquired by ancient Egypt for unap-
proachable excellence in every department of art and science, has
invested the name and history of this land with a reputation for
magical wisdom which raises expectation to the very highest
pitch. A general impression seems to prevail moreover, that
Egyptian monuments, incomprehensible hieroglyphics, and
buried crypts conceal treasures of magical lore unknown to other
nations and inaccessible to modern research. But assuming, as
there is good reason to do, that Hindostan preceded Egypt in the
dynastic order of ancient civilization, India surviving, although
Egypt is no more, still preserves the originals of those splendid
myths which became the undertones of Egyptian sacerdotal sci-
ence. And again, how many of the wisest and most philosophic
minds of Greece visited the Egyptian priests, sat at their feet,
ART MAGIC.
185
and carried from thence those systems of esoteric knowledge
which became the corner-stones of Grecian mysteries? Those
mysteries are such to us no longer, and we lose nothing of Egyp-
tian wisdom because we find it filtered through Greek philosophy.
Neither must we forget that the founders of the Jewish nation
were residents in Egypt during some portion at least of her most
triumphant periods of civilization, and when this captive people
were led forth by Moses, he carried with him as much of the far-
famed wisdom of the Egyptians as a well instructed Hierophant
could obtain.
+
Believing, as the best authenticated fragments of history
would imply, that this same Moses claimed by the Jewish people.
as their own countryman was in reality an Egyptian priest, and an
Adept of the famous school of Heliopolis, we marvel not to find
every item of Jewish religious worship stamped with Egyptian
characteristics; hence, too, we see little ground for the general be-
lief that Egypt conserved within herself sacerdotal mysteries ut-
terly unknown to cotemporary nations of antiquity, or that those
elements of mystic wisdom for which she became so famous, per-
ished with her, and have been lost in the night of her antiquity.
We believe that the veil of Isis concealed the mysteries of nature
only from the vulgar who were unable to comprehend them,
whilst the wisdom so hermetically sealed against all but the In-
itiates, was preserved in the sum of Grecian philosophy, which is
itself by no means inaccessible to the student of the nineteenth
century.
As to the ornaments of which the Hebrews spoiled the
Egyptians on the eve of their exodus, they are perfectly well un-
derstood to signify in Cabalistic language, the external rites and
ceremonies of their religious worship. And all these are as fully
revealed in the writings of the Hebrew prophets and the Book of
Revelations, as they were, when breathed into the ears of trem-
bling Neophytes by the Hierophants of Egypt. Whilst there-
fore, we may admire, wonder, philosophize, and crown the land
of the Nile with a mastery over arts and sciences unknown in any
other country or time, whilst we gaze on her stupendous ruins
with an awe and wonder that almost revives the belief that, the
sons of God did take them wives of the daughters of men, and in
those days there were giants; still, we cannot admit that the ge-
nius of great Egypt has perished, or that her understanding of
nature's most occult laws lays buried in secret crypts or veiled hi-
eroglyphics, forever remaining the unsolved problems of history.
The indisputable parity between Hindoo and Egyptian sac-
erdotalism, justifies the belief of many eminent scholars, that the
186
ART MAGIC.
+
famous books of Hermes, so pretentiously heralded forth to all
subsequent ages as the writing of Thoth, "the secretary of the
Gods," found their originals in the still existing four books of the
Hindoo Vedas, and that those originals still exist, although the
copies are said to have been lost, or only reproduced in fragments,
treasured up as the most priceless gems of antiquity. The books
of Hermes, like the Vedas, were divided into four parts, and sub-
divided into forty-two volumes.
They treated of the same subjects, were carried in procession
in the same order, and by the same classes of Priests and Proph-
ets. The treatises claimed from time to time to be reproduced as
Hermetic wisdom, are direct paraphrases of Vedic writings, and
the chief difference that exists between them is the value which
posterity attaches to that which is unattainable, and the indiffer-
ence with which it regards the treasures it still possesses.
There
can be no question that the Jewish Ark of the Covenant found
its model in the Egyptian Oracleship; that the chest held so sa-
cred as the repository of nameless treasures carried about in the
celebration of Bacchic rites, is paraphrased from a similar instru-
ment used in the Osiric mysteries, whilst the resemblance between
the solar and phallic emblems, crosses, obelisks, pyramids, and
temple services of India and Egypt, are too obvious to escape the
notice of the most superficial observer. The sequence of descent
from the rites performed at Benares to those of Heliopolis, and
from thence to Eleuesis, may be clearly traced; in a word, whilst
India may be regarded as the fatherland of myth and sacerdotal
mystery, the entire East, including great Egypt, once splendid
Babylonia, Palestine, Persia, Greece and Rome, all may be re-
garded as tributary nations, amongst whom the ages have parted
the garments of the great Hindoo Messiah, the oft reincarnated
original of all the worshiped Sun-gods of antiquity. We are
aware that to many, these assertions will be deemed worthy only
of an anonymous writer. "God understands!" And in that
brief sentence is our recompense for all the misapprehension and
wrong that our words may suffer at the hands of humanity.
Gig
The specialties of Egyptian magic were these. The priests.
of Egypt, who were the sole conservators of all the religious, spir-
itual, and metaphysical knowledge of their land-were perfect
Adepts in the two great spiritual forces now called Magnetism
and Psychology. In Egypt, as in India, the priestly caste in-
cluded many grades, the highest of whom were the Prophets, a
class who were obviously synonymous with the modern "Spirit
mediums," that is persons in whom the gifts of the spirit were im-
planted by nature, and that without processes of artistic culture.
ART MAGIC.
187
.
Amongst the lower orders were those wonder workers who
have obtained the name of magicians, and beneath them again,
and not necessarily included in the priestly hierarchy at all, were
itinerant ascetics, who performed marvelous feats by reason of
natural magical endowments, quickened by culture and abstinent
practices, called Dervishes, a class which finds an abundant repre-
sentation throughout Egypt to this day..
The Egyptian priest, although an ascetic and rigid disciplin-
arian, did not practice the life-long and abnormal self-mortifica-
tions endured by the Fakeers of India and some of the Lamas of
China. They were highly educated scientific men, and learned
by experience that more potential virtues existed in nature, than
were to be eliminated from the human body in a starved and mu-
tilated condition. They understood the nature of the load-
stone, the virtues of mineral and animal magnetism, which,
together with the force of psychological impression, constituted
a large portion of their theurgic practices. They perfectly un-
derstood the art of reading the inmost secrets of the Soul, of im-
pressing the susceptible imagination by enchantment and fasci-
nation, of sending their own spirits forth from the body as clair-
voyants, under the action of powerful will-in fact, they were
masters of the arts now known as Mesmerism, Clairvoyance,
Electro-biology, etc.
They also realized the virtues of magnets, gems, herbs, drugs
and fumigations, and employed music to admirable effect. The
sculptures, which so profusely adorn their temples, bear ample
witness to their methods of theurgy and medical practice, for
which their renown is immortal.
Their sacerdotal system was both exoteric and esoteric, and
divided into speculative philosophy and practical magic.
The nature of their Theosophy we have already sketched out
in earlier sections, treating of the astronomical religion and the
worship of the powers of nature, especially of the generative
functions.
In these systems the whole arcana of Egyptian wisdom was
to be found. Their hierarchy of Gods, Goddesses, and intermedi-
ate spiritual agencies were derived from these systems of worship.
All their grandest temples and priestly orders were devoted to
the worship of the spiritual Sun, of whom the majestic god of
day was but the external and physical type.
Every star, planet and element was impersonated in some
form; hence, they found that immense range of correspondences
in nature which impressed a sacred idea on so many animals,
birds, insects, reptiles and plants.
188
ART MAGIC.
*
The different powers and functions of Divinity that they im-
agined to be manifest in these objects, excited their reverential
feelings, not the objects themselves.
The sacred triangle, representative throughout the East of
the masculine principle of generation-the Yoni, circle, lozenge,
or horizontal line, significant of the feminine principle, these,
with crosses of every variety, indicative of the same generative
functions, were esteemed by the Egyptians as most sacred symbols
and will be found interspersed in all their sculptures.
Isis, the maternal principle in nature, was very commonly
represented as a hawk-headed Deity, from the sacredness attached
to the idea that the hawk was the bird of the Sun, could ascend
to its resplendent heights and gaze with undimmed eye into its
blazing beams. The serpent was esteemed in Egypt, as in other
oriental lands, as an emblem alike of the Deific principles of good
namely: immortality, rejuvenescence, wisdom and health, and of
death, terror, destruction and evil.
=
The famous Anubis, whose emblem so often occurs in Egyp-
tian sculptures, was derived from the Dog Star, whose sign in
the ascendant gave notice of the rising of the sacred River Nile,
worshiped for its beneficence in irrigating the land.
The Dog Star on this account was esteemed as the door-
keeper of the house of life. He held the key of the portals of
immortality. He was the invariable attendant of Osiris, the Sun-
God and Judge of the Dead; hence, the dog-headed Deity Anubis
is so constantly seen in connection with sculptures of religious
significance.

་
Anubis-Egyptian Amulet.
The sum of Egyptian Theogony is too well known to need
further description here; nor does it materially affect the magical
practices of this great people. We shall only, therefore, allude
ART MAGIC.
189
tó or describe it, inasmuch as it may throw light upon our special
subject.
The belief in Gods, Goddesses, good and evil spirits, the
immortality of the human soul, and its transmigrations for pur-
poses of probation and purification, the magical union between
the heavens and the earth, the influences of the sidereal heavens
upon nature and human destiny, the fall of the spirit from a
condition of innocence and bliss, and its ultimate restoration
through long series of probationary states-the spiritual powers
once enjoyed by the primeval man, now lost, or held latent, and
in part only, restored by the practice of a divine life and initiation
into the sacred mysteries; these were the main ideas which under-
laid Egyptian Theosophy, and connected its speculative science
with its magical practices.
A
The history of the Sun-God, the worship of the powers of
nature, the trials, discipline, probationary states, purification of
the human soul and its ultimate restoration to Deity, were the
doctrines taught through gorgeous dramatic representations, in
the famous mysteries of Isis and Osiris, to obtain a complete
knowledge of which many a valuable life was vainly sacrificed.
The full sum of magical knowledge was limited to the Kings and
Priests, and the latter, according to their worthiness and differ-
ent grades of rank, were instructed in all that appertained to the
subject. The rite of circumcision was an absolute prerequisite
to initiation, hence foreigners, who, having arrived at adult age,
when this rite might, as it often did, prove fatal, feared to encoun-
ter its hazards, and were seldom admitted to the mysteries. The
rite of circumcision was symbolized by a circle, and the Egyptian
priests wore a consecrated ring in memory of its performance.
The ceremonies of initiation into these mysteries are not,
as the would-be mystics of the present day imply, so entirely un-
known to this generation. Those who really understand the
esoteric meaning of Free Masonry, and the Apocalypse, might
discover therein a clue to the ancient mysteries, which few merely
exoteric or superficial thinkers dream of.
In the present limited treatise we can do no more than indi-
cate the general tenor of their conduct. They were as follows:
The Neophyte upon being presented to the attendant priest,
after having undergone a preliminary series of purifications by
bathing, fasting and prayer, was conducted before a masked tri-
bunal, each member of which was arrayed in funeral robes. On
every side of the vast hall of assemblage were emblems of death,
and sculptures representing the judgment through which de-
190
ART MAGIC.
parted spirits must pass ere they were permitted to quit the earth
and enter upon the next stage of the soul's probation.
The Neophyte's conductor wore the Dog's head mask of An-
ubis. The chief Judge, representing Osiris, was surrounded with
his bench of Assessors after the fashion of an actual judgment,
such as was held upon deceased persons ere their remains were
consigned to the sepulchre. After the usual funeral rites were
ended, the Neophyte was advised that he must now consider him-
self as dead to the world. All its pursuits, pleasures and attrac-
tions must be renounced forever, and an embryotic life must be
entered upon, preparatory to the expected new birth which he
was to attain through a long series of painful, fatiguing and soul-
distracting probations.
į
As an evidence of the power his Judges exerted over him,
the Neophyte was astonished, and in some instances horror-struck
to hear one after another-the Assessors starting forth as his ac-
eusers, each in turn rehearsing all the errors or shortcomings of
his past life, dragging to light even his secret desires, and the
hidden things of his inmost nature, thus proving the extraordi-
nary facility with which these great Adepts could clairvoyantly
perceive all secrets, and read the characters of men. After this,
long list of penances and acts of severest discipline were imposed
upon him. During this fearful trial the accused was not permit-
ted the slightest opportunity of rebutting the charges brought
against him, the strictest silence having been enjoined, all save
the tremendous oaths and self-invoked penalties which he was
called upon to pronounce, both on entering and quitting the
sacred presence.
From this point the Neophyte was required to abide in cer-
tain crypts sculptured over with animals, typical of the criminal
propensities to which the soul is addicted, and then instructed in
the snares and temptations to which the passions were liable to
seduce him. Thus he was taught how these passions might assail
him, and in what manner to subdue them by penances, prayers
and abstinence. Long hours spent in total darkness, processes of
discipline, and even severe scourgings, dramatic scenes represen-
tative of passages in the Sun-God's history, alternations of light
and darkness, pleasure and pain, fasting and feasting; some scenes
where the senses could be indulged, others where the means of
gratification were presented, but the Initiate's strength of resist-
ance was tested; all these were but preliminary exercises through
which the emaciated body and tortured soul was required to pass
ere he could become a Priest.
ART MAGIC.
191
Frequent appearances before the awful Assessors of the Soul
tested the actual progress he had made.
Sometimes the Neophyte was placed amongst the Judges,
and required to pronounce upon the hidden secrets of others'
souls, thus calling forth his intuitional powers, and strengthening
his clairvoyant perceptions. Periods arrived when the severity
of the discipline relaxed, and the tired spirit was magnetized to
the somnambulic or trance sleep by powerful Adepts, who, by
whispering in his slumbering ear, caused him to behold scenes
of beatific beauty and prophetically pointed out the glory of the
heavens to which conquerers in these fearful scenes of trial would
ultimately attain.
Although gleams of hope, visions of beauty, and short, fitful
periods of rest were thus permitted to the harassed spirits of as-
pirants for Priestly honors and magical knowledge, there were
many who sank under the tremendous discipline, and passed to
the higher life of the heavens ere its prototype was achieved on
earth. Those who survived and triumphantly endured to the end,
were, as it was said, "often seen to weep, but never to smile."
Their youth and all its blossoming fragrance was crushed out, and
ever after they were stern, abstracted and isolated ascetics.
One stage of the initiation-probably its happiest phase-
consisted in scientific schooling. The Neophyte having been
previously prepared in the elements of rudimentary learning,
was instructed in astronomy, astrology, medicine, mineralogy,,
mathematics, geometry and such arts and sciences as were
known to that age. Magnetism and psychology were meth-
ods not only practiced on himself, but every Initiate was re-
quired to practice it on others, and it was during these processes
that all the latent powers of the individual were expanded into
stupendous growths. If the Neophyte was found to be pos-
sessed of natural prophetic endowments, much of the rigor of
his probation was abated, and he was rapidly elevated to that
higher rank amongst the Priests assigned to prophets, through
whom the most transcendent spiritual powers were exhibited.
Egyptian scholars have stated to the author that it was because
Joseph, the Jew, was found to possess normally the spiritual pow-
ers which the Priests were compelled to acquire by art, that he
was received into royal favor, and permitted to exercise such un-
limited command; also, they alleged that Moses, or, in Egyptian
phraseology, Mises (signifying law-giver), was a Priest of Heli-
opolis, and being naturally endowed with wonderful mediumistic,
or spiritual gifts, he had excited the envy and jealousy of inferior
orders of the Priesthood. A great feud existed, they said, between
192
ART MAGIC.
the Priests of different Temples and Moses, in his strong reliance
on his invincible powers, revolted against the arbitrary authority
of some of his oppressors, and hence was banished to the Lepers
quarter, a punishment so abhorrent, that, in revenge, he made
his escape, joined the oppressed Israelitish captives, and retal-
iated upon his tyrannical countrymen by becoming the leader
and deliverer of their unhappy bondmen.
One of the chief duties of the Egyptian priesthood was the
cure of the sick, and for this purpose the Initiates were instructed
in the simple arts of medicine then known and the routine of
magnetic manipulations.
Loadstones were in constant use in temple service, and not
a few of the most remarkable feats of magic were due to the
knowledge of their use.
In therapeutic rites they were frequently held in the hands,
applied to different parts of the person, and enclosed in metal
balls held by the patients and connected by chains and rings.
Thus they were formed into a kind of rude battery, in which the
moisture of the body was deemed efficient in producing powerful
magnetism. Herbs, drugs, charms, amulets and sacred sentences
inscribed on scraps of papyrus were often enclosed in metal balls,
and applied to different portions of the body. Not unfrequently
the unfortunate patients were treated to boluses made of sacred
words and occult sentences.
Sometimes their afflicted members were bound up with these
talismanic papyri or their foreheads were sealed with them after
the fashion of the Pharisaic phylacteries.
Frequent bathings, the use of incense, spices, fragrant fumi-
gations, herb drinks, simple medicaments, charms, amulets, spells,
but above all, friction and magnetic manipulations, were the
means by which the Egyptians acquired a skill in the mastery
of disease, which has never been excelled, perhaps never equalled
in any age or country of the earth. One of their most potential
means of cure was to induce the famous Temple sleep practiced
at a later day so successfully by the Greeks. In this condition--
which was in fact somnambulic trance, procured through the
magnetism of powerful Adepts-the sleepers were advised by
whispers from the well-practiced watchers, to remember when
they awoke all that the Gods communicated to them.
In this way dreams were procured or veritable visions seen,
in which the patient received prescriptions, directions, and pro-
phetic revelations which the priests never failed to apply, deem-
ing this the most direct and infallible method of communicating
with the Gods and insuring a certain cure.
ART MAGIC.
193
We have said at the commencement of the second part of
this volume, that Magnetism and Psychology were the two great
columns that upheld the Temple of Spiritism.
Never was this sublime truth better understood and appre-
ciated than by the Priests of Egypt. Their manipulations, knowl-
edge of the occult virtues of stones, plants, vapors and magnets,
their psychological powers cultivated up to the very verge where
sanity ends and insanity begins, rendered them complete adepts
in those noble sciences, of which we, in the nineteenth century,
have but the slightest glimpses, but of which few save the in-
spired Mesmer have realized the full force since the ancient days.
of which we write. The chief process of initiation into the
splendid mysteries depended on these arts. Appeals to the senses
through delightful music, gorgeous scenery, dazzling lights, cim-
merian darkness, the horrors of impending death, the appearances
of frightful forms and ferocious beasts, the compulsion to ascend
perilous heights, and descend into awful and interminable depths,
the effects of solitude, fasting, scourgings, prayers, the sud-
den demand to explain the hidden thoughts of others, or execute
deeds of daring and hardihood-all these terrible trials and soul
disciplines, were means employed to evoke psychological powers
of the mightiest kind. This was the far-famed wisdom of the
Egyptians, these their means of evoking all the latent powers of
the mind, the triumphs of the spirit, the cure of the sick, and the
mastery of the occult forces of nature. It must be admitted that
in no nation of antiquity did such severe discipline and such in-
tense intellectual culture precede the initiatory rites of Priest-
hood. In India the only methods required, were the complete
subjugation of the senses, and the annihilation of the passions,
emotions, and attributes of matter; but the Egyptians were not
only taught to elevate the spirit above the realm of matter, they
were instructed how to call its highest powers into exercise. Their
intellects were cultured by the acquisition of useful knowledge.
The highest achievements of art were set before them. Science
was hunted down, captured and forced to yield up its most occult
revealments to the minds of these accomplished scholars.
·
Far deeper meanings than the multiplication or divisions of
numbers were discovered in mathematics.
The Egyptians determined accurately the numbers which
expressed men, Gods, the world and all things in the Universe.
The occult principles in geometry were dragged from their lurk-
ing places beneath lines, circles and angles, and the true basic
principles of world-building were revealed.
For thousands of years, the more than royal powers by which
194
ART MAGIC.
the Priests of Egypt ruled their land and held other nations trib-
utaries to their mental achievements, continued in full force.
For thousands of years this noble Caste retained their integrity,
maintained their justly acquired reputation for wisdom, and held
their position as the guides of kings, the counsellors of warriors,
the dictators of laws, the healers of the sick, Prophets of the fu-
ture, wonder-workers and interpreters of the will of Deity and the
ministrations of spirits.
Always ascetic, silent, true and faithful; their manners were
reserved and taciturn. They never smiled nor partook of the
amenities of social life and friendly intercourse. Cleanly, active,
pure and industrious; often tilling their own lands and taking
the severest of exercise in sunshine and storm, they seemed to
have completely ascended beyond the pains, penalties or inter-
ests of the world in their own persons, and only to be concerned
for the weal, woe, or elevation of their fellow creatures. A more
exalted race of men never won the secrets of eternity from the
Gods, or more completely took the kingdom of heaven by storm
through their own sublime powers.
Fascinating as are the researches connected with Egyptian
magic, it would be useless to pursue them farther as regards their
performance in ancient days. Those who pin their faith on Bibli-
cal accounts of the trial of magical power between Moses and the
Egyptian magicians, perceiving in the recorded triumphs of the
one, only the interference of their favorite God, and in the re-
corded failures of the other, the displeasure of the same partial
Deity, will arrive at a very poor and imperfect conception of the
truths which underlie the science of Egyptian magic. To the
Priest, or in fact to any well-informed inhabitant of Egypt at
this very day, the sudden visitation of lice, frogs, red rain colored
by fine sand to the appearance of blood, boils, blains, murrain
on cattle, or even the rapid approach and disappearance of thick
darkness, will be no new phenomena nor require the miraculous
intervention of a God to induce them. They may occur any day
and at all hours, and they only require an accurate knowledge of
atmospheric changes, and the natural conditions of the land, to
predict their appearance within any given space of time.
Those who have ever witnessed, as they may do any day in
the streets of Cairo, the marvels wrought by Egyptian serpent
charmers, those who have seen these itinerant performers wander-
ing through the cities, twining hissing snakes round their bare
necks and arms, arranging them in dancing order and forming
them into quadrille parties, will not question that Moses and
Aaron learnt quite enough of serpent proclivities during a very
ART MAGIC.
195
long residence in ancient Egypt, to contend successfully with
serpent charmers a little inferior perhaps to themselves-whilst
for the story of the slaughter of the first born of Egypt!—Pshaw!
the tale is too old and has been repeated too often to suit the pur-
poses of rival sects, to be believed now of any nation in particular.
One tning is certain. If the Pharaoh of the Jewish history did
actually cause this hideous drama to be performed in his own
land, he only paraphrased an old story long before imported
into his nation by the Hindoos, on whose most ancient temple
walls, sculptured representations of such a massacre may be
found, dating back to periods long before the Jews were known
as a people. The same remark applies to a similar tragedy said
to have been enacted at a still later date in Judea under the
reign of King Herod. If the writers of the New Testament had
taken the trouble to acquaint themselves with the true origin of
this fable, or had had skill and learning enough to have traced
it from Egypt into India, and from most ancient Indian Sculp-
tures into the realm of ancient mythical creations, it is doubtful
if they would have permitted the same audacious fiction to have
been twice repeated in the same volume.
Premising that we shall continue to write of Osiric mysteries
in those of Eluesis; Egyptian Astrology in its succession from
Chaldean Priests to Lilly and Dr. Dee; of Egyptian enchantments
and fascinations in the magnetic passes of Paracelsus and Mes-
mer, and of their Priests' clairvoyant perceptions of heaven and
earth, and all that in them is, in the equally grand and lucid reve-
lations of a modern seer, whose name is all too little remembered
and honored in his own country, but who will ere long be cited
in evidence of the undying perpetuity of spiritual gifts, we take
leave of a subject which the progress of ages and the divine econ-
omy of life assure us, we can never lose sight of in spirit, however
the external form of its original may be buried beneath the super-
incumbent masses of ruin and decay. The distinguishing feature
of Egyptian magic, was the union of occult with natural science,
the connection of super-mundane with mundane Spiritism. The
specialties of the Egyptian magician were patience, devotion and
self-sacrifice, in the acquirement of occult knowledge: skill in its
use, purity of life, fidelity to his calling, and educational culture
upreared on the foundation of natural gifts. These are the ele-
ments by which a true medium becomes an accomplished magi-
cian, and it was the Priests who rendered the name of Egypt
famous through all time, and their land the synonym of all that
is wise in intellect, stupendous in art, elevated in ideality and
divine in spiritual science.
196
ART MAGIC.
SUPPLEMENT TO SECTION XIII.
THE GREAT PYRAMID OF EGYPT-ITS POSSIBLE USE AND OBJECT.

MACROCOSMOS.
V
၂ဝ
Dragon's tail.
ତ
Dragon's head.
&
MICROCOSMOS
Man, the Microcosm of the Universe.
Amongst the intellectual triumphs achieved by the Egyptian
mind, must be reckoned the knowledge of Astronomy, Astrology,
Mathematics, Geometry, and a perception of that most profound
of all sciences, namely, the universal law of correspondence ex-
isting between the four branches of knowledge above named-
heaven, earth, man and all created things.
A
Those who search Egyptian records to their full depths, and
can learn above all other examples, to read perfectly the meaning
of the Great Pyramid, the object in its erection, the principles
upon which it was built, and the use for which it was designed,
will understand that man and his planet were fashioned in certain
proportions represented alike in numbers, colors, sounds, forms
and uses. Those who understand one department of natural sci-
ence, possess a key which unlocks the whole. Therefore, this
great Pyramid, built to illustrate the most perfect principles of
ART MAGIC.
197
astronomy, astrology, mathematics and geometry, ought to pos-
sess an interest in the eyes of the profound scholar, which removes
it forever from the common-place idea that this wonderful struc-
ture was erected merely as a huge royal sepulchre. The tomb
of its founder it undoubtedly became; for, in order to celebrate
all the mysteries of life and being-the special object for which
the great Pyramid was built-death must also take its place in
the pageant, and the stupendous history of the Soul's progress
through the section of eternity embraced by man's brief sojourn
on this planet, could not be completed, unless the Angel of Death
was assigned his niche in the splendid shrine.
It would be impossible, without entering into a labored and
abstract description first, of mathematical principles, and next,
of geometrical measurements, disquisitions which we are assured
would not be acceptable to at least four hundred and ninety of
our five hundred readers-to explain the methods by which the
Egyptians obviously arrived at the idea, that the entire order of
the Universe was based on a geometrical figure, and included
in a mathematical sum-also that in all departments of being
this figure would be found and this sum would exist. In this
volume we can but vaguely hint at this sublime discovery, but
whilst a vast mass of Egyptian vestiges disclose its prevalence,
the great Pyramid is in itself a complete illustration of the idea.
As regards popular theories concerning the design of this vast
monument, we must premise our own statements of belief hy
acknowledging that the number of wise and learned men who
have devoted time, talent and indomitable effort to research in
Egyptology, have justly earned the thanks of posterity, and the
respectful appreciation of all to whom their opinions have been
rendered. It is not with a view of combatting the theories ad-
vanced by eminent Egyptian discoverers then, that we now write,
but in view of the specialty of our subject we believe we have
an interest in this great Pyramid which has not been sufficiently
well considered by others, and therefore we venture to propound
the subjoined opinions concerning the uses for which this mar-
velous structure was designed.
TRA
The most ancient Theosophists, amongst whom we include
the Hindoos and Egyptians, taught that there existed through-
out all being that universal law of correspondence to which we
have before alluded.
All Eastern nations attributed the origin of life, light, mo-
tion and mind to the action of the Spiritual Sun, symbolized by
the physical orb of day.
Character, destiny, physical form and external appearances
198
ART MAGIC.
1
of all kinds were determined principally by astral as well as solar
influences.
Again it was argued that laws stern and immutable, prin.
ciples strict and unvarying, must underlie a scheme in which
millions of worlds are the actors, yet the whole drama is con-
ducted in the most unbroken system of harmony and power. To
arrive at any just idea of causation, it was believed that well de-
fined mathematical quantities and geometrical proportions must
be the underlying principles of this stupendous chain of being,
all moving, living, and acting severally and singly in the most
unbroken power and perfection.
Every sound in the universe must conform to the harmonic
rule, every shade of color must combine to produce the totality of
pure white light. Every creature must be a definite part, every-
thing an organ belonging to the vast whole. Fanciful methods
of interpreting this gigantic scheme by the laws of correspon-
dence must ever remain fanciful, unless the keystone was found
which should combine all the separated parts of the grand Temple
of humanity by one mighty arch. This fair white stone would
be neither oval nor square, yet its perfection would delight all
eyes, its beauty excite the wonder of all beholders. In its mystic.
proportions would be found the square, the triangle, the circle
and the line. In its combinations would be expressed the truths
of Astronomy, or the science of Astral worlds; Astrology, or the
science which connects the sum of worlds with the units, and
teaches how the mass influences and disposes of the integral parts;
Mathematics, or the science which assigns to each world its num-
ber, to each component part its unit, and finds in the whole sum
the just relations which cach unit sustains to the other, and to
the whole. Fourthly and last is the science of Geometry, by
which the universe is mapped out in lines, angles, squares and
circles, in which all the component parts are arranged in just re-
lations to each other, and united together in the grand circle of
Infinity.
Let not our readers regard these words as meaningless, nor
deem them the mere rhapsody of a transcendental writer:
"The stone that the builders reject becomes the head of the
""
corner.
For ages the great Pyramid has been this rejected stone.
The world has not known it, and the builders of science
have thrown it away amidst the rubbish of speculative possibil-
ities.
Long has it waited for recognition, and we deem we do not
ART MAGIC.
199
claim too much for it when we prophesy it will yet be read and
understood, and take its place as the keystone in the lost art,
which interprets the grand science of being as a Masonic Lodge.
All creation, the Universe itself, is the Lodge of the Divine Ma-
son, in which all the principles of science are found, from the
smallest atom to an Astral system. All are arranged in the exact
order of pure mathematics and geometry, and the great Pyramid
was built to represent this sublime truth, to celebrate its mys-
teries and perpetuate its meaning from generation to generation.
We shall now present to the reader a few excerpts from vari-
ous authoritative writers, whose opinions will strengthen the
theory vaguely intimated above.
Bishop Russell, of St. John's College, Oxford, England-
advancing the very just and reasonable hypothesis that the great
Pyramid of Cheops was not built by a descendant of the ancient
Egyptian dynasty, but rather by one who determined to illustrate
in its erection ideas imported from a still older and more advanced
civilization-says in his fine treatise on "Ancient Egyptian Monu-
ments":
a
"It is manifest at first sight that the dynasty of princes to
whom these stupendous works are ascribed were foreigners, and
also that they professed a religion hostile to the animal worship
of the Egyptians, for it is recorded by the historian (Herodotus)
with emphatic distinctness, that during the whole period of their
domination, the temples were shut, sacrifices prohibited, and the
people subjected to every species of calamity and oppression.
Hence it follows that the date of the pyramids must synchronize
with the epoch of the Shepherd Kings, those monarchs who were
held as an abomination by the Egyptians, and who, we may con-
fidently assert, occupied the throne of the Pharoahs during
part of the interval which elapsed between the birth of Abraham
and the captivity of Joseph. The reasoning now advanced will
receive additional confirmation when we consider that buildings
of the pyramidal order were not uncommon amongst the nations
of the East...... At the present day there are pyramids in India,
and more especially at Benares...... An edifice of the same kind
has been observed at Medun, in Egypt, constructed in different
stories or platforms, diminishing in size as they rise in height
until they terminate in a point the exact pattern of which was
supplied by the followers of Buddha in the plan of their ancient
pyramids, as these have been described by European travelers,
on the banks of the Ganges and the Indus."
The author of this work has himself visited and examined
these Hindoo structures, taking part in the rites of initiation still
200
ART MAGIC.
practiced in their ancient crypts, and that after a fashion which
clearly indicates that the great Pyramid of Cheops was designed
upon the same model and for the same purpose. Bishop Russell
adds:

ÿ{ok.
Her
Ì H
!الا.
The Tower af Babel.
"Such, too, is understood to have been the form of the Tower
of Babel, the object of which may have been to celebrate the mys-
teries of Sabaism (the astronomical religion), the purest supersti-
tion of the untaught mind. Mr. Wilford informs us that on his
describing the great Pyramid to several very learned Brahmins
they declared it at once to have been a Temple, and one of them
asked if it had not a communication with the River Nile. When
answered that such a passage was said to have existed, and that a
well was to be seen to this day, they unanimously agreed that it
was a place appropriated to the worship of Padma Devi, and that
the supposed tomb was a trough, which, on certain festivals, her
priests used to fill with water and the sacred lotus flowers.
"The most probable opinion respecting the object of this vast
edifice is, that it combines the double use of the sepulchre and
the temple, nothing being more common in all nations than to
bury distinguished personages in places consecrated to the rites of
worship. If Cheops intended it only for his tomb, what occasion
was there for the well at the bottom, the lower chamber with a
large niche in its castern wall, the long, narrow cavities in the
sides of the large upper room, encrusted over with the finest mar-
ble, or for the ante-chambers and lofty gallery with benches on
each side that introduce us into it? As the whole of Egyptian
Theology was clothed in mysterious emblems and figures, it seems
reasonable to suppose that all these turnings, apartments and se-
crets in architecture were intended for some nobler purpose, for
the catacombs are plain, vaulted chambers hewn out of the natu-
ral rock-and that the Deity rather, which was typified in the
outward form of this pile, was to be worshiped within."
Always desirous of presenting the views of such writers as
may prove more acceptable to our readers as authority than our-
ART MAGIC.
201
selves, we propose to render our own opinion on this recondite
subject in another quotation from a curious little work put forth
by an erudite American gentleman by the name of Stewart, on
the subject of Solar worship. This author says:
"It is important not to lose sight of the fact, that formerly
the history of the heavens, and particularly of the sun, was writ-
ten under the form of the history of men, and that the people
almost universally received it as such, and looked upon the hero
as a man. The tombs of the Gods were shown, as if they had
really existed; feasts were celebrated, the object of which seemed
to be to renew every year, the grief which had been occasioned by
their loss. Such was the tomb of Osiris, covered under those
enormous masses known by the name of the Pyramids, which the
Egyptians raised to the star which gives us light. One of these
has its four sides facing the cardinal points of the world. Each
of these fronts is one hundred and ten fathoms wide at the base,
and the four form as many equilateral triangles. The perpendic
ular height is seventy-seven fathoms, according to the measure-
ment given by Chazelles, of the Academy of Sciences. It results
from these dimensions, and the latitude under which this pyramid
is erected, that fourteen days before the Spring equinox, the pre-
cise period at which the Persians celebrated the revival of nature,
the sun would cease to cast a shade at midday, and would not
again cast it until fourteen days after the autumnal equinox.
Then the day, or the sun, would be found in the parallel or circle
of the Southern declension, which answers to 5 deg. 15 minutes;
this would happen twice a year-once before the spring, and once
after the fall equinox. The sun would then appear exactly at
mid-day upon the summit of this pyramid; then his majestic disk
would appear for some moments, placed upon this immense ped-
estal, and seem to rest upon it, while his worshipers, on their
knees at its base, extending their view along the inclined plane of
the northern front, would contemplate the great Osiris-as well
when he descended into the darkness of the tomb, as when he
arose triumphant. The same might be said of the full moon of
the equinoxes when it takes place in this parallel.
"It would seem that the Egyptians, always grand in their
conceptions, had executed a project (the boldest that was ever im-
agined) of giving a pedestal to the sun and moon, or to Osiris and
Isis; at midday for one, and at midnight for the other, when they
arrived in that part of the heavens near to which passes the line
which separates the northern from the southern hemisphere; the
empire of good from that of evil; the region of light from that of
darkness. They wished that the shade should disappear from all
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ART MAGIC.
the fronts of the pyramid at midday, during the whole time that
the sun sojourned in the luminous hemisphere; and that the
northern front should be again covered with shade when night
began to attain her supremacy in our hemisphere-that is, at the
moment when Osiris descended into hell. The tomb of Osiris
was covered with shade nearly six months, after which light sur-
rounded it entirely at midday, as soon as he, returning from hell,
regained his empire in passing into the luminous hemisphere.
Then he had returned to Isis, and to the God of Spring, Orus,
who had at length conquered the genius of darkness and winter.
What a sublime idea!"
1
That this great Pyramid was built by those who transcended
the ancient Egyptians in sacerdotal arts, sublimity of conception,
and the knowledge of the exact sciences, none can question. That
it was designed for a Temple as well as a tomb, all true Initiates
of Oriental mysticism will affirm. Its external form is the purest
example of mathematical rule and geometrical proportion in the
world. The perfect square is obtained at its base; perfect tri-
angles at each corner, and a perfect circle when it becomes, as
it was designed to be, the semi-annual pedestal of the Sun and
Moon.
According to the hypothesis of Prof. Piazza Smythe, the ob-
ject of this great Pyramid was to convert it into a granary in time
of famine, and a storehouse for the preservation of treasures in
the event of a general inundation, or other national calamity.
Others imagine it to have been simply designed as the tomb of its
founder Cheops, and a monument to his memory. These and
other opinions concerning its destined uses are supported with
more or less plausibility, Prof. Smythe, the chief supporter of the
first named hypothesis, triumphantly pointing to his wonderfully
adjusted scales of measurement, and actually proving at least to
his own satisfaction-that the huge porphyritic coffer, found in
the great upper chamber, lidless, open, empty, was designed for
an universal standard of measurement, and that its division into
certain nicely calculated parts, will coincide with the standard of
dry measure now in common use throughout Europe and Amer-
ica! A better understanding of the profound heights of meta-
physical speculation in which the Oriental mind employed itself
would have shown the learned Edinburgh Professor that this vast
edifice was designed as a sky and earth meter, not a mere standard
by which farmers and market women could adjust their bargains.
during centuries after the great founder had ascended to his place
of recompense and rest, and that the huge problem of scientific
discoverers, the mystic, lidless, wholly unornamented, uninscribed
ART MAGIC.
203
}
coffer, in the midst of the vast unornamented and uninscribed
chamber, was not intended as a model for all generations of suc-
ceeding corn and seedsmen, but as a sarcophagus for living men,
for those Initiates who were there taught the solemn problems of
life and death, and through the instrumentality of that very
coffer attained to that glorious birth of the Spirit-that second
birth so significantly described by the great Hierophant of Naza-
reth when he answered those who came to inquire of him by
night, saying: "Except a man be born again he cannot see the
kingdom of God."
Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot
enter the kingdom of God.
That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is
born of the spirit is spirit.
Marvel not that I said unto thee, ye must be born again…..
Nicodemus answered and said unto him, How can thesc
things be?
Jesus answered and said unto him, Art thou a Master in
Israel and knowest not these things?
We might ask the same question of the learned Professors,
but the succession of ideas revealing the sublime metaphysics of
being, transmitted from God through nature to his first Priests,
the ancient Priests of the Aryan tribes, from them to the Hin-
doos, on to the Egyptians, forward through Moses to the Hebrews,
the "Masters in Israel," and chief of them all, to the Essenes, of
whom Jesus of Nazareth was the best type these items of pure
metaphysics, form no part of the learning of great Edinburghy
professors, and so the huge sarcophagus of the mighty Temple of
Cheops, in which Initiates were designed to be typically born
again of water and of the Spirit, became a corn measurer in the
eyes of the great British mathematician! When an angel spoke
at the baptism of Jesus, the by-standers said, "it thundered."
Such by-standers are not all dead yet.
>>
The time was when Egypt, the young untutored child of the
desert, was not the Queen of arts and sciences, who sat enthroned
over the intellectual world. Then did she become the prey of the
spoiler. She was invaded and conquered by the "Pali"-Shep-
herd Kings or "Hyksos," who, according to Manetho, overran the
land, put the inhabitants to chains and tributary service, and be-
came for awhile the Rulers of Egypt. What this country was be-
fore the advent of these Shepherd Kings we can hardly conjec-
ture, but after their rule, every monument, pyramid, and in-
scription, bore the stamp of Oriental ideality. It needs not that
we particularize the details of these revolutionary changes; we
204
ART MAGIC.
only allude to them, to account for the wonderful parity which
exists between the religious opinions which we have enlarged
upon in our descriptions of Hindoo worship, and those which re-
appear in Egyptian Theogony. Let us, as Solomon says, consider
the conclusion of the whole matter. Cheops, a monarch of the
invading line, caused a temple to be erected in conformance with
those strict rules of science, revealed to the ancient Hindoo meta-
physicians, as the mode in which God worked.
The external of this gorgeous edifice was the symbolism of
the world; built upon the purest principles of Astronomy, As-
trology, Mathematics and Geometry.
The interior was a Temple designed to teach and illustratc
those sciences, and as the soul of man was regarded as an emana-
tion direct from Deity, so its progress through matter-its fall
from spiritual purity to an alliance with gross matter-its trans-
migration through various forms for the purposes of probation
and purification, its ultimate birth into manhood and-provided
the animal prevailed in its nature-its descent again into animal
forms, and provided the spiritual prevailed, its new birth and final
transformation into a pure spiritual existence; these were the
stages of the gorgeous drama which the Temples were built to
display, and chiefest of all was the great Temple of Cheops, which
by profound and correct astronomical calculations, the founders
designed should be the physical centre of the world, so they also
metaphysically designed it to be the great centre of all those sub-
lime teachings which, in the form of mysteries too profound for
the vulgar mind, they, the ancients organized into Free Masonry.
The base of this great building occupies something over thir-
teen acres of land. Its base line is 764 feet, and its vertical height
480. Descriptions of its bewildering passages, noble halls, cham-
hers, galleries, sunken shafts, ending in secret crypts, blocked up
by fallen stones and accumulations of sand, the descending pas-
sages invariably found leading to all sepulchral edifices, the as-
cending galleries and noble chambers which forbid the idea of its
being a monument of death alone, its empty, lidless sarcophagus
without any signs of attachment, whereby a lid could ever have
been used, and the perfect absence in the upper chambers of all
inscriptions which could declare the secrets of the rites performed
within it, all´speak in trumpet tones to the true and instructed
masters in Israel, of the design and scope of this wonderful build-
ing and its actual nature as a veritable Lodge of Ancient Free
Masonry.
Ka
We must add, that this dumb but most eloquent structure
is full of revelation to the true mystic. Its base is the perfect
ART MAGIC.
205
square which symbolizes in its four corners the sacred number 1,
the union of the masculine and feminine principles. Its corneis
are the perfect triangle, the symbol so esteemed throughout the
East as the masculine emblem, and significant of the mystic num-
ber 3. Its apex represents the Phallus, the sign ever deemed
throughout the East the symbol of Deity, or the creative princi-
ple. The descent of the sun upon its apex at the two solemn
epochs of the year, which signify life eternal, and death through
the ever-constant adverse principle of evil, complete the series of
allegorical ideas which this building was designed to celebrate.
The different stages of the mysteries celebrated within its
crypts, tortuous passages, large halls and grand chambers, would
not now avail to relate, even if we did not feel bound in honorable
promise to suppress them. But their spirit belongs to humanity.
They are found in the grand law of universal correspondence-a
correspondence which makes Geometry the plan, and Mathe-
matics the sum of all things that be; that knits up color and
sound, form and function, matter and spirit, heaven and earth,
man and his Creator, each planet with his solar system, and the
solar system with the universe, in one stupendous scheme of har-
mony-harmony in which, a number, a sign, a color, a tone, or a
word will express the whole. The number is one the color,
white-the sound, the pure octave-the word, all the synonyms
which relate to God-the sciences, Astronomy, Astrology, Mathe-
matics, Geometry-the parts, Infinity, the sum, Eternity. Frag-
ments of this sublime philosophy have been obtained by all the
capable minds who resorted to the Egyptian Priests for informa-
tion concerning their occult wisdom. Parts of it are to be found
in all the different philosophical systems of the Greeks and Ro-
mans, the Cabalism of the Jews, the mysticism of the mediaeval
sects called Alchemists and Rosicrucians; the fullness of Ancient
Masonry, and the effete exoteric puerilities of modern Free Ma-
sonry; the figure which typifies the perfection of this system in
geometrical proportion is often passed by unnoticed in Egyptian
monuments.
Mak
The word is spoken with cold, lifeless, unsanctified lips, and
has no effect on the unresponsive air.
The magnificent unison that strikes from the lowest to the
highest depths, including all the tones of Creation, sounds in vain
in the harmony of choiring worlds upon ears that are dulled to
every tone save the clink of money, the emblem of all material-
ism; but amidst this eclipse of the true faith-this total darkness
on the subject of the scientific religion, and the religion of sci-
ence, the grand old Pyramid of Cheops stands grimly mute-elo-
206
ART MAGIC.
}
quently speechless, waiting for the hour when the builders of the
new Temple of the divine humanity, missing the keystone of the
arch, which is neither oblong nor square, shall search amid the
rubbish of antiquity, and finding the stone that the builders re-
jected, place it as the keystone in the arch by which the heavens
overshadow the earth, and constitute the universe the Divine.
Lodge of the Master Builder, God.
There is yet another fragment of metaphysical history to be
given ere we feel free to close this section.
The Sun God, to whose honor this temple was dedicated,
once in every year dies, and descends into the deepest portions of
the earth.
So does death linger in the lowest crypts, in the ashes of the
earthly founder of the building. The intricate passages, the
narrow, rough and rugged paths, and the final openings into the
great Temple Hall, were only so many practical types of the Soul's
progress to that of the Sun God through the constellated Zodiac
of the skies. In the great Hall to which he at length arrives, the
Neophyte was instructed in the last great lesson of life and death.
Slain by violence and laid in the coffer, with him is destroyed the
Master's word on which the building of the Great Temple de-
pends.
The aroma of death directs the searchers to the spot where
he lies.
On the five points of human fellowship, he is raised to life
again, and elevated to the still higher degree of life eternal. Born
again!-now he becomes the key-stone, and is placed in the royal
arch which completes the building of the Divine Temple. There
the Sun of Heaven sits triumphant on the apex of the Pyramid--
the Pyramid which in itself is a symbol of generative life.
araling
This temple was the work of those who lived 5,000 years ago.
Its date is no uncertainty. Names and inscriptions have been
found which justify this opinion inferred both by Manetho and
Herodotus. The rites celebrated in this grand old fane at least
2,500 years ago, are not quite forgotten yet, nor are the principles
upon which they were practiced, blotted out. The moving phan-
tasmagoria which constituted the glory of ancient Egypt has dis-
appeared from the scene, perhaps never again to be replaced, cer-
tainly never by a band of actors as sublimely perfect in the high-
est realms of life's melodramatic art as those who figured in the
great Epic of antique Egypt's palmy splendors.
To-day tribes of wandering Arabs scarcely banded together,
not ruled by some poor Sheik, who will perform magic for the
value of a few English shillings, or a set of Dervishes who will
ART MAGIC.
207
dance, whirl, howl, or throw themselves into epileptic trances, for
a few dollars, represent the chief of what was once so wise, power-
ful, far-seeing, and sublime, in Egyptian Spiritism.
Notwithstanding this picture of external degradation, the
spirit of ancient Egypt, filtered through the epics of classic Greece
and the memories of stately Rome, still lives, still animates the
carnest student and the patient scholar to fresh research in the
letter of the dead Orient, and fresh discovery in the hidden mean-
ing of its immortal Soul. The day will come when the magic of
the ancients will be the Science of the moderns, and in that morn-
ing light of revelation the Great Pyramid of Cheops will be
known for what it really is, the alphabet which spells out the sig-
nification of the Divine Drama of existence.
SECTION XIV.
SPIRITISM AND MAGIC AMONGST THE JEWS.
ANTIQUITY OF THE JEWS DISPUTED—ABRAHAM, MOSES, THE PRIESTS
AND PROPHETS-THE CABALA-BIBLE-CHALDEAN AND PERSIAN
IDEAS IN HEBREW WRITINGS-PERSONALITY OF JESUS.
The Hindoos and Jews are almost the only ancient Oriental
nations who have left any written records of their religious be-
lief.
The Chaldeans and Egyptians, although disputing the palm
of antiquity with India, have bequeathed to posterity only monu-
mental vestiges of their elaborate systems of worship, and the
mysterious means by which they penetrated into the secrets of
spiritual existence.
The sacred writings of the Hebrews have been so faithfully
preserved, and they contain such a vast repertoire of Spiritual-
istic events, that they would have furnished an invaluable array of
testimony on this subject, had not the excessive egotism of Jewish
historians, and the unquestioning veneration with which all their
statements were received by succeeding generations, intervened to
throw doubts upon the credibility of much that they affirm.
It is now fully proved, that the enormous claims set up by the
Jews themselves for the antiquity of their Scriptures, and the
originality of many of the events related in them, are totally at
variance with cotemporaneous history.
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ART MAGIC.
The allegations of Hellenistic Jews also, that certain por-
tions of Greek philosophy were derived from Hebrew writings
have been proved to be false; in fact, whilst candid students of
the Bible will find in it an excellent transcript of the manners,
customs, traditions and Spiritism of the Eastern nations gener-
ally, they will discover only a meagre account of the actual char-
acteristics of the Jewish people, save in respect to their personal
adventures, and their constant tendency to imitate the vices and
idolatries of other nations.
Abraham, the father of the Jewish nation, was a Chaldean
by birth, and though he protested against the idolatrous practices
of his own land, and voluntarily quitted it, to found a purer and
more monetheistic form of worship, still he impressed upon his
descendants many ideas, derived from the astronomical religion
of the Chaldeans, especially their reverence for fire, the custom of
rearing altars to Deity of upright stones, their system of sacrificial
offerings and direct communion with Tutelary Spirits, believed
to have special charge over nations and peoples.
Josephus affirms that Abraham went into Egypt, and there
became an auditor of the Priests, who greatly admired him for his
wisdom. It was probably from Egypt that Abraham derived his
ideas of the sacredness of circumcision, a rite which he enjoined
as the most important of all religious obligations upon his pos-
terity. His immediate descendants were only herdsmen, and far
less instructed than himself, yet they openly communed with spir-
itual beings, and received counsel and direction through dreams
and visions.
Making all due allowance for the necessity of interpreting
much of the Bible by cabalistic methods, that is to say, by deem-
ing the words written, designed to veil rather than to express
their meaning, we must either treat the existence of the Jews and
their whole history as mythical, or allow that they form one of the
most remarkable specimens of Theocratic government the world
has ever known.
This people migrated and settled, directed their wanderings,
even transacted their business, and governed their Tribes, under
the direction of Angels and the inspiration received through
dreams, visions or oracular communications. With the Jewish
Scriptures so familiarly known to every child in Christendom, it
would be useless to review its Spiritism in detail; it is enough to
say then, that every page is a record of super-mundane signs,
tokens, open intercourse with spiritual beings, and all those
phases so familiarly known in the nineteenth century as "Spirit-
ualism."
>>
To judge of the origin and characteristics of Jewish Spirit-
ART MAGIC.
209
ism, it must be remembered that the people had been ruled over
in turn by the Kings of Mesopotamia, Moab, Midian, Ammon,
Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Syria, Macedonia, and Rome.
The various forms of worship practiced in each of these na-
tions, left their impress on Jewish Theogony, rendering it far
more a transcript of the beliefs than prevailing throughout the
East, than a concrete system of any one nation's religion.
From the Jewish Scriptures may be gathered much informa-
tion concerning those Priestly rites and sacerdotal ceremonies
borrowed from Egypt, but of which that land preserves no writ-
ten descriptions. The early chronicles of the Hebrews may be re-
garded as a complete representation of Egyptian Theosophy, the
Jehovah being one of the Eloihim, or Tutelary Deities of Egypt,
their Tabernacle, Ark, Priestly order, rites, ceremonials and sa-
cred garments being all exact copies from Egyptian models.
During the prophetic dispensation, an interregnum occurs,
marked by the struggle between a few inspired men to restore a
pure form of Monotheistic worship, and the idolatrous tendencies
of the people to imitate their neighbors, who throughout Arabia
and Syria, practiced the lowest forms of Solar and Sex worship.
The Babylonish captivity leaving its strong admixture of Chal-
dean ideas, follows, after which and during the Roman rule arises.
that sublime form of pure religion, so thoroughly identical with
the doctrines of the Essenes, inaugurated by Jesus of Nazareth.
Under this inspired and holy teacher, the Spiritism of his
wonderful works became united to the Spiritualism of his Divine
life and doctrines, and so continued through the apostolic dispen-
sation of his immediate followers, although it became modified by
the commanding intellect of Paul, who, having been brought up
in the sect of Pharisees, and instructed in the subtleties of Gnosti-
cism, introduced into his otherwise kindly yet exalted Chris-
tianity, much of that ancient mysticism which distinguished the
schools in which he had been educated.
Grija
Amongst the Jews, as with all other nations of antiquity, the
line of demarcation was strongly drawn between the Priests and
the Prophets. Abraham and his descendants were evidently
what would now be termed "Spirit Mediums," for their converse
with spirits, their dreams, trances and visions are all described as
of purely natural occurrence, yet they added to these gifts the
practices of magic by building altars for burnt offerings and
other sacrificial rites.
Moses also was both Prophet and Priest. His extraordinary
spiritual endowments might have been greatly exaggerated by the
egotistical style employed throughout the Hebrew Scriptures,
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ART MAGIC.
still the fact of his high inspiration and open communion with
the Tutelary Deity Jehovah, can hardly be doubted, without
questioning the fact of his agency in the Jewish history alto-
gether.
This admitted, his power as a magician affords a stupendous
picture of that esoteric wisdom, in which the Egyptian Priest-
hood were so well versed. His contest with the Magians of
Egypt, his conclusion amidst the awful mysteries of Sinai, his es-
tablishment of Priestly laws, ordinances and rites; in a word, the
whole order of his wonderful and sublime history, gives a strange
insight into the almost God-like powers with which a Hierophant
of the most ancient mysteries becomes endowed. Another,
though a far inferior example of the dual powers of Prophet and
Magian, is described in the person of Balaam, who, though an en-
chanter and diviner, one who was evidently familiar with the
magical arts then so common in the East, who was hired both to
curse and bless, or by strong psychological will to procure good or
evil fortune for pay, was yet in modern phrase a Spirit Medium,
subject to trance and vision, and when under the Divine Spiritual
afflatus, one who was compelled to speak as the spirit gave him
utterance, though gold and silver were offered as inducements to
prophesy to a contrary effect.
The immense importance attached to psychological power
is manifested in numerous instances throughout the pages of the
Bible. The curse and blessing so solemnly pronounced by Moses
on Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim, were deemed as immutably
prophetic as if they had been the utterances of the Deity in per-
son. Curses and blessings were considered so potent in effect,
that the trade of Balaam was commonly practiced, and Prophets
were either solicited or hired to pronounce words of ban or bless-
ing on enemies or friends, as was most desired. In the days of
Samuel, schools of the Prophet were established, it being thought
that young persons by mere association with those holy men, and
by ministering to them as servitors, might partake of their Divine
gift, and receive of their spirit by contact, or laying on of their
hands. It was not considered derogatory in the days of Samuel,
for Prophets to exercise their gifts of Seership for the recovery of
lost property, and the custom of resorting to them for this pur-
pose was considered just as legitimate as that of seeking oracular
responses "from the Lord" through Urim and Thummim. On
the Priestly modes of obtaining these responses, we shall speak
in the concluding portion of this section; it is proper to notice,
however, that whilst prophetic powers were evidently conferred
upon certain individuals by natural endowment, and not by study
ART MAGIC.
211
or art, the Prophets of Israel led exceptional and devoted lives.
They often retired into wildernesses apart from the haunts of
men; they observed long fasts, and subjected themselves to fre-
quent penances, the latter more generally for the sins of others
than themselves. They wore rough garments, most commonly
a mantle composed of the skins of animals. Some amongst them
were accustomed to wound their hands and rend their garments in
prophetic frenzy. They spent much time in prayer, and were
passionately addicted to the practice of music. Many indications
appear throughout the Jewish Bible of the constant resort which
the Prophets made to music, as a means of stimulating the pro-
phetic afflatus, especially in the exorcism of evil spirits, and the
rites of Temple worship.
There are many commentators on the Hebrew sacred writ-
ings who do not hesitate to affirm that such personages as Moses,
Elijah, Elisha, and Jesus never existed, whilst Samson has been
proved to be a mythical representation of the Greek Hercules,
and Jeptha a paraphrase of the Greek Agamemnon.
The audacious transposition of ancient Heroes from their
own lands into that of Judea by Jewish historians, and the bold
plagiarisms of other nations' histories to sustain their own, does
not alter the fact that at certain epochs of time, great and provi-
dential characters must have flourished and acted something of
the parts set down for them. Moses, as we have already alleged,
we believe to have been an Egyptian Priest-an opinion which is
sustained by Manetho, a Greek historian who claims to have au-
thentic knowledge on this subject. Still the part sustained by
this remarkable man in the Jewish Exodus from Egypt, the enun-
ciation of his noble code of laws, his establishment of the priestly
ordinances, and the extraordinary spiritual influences which at-
tended him, and enabled him to bring the Jews into direct and
constant communion with their Tutelary Deity, are integral por-
tions of history which cannot be blotted out. Elijah, from his
name signifying one of the houses of the sun, like his follower
Elisha, has sometimes been deemed a mythical personage, a mere
type of the Sun God. Even if the personality of both these ex-
alted characters were to be resolved into allegory, it does not alter
the fact that at certain periods of Jewish history, many wise, pow-
erful, and spiritually endowed men arose, under whose scathing
rebukes and sublime inspirations, the rebellious people were won
back to the worship of one God, and the wise standards of govern-
ment prescribed by Moses.
In the advent of Jesus of Nazareth a revolutionary change
in Jewish history occurs, which could not have been effected
212
ART MAGIC.
A.
without the intervention of just such a pure, high and holy
teacher as he is represented to have been.
From the descriptions given by Philo and other cotemporary
historians of the Essenes, a sect of pure and holy men who arose
about one hundred years before the advent of Jesus of Nazareth,
it has often been supposed that he was one of their number. The
doctrines, manners and customs of this sect conformed in almost
every particular to those of Jesus and his Disciples. Even the
famous Sermon on the Mount becomes little else than a transcript
of Essenian aphorisms, when the two are carefully compared.
The same extraordinary similarity of doctrine and practice has
been traced between this sect and that of the Sage Pythagoras,
and the universality of the idea which marks the great and in-
spired lives of the Jewish and Samian Teachers, naturally sug-
gests that each of them drew their opinions from the same Essen-
ian model.
Hig
As to the identity of the Jewish Christ with the popular
myth of the Eastern Sun God-we have no opinion to offer in
this place.
The truth that at least twenty different incarnate Gods were
celebrated in the East, and taught of in Greece, to each of whom
was attributed a history similar in general details to that of the
Christian's Messiah, but the still more significant facts that these
various incarnations were all supposed to have preceded Jesus in
point of chronology, and that the miracles attributed to him had
been sculptured in Temples gray with age before the date assigned
for his birth, bring their own comment to every mind not closed
against the light of reason by bigotry, or incapable of appreciat-
ing the truths of history from blind superstition.
Notwithstanding the fact that the worshipers of the Sun
God in the personality of the Jewish Messiah, destroy faith in his
very existence by the wilful perversity with which they insist
upon maintaining for him an impossible biography, the origin,
growth and specialties of the Christian faith in Jerusalem, de-
mand the interposition of a human founder, and point, with con-
clusive testimony, to the influence of a noble Essenian of pre-
cisely the character attributed to the meek and gentle Nazarene.
The biographies of Jesus were compiled long after his de-
cease, and were evidently the work of men who, in order that the
Scriptures might be fulfilled in his person, interblended the rec-
ords of his pure and holy ministry, with the miracles of that leg-
end, which as the history of the Sun God-had been so popu-
larly engrafted into all religious systems throughout the East for
thousands of years before the time of Jesus.
ART MAGIC.
213
·
The true founder of Christian Theology was Paul. This in-
domitable Disciple was himself a Gnostic, and wrote in the true.
Cabalistic spirit of the mystery of the Lord Jesus Christ.
But to the immediate followers of the beloved Master, to
those who had heard his voice, lived in his holy presence, shared
his sufferings, and witnessed his exalted spiritual powers, Jesus
was no mystery, his existence no myth. They had often mar-
veled at his words, and failed to understand that when he spoke
from the simple standpoint of his humanity, he was one of them-
selves, and represented himself only as an imperfect mortal; but
when he was "in the spirit," as he doubtless often was, he spoke
as if he had indeed lived before Abraham; as of "the Son of God,"
the mysterious and long-promised Messiah, who temporarily in-
spired, without being the actual personality of the man Jesus.
The devotion which rose to enthusiasm, and subsequently to a
faith which has survived the upheaval of dynasties, the rise and
fall of empires, and the changes which have revolutionized the
old earth and builded and rebuilded it again and again, was not
founded on a myth, a mistake, or an idle superstition.
When good, pure, divinely inspired and divinely acting men
enter upon the scene, and this poor degraded humanity of ours
can look up to such an one and feel his kind hands healing their
sicknesses, and hear his tender tones compassionating them, and
bringing them very near to the awful majesty of the unknown
God, translating that majesty into the pitying and strictly human
character of a Father, who can wonder that such an one was
deemed of as a God, and invested with all the popular attributes
of that mediatorial Deity, whose existence and occasional appear-
ances on earth, incarnate in human form, had been taught and
believed in for countless ages? The Jews were well acquainted
with this popular idea, and their great theological teacher, Paul,
obviously favored it; hence it cannot excite surprise that many of
the early Christians were disposed to invest the memory of their
beloved Master with the same divine attributes that had been as-
signed to many another great and good man before. Whatever
the simple followers of Jesus may have deemed of his divinity, it
was his gospel of love, his pure life, his divinely compassionate
nature, that so endeared his memory to suffering human hearts,
and sustained the faith of his disciples to preach his gospel amidst
the fires of persecution and the tortures of martyrdom. But the
simplicity and practical beauty of this gospel of love died out,
when it became entangled in the sophisms of learning, and identi-
fied with incomprehensible systems of metaphysical speculation.
The early Christian faith taught by the pure Essenian Jesus,
214
ART MAGIC.
perished about the time when Constantine the Great usurped its
name and fame, in order to justify his own iniquities and atro-
cious murders. Its crucified remains were buried under the
Athanasian Creed, and the ecclesiastical fables of the Council of
Nice, and nothing of it was left but the name; the body without
the soul, the letter without the spirit; the God without his hu-
manity-the mystery without the meaning-nothing was left of
the gospel of the loving Jesus, but the name.
We have made many allusions in this and former sections,
to the Jewish Cabala, and it is now in order to give a brief notice
of the origin and genius of this celebrated work.
Despite all the assertions of practical historians to the con-
trary, it is quite certain that the Jewish sacred writings, if not
wholly lost or destroyed, were reduced to very few and scarce
copies during the different seasons of captivity that so often over-
whelmed the nation, despoiled the once glorious Temple of Solo-
mon, and committed alike the books of the law and all the other
sacred writings to the flames. This spirit of devastation was es-
pecially manifested before the Babylonish captivity. After the
return of the exiles to their ruined City and desecrated Temple,
the solemn duty of re-transcribing the Mosaic law devolved upon
Ezra, a learned Priest, a most zealous Scribe, and one so highly
esteemed in his generation, that he was commonly called the sec-
ond founder of the law. Admiring Rabbis are still accustomed to
"If Moses had not founded the law, Ezra was worthy to have
done so."
In order to fulfill his difficult task with the most conscien-
tions fidelity, Ezra not only transcribed the laws of which he had
made a deep study during his period of captivity, but he gath-
ered together the ancient men of his nation, consulted with them,
carefully noted down the traditions which they had committed to
memory, and sought in every direction to improve upon his own
knowledge by the information thus acquired through oral tradi-
tion.
It was from this circumstance that authoritative value came
to be set on traditional records.
In process of time, as these traditions increased in number,
and became easily stretched to suit the imagination of the nar-
rators, or the temper of the times, the books of the law and the
Prophets compiled by Ezra sank into insignificance compared to
the superstitions veneration which to some minds clustered
around these ever-growing traditions, and a sect of believers at
length arose called Separatists or Pharisees, who absolutely
pinned their faith and adjusted their lives, manners and actions
ART MAGIC.
215
A
entirely on the assumed authority of these traditions. This was
the field in which Persian myths and Chaldean ideas were per-
mitted to take root, until they almost supplanted the stern Mono-
theism of Abraham and Moses. Jesus frequently alludes to these
traditions as making the law of Moses of no effect. It is from this
source that the fantastic flights of Talmudic writers are drawn,
and it is on the strength of these elastic oral teachings that the
famous Cabala is founded. Cabalists and devoted admirers of
these writings claim for them an antiquity ascending to Adam,
and an origin stretching up to heaven. They trace the descent of
this book to Seth, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Joshua, the
Judges, and with occasional flying visits back to Heaven from
whence it came, straight on to the possession of a certain Hellen-
istic Jew, who, with a few followers, after having been banished
for sedition to Alexandria, reappeared from exile about a century
before the advent of Jesus of Nazareth.
One of the Cabalistic collections is called Zohar, or the Book
of Light, and around this volume, the traditions cluster with im-
mense enthusiasm.
The nature of Cabalistic writings we have already explained.
They are for the most part, designed to mask, rather than reveal
the true sense of the words, and this mystical style is assumed to
be necessary in order to preserve sacred ideas from the vulgar, in
short, not "to give pearls to swine," a favorite expression of the
Cabalists.
A collection of Cabalistic writings was made in the second
century, and some rare copies are still extant; from these we find
that the writers enlarge much on the doctrines scattered through-
out the East concerning Deity, the divine Trinity, which in its
various phases, attributes, powers and personalities, is exalted as
the sublimest mystery of being. The Cabala discourses of the
various emanations from Deity commencing with Adam Kadman,
the Brahma of the Hindoos; the Osiris of the Egyptians; the
Mithra of the Persians; the Logos, or Word, of the Greeks; the
Divine Ensoph, or masculine Wisdom of Deity; and the Sophia,
or Feminine principle of Creation. From thence it teaches of
Hierarchies of celestial emanations, Angels, Archangels, Thrones,
Dominions, Powers, Splendors; Fallen Angels, Planetary Spirits,
Evil Angels, Demons, Elementaries, Men, Worlds, Spheres, and
the entire order of that creative scheme, on which Hindoo Meta-
physicians had speculated for thousands of years, and which the
Egyptians had inscribed in colossal monuments, whose perma-
nence will almost bid defiance to the destroying scythe of time.
The Cabalistic writings, besides the veiled mysticism with
216
ART MAGIC.
which they treat philosophical theories, contain directions for
healing the sick, exorcising evil spirits, invoking good Angels and
Planetary spirits; also, for the exercise of magical powers over
winds, waves and elements generally. These powers are to be pro-
cured through purity of life, conduct and thought; strict atten-
tion to ablutions, purifications, prayers, the use of talismans,
spells, charms, ceremonial rites, and other methods too familiar
now to the reader to need farther recital. The Cabalists put im-
plicit faith in the use of sacred names, and the combination of
certain numbers.
They rehearse seventy-two names of Deity, and affirm that
according to the method in which they are written and pro-
nounced, such will be the amount of virtue evolved from their
use.
The system of numerals vaguely laid down in the Cabala is
evidently a ray derived from the Egyptian figure before alluded
to, as manifested in the building of the Great Pyramid, but still
more lucidly defined in Pythagorean Philosophy, whilst the allu-
sions so often made to the unity of design manifest throughout
the universe, is a mixture of ideas derived from Zoroaster, the
Chaldean system of planetary correspondences, and a large infu-
sion of Greek philosophy. The Cabala and Zohar are curious
specimens of literature; compendiums of Eastern ideas, and fully
sufficient examples of that style of writing justly termed Cabalis-
tic, but when the full meaning of their obscure expressions is
arrived at, the student will find broader, fairer, and more original
fields of study in the elder nations, in their grand monuments,
their most ancient writings, and above all, in the stately and
inspired utterances of the Hebrew Prophets. One chapter of the
sublime Isaiah, will convey a far higher conception of the rela-
tions between man and his God, than whole pages of the mystic
Zohar, and the books of Ezekiel and Revelations, contain all the
mysteries so elaborately concealed in Cabalistic writings; in short,
we cannot promise our readers any higher results from their
study, than such as may be attained by the perusal of other works
on the antiquities of the East or initiation into the rites of modern
Free Masonry. In the celebrated Rosicrucian diagram of Ezek-
ial's wheel, the whole heart of the mystery is disclosed. Therein
will be found the six ascending signs of the Zodiac representing
Heaven, Good, the ascent of the human Soul, the Universe, or
Macrocosm; in the six descending signs are all the opposite prin-
ciples of evil, the fall of man, the descent of the Soul into matter,
etc., etc., etc. In this consists all the mystery of Cabalism.
ART MAGIC.
217
EZEKIEL'S WHEEL.
Macrocosmos Ascending.
£ 2. 3. 4. 5.
r 8 11 IN MX
my
1
u zy w x
8. 9. 10. 11. 12.
Microcosmos Descending.
The succession of ideas representing the same primal thought
in the varied but ever progressive intelligence of different nations,
in different epochs of time, always present old truths in novel
points of view. This is essentially illustrated in the history of
Spiritism. The same fundamental principles underlie the whole
structure of human and spiritual intercourse, and whether we
study the relations that unite the two worlds from a Hindoo or
European point of view, in the year 1 or our own time, we shall
find that Magnetism and Psychology are the only keys which ever
did or ever will unlock the gates of the Spiritual Kingdom, whilst
the Spiritism or magic of different nationalities and times are only
rife with examples of the various modes in which these two stu-
pendous attributes of body and soul may be employed.
Learned men spend years in attempting to interpret the
mystic raptures of Cabalism, whilst the stately old Jewish Bible
lies open to their view, presenting an array of curious and varied
literature, which far exceeds in valuable suggestion and breadth
of information, every other ancient work extant save the Hindoo
Vedas, or Persian Zendavesta. The direct simplicity of Genesis,
the elaborate details concerning Egyptian customs, manners, and
modes of worship brought to light in the other books of the Pen-
tateuch, the startling accounts of angelic ministry with which
every page abounds the sublime imagery of the Hebrew Proph-
ets, and the curious insight which their denunciations afford
7.
Vo

*
Turning-Point Libra.
- 218
ART MAGIC.
into the nature and universality of the idolatrous practices they
protest against; the exquisite pathos and beauty of the New Tes-
tament teachings, the mixture of high-toned morality and mystic
Gnosticism of the Epistles, and the clue to all ancient mysteries
afforded by the writings of Ezekiel, Daniel and John in the Apo-
calypse, combine to render the Hebrew Bible one of the most
remarkable and notable specimens of ancient literature now ex-
tant.
It is a book which must compel the skeptic either to pro-
nounce the dictum of wilful falsehood and causeless imposture
against all ancient history, or else to acknowledge that there must
in olden time, if not now, have been a substratum of truth, in the
immense array of spiritual demonstrations claimed to have been
rendered in the days of antiquity.
The Bible is a book of Spiritism; an Arbatel of Magic, a
storehouse of Oriental knowledge, and as such, commends itself
to the earnest seeker after magical lore and spiritualistic light.
There were periods in the history of the Jews, when the pro-
phetic afflatus was lost, quenched, as it would seem, by the idola-
trous perversity of the people and their devotion to other rites
than those enjoined by their Priests and Prophets.
Such was the interregnum that occurred after the death of
Samuel; and again after the closing up of the Prophetic era in
the person of Malachi, called from thence "the seal of Prophecy."
With the advent of Jesus of Nazareth, a new era dawned upon
the world, not only in relation to the sublime teachings which he
inculcated, and the good works by which he sealed his commis-
sion, but by the strictly human evidences of magnetic and psy-
chologic power which resulted from his mission.
All history proves that there are mental as well as physical
epidemics; contagious affections of the mind as well as of the
body.
When a great reformatory thinker appears in the arena of
human life-when such an one is endowed moreover with that
mysterious charge of Astral fluid which effects cures of disease,
and produces other magnetic phenomena on all who come within
his influence-look to see that combination of mental and phys-
ical power diffusing itself far beyond the sphere of its immediate
source.
Alg
From such magnetic and psychologic influences arose that
irresistible tide of religious opinion which spread throughout
the East from the minds of inspired teachers like Confucius, Zʊ-
roaster, Buddha and Christ. Such was the source of those men-
tal and physical epidemics which imparted belief in, and power
ART MAGIC.
219
to effect, the practices of witchcraft in the middle ages; which in-
fluenced the French Prophets of the Cevennois with a mighty
enthusiasm equal in effect to the ecstasies of Indian Fakeers;
which animated the Ecstatics at the tomb of the Abbe Paris, and
rendered the "Convulsionaires" insensible to pain; which exhib-
ited itself in demoniacal possessions in the multitudes who made
up the ghastly records of Witches and Wizards in Scotland, New
England, Sweden, and in later times, in the Valley of Morzine—
in short, in all cases of mental epidemic, whether it take the shape
of that enthusiasm which enabled frail women, young children
and feeble old men to court the agonies of martyrdom during the
first centuries of the Christian era, or that subjugation of sense
and reason to the control of evil spirits, which marked the mad-
ness of witchcraft.
We shall conclude this section by a supplement giving ex-
tracts from an old work, entitled "Moses and Aaron," or an ac-
count of the civil and ecclesiastical rites of the ancient Hebrews,
by Thos. Godwyn, B. D., published at London, in 1628.
In these curious excerpts the reader will find correct and
graphic descriptions of the various kinds of divination, etc.,
whether lawful or forbidden, practiced by the Jews of old.
SUPPLEMENT TO SECTION XIV.
C
IDOLATRY AND ANCIENT SCRIPTURE.
SOME OF THE MODES OF DIVINATION, BOTH LAWFUL AND UNLAWFUL,
PRACTICED AMONGST THE JEWS-FIRST, NEBUAH-SECOND,
RÚACH HACODESCH-URIM AND THUMMIM.
"As Idolatrie originally sprang from mistaking of Scripture,
so witchcraft and sorcery seemeth to have had its first beginning
from an imitation of God's oracles. God spake in divers manners
(Heb. i., 1); but the chief means of revealing himselfe observed
by the Hebrew writers are foure, which they term foure degrees
of prophecie or divine revelation.
The first degree was Nebuah, which was, when God did by
certaine visions and apparitions reveale his will.
The second was Ruach Hacodesch, or inspiration of the Holy
Ghost, whereby the partie was enabled, without visions or appari-
tions, to prophecie. Some, shewing the difference betweene these
two, adde, that the gift of prophecie did cast a man into a trance
220
ART MAGIC.
or extasie, all his senses being taken from him; but the inspira-
tion of the Holy Ghost was without any such extasie or abolition
of the senses, as appeareth in David and Daniel. Both these de-
grees, as likewise Urim and Thummim, ceased in the second Tem-
ple, whence their ancient Doctors say, that after the latter Proph-
ets Haggai and Malachy were dead, the Holy Ghost went up, or
departed from Israel. Howbeit they had the use of a voice or
eccho from Heaven. In which speech we are not to understand
that the Holy Ghost wrought not at all the sanctification of men,
but that this extraordinary voice, enabling men to prophecie by
the inspiration of the Holy Ghost then ceased; and in this sense.
the Holy Ghost was said to have departed from Israel.
The third degree was Urim and Thummim. Urim signifieth
light, and Thummim perfection. That they were two ornaments.
in the High Priest's brest-plate, is generally agreed upon; but
what manner of ornaments, or how they gave answer, is hard to
resolve. Some thinke them to be the foure rowes of stones in
the brest-plate, the splendor and brightnesse of which foreshewed
victory, and by the rule of contraries, we may gather, that the
darknesse of the stones not shining presaged evil. Others say it
was the name Jehovah, put in the doubling of the breast-plate,
for that was double. Others declare the manner of consulting
with Urim and Thummim consisted of all the Tribes' names,
and likewise of the Patriarchs, Abraham, Isaak and Jacob, so
that no letter of the Alphabet was wanting. The question being
proposed, some say that the letters which gave the answer did
arise and eminently appear above the others. An example they
take from the 2nd Sam. 2: 1. When David asked the Lord,
"Shall I goe up into any of the Cities of Judah?" the Lord
answered, "Goe up." Here say they, that the letters which rep-
resented the Oracle, did, after a strange manner, joyne themselves
into perfect syllables and intire words, and made the answer coin-
pleat. The fourth degree was Bath Kol, "the daughter of a
voice" or an echo; by it is meant a voice from heaven, declaring
the will of God; it tooke place in the second Temple, when the
three former degrees of prophecie ceased.
#
THE SEVERAL SORTS OF DIVINATION FORBIDDEN.
#
Wee shall find, Deut. 18: 10, 11, those Diviners, which are
by the law forbidden, distinguished into seven kindes, not be-
cause there were no others, but they were the most usual. 1st,
An observer of times. 2d, An inchanter. 3d, A witch. 4th,
A charmer. 5th, A consulter with familiar spirits. 6th, Awiz-
ard. 7th, A necromancer. To these we may adde an eighth,
1
:
ART MAGIC.
221
Consulting with the staffe. And a ninth, A consulter with in-
tralls. The first is: An observer of times, one that distinguish-
eth times and seasons, saying, such a day is good, or such a day
is naught, such an houre, such a month is luckie, and such and
such unluckie, for such and such businesses.. The second sort
of unlawful Diviner is also an observer of times; the first draw-
ing his conclusions from the colour or motion of the clouds; The
second, from his owne superstitious observation of good and evil
events, happening upon such and such dayes, such and such
times; the first seemeth to have drawne his conclusions a priori,
from the clouds or planets, causing good and bad events; the sec-
ond, a posteriori, from the events themselves, happening upon
such and such times. This planetary observer when he watched
the clouds, seemeth to have stood with his face Eastward, his
backe Westward, his right hand towards the South, and his left
hand towards the North.
2. The second is Menachesch, rendered an Inchanter; it
importeth rather an Augur, or Soothsayer. The originall signi-
fieth such a one who out of his owne experience draweth observa-
tions, to foretell good or evil to come, as soothsayers doe by ob-
serving such and such events, by such and such flying of birds,
screechings, or kawings. The Rabbines speake in this wise. He
is Menachesch, a Soothsayer, who will say, because a morsell of
Bread is fallen out of his mouth, or his staffe out of his hand, or
his sonne called him backe, or a Crow kawed unto him, or a Goat
passed by him, or a Serpent was on his right hand, or a Fox on
his left hand, therefore he will say, doe not this or that to-day.
This word is used Gen. 30: 27. "I have learned by experience,
saith Laban, that the Lord hath blessed mee for thy sake.'
Againe, Gen. 44: 5. "Is not this the cup in which my Lord drink-
eth? and whereby indeed hee divineth?" That is, proveth or
maketh triall or experience what manner of men yee are; the
Heathen people were very superstitious in these observations;
some dayes were unluckie, others luckie; on some dayes they
counted it unfortunate to begin battaile, on some months unfor-
tunate to marry.
""
And as they were superstitious in observing unluckie signes,
so likewise in the meanes used to avert the evil portended; the
meanes were either words or deeds. Deeds: if an unluckie bird,
or such like came in their way, they would fling stones at it; and
of this sort is the scratching of a suspected Witch, which amongst
the simpler sort of people is thought to bee a meanes to cure
Witchcraft. By words, they thought to elude the evill, signified
by such signes, when they say:
222
ART MAGIC.
"This evil light on thine owne head."
The third is Mecascheph, A Witch, properly a Jugler. The
originall signifieth such a kinde of Sorcerer who bewitcheth the
senses and mindes of men, by changing the formes of things,
making them appeare otherwise than indeed they are.
The same
word is applied to the Sorcerers in Egypt, who resisted Moses,
Exod. 7: 11. Then Pharoh also called Mecaschphim, the Sor-
cerers. Now the magicians in Egypt, they also did in like manner
with their Inchantments. This latter part of the text explain-
eth what those sorcerers were. In that they are called magicians,
it implieth their learning, that they were wise men, and great
philosophers; the word inchantments declareth the manner of
the delusion, and it hath the signification of such a slight, where-
by the eyes are deluded, for Lahatim, there translated inchant-
ments, importeth the glistening flame of a fire, or sword, where-
with the eyes of men are dazled.
The Greeke version doth not unfitly terme them compound-
ers of medicines, or if you please, complexion-makers, such arti-
sens who make men and women false complexions. Hence it is
that the Apostle compareth such false teachers, who under a
forme and shew of godlinesse, leade captive silly women, to the
Egyptian Sorcerers, Zannes and Zambres, who assisted Moses,
2 Tim. 3: 8. These two were of chief note. In the Talmud they
are called Johanne and Mamre.
The fourth is Chober, a Charmer. The Hebrew word signi-
fieth conjoining or consociating; either from the league and fel-
lowship which such persons have with the Devill, or as Bodine
thinketh, because such kinde of Witches have frequent meetings,
in which they dance and make merrie together.
Onkelos translateth such a charmer Raten, a Mutterer, inti-
mating the manner of these Witcheries to be by the muttering or
soft speaking of some spelle or charme. The description of a
charmer is thus: Hee is a charmer who speaketh words of a
strange language, and without sense, and he, in his foolishnesse,
thinketh that these words are profitable; that if one say so, or
so, unto a Serpent or Scorpion, it cannot hurt a man, and he
that saith so, or so, unto a man, he cannot be hurt. Hee that
whispereth over a wound, or readeth a verse out of the Bible,
likewise he that readeth over an infant, that it may not bee
frighted, or that layeth the Booke of the Law, or the Philacteries,
upon a child that it may sleepe, such are not only among Inchant-
ers, or Charmers, but of those that generally deny the Law of God,
because they make the words of the Scripture medicine for the
body, whereas they are not, but medicine for the Soule. Of this
ART MAGIC.
223
1
sort was that, whereof Bodinus speaketh. That a childe by say-
ing a certain verse out of the Psalmes, hindered a woman thai
shee could not make her butter; by reciting the same verse back-
ward, hee made her butter come presently.
The fifth Schoel Ob, a consulter with Ob, or with familiar
spirits. Ob signifieth properly a Bottle, and is applied in divers
places of Scripture to Magicians, because they being possessed
with an evil spirit, speake with a soft and hollow voice, as out of
a bottle. The Greek calleth them Ventriloquos, such whose voice
seemeth to proceed out of their belly. Such a Diviner was the
Damosell, Acts 16: 16, in Saint Augustin's judgement, and is
probably thought so by most Expositors, who are of opinion, that
the spirit of Python, with which this Damosell was possessed,
is the same which the spirit of Ob was, amongst the Hebrews.
Hence the Witch of Endor, whom Saul requested to raise up San-
uel, is said in Hebrew to have consulted with Ob; but among the
Latine Expositors, she is commonly translated Pythonissa, one
possessed with the spirit of Python.
The sixth is Jiddegnoni, a Wizard; he is translated some-
times a cunning man. Hee had his name from knowledge, which
either the wizard professed himself to have, or the common pec-
ple thought him to have. The Rabbies say hee was called in He-
brew from a certain beast, in shape resembling a man, because
these wizards, when they did utter their prophecies, held a bone
of this beast between their teeth. This haply might bee some
diabolicall sacrament or ceremonie, used for the confirmation of
the league betweene Satan and the Wizard. Prophane history
mentioneth divinations of the like kinde, as that Magicians were
wont to eat the principall parts and members of such beasts,
which they deemed propheticall, thinking thereby that the soule
of such beasts would be conveyed into their bodies, whereby they
might be enabled for prophecy.
The seventh is Doresch el hammethim; the Greeke answer-
eth word for word-an enquirer of the dead, a Necromancer.
Such diviners consulted with Satan in the shape of a dead man.
A memorable example wee finde recorded; 1 Sam.:29. There
King Saul, about to warre with the Philistins, (God denying to
answer him either by dreames, or by Urim, or by Prophets,) upon
the fame of the Witch of Endor, he repaired to her, demanding
that Samuel might bee raised up from the dead, to tell him the
issue of the warre. Now that this was not in truth Samuel, is
easily evinced, both by testimonies of the learned, and reasons:
First, it is improbable that God, who had denied to answer him
by any ordinary meanes, should now deigne him an answer so ex-
224
ART MAGIC.
}
traordinary. Secondly, no Witch or Devil can disturbe the bodies.
or soules of such as die in the Lord, because they rest from their
labors; Rev. 14: 14. Thirdly, if it had beene Samuel, he would
doubtless have reproved Saul for consulting with Witches.
The eighth is Scoelmakle, a consulter with his staffe. Je-
rome saith the manner of this divination was thus: That if the
doubt were betweene two or three cities, which first should be as-
saulted; to determine this, they wrote the names of the cities upon
certain staves or arrowes, which being shaked in a quiver together,
the first that was pulled out determined the citie.
Others deliver the manner of this consultation to have been
thus: The consulter measured his staffe by spans, or by the length
of his finger, saying as he measured, I will goe, I will not goe,
I will doe such a thing, I will not doe it, and as the last spanne
fell out, so he determined. This was termed by the Heathens,
Divination by rods or arrowes.
The ninth was Roebaccabed, a diviner by intralls. Nebu-
cadnezar being to make warre both with the Jews and the Am-
monites, and doubting in the way against whether of these he
should make his first onset: First, he consulted with his arrowes
and staves, of which hath beene spoken of immediately before;
Secondly, he consulted with the entralls of beasts. This practice
was generally received among the Heathens, and because the liver
was the principall member observed, it was called Consultation
with the liver. Three things were observed in this kind of divin-
ation. First, the colour of the intralls, whether they were all
well-coloured; Secondly, their place, whether none were dis-
placed; Thirdly, the number, whether none were wanting. Among
those that were wanting, the want of the liver or the heart chiefly
presaged ill. That day when Julius Caesar was slaine, it is storied,
that in two fat oxen then sacrificed, the heart was wanting in
them both.
A
ART MAGIC.
225
SECTION XV.
MAGIC AND SPIRITISM AMONGST THE CHALDEANS.
C

mur 42:
DETE
EST
ABPLES
The Tower of Babel.
The religious doctrines of the Chaldeans, varied from those
of the Hindoos and Egyptians chiefly, in their different modes of
expression, in the name appropriated to different Deities, and the
functions which these mythical personages were supposed to be
endowed with. The basic idea of Solar and Astral worship how-
ever prevailed in all nations alike, but the absense of sexual em-
blems on Chaldean monumental remains, seems to imply that this
people adhered to the astronomical religion, without engrafting
its popular successor, Sex worship, upon its purer Theosophy.
Although our only information concerning the Spiritism of Chal-
dea is derived from monumental records, oral traditions, and con-
temporaneous history, these sources are abundantly sufficient to
testify to the fact that Babylon the great and the Priests of Chal-
dea, so widely renowned for occult wisdom, acquired this vast rep-
utation principally for transcendent skill in the arts of divination,
and the methods of reading the future by Astrology. The Chal-
deans were also celebrated for certain branches of chemical
knowledge, especially for the means whereby they learned to re-
sist the action of fire and poisons.
Schools of the Magi were established at Babylon, and as
magic was deemed an essential item in the art of governing the
nation, and conducting armies to victory, even Kings, Statesmen,
226
ART MAGIC.
and Warriors, no less than the Sons of the Nobles and wealthy
Citizens, resorted to these famous seminaries of occult learning,
or sat at the feet of the Magi to drink in the elements of their
profound wisdom. It was in these schools that Daniel and some
of the handsomest and most intelligent of the Hebrew captives
were placed for education after the conquest of Judea by the
Babylonians. It was from thence that the remarkable admixture
of Chaldean and Persian philosophy was derived, which marks
the literature of the Jews after the Babylonish captivity. There
are many scholars who believe-and that upon good foundation-
that the writings of the Pentateuch, the composition of the Ca
bala, and the fables of the Talmud, owe so much of their peculiar
spirit to the Chaldean Magi, that those who are well acquainted
with these Hebrew writings, lose nothing by the total lack of
Chaldean Scriptures.
In Chaldea, as in other Asiatic and Eastern nations, the con-
nection between religious rites and the art of magic was insepara-
ble. The highest class of the Priesthood-those set apart for
Temple service-were "Star Gazers" or Astrologers, healers of
the sick, by magnetism (i. e.,), the laying on of hands-and even
the High Priest himself-the functionary who virtually ruled
the land through his influence over the reigning monarch-de-
livered oracles, and often practiced the highest form of magical
rites. So great was the skill of the Chaldean Magi in Astrology,
that it has become proverbial in all ages to attribute the invention
of this art to the Chaldeans, and in some lands the terms Astroi-
oger and Chaldean were held to be synonymous.
The Babylonish Priests were reputed to be thoroughly well
acquainted with the occult virtue of stones, plants, herbs, vapors
and narcotics. They claimed to be able to cast spells on whole-
armies, arresting their progress, or paralyzing their power of ac-
tion. They could even cause the downfall of nations, though
it is obvious they had no such power in the preservation of their
own once splendid dynasty. Their achievements during the flush
of their splendor and magnificence, caused their vast claims for
magical knowledge to be feared and quoted through all cotem-
poraneous nationalities.
Their methods of interpreting dreams and visions, of proplie-
sying or soothsaying, and resisting the action of fire, are signifi-
cantly alluded to in the book of Daniel, wherein it clearly appears
that the natural endowments, or in modern phraseology, the nor-
mal mediumship of the young Hebrew Captives, were found su-
perior in truthful results to the arts of the instructed Magians,
and it is quite probable that if many of the stupendous claims
ART MAGIC.
227
set up for the magical practices of antiquity could be brought to
a similar test, they would be found inferior to the true prophetic
gifts which spring from natural endowments. It is well to notice,
however, that Daniel and his companions practiced that strict
regimen and remarkable abstinence which has been so universally
found efficacious in promoting spiritual afflatus. Let not those
who rely solely on their mediumship without culture, mistake this
important suggestion.
In Chaldea as amongst all other ancient nations, the most
honored class of the Priests were true prophets, persons naturally
endowed, but these fortunate individuals, like the Hebrews, often
arose outside the priestly ranks, and even when within them,
seldom accepted office, preferring-as those gifted by the power of
the spirit invariably do-to act independently of priestly organi-
zations. Amongst the priests there were three distinct classes.
The first were the Singers, Musicians, or Exorcists, who were
commonly employed in exorcising demons and ministering to the
sick. These by their admirable performances on instruments or
in solemn chants stimulated the minds of worshipers to devotion,
enchanted the listeners, even serpents becoming obedient, and
ferocious beasts yielding themselves up to the spell of their de-
licious melodies. The second class were the magicians or wonder-
workers, through whom all manner of soothsaying was effected,
also ordeals by fire were shown, elements stilled, or storms raised;
spells and enchantment procured, and divination or auguries from
entrails, burnt offerings, flights of birds or other natural objects
obtained. The third and highest class were the "Star Gazers,”
for whom were erected those gigantic temples of which the famous
tower of Babel or Belus forms an example. The exterior and apex
of these wonderful monuments were used for astronomical obser-
vations, the interior for those mysterious rites through which In-
itiates were taught, and Priestly Hierophants received their edu-
cation. As these famous mysteries were subsequently inaugu-
rated in Persia under the name of Mithraic rites, we learn from
them that the Chaldean originals were simply designed to teach
the fundamental principles of Sabaeism, or the most ancient as-
tronomical religion.
Cicero, in his treatises on Soothsaying and Divination, at-
tributes paramount excellence to the Chaldeans, intimating in
fact that to these most ancient priests the origin of Astrological
Science and Magical art is due. Their modes of initiation and
study were very severe. Lives of purity and asceticism were de-
manded, but though they were required to abstain from wine and
the flesh of animals, they never practiced the rigid discipline en-
228
ART MAGIC.
forced upon the Hindoo Fakeers, on the contrary, they main-
tained that emaciated bodies and enfeebled frames were more sub-
ject to the attacks of evil spirits, and less capable of resisting
them, than healthy, pure, and well-balanced organisms.
Although a vast number of the engraved tablets found
amongst the ruins of ancient Chaldea, exhibit zodiacs and astro-
nomical signs in abundance, there is no authentic record of the
exact system of calculation upon which these great Adepts based
their methods of Astrology. The Persians, Chinese and Mediae-
val Professors of the art, claim to be in possession of correct Chal-
dean schemes, but whether this be true or false, the scientific as-
trologer is aware that the system of calculation by which success-
ful results are to be obtained, is as exact and unvarying a science
as astronomy, and does not change with country or clime. Those
who can obtain successful results then, even in the nineteenth
century, may assure themselves they are in possession of the same
rules by which the Chaldean Adepts achieved their vast renown.
As the methods of Astrology are very elaborate, and require much
more space than we could assign them in this volume, we refer
those who may be disposed to study this curious science, to the
many treatises on the subject that are now extant. Those who
desire to acquaint themselves with the most approved rules of the
art, should study Lilly's Astrology, published in 1647. Students
well versed in this branch of occultism, claim the work in ques-
tion to be the most reliable and authentic now in print.
It would be useless to pursue our investigation into ancient
Asiatic or African researches farther.
The spiritism of the Jews, Medes, Persians, Gnostics, Neo-
Platonists and early Christians, with the modifications which we
so often insist on, as the results of growth through different
epochs of time, and changes induced by varied climes and scenes.
all proclaim the steady and unbroken succession of ideas spring-
ing up from one original source, namely, an observance and wor-
ship of the powers of nature. Now, as heretofore, we claim that
nothing is lost in history or in nature.
However limited the intercourse between ancient nationali-
ties might have been, their frequent irruptions into each other's
territories, the transmission of opinions through mutual captivi ·
ties, through commerce, oral tradition and the contagion of
thought, render it certain, that the utter obliteration of ideas
from any one land by the destruction of their scriptures, or the
loss of a key to their hieroglyphical inscriptions is simply impos-
sible. It is the favorite opinion of modern students, especially
those of a romantic and naturally mystical turn of mind, that
ART MAGIC.
229
¦
Egypt and Chaldea, the two most antique nations of civilization,
Hindostan excepted, conceal beneath their cuniform characters,
profuse hieroglyphics and singular tablets, profound revelations
in occultism that are forever lost to mankind, unless, indeed, some
spiritual "Edipus" of these ruined lands, should disclose their
mysteries through the entranced lips of a modern Somnambule.
With these attempts to repair the breaches in that tremen-
dous veil of mystery which once shrouded the sacerdotal power
of Babylon the great, hushed the voice of musical Memnon, and
put the finger of eternal silence, on the stony lips of the Sphinx,
we have no sympathy, nor do we offer any plea for belief in such
directions.
We claim now, as heretofore, that we have more of the real
spirit of antiquity in our midst, than the race in this utilitarian
and materialistic age understands; besides, the same imperishable
sources of knowledge from which the ancients derived their opin-
ions and framed their systems of Theosophy, are open to the
students of the nineteenth century in all their fullness. The
starry Scriptures of the skies still unfold their pages of light for
the perusal of the patient Astrologer. The plants dispense their
fragrance, the herbs their virtues, the gums and spices stimulate
the senses with aromatic odor now, as in olden times. The won-
derful loadstone and the subtle amber have yielded up mysteries
to the researches of modern Science, of which the ancients
scarcely dreamed. What oracular responses could now be given
by the telegraph, which would put the magic of Dodona to shame!
What miracles of necromancy are daily effected by the magic of
the photographer, by aid of the Egyptian's Sun God! The five
hundred thousand men that were required to drag stones over a
made road, and then upheave them by clumsy levers, to build the
pyramid of Cheops, might now stand by with their hands in their
pockets, watching labor-saving machinery, propelled by that
mightiest of all magicians, the noble steam engine, doing the
work a thousand times quicker, and a thousand times better, than
ever the poor, bruised hands of unwilling captives could have
done! It is not in executive power in any single direction that
the ages of antiquity can successfully compete with the scientific
triumphs of the nineteenth century, when man's knowledge of
how to control the elements, and his perfect comprehension of
imponderable forces as applied to mechanical uses, produce re-
sults in physical science, which would make all the Magicians of
the East, and all the wonder-workers of antiquity, give up the
ghost in envy and amazement. But it is not in materialistic ac-
quirements or physical science, that the ancients transcended us
"It"
230
ART MAGIC.
*
or even began to equal the magical marvels, which the building
and furnishing of one single modern mansion displays. It is in
the realm of metaphysical speculation and the utilization of Soul
powers, that the ancients were our masters, and that the moderns
are wilfully blind, and contemptuously determine to remain so-
nay more: when the mere suggestion is thrown out that spiritual
sciences may correlate those of physics, the scoff, sneer and jeer
of Scientists, and the anathema maranatha of Priests, effectually
stifles all attempts at research save on the part of those who are
bold enough to face the rack and thumb and screw of moral mar-
tyrdom. Take for instance, the correlation of astronomy and as-
trology. Whilst astronomy declares the mathematics and geom-
etry of the sidereal heavens, astrology defines the executive forces
which suns, planets and systems mutually exercise upon each
other, and the influence which each atom of matter exercises upon
every other atom. Physicists allow that light and heat are the
two great motor powers of form and being; yet, whilst admitting
that man is the creature of physical organization, that his charac-
ter and physique are determined by the place where he is born,
the ante-natal influences which create his special tendencies, he
shoots out the lip of scorn when Astrology claims that the con-
figuration of the heavenly bodies, the original sources of light,
heat, and therefore of all subordinate effects, have aught to do
with shaping man's destiny, or determining the career he has to
run. Nothing is so thankless and unprofitable as the attempt to
pit spiritual phenomena against physical formulae, or argue in-
ductively against bigotry and materialism; but we venture to as-
sert, that if one score of thoroughly well-instructed astrologists,
who are both astronomers and mathematicians, shall undertake
to set up the figure of one life submitted to their methods for an-
alysis, the results in each instance shall be precisely the same, and
every leading feature of the physical form, mental tendency and
leading events of the human pilgrimage, shall closely correspond,
every one of the twenty with the other.
Jak
If such a possibility as the above does not indicate the ele-
ments of "exact science," we are at a loss to know the application
of the words. Meantime, the modern spirit medium of Europe
and America, has within the last quarter of a century exhibited
natural gifts and spontaneous powers, which put the acquired arts
of ancient Magians into the shade. Why they are not as great as
the mediums of India, Arabia, and Asia Minor, is, because the
Western medium depends entirely on the spirits to do the work
for him, and offers no prepared conditions, either physically, men-
tally, or in circumstantial surrounding, to aid the spirits, whilst
A
ART MAGIC.
231
the Asiatic and African medium fasts, prays, thinks, dresses,
washes, and practices the spiritualistic conditions necessary for
the highest gifts, through years of discipline. Spiritual bigotry,
scientific prejudice and popular indifference on religious subjects,
are the underlying causes which have cast their blight on Spirit-
ism and Magic in the nineteenth century, and cause these wonder-
ful elements of knowledge to loom up from the antique ages, in
proportions as stupendous and overwhelming as the Pyramid of
Cheops compared to a modern church, or the cave Temples of
Elephanta and Ellora, gauged by the proportions of a London
museum or a Parisian gallery of art.
The absence of magical art is not the lack of magical knowl-
edge. The spirit world will not confer its prizes upon dunces and
idlers. The natural world is the open page, the heaven, earth,
and all that in them is, are the letters of the magical alphabet, and
until man learns these, and enters upon the spelling-book of mag-
netism, and the grammar of psychology, this pen of ours may
point the way, but every pilgrim foot must tread the path for
himself. Thus, and thus only, may we rival the ancient man in
the goal of magical achievements to which he ascended.
We shall conclude this section by a few quotations, the first
of which we take from Ennemoser's History of Magic, in which
he gives an appropriate sketch of the characteristics of the Lapps
and Finlanders, whose spiritism strongly illustrates our opinion,
that climate, soil, scenery and surroundings, exert remarkable ef-
fects in modifying natural spiritualistic endowments, also that
these are communicated by the contagion of thought in com-
munities already predisposed to such affections.
"The present nations of Asia, among whom ecstatic states
and visions are to be met with, are worthy of mention. Among
them are the Siberian Schamans, the Arabian Dervishes, and the
Samozedes and Lapps. Among all these nations a species of som-
nambulism is common, into which they fall, either by means of
natural susceptibility, or by peculiar movements and exercises of
the body, and rarely by the use of narcotic substances. Among
the northern nations, the phenomenon of second-sight is said to
be frequent.
"Among the many Mongolian tribes, and also the Lapps, par-
ticularly excitable and susceptible persons are chosen as ghost-
seers and sorcerers; in India as Jongleurs, in Siberia as Schamans.
With much natural disposition, strengthened by practice and
mode of life, the majority require nothing more than to shout
violently, to storm, to dance and to drum, to turn round in a cir-
cle, to induce insensibility and convulsive rigidity. Among the

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233
Siberian Schamans, as we learn from Georgi, narcotic substances
are used, such as a decoction of fungus or other exciting vegetable
substances to produce visions, in which they see and communicate
with spirits, learning from them future and distant events. They
also see distant countries and the souls of the dead, to whom they
ascend from the body through the air to the seats of the gods,
which Hoegstrom especially relates of the Lapps, among whom,
such a high degree of susceptibility exists, that the most remark-
able phenomena are witnessed. If any one opens his mouth or
closes it, or points to anything with his fingers, or dances, or
makes other gesticulations, there are many who will imitate all
this, and when they have done so, inquire whether they have done
anything improper, as they knew nothing of what they did.
These Lapps are excitable to such a degree, that they are thrown
into insensibility and convulsions, by the most trifling and unex-
pected occurrence, such as a sound, or a spark of fire. In the
church they often fall into insensibility when the preacher speaks
too loud or gesticulates too much; while others, on the contrary,
jump up as if mad, rush out of the church, knock down all who
oppose them, and even strike their friends and neighbors."
"Pallas relates that the Schamans, the Samozedes, the Kat-
schinzes and other north Asiatic nations, are so extremely excit-
able, that it is only requisite to touch them unexpectedly to dis-
turb their whole organization, to excite their imagination and.
make them lose all self command. Each one infects the person
next to him sympathetically, so that in this manner whole neigh-
borhoods fall into fear, uneasiness and confusion. Pallas relates
of some girls among the Katschinzes, that they feel simultaneous
suffering as soon as one of their number becomes ill. 'For the
last few years,' says he, 'a species of insanity has made its appear-
ance among the young girls of the Katschinzes as if by infection.
When they have these fits they run out of the villages, scream,
and behave with the greatest wildness, tear their hair, and en-
deavor to hang and drown themselves. These attacks last usually
some hours, and occur when their sympathy has been excited by
the sight of other girls in a similar condition, without any certain
order-sometimes weekly, at other times not appearing for
months. All these and similar phenomena are related by Georgi
of the Mongol and Tartar races, who all have the same common
origin."
Our next quotation will be from a series of autobiographical
sketches, entitled "Ghost Land," written by the author of this
work, published by Emma Hardinge Britten in her admirable
American periodical, "The Western Star."
"In Lapland, Finland, and the northeastern part of Russia,
234
ART MAGIC.
our new acquaintances had beheld so many evidences of inborn
occult powers amongst the natives, that they had come to a con-
clusion which the well informed Spiritualist of modern times will
no doubt be ready to endorse, that is, that certain individuals of
the race are so peculiarly endowed, that they live, as it were, on
the borders of the invisible world, and from time to time see,
hear, act, and think under its influence, as naturally as other in-
dividuals do who are only capable of sensing material and external
things.
"Moreover, our friends had arrived at the opinion that cer-
tain localities and climactric influences were favorable or other-
wise to the development of these innate occult endowments.
"Experience had shown them that mountainous regions, or
highly rarefied atmospheres, constituted the best physical condi-
tions for the evolvement of magical powers, and they therefore
argued that the great prevalence of supermundane beliefs and
legendary lore in those latitudes arises from the fact, that inter-
course with the interior realms of being are the universal experi-
ence of the people, not that they are more ignorant or supersti-
tious than other races. Lord D had brought to England
with him a 'Schaman,' or priest, of a certain district in Russia,
where he had given extraordinary evidence of his powers. This
man's custom was to array himself in a robe of state, trimmed
with the finest furs and loaded with precious stones, amongst
which clear crystals were the most esteemed.
"In this costume, with head, arms, and feet bare, the Scha-
man would proceed to beat a magical drum, made after a peculiar
fashion, and adorned with a variety of symbolical and fantastic
paintings.
F
"Commencing his exercises by simply standing within a cir-
cle traced on the ground, and beating his drum in low, rhythmical
cadence to his muttered chantings, the Schaman would gradually
rise to a condition of uncontrollable frenzy; his hands would ac-
quire a muscular power and rapidity which caused the drum to re-
sound with the wildest clamor, and strokes which defied the power
of man to count.
"His body, meantime, would sway to and fro, spin round,
and finally be elevated and even suspended several feet in the air,
by a power wholly unknown to the witnesses. His cries and ges-
ticulations were frightful, and the whole scene of 'manticism'
would end by the performer's sinking on the earth in a rigid cata-
leptic state, during which he spoke oracular sentences, or gave
answers to questions with a voice which seemed to proceed from
the air some feet above his prostrate form. During my stay in
{
ART MAGIC.
235
:
Alg
Engand I was present at several experimental performances with
this Schaman, and though he could unquestionably predict the
future and describe correctly distant places and persons, Professor
M and myself were both disappointed in the results which we
expected to proceed from his very elaborate modes of inducing
the 'mantic' frenzy. Lord D accounted for the inferiority of
his protege's powers by stating that the atmosphere was prejudi-
cial to his peculiar temperament, and though he had striven to
surround him with favorable conditions, it was obvious he needed
the specialties of his native soil and climate for the complete
evolvement of the phenomena he had been accustomed to ex-
hibit.....
"We found another class, who seemed to have no extraordi-
nary endowments of a spiritual nature, yet in whom the most
wonderful powers of inner light, curative virtue, and prophetic
vision could be awakened through artificial means, the most po-
tent of which were the inhalation of mephitic vapors, pungent es-
sences, or narcotics; the action of clamorous noise, or soothing
music; the process of looking into glittering stones and crystals;
excessive and violent action, especially in a circular direction, and
lastly, through the exhalations proceeding from the warm blood
of animated beings. All these influences, together with an array
of forms, rites and ceremonials which involve mental action, and
captivate the senses, I now affirm to constitute the art of ancient
magic, and I moreover believe that wherever these processes are
systematically resorted to, they will, in more or less force, accord-
ing to the susceptibility of the subject, evoke all those occult
powers known as ecstasy, somnambulism, clairvoyance, the gifts
of prophecy, healing, etc.
"We derived another item of philosophy from our researches,
which was, that under the influence of magical processes, the
human organism can not only be rendered insensible to pain, but
that wounds, bruises, and even mutilation can be inflicted upon
it, without permanent injury; also, that it can be rendered posi-
tive to the law of gravitation, and ascend into the air with perfect
ease.
"Also, the body can be so saturated with magnetism, or
charged with spiritual essence, that fire cannot burn it; in a word,
when the body becomes enveloped in the indestructible essence of
spirit, or the soul element, it can be made wholly positive to all
material laws, transcending them in a way astonishing and inex-
plicable to uninstructed beholders. Of this class of phenomena,
let me refer to the 'Convulsionaires of St. Medard'; the history of
the 'French Prophets of Avignon'; the still more recent accounts
236
ART MAGIC.
of the frightful mental epidemic which prevailed in the district
of Morzine in 1864; the now well attested facts of supermundane
power enacted by the Fakeers, Brahmins, and ecstatics of the
East, and many of the inexplicable physical and mental phenom-
ena attributed to monastic ecstatics.
"Amongst the 'Convulsionaires of St. Medard' and the pos-
sessed peasants of Morzine, one of the most familiar demonstra-
tions of an extra-mundane condition was the delight and appar-
ent relief which the sufferers represented themselves as experi-
encing, when blows violent enough, as it would seem, to have
crushed them bone by bone, were administered to them. At the
tomb of the Abbie Paris, and amongst the frenzied patients of
Morzine, the most pathetic appeals would be made that powerful
men would pound their bodies with huge mallets, and the cries.
of 'Heavier yet, good brother! heavier yet, for the love of Heaven!'
were amongst the words most constantly uttered......
"During the fearful struggle maintained by the brave and
devoted prophets of the Cevennes against their oppressors, every
history, whether favorable or antagonistic, makes mention of the
exhibitions by which Cavillac and others of 'the inspired,' proved
their ability, under the afflatus of ecstasy, to resist the action of
fire."
The ancient Chaldeans acquired this art not by any magical
process, but by the knowledge of such chemicals as asbestos, and
other substances which would render the body fire-proof. The
French Prophets, and many spirit mediums of the nineteenth
century, have proved their power to resist the action of fire un-
der spiritual afflatus. Another example, it more were wanting,
of the superiority of natural spiritualistic endowments, over the
most occult methods of magical art.
ART MAGIC.
237
SECTION XVI.
A
THE POETRY OF LIFE'S STERNER PROSE.
MAGIC AMONGST THE GREEKS AND ROMANS-THE MYSTERIES OF
SAMOTHRACE AND ELEUSIS-THE GRECIAN SIBYLS AND DEL-
PHIC ORACLE-SORCERY AND THE DARK SIDE OF SPIRITISM.
Magic in the classical lands of Greece and Rome becomes so
thoroughly transformed from the solemn metaphysics of India,
the semi-savagism of Arabia, and the profound mysticism of
Egypt, by the young life, blossoming intellect, and love of the
beautiful which characterized Grecian genius, and in a measure
imparted its grace to the sterner spirit of Rome, that no attempt
to condense descriptions of their spiritism could do justice to the
subject. On the other hand our available space has been too
much taken up with analyses of the underlying principles of mag-
ical history in the Orient-the true fatherland of magic-either
to permit of, or to need our dweiling at any length upon these
fascinating themes, so clearly defined as the poetry of life's
sterner prose.
Magic, sorcery and the correspondingly dark shades of Spir-
itism, were not in harmony with the graceful and elastic charac-
ter of classic lands. Their peoples loved philosophy, and reveled
in the subtleties of thought, as portrayed through the brilliant
ideality of Greek and Roman history with stars of immortal
lustre.
Strictly speaking, no well marked systems of religious belief
prevailed in Greece and Rome. Their Pantheon of countless
Gods and Goddesses were too closely allied with humanity to im-
press their votaries with the awe and majesty appropriate to the
idea of Deity, and even their most exalted flights of imagination
could not embody the creative principle in aught beyond an im-
personated Demiurgus.
As we have already premised that we are not perpared in this
place to render any justice to the abundant and mobile shapes in
238
ART MAGIC.
which spiritism was represented in classic lands, we shall limit
the present notice to a brief account of certain specialties not
found in former sections, illustrated by the famous mysteries of
Eleusis, and the Sybilline women of Greece.
The Samothracian mysteries date back to the earliest periods.
of Grecian history, and attempts have been made to show, that in
these veiled rites the use of the loadstone, the secret powers of
electricity, and the twin fires of magnetism were brought into
play, and hence arose the worship of the constellated Deities Cas-
tor and Pollux.
There is little cotemporaneous evidence, however, to show
that the Samothracians possessed any practical knowledge of min-
eral magnetism, or understood the use of the loadstone, although
they cherished a deep and superstitious reverence for its myste-
rious properties of attraction and repulsion.
The highest and most elaborate rites, a knowledge of which
has descended to us from the days of antiquity, were those of
Eleusis and Bacchus in Greece, and the Saturnalia of Rome.
These, no less than the Samothracian rites, were unquestionably
derived from Egypt, and as the Eleusinian mysteries probably af-
ford the best representation of their famous Egyptian model, the
Isic and Osiric mysteries it is to a brief account of this famous
pageant that we shall call our readers' attention. So much has
been written in fragments concerning these great mysteries, and
the general tone of every description so invariably pre-supposes
that the reader is already acquainted with the basic ideas upon
which it discourses, that we deem it not out of place to present a
consecutive statement of the myth, as well as the underlying prin
ciples upon which these mysteries were founded. For this pur-
pose we avail ourselves of an admirable edition of Taylor's Eleu-
sinian and Bacchic rites, published by Dr. Alexander Wilder, of
New York, in 1875. We quote an abridged account of the legend
rendered by Minutius Felix. in Thomas Taylor's translation. This
author says:
CC
'Proserpina, the daughter of Ceres by Jupiter, as she was
gathering tender flowers, in the new spring, was ravished from
her delightful abodes by Pluto, and being carried from thence
through thick woods, and over a length of sea, was brought by
Pluto into a cavern, the residence of departed spirits, over whom
she afterwards ruled with absolute sway. But Ceres, upon discov-
ering the loss of her daughter, with lighted torches, and begirt
with a serpent, wandered over the whole earth for the purpose of
finding her, till she came to Eleusis; there she found her daughter,
and also taught to the Eleusinians the cultivation of corn.' Now
ART MAGIC.
239
in this fable, Ceres represents the evolution of that intuitional
part of our nature which we properly denominate intellect, and
Proserpina that living, self-moving, and animating part which
we call soul. But in order to understand the secret meaning of
this fable, it will be necesssary to give a more explicit detail of
the particulars attending the abduction, from the beautiful poem
of Claudian on this subject. From this elegant production we
learn that Ceres, who was afraid lest some violence should bc
offered to Proserpina, on account of her inimitable beauty, con-
veyed her privately to Sicily, and concealed her in a house built
on purpose by the Cyclopes, while she herself directs her course
to the temple of Cybele, the mother of the Gods. Here then we
see the first cause of the soul's descent, namely the abandoning
of a life wholly according to the higher intellect, which is occultly
signified by the separation of Proserpina from Ceres. Afterward,
we are told that Jupiter instructs Venus to go to this abode, and
betray Proserpina from her retirement, that Pluto may be enabled
to carry her away; and to prevent any suspicion in the virgin's
mind, he commands Diana and Pallas to go in company. The
three goddessses arriving, find Proserpina at work on a scarf for
her mother; in which she had embroidered the primitive chaos,
and the formation of the world. Now by Venus in this part of
the narration we must understand desire, which, even in the celes-
tial regions (for such is the residence of Proserpina till she is rav-
ished by Pluto), begins silently and stealthily to creep into the
recesses of the soul. By Minerva we must conceive the rational
power of the soul, and by Diana, nature, or the merely natural
and vegetable part of our composition; both which are now en-
snared through the allurements of desire. And lastly, the web
in which Proserpina had displayed all the fair variety of the mate-
rial world, beautifully represents the commencement of the illu-
sive operations through which the soul becomes ensnared with the
beauty of imaginative forms.
-
"Proserpina, forgetful of her parent's commands, is repre-
sented as venturing from her retreat, through the treacherous per-
suasions of Venus.
"After this we behold her issuing on the plain with Min-
erva and Diana, and attended by a beauteous train of nymphs,
who are evident symbols of the world of generation, and are,
therefore, the proper companions of the soul about to fall into
its fluctuating realms.
"But the design of Proserpina, in venturing from her retreat,
is beautifully significant of her approaching descent; for she ram-
bles from home for the purpose of gathering flowers; and this in
--
240
ART MAGIC.
a lawn replete with the most enchanting variety, and exhaling
the most delicious odors. This is a manifest image of the soul
operating principally according to the natural and external life,
and so becoming effeminated and ensnared through the delusive
attractions of sensible form. Minerva (the rational faculty in this
case), likewise gives herself wholly to the dangerous employment,
and abandons the proper characteristics of her nature for the de-
structive revels of desire.
“After this, Pluto, forcing his passage through the earth,
seizes on Proserpina, and carries her away with him, notwith-
standing the resistence of Minerva and Diana. They, indeed,
are forbid by Jupiter, who in this place signifies Fate, to attempt
her deliverance.
"Pluto hurries Proserpina into the infernal regions; in other
words, the soul is sunk into the profound depth and darkness
of a material nature. A description of her marriage next suc-
ceeds her union with the dark tenement of the body.
!
"Night is with great beauty and propriety introduced as
standing by the nuptial couch, and confirming the oblivious.
league. For the soul through her union with a material body
becomes an inhabitant of darkness, and subject to the empire of
night; in consequence of which she dwells wholly with delusive
phantoms, and till she breaks her fetters is deprived of the intu-
itive perception of that which is real and true.
"The reader may observe how Proserpina, being represented
as confined in the dark recess of a prison, and bound with fetters,
confirms the explanation of the fable here given as symbolical
of the descent of the soul; for such, as we have already largely
proved, is the condition of the soul from its union with the body,
according to the uniform testimony of the most ancient philoso-
phers and priests.
"After this, the wanderings of Ceres for the discovery of
Proserpina commence. Begirt with a serpent, and bearing two
lighted torches in her hands, she commences her search by night
in a car drawn by dragons. The tears and lamentations of Ceres,
in her course, are symbolical both of the providential operations
of intellect about a mortal nature, and the miseries with which
such operations are attended.
"These sacred rites occupied the space of nine days in their
celebration; and, this, doubtless, because, according to Homer,*
* Hymn to Ceres. "For nine days did holy Demeter perambulate
the earth and when the ninth shining morn had come, Hecate met
her, bringing news.'
"}
Apuleius also explains that at the initiation into the Mysteries of
•
ART MAGIC.
341
}
this Goddess did not discover the residence of her daughter till
the expiration of that period. Hence the first day of initiation
into these mystic rites was called agurmos, i. e., according to
Hesychius, an assembly, and all collecting together.
"After this, the soul falls from the tropic of Cancer into the
planet Saturn; and to this the second day of initiation was conse-
crated when they called 'to the sea, ye initiated ones!' because, says
Meursius, on that day the crier was accustomed to admonish the
mystae to betake themselves to the sea. Now the meaning of this
will be easily understood, by considering that, according to the
arcana of the ancient theology, as may be learned from Proclus,
the whole planetary system is under the dominion of Neptune.
Hence when the soul falls into the planet Saturn, which Capella
compares to a river voluminous, sluggish, and cold, she then first
merges herself into fluctuating matter, of which water is an
ancient and significant symbol. But the eighth day of initiation,
which is symbolical of the falling of the soul into the lunar orb,
was celebrated by the candidates by a repeated initiation and sec-
ond sacred rites; because the soul in this situation is about to bid
adieu to everything of a celestial nature; to sink into a perfect.
oblivion of her divine origin and pristine felicity; and to rush pro-
foundly into the region of ignorance and error.* And lastly, on
the ninth day, when the soul falls into the sublunary world and
becomes united with a terrestrial body, a libation was performed,
such as is usual in sacred rites. Here the Initiates, filling two
earthen vessels sacred to Bacchus, they placed one toward the east
and the other toward the west. And the first of these was doubt-
less, according to the interpretation of Proclus, sacred to the
earth, and symbolical of the soul proceeding from an orbicular
figure, or divine form, into a conical defluxion and terrene situa-
tion;** but the other was sacred to the soul, and symbolical of its
celestial origin; since our intellect is the legitimate progeny of
Bacchus. And this, too, was occultly signified by the position of
the earthen vessels; for, according to a mundane distribution of
the divinities, the eastern centre of the universe, which is analo-
gous to fire, belongs to Jupiter, and the western to Pluto, who
governs the earth, because the west is allied to earth on account
of its dark and nocturnal nature.
Isis the candidate was enjoined to abstain from luxurious food for ten
days, from the flesh of animals, and from wine.
* The condition most unlike the former divine estate.
** An orbicular figure symbolized the maternal, and a cone the
masculine divine Energy.
212
ART MAGIC.
"Again, according to Clemens Alexandrinus, the following
confession was made by the Initiate in these sacred rites, in an-
swer to the interrogations of the Hierophant: 'I have fasted; I
have drank the Cyceon; I have taken out of the Cista, and placed
what I have taken out into the Calathus; and alternately I have
taken out of the Calathus and put into the Cista.'
"We may easily perceive the meaning of the mystic confes-
sion, I have fasted; I have drank a mingled potion, etc.; for by
the former part of the assertion, no more is meant than that the
higher intellect, previous to imbibing of oblivion through the de-
ceptive arts of a corporeal life, abstains from all material concerns,
and does not mingle itself with even the necessary delights of the
body. And as to the latter, it alludes to the descent of Proserpina
to Hades, and her re-ascent to the abodes of her mother Ceres:
that is, to the outgoing and return of the Soul, alternately falling
into generation, and ascending thence into the intelligible world,
and becoming perfectly restored to her divine and intellectual
nature. For the Cista contained the most arcane symbols of the
Mysteries, into which it was unlawful for the profane to look.
As to its contents, we learn from the hymn of Callimachus to
Ceres, that they were formed from gold, which, from its incer-
ruptibility, is an evident symbol of an immaterial nature. And
as to the Calathus, or basket, this, as we are told by Claudian, was
filled with the spoils or fruits of the field, which are manifest sym-
bols of a life corporeal and earthly. So that the candidate, by
confessing that he had taken from the Cista, and placed what he
had taken into the Calathus, and the contrary, occultly acknowl-
edged the descent of his soul from a condition of being supra-
material and immortal, into one material and mortal; and that,
on the contrary, by living according to the purity which the Mys
teries inculcated, he should re-ascend to that perfection of his
nature, from which he had unhappily fallen."
*
•
Throughout this curious fable it must be borne in mind that
the Egyptians, Greeks, and all ancient as well as classic nations,
believed in the doctrines recited in the earlier sections of this
work, namely: that the Soul had once existed in a purely spirit-
ual state; that, tempted by the demands of sense, it had yearned
for mortal birth-descended or fallen into an earthly condition,
* A golden serpent, an egg and the phallus. The epopt looking
upon these, was rapt with awe as contemplating in the symbols the
deeper mysteries of all life or being of a grosser temper, took a lasciv-
ious impression. Thus, as a seer, he beheld with the eyes of sense or
sentiment; and the real apocalypse was therefore that made to himself
of his own moral life and character.
ART MAGIC.
243
and by its probationary sufferings and trials on earth, regained
the Paradisaical bliss from which it had fallen (vide sections 2
and 3). These ideas are represented in the myth of Proserpine,
and constituted the chief legend of all the ancient mysteries. At
the point, however, where our quotations cease, it is proper to
state that the drama proceeds after a fashion, the direct simplic-
ity of which is a part of that arcanum wherein the ancients repre-
sented the Soul's alliance with and birth into material form
through earthly generation.
The plainness of speech and characteristic nature of the
symbols employed, would prove revolting to our modern sense of
propriety; but most learned commentators admit that the ancients
sought to strengthen the Soul against sensual indulgence by
familiarizing the mind with ideas and forms connected with sen-
sual rites.
Jamblichus excuses this part of the mysteries, and especially
the dramatic scenes which depict the descent of the Soul into
earth through human generation, by saying:
-
"Exhibitions of this kind in the Mysteries were designed to
free us from licentious passions, by gratifying the sight, and at
the same time vanquishing desire, through the awful sanctity
with which these rites were accompanied; for the proper way of
freeing ourselves from the passions is: first, to indulge them with
moderation, by which means they become satisfied; listen, as it
were, to persuasion, and passion may thus be entirely removed."
The mysteries were divided into two sections, of which the
first or lesser mysteries were mere rudimentary states, during
which the Neophyte was supposed to undergo those embryonic
conditions necessary to prepare him for the higher revelations
of the great mysteries. In the first, the candidate was called a
Mysta, or "veiled one;" in the second, he became an Epopta, er
Seer, and was henceforth deemed exalted to the highest attainable
knowledge of human life and destiny, and the highest condition.
of purity which ceremonial rites could typify.
The chief aim in these celebrations was to impress the Neo-
phyte throughout with the sacredness and divine significance of
life, generation, the generative functions, and all the rites and
symbols thereto belonging.
The ministering priests were all persons of the purest lives
and most ascetic habits. Their garments and vessels were conse-
crated, their ornaments of the most splendid character, and "their
performances dignified with a lofty bearing impossible to be
described." All who took part in these rites were required to be
of pure life and unspotted name. No notoriously evil-doer could
244
ART MAGIC.
be admitted even to the lesser mysteries, and every candidate
was required to observe long fasts, strict asceticism, prepare for
the ceremonies by ablutions, and many purifications, and present
themselves unspotted in mind, body and garments, and crowned
with freshly gathered wreaths of myrtle.
The Temple devoted to this purpose was vast and gorgeous.
It was full of magnificent halls, solemn crypts, long galleries,
winding passages ascending and descending fearful precipices,
steep rocks and gloomy caverns.
The whole order of these wonderful buildings was designed
to typify the procession of the Soul's spiritual origin, descent into
matter, its struggles, trials, temptations, new birth, final regen-
eration, and re-ascent to the supernal glories of the Elysian
realms, from which it was assumed to have fallen. During the
rites, the Neophyte was conducted through scenes most terrible
to endure, most trying to all senses. Sometimes he was envel-
oped in thick darkness, and assailed with shrieks, groans, wails
and lamentations, symbolical of the despairing condition of the
lost Souls peering through flames and torments in the realms of
Pluto.
Peals of crashing thunder distracted him with terror; forked
lightnings gleamed fitfully through darksome abodes, revealing
the forms of hissing serpents, ferocious beasts, and sheeted spec-
tres, doomed to perdition. One of the final scenes of this tremen-
dous Drama, was the descent of the appalled Neophyte through
a rifted rock designed to typify the Yoni, and thence through a
rough and narrow cleft, the struggling victim emerged into a
fearful and unknown realm, the perils of which he could only
surmise by the awful stillness around him, broken by low groans
and convulsive sobs, designed to signify the agonies of new birth,
and a physical process of regeneration. Drawn through the sacred
waters of a new baptism, and borne onward by invisible conduc-
tors, the half dead Initiate was left for awhile to repose after the
tremendous struggle of final emergement through the stony mat-
rix. It was unquestionably from this great central idea of the
ancient mysteries that the Christians have derived their doctrines
of the new birth and regeneration; words which, to all but true
Initiates, are merely words, and significant of nothing more than
a senseless mystery.
S
After the great final trial, the Soul, by passing through the
allegorical new birth, was deemed to have become spotless and
innocent as a babe. Holy hymns were chanted, eloquent appeals
to the Initiate's constancy and virtue were uttered; he was ushered
into a magnificent Temple, where a colossal image of the glorious
ART MAGIC.
245
Maternal Goddess burst upon his sight, surrounded with all the
pageantry and pomp of Grecian luxury, art and splendor. Scenes
of dazzling beauty and supernal glory opened upon his ravished
vision. Exquisite representations of the Elysian fields allured
him to ramble amidst their flowery glades. Forms of unearthly
loveliness surrounded him; strains of delicious music and songs
of penetrating sweetness filled his soul with rapture, and lifted
him up to ecstasy.
Many of the noblest sages of antiquity passing through these
stupendous rites, have affirmed that their eyes beheld the forms
of the Gods, looked upon heavenly scenes, dazzling suns, blazing
stars, and figures of resplendent glory that were not of this earth.
Visions of the blest in their abodes of Paradise glanced before
them, and triumphant lyrics were heard chanted by no mortal
lips. Why should we doubt these repeated assertions of the great,
the wise, and the inspired ones of old? On the contrary, is it
possible to imagine that any truly sensitive nature could partake
of such scenes without unfolding to a higher life and more exalted
powers than they had ever enjoyed before?
The physical nature was under complete subjection. The
magnetic life of powerful Adepts permeated the air and filled the
Temple with Astral light and life.
The invocations, prayers and fervent aspirations poured forth
by the Neophytes must have charged the Temple spaces with
Soul aura, and transformed it into a spirit sphere. If there was
a spark of luminosity in the souls of those who toiled through
these tremendous initiatory processes, they must have been en-
kindled into celestial flame then or never, and it is equally impos-
sible to conceive of the existence of spiritual realms, and suppose
their inhabitants were not attracted to their earthly loves, and
the subjects of their tenderest care and ministry in these hours.
of exhaltation and trial. The Soul's powers must have been
quickened, the spiritual senses must have been awakened, and it
could not be otherwise than a true season of new birth or regen-
eration.
And thus it was that so many Initiates came forth from
these mysteries changed both in body and mind; hence, that so
many regarded them with a reverence unspeakable, and memories
so hallowed, that it left an impress on the entire of their after
lives. Neither can we wonder that it was the policy of govern-
ments to uphold these sacred mysteries; of legislators to constitute
them one of the most essential portions of ancient theocratic insti-
tutions.
Amidst all the temptations to linger in description which
—
246
ART MAGIC.
the graceful imagery, sparkling fancy and abundant Mythology
of Greek Spiritism abounds with, we are only privileged to pause
for one more notice, and that is of the famous Sibylline women
by whom the Oracles of Greece were delivered for so many centu-
ries, and for this purpose we select a few excerpts from a compre-
hensive and authentic sketch, taken from the Western Star, before
quoted, and written by the fluent pen of Emma Hardinge Brit-
ten:
THE CUMAEAN SIBYL AND THE PYTHIA OF DELPHI.
Some classical authors have limited the number of Sibyls
to four, but the generality of ancient writers give a list of ten,
to whom they assign names according to the countries of their
birth. Varro thus enumerates them:
*
"The Delphian-elder and younger; the Cimerian, and two
Sibyls, both named Erythraen; the Samian, the Cumaean, the
Hellespontian, the Phrygian, and the Tiburtine. Of all these,
the Cumaean and the Delphian have been the most renowned.
It is to the Cumaean Sibyl that is attributed the authorship of
the famous Sibylline books, the sale of which to King Tarquinius,
by an unknown old woman (supposed to have been the Sibyl her-
self) all classical historians have frequently mentioned. These
books were nine in number when first tendered for sale to the king.
When he refused to purchase them, the old woman threw three
of them into the fire, and returning to the king, demanded the
same price as before for the remaining six. The offer being still
refused, the unknown destroyed three more of her singular wares,
and again returning, demanded the same price for the three,
which she had asked in the first instance for the whole nine.
Struck with the oddity of this proceeding, Tarquinius paid the
price demanded, but no sooner became possesssed of the books,
than the old woman who had sold them disappeared.
On examination, the contents of the volumes proved to be
the vaticinations of the renowned Sibyls, and so great was the
value set upon these writings, that Tarquinius appointed two offi-
cials, especially charged with the duty of guarding them, and only
permitting them to be inspected and consulted by duly consti-
tuted authorities, in seasons of great national emergency. Not-
withstanding the high respect with which the Sibylline writings
were regarded, the original volumes purchased by Tarquinius
were destroyed by fire. Other monarchs caused fresh collections
to be made, and the most careful researches were instituted to
gather up and preserve all the Sibylline writings extant. Not-
withstanding this, several succeeding collections shared the fate
of their predecessor; so it is fair to conclude that the voluminous
ART MAGIC.
247
the
mass of books attributed to the Sibyls, and quoted by the early
Christian, as well as heathen authors, in support of their favorite
dogmas, contained as many interpolations as genuine writings;
indeed, it is questionable whether any of the original Sibylline
vaticinations survived the wreck of fire and revolution, which con-
sumed the most valuable records of those stormy times. On the
question of the number of those whom history has designated
the Sibyls, there can be no doubt but that many prophetic women,
who succeeded each other in the temple services of different dis-
tricts, were called by the same name, so that, in fact, the classifi-
cation of Varro, given above, applies rather to the places with
which they were associated, than to the actual limitation of their
numbers. There seems to have been some points of difference
between the Priestesses, the Pythia of Delphi, wandering
Prophetesses, and the personages mentioned as Sibyls. The
fact that so many women of antiquity manifested prophetic
powers, and were so frequently endowed with the faculty of ren-
dering oracular responses under the afflatus of what was deemed
'Divine inspiration, renders it a task of some difficulty to discrim-
inate amongst the variety of powers from which they derived cel-
ebrity.
S
Virgil, in describing the Cumaean Sibyl, says she was born
in the district of Troy, but went to Italy, where for a time she
dwelt in a cavern in the vicinity of the Avernian lake.
"She sometimes wrote her oracles upon palm leaves, which
she laid at the entrance of her cave, suffering the winds to scatter
them and bear them whither the Gods directed. At other times,
she gave responses orally to those who came to consult her, and
many chapters could be written on the marvelous accuracy of her
prophecies, and the remarkable lucidity with which she delivered
her descriptions of distant persons and things. In writing of this
'Sacred Maid,' as he styles her, Virgil gives the following well-
known delineation of her 'Corybantic' modes of prophesying:
"Aloud she cries,
"This is the time! inquire your destinies!
He comes! Behold the god!' Thus, while she said,
And shiv'ring at the sacred entry staid,
Her color changed, her face was not the same,
And hollow groans from her deep spirit came;
Her hair stood up, convulsive rage possessed
Her trembling limbs, and heaved her laboring breast.
Greater than human kind she seemed to look,
And with an accent more than mortal spoke.
Her staring eyes with startling fury roll,
<la
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ART MAGIC.
And all the God came rushing on her soul.
Struggling in vain, impatient of her load,
And laboring underneath the ponderous God,
The more she strove to shake him from her breast,
With more and far superior force he pressed,
Commands his entrance, and without contest
Usurps her organs, and inspires her soul."
Dryden's Translation of Aeneis, Book VI.
"This Cumaean Sibyl declares of herself:
"I am entirely on the stretch, and my body is so stupefied
that I do not know what I say, but the God commands me to
speak: Why must I publish my song to every one? and when my
spirit rests, after the divine hymn, the God commands me to
vaticinate (prophesy) again. I know the number of the grains of
sand, and the measure of the sun. I know the height of the eartlı,
and the number of men, stars, trees and beasts."
The Cumaean Sibyl, amongst other very important prophe-
cies, foretold that terrific eruption of Vesuvius, in which Pliny,
the naturalist, is said to have perished, and so many cities were
destroyed. She wrote, besides, many books which were held in
the highest veneration by the Romans, and is supposed to have
been the original of the fine statue which was placed in the tem-
ple of Jupiter Capitolinus, representing her holding one of her
famous Sibylline books in her hand.
"Passing over the vivid descriptions rendered by Plutarch,
Varro, Heraclides, and others, of the various Sibyls of other
names, we must now draw a slight sketch of the famous Pythia
of Delphi, who, whether one or many, has been more widely re-
nowned for demonstrating the fact of prophetic power than any
other name in history, the Cumaean Sibyl alone excepted.
"The small town of Delphi, in Phocis, would never have
attained any celebrity from its situation or commercial import-
ance had it not been the site of one of the most renowned of all
the Grecian oracles-that of the Apollo of Delphi.
"The site of the once magnificent temple, so famed for its
Pythian oracle, is at the northwestern extremity of the town,
built on the slope of the beautiful mountain called Parnassus.
"Shutting in the crescent-like inclosure which comprises the
ancient site of Delphi, is a vast mountain, split asunder, appar-
ently by volcanic action, and presenting two high peaks or cliffs,
which the Greeks called "The Brothers," It is from this circum-
stance that the town is supposed to have derived the name of Del-
phi or Adelphus. From the cleft which divides these two gigantic
peaks, flows out the far-famed Castalian Spring; and here tradi-
ART MAGIC
249
tion asserts that Apollo and the nine Muses, to whom the spring
was dedicated, endowed those who drank of, or bathed in its cool,
translucent waters, with the gifts of prophecy, musical and poet-
ical inspiration.
"On the spot which subsequently became the centre of the
gorgeous temple of Apollo, formerly yawned a deep cavern, from
which issued those strange mephitic vapors which were supposed
to exercise so powerful an influence in preparing the Pythia for
the possession of the oracular god. All authors of the time de-
clare that the cavern was charged with vapors of that peculiar
quality which excited a species of frenzy in animals, and delirious
ecstasy in the human beings who inhaled it.
"The discovery of these remarkable properties in the cav-
ern was due, it is alleged, to a goat-herd, who, noticing how wild
and frantically his flock leaped about after straying into the
entrance, made his way into its recesses, and was afterward found
in the frenzied condition common to all who ventured within
its charmed precincts. After the spot had attracted general atten-
tion, and become in that superstitious age venerated for its mys-
terious power of evoking the spirit of 'vaticination' or prophecy,
it was set apart as a hallowed place. The priests of Apollo
declared it was the choice dwelling-place of the God, and that the
utterance of those who resorted thither, and came under the influ-
ence of 'the divine fury,' were henceforth to be regarded as pro-
phetic, and their ravings received as oracular.
"It must be remembered that it was the universal belief of
the time, that the ravings of lunacy were prophetic, and denoted
the possession of some God; hence it is not surprising that a place
capable of producing upon all comers the afflatus so highly rever-
enced should be regarded as holy, and become the scene of those
superstitious rites common to the time and country. As it was
found that little else than wild confusion and unintelligible rav-
ings resulted from permitting the cavern to become a place of
universal resort, the Phocian authorities commanded that a
maiden of pure life and unspotted character should be selected,
who was brought to the sacred spot, immersed in the waters of
the Castalian Spring, arrayed in white, crowned with laurels,
and required to perform divers other ceremonies of purification
and preparation. When this was done, the priests of Apollo held
the Pythia,' as she was termed, over the entrance of the cavern,
and, provided she could endure the inhalation of the exhalations
without permanent loss of reason, or, as it more than once hap-
pened, without yielding up life itself in the frantic convulsions
which sometimes ensued, the novitiate was deemed the elect of the
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ART MAGIC.
God, and duly installed as his priestess, by taking her seat on a
tripod or basin, with three ears of gold, placed at the entrance to
the cavern.
"Plutarch alleges that the first and most celebrated Pythia
who served the Delphic oracle was a beautiful young country
girl named Sibylla, from the district of Libya. It is probable
that from this ancient prophetess was derived the name of Sibyl,
afterwards conferred on all her class. In later years it was found
necessary to select women of mature, and sometimes of advanced
age, to serve the oracle, the sacred character of their profession
having been found insufficient to protect the Pythia from the
licentiousness of the age. Plutarch, writing of this inspired
woman, says:
"We derive immense advantages from the favor the Gods
have conceded to her. She and the priestess of Dodona confer
on mankind the greatest benefits, both public and private.
"It would be impossible to enumerate all the instances in
which the Pythia proved her power of foretelling events, and the
facts themselves are so well and generally known, that it would
be useless to bring forth new evidences. She is second to no one
in purity of morals and chastity of conduct. Brought up by her
poor parents in the country, she brings with her neither art nor
experience, nor any talent whatever, when she arrives at Delphi,
to be the interpreter of the God. She is consulted on all accounts
—marriage, travels, harvest, disease, etc., etc. Her answers, though
submitted to the severest scrutiny, have never proved false or in-
correct. On the contrary, the verification of them has filled the
temple with gifts from all parts of Greece and foreign countries.”
"A gentleman, who once resided at the spot* so venerated
as the seat of divine inspiration, furnishes us with some descrip-
tions of the wild region which was the scene of the Cumaean
Sibyl's vaticinations. He says:
"The Lake of Avernus was once the extinct crater of a
mighty volcano, and the whole region, though now fertilized by
its waters, bears the marks of being fire-scarred, and presents a
most gloomy and repulsive appearance. The clefts in the savage
rocks abound with caverns exhaling mephitic vapors and bitumin-
ous odors. It was in one of the wildest, grandest, yet most awe-
inspiring gorges of these mountains, that the cavern existed which
tradition affirms to have been the dwelling of the Cumaean Sibyl.
The scattered inhabitants of the surrounding district believed
that this gloomy grotto was the entrance to the nether world;
* The author of Art Magic.
ART MAGIC.
251
that the hammers of the Titans, working in the mighty labora-
tories of the Plutonic realms, might be heard, ever and anon, re-
verberating through the thick and sullen air. The dark waters
of the gloomy lake were supposed to communicate directly with
the silent flow of the river of death, the Lethean stream, made
dreadful by the apparitions of unblest spirits who floated from
the Avernian shores to the realms of eternal night and torture.
Here dwelt the famous Cumaean Sibyl, and from the exhalations
of those poisonous regions, fatal to the birds that attempted to
wing their way through its burdened airs, or the living creatures
that strayed amidst its savage wilds, this weird woman derived
that fierce ecstasy in which she wrote and raved of the destiny of
nations, the fate of armies, the downfall of kingdoms, and the
decay of dynasties.
"Monarchs and statesmen shaped their acts by her sublime
counsels. The secrets of the unwritten future were mapped out
to her far-seeing eyes, as on an open page.
"The purposes of the Gods were made known to her as if she
had been their counsellor, and the inexorable fates revealed,
through her lips, the decrees in which thrones and empires crum-
bled into dust, as though she had been the mouthpiece of the
Eternal One.
"The mournful regions of the Avernian Lake were in strange
contrast to the equally celebrated, but far more attractive scenes
consecrated to the oracle of the Snn-God, in the delightful coun-
try of the Delphian Pythia.
"All travelers agree that the neighborhood of Mount Par-
nassus and the beautiful Castalian Spring is of much more genial
character, sparkling, as it is, with the sunlight, and fragrant with
bloom, yet there is, to my mind, an evident connection between
the influences of the exhalations derived from the Avernian and
Delphic caverns. The chasm, so famed as the scene of the Pythia's
utterances, is now no longer to be seen. The superb temple of
Apollo was so built as to inclose, and secure it from the approach
of the vulgar, and at this day no sign of such a chasm is visible;
but there are many clefts in the rocks, and one in especial, which
forms a deep cavern, into which I have myself penetrated as far
as I dared; but as I descended, clinging to its rugged sides, with
the intention of exploring it, I noticed the exhalations which arose
from it, and soon found that they were beginning to produce upon
me the same effect as the inhalation of nitrous oxide (laughing)
gas. The following day I visited that and two other caverns
piercing the mountains in the same direction, and by applying
1
252
ART MAGIC.
chemical tests to the vapors exhaling from within, I found my
suspicions confirmed, and am convinced there are chemicals in
these regions which continually generate nitrous oxide gas."
"The stately forms of the Sibyls have vanished from the
earth. The white-robed priest and the vestal virgin no longer
float through multitudes of adoring votaries, as mediums between
a race of Gods and men. The altar fires of the temples are
quenched, the colossal forms of marble deities overthrown; the
oracles are dumb, and the books of the Sibyls all consumed in the
whelming flames of time and change.
"The bowers of Grecian myrtle and rose are choked up with
trailing weeds, and the voluptuous shade of the laurel groves are
deepened into an unbroken night of rank vegetation. Faded
beauty, and living ugliness, death, ruin, and decay, occupy the
stately seats of ancient devotion, and the sunlight of inspiration
seems to have gilded the purple and gold peaks of Parnassus for
the last time; but the cup of inspiration, run dry in classic Greece,
is flowing full and abundantly in newer, happier lands.
.
"The links which bind the mortal and immortal, torn asun
der by the catastrophies of war and desolation, in ancient lands,
have stretched out into telegraphic lines between the worlds of
spirit and humanity; and though the modern medium can never
fill the place which the Sibyl of antiquity occupied in sublimity
of inspiration, in romantic lore and heathen splendor, she is suffi-
cient for the age she lives in; sufficient to bring to a cold and ma-
terialistic world the undoubted proofs of the soul's immortality,
and the fatherhood of the one universal God who is a spirit."
S
ART MAGIC.
253
PART III.

Allo
SECTION XVII.
MEDIEVAL THEOSOPHY-ELVES OR FAIRIES.
ELEMENTARY AND PLANETARY SPIRITS, OR SUB-MUNDANE AND SU-
PER-MUNDANE SPIRITISM-THE JEWISH CABALA-SCHEDIM-
THE INTERMEDIARY SPIRITS-THEIR FOUR ORDers.
In entering upon the third and concluding portion of this
volume, it becomes necessary that we should explain to our read-
ers what were the opinions cherished by the mystics of all ages,
concerning the existence and influence upon earth of other than
human spirits.
Ancient Theosophy in every land taught the existence of
Spirits, both higher and lower than those of earth's inhabitants.
The Jewish Cabala, which, as we have before alleged, contains
the sum of opinions derived from Persia and Chaldea, and in all
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4
probability, from still older lands, teaches that besides the Angels
and Archangels, who include many celestial orders, there are
between men and the lowest condition of fallen or evil angels
intermediary Spirits termed Schedim, who live in the elements,
and were divided into four orders corresponding to Fire, Air,
Earth and Water.
The first class belonged to the Fire, and in German Theos-
ophy were termed "Salamanders." They were supposed to be
wise, powerful and prophetic, partaking very nearly of the angelic
nature, yet not sufficiently advanced in the scale of being, to be-
come immortal. It was deemed that they knew many of the
secrets of nature, and to those toward whom they were benefi-
cently inclined, they would impart their knowledge freely. They
were sometimes said to be fierce and even terrible in their wrath,
and hence were as much dreaded as courted by the ancient Ma-
gians. The second class were spirits who partook of the fiery
quality of the first order, but were more properly spirits of the
air. The Scandinavian and Teutonic traditions simply define
them as spirits of the earth, but give them a wide range of class
and function, and represent them generally as dangerous and very
capricious,
It is in this order that mediaeval Theosophists ranged the
sweetest and most popular of all the Elementaries, those of whom
so many poets have sung, and traditions celebrated-the Elves or
Fairies-those moonlight loving Sprites whose tiny feet leave
their imprint on the green sward in magic rings-those imper-
sonated blossoms of the earth and air, on whose fantastic and
half mythical existence so many thousands of epics have been
founded, so many charming legends written. For ages these fas-
cinating sprites have served as the inspiration of the musician's
sweetest strains, the sculptor's fairest ideals, and the painter's
chef-d'oeuvres. Even the royal mind of Shakespeare stooped
to revel amidst the flowers and bloom, the merry Puck-like
tricks and pretty vagaries of these moonlight haunting phantoms,
and the world of poetry and imaginative literature will miss a
rare streak of sunshine from the dreary paths of dry matter-of-
fact narrative, when plain common sense shall begin to realize
the duty of extinguishing "the idle superstition" of Fairy lore.
Besides these charming "little people," whole nations of half-
aerial, half-earthly beings, of a kindred character, have been
ranked in the third class of Elementaries, especially by the Scots,
North Britons and Scandinavians. Such are the Trolls, Nixies
and Brownies, to say nothing of the Pigmies, who inhabit the
lowest parts of the earth; also the Gnomes and Kobolds, a good-
ART MAGIC.
255
natured but very low type of being, who are said to dwell in
mines, caverns, crypts where hidden treasures abound, and places
where metals are hid. These dwarfish beings were always repre-
sented as kindly-disposed toward humanity, and especially prompt
to aid miners and other treasure-seekers in discovering the object
of their search. Sometimes they were malign, and strove to hin-
der rather than assist humanity, guarding their earthly treasures
with jealous care, and using mysterious arts to baffle the seekers
for buried wealth; but, as a general rule, all miners who are not
too strong-minded to reject the idea of such spirits, unite in de-
claring that these sub-mundane dwarfs actually exist; that the
workmen often encounter them, and that many of them have been
guided by their friendly lights, or directed by the sounds of their
invisible hammers to the best mineral "leads." The author is in
possession of a vast mass of testimony on this subject, some col-
lected from experiences in Hungarian, Bohemian and Cornish
mines, in which he has himself partaken; others gathered from
reliable sources, containing narratives of the many kind acts of
warning against danger, and guidance for good, miners have
received from these subterranean Elementaries.
There are several still lower classes of impish beings, who
correspond to various species of animals and reptiles, and these,
though possessing hardly any traits of intelligence-except such
as are peculiar to the creatures of whom they are the spiritual
types-for the most part delight in mischief, and are ready when
summoned to aid human beings, as low in the scale as themselves,
in working ill to others.
In the ghastly records of mediaeval witchcraft, this class of
Elementaries were known as Vampires, Incubi and Succubi.
They were supposed to parasite on the bodies of the Witches
whom they served, acting as their "Imps or Familiars," in return.
for the nourishment afforded them, and the caresses they received.
There can be no doubt that the most absurd and wild exaggera-
tions have arisen, concerning the supposed communion between
Demons, and poor, degraded mortals, whose ignorance, helpless-
ness and perhaps the involuntary exercise of those occult powers,
which often manifest themselves in low types of humanity, have
rendered them obnoxious to the charge of witchcraft.
To accept the literal truth, of all the revolting tales of such
demonic intercourse, would be a libel upon human nature, but
to deny that strong and irresistible sympathies exist between the
visible and invisible realms, uniting alike the spirits of the lower
as well as the higher orders of being with man, would be to accept
the truth so flattering to pious egotism, of angelic ministry, and
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ART MAGIC.
blind our eyes to that unpleasing correlative, which binds up man
with the lower grades of being, and thus combines the whole scale
in one interblended chain of harmonic dependency.
As it is above, so it is below-on earth as in the skies. The
Universe is an endless chain of worlds in which spiritual spheres
above, and semi-spiritual spheres below, stretch away from the
lowest tones of being to the highest, in which embryonic life is
swarming upwards to manhood, as man himself aspires to spirit-
ual existence beyond. In this wonderful Oratorio of Creation,
every keynote struck by man finds an echo in the cavernous
depths below, and awakens vibratory harmonies in the corridors
of heaven above.
Spirits and angels are attracted to the necessities of human-
ity; elementaries reach up to sustain themselves by man's superior
endowments. If on the other hand he descends by the indulgence
of animal passions, cr sensual tendencies, to the lower realms of
being, can it be questioned that the creatures who derive influence
and influx from man, should be ready to respond to him in those
particular directions, to which their own instincts and impulses
point? The only questions that can legitimately arise in this con-
nection are these: Do such beings as Elementaries exist at all?
and can they communicate and hold intercourse with man? If
the reiterated assertions of Sages, Seers, Prophets, and Philoso-
phers, in the antique and Middle ages, be worth acceptance as tes-
timony-if the experience of modern Mystics and Seers, whose
prejudices do not interfere to prevent their reception of any form
of truth, deserve credit, then do these Elementaries exist-swarm
through all departments of nature, manifest their presence, and
become the willing subjects of human beings when the conditions
for intercourse are open to them. The gradations of elementary
existence extend, as we have before intimated, down to the very
lowest depths. There are beings whose rude embryonic life corre-
sponds to the lowest species of plants, earths, stones, metals and
minerals.
There are also two classes of watery spirits, namely; those
who inhabit marshy lands, stagnant pools, ditches, and still water;
and another of a higher type who govern rivers, fountains, seas,
ocean depths, and all kinds of running waters. These were an-
ciently called "Tritons, Mermaids, Mermen, and Undines." The
Earthly and Watery Elementaries were assumed by the Cabala to
be governed by a powerful Chief termed Asmodi. They were
taught of in all lands and in all times, and though different na-
tions assign to them varieties of names, and functions as numer-
ous as the varieties of matter, there is in all the legendary aç-
ART MAGIC.
257
.
counts rendered of them, a generic similitude, which leaves no
doubt that one basic idea prevails through all.
As the Author emphatically renders in his testimony of be-
lief to the existence of an intermediary class of beings, termed
with great propriety Elementaries, we shall drop the tone of tra-
ditionary description, and enter upon that more suited to convey
an idea of actual realities.
The Elementaries are neither wholly spiritual, nor entirely
material in substance. The corporeity of their bodies is too
dense to inhabit the spirit spheres, or consort with purely spiritual
existences, yet not sufficiently palpable to become visible to ma-
terial eyes, or the external senses of man. They inhabit strata of
atmospheres infinitely more sublimated than gases, yet far less re-
fined than pure Astral light. They correspond in the infinitude
of their states and functions to every particle of matter that ex-
ists, from the most solid crystal to the most rarefied gas. We
claim in short, that for every material body, animate or inanimate,
organized or inorganic, there is a correspondential realm of spirit-
ual existence-a counterpart in every stage of being. The dis-
embodied Souls of men are the counterparts to man himself—the
Elementaries to the world of matter, including the animal, vege-
table and mineral kingdoms. The two highest classes of these
beings, possess a fine ethereal sensitive spirit, yet not one whose
organization is sufficiently perfected to become self-conscious,
after the span of their earthly lives terminates, hence they are not,
strictly speaking, immortal. The same remarks apply in a meas-
ure to the two lower classes, although their vital or animating
principle is inferior to the "Sylphs and Salamanders"; in fact,
they are little more than animal, vegetable and mineral existences,
with strong and powerful instincts in the special realms of nature
to which they belong, but incapable of reason, reflection or self-
knowledge. From the highest to the lowest these beings are
aware of the existence of man; they honor and even reverence him
as a God, and are drawn by a mysterious instinct to desire contact
and association with him. The highest orders understand the na-
ture of continued existence, passionately long for it, intuitively
hope for it in some distant realms of being, and closely connect
the idea of immortality with man, hence their yearning for inter-
course with him, and their general desire to serve and oblige him.
There seems to be a descending scale of moral as well as mental
and physical inferiority amongst these intermediary existences,
for the finer, purer and more kindly traits of character diminish,
and at last utterly merge into ferocity, mischief and soulless ani-
mation, as we descend through the various grades of Elementary
life.
These beings are all embryotic and rudimentary, but whilst
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ART MAGIC.
the highest grades obviously prophesy of man-modeling after
him, though lacking his completeness, and always deficient in
some part, organ, or function-the lower we descend the more ru-
dimental becomes each type. It would be difficult to convey an
idea of the localities occupied by this wonderful realm of exist-
ence, to those Scientists who are accustomed to divide the world
of matter into solids, fluids, gases, ether, and perhaps the still
finer element so vaguely termed "Electricity"; but supposing we
were to add to these subdivisions one hundred, then one thousand
more, and then multiply that number by the largest sum in math-
ematics, we might conclude by affirming, that Science had still
failed to find the two extremes of solidity and rarefaction any
more than the largest telescope and the most powerful micro-
scope now in existence, have traced the finalities of the infinitely
large, and the infinitely little, or the gold-beater with all the
tenuity of his finest work has arrived at the last point of divisibil-
ity in the atom.
ļ
<
Permeating all space, interpenetrating even man's dense
world of solids, fluids, and gases, is a realm whose ethereal sub-
limations, the explorations of science have never yet mastered.
Vitalizing this material world of ours as the Soul animates the
body, this substantial yet invisible spiritual kingdom sustains all
the countless generations of human souls, that have been liberated
by death from the encasements of mortal structure. Between this
realm of pure Astral light, with all its freight of living spirits,
clothed in bodies of the same imperishable element, is a still
denser realm, neither as gross as the earth's atmosphere, nor as
sublimated as the spirit land, and yet it partakes of the quality
and essence of both, inheres in both, and is indissolubly con-
nected with both, for between the rarefactions of the one, and the
density of the other, float those strata of element which form the
world of the embryotic beings of whom we have been writing.
Away up beyond the sunny paths cleft by the wing of the
soaring eagle; deep down amidst the cities of pearl and kingdoms
of coral that pave the ocean floor; burrowing in the unexplored
depths of the cavernous rocks where mile upon mile of mountain
limestone and crystalline granite combine to form the overarching
roof of the fire king's castle; in all, through all, everywhere, in
every unit of space, there roll the waves, and float the winds of
the country inhabited by the Elementaries, so that could the eyes.
of mortality be opened as were those of the Jewish boy of old, in
response to the prayer of Elisha, they would gaze upon oceans and
seas of living creatures, finer than the Infusoria, larger than the
fabled giants—each in his place, in his town, city, nation, divided
i
ART MAGIC.
259
off into his peculiar realm, inhabiting each his special portion of
the kingdom to which he belongs, the whole constituting the
realm of the Elementaries.
These creatures cannot ordinarily see mortals, any more than
they can in turn be seen. Some amongst them, endowed with
finer instincts than others, can peer into the rifts and rents of
matter, and looking through, behold the God-like world of hu-
manity, just as prophetic clear-eyed men can-at special moments
of lucidity-gaze upon spirit land. Also they can be invoked,
much after the fashion that mortals employ in summoning
human spirits. Magicians especially those who have pre-
pared themselves for the control of spirits-can summon the Ele-
mentaries and cause them to appear as readily as human spirits.
The powers of the Elementaries are limited to the peculiar de-
partments of nature to which they belong. The beings who in-
habit woods, forests, and rural scenes, attach themselves to hunts-
men, charcoal burners, and others similarly employed.
Miners, fishermen, sailors, florists, metallurgists, all individ-
uals who find their spheres of labor, in special departments of na
ture, are surrounded by Elementary Spirits of a corresponden-
tial character. Persons of peculiar temperament, too, attract
different grades of Elementaries, and thus, some are specially at-
tractive to spirits of the fire, others to the aerial, earthly, or
watery spirits, just as the idiosyncrasies of their organisms dispose
them. It may be asked, how these beings are attracted to mor-
tals, if there is no sensuous perception between the two worlds.
Again we are at a loss to find analogies by which to explain to an
age, totally insensible to metaphysical laws, the intense and irre-
sistible sympathies which bind up the different objects in nature,
prevailing between man and all lower as well as higher existences,
diffusing a kind of blind consciousness even through the lowest
classes of inorganic matter. How tenderly does the blossom turn
to the light. How will the atoms of matter seek their chemical
affinities, exhibiting even their preferences, dropping one class of
metal, and rushing to another as soon as their favorite approaches!
Who instructs the sea-gull of the impending storm? Who
apprizes the terrified animals and fluttering birds, that an earth-
quake is at hand, and what kind hand closes up the cups of the
flowers when the last sunbeam has disappeared, or warns them to
open their shining petals to its return? Consider above all, the
nameless and indescribable realm of antipathies and attractions,
between which our whole system of society and companionship
oscillates, and then we may begin to comprehend how the half
spiritual, half corporeal creatures of the elements apprehend the
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ART MAGIC.
1
presence of man; are drawn to kindred natures, or repelled from
antagonistic ones; revel in the atmosphere of special tempera-
ments, and are driven off from others, as men shrink from contact
with uncongenial companions. In the higher teachings of wise
spirits, we learn that these Elementaries are born, and die, marry,
propagate their species and rear their young, even as mortals do.
As they die out of earth they are born into some other spheres,
alternating between spirit spheres and earths, until they arrive at
that state of perfect self-consciousness which antedates their birth
into those fully completed organisms capable of maintaining an
immortal existence. Many of the higher orders of Elementaries
attracted in the first instance by sympathy, have become the tute-
lary spirits of certain distinguished families, and continue their
protective care for succeeding generations. This is the origin of
what has so generally been deemed an idle superstition-like the
"Banshee" of Ireland, the vision of an armed knight, a weeping
woman, a white spectre, the unlooked for appearance of white
pigeons, lambs, or other unaccountable apparitions, preceding
death, sickness, or calamity, the traditions of which have been
handed down through all time, although it has become the fash-
ion to sneer the actualities out of orthodox acceptance.
The Red Indians of North America are especially distin-
guished for guardianship of this character.
Before entering upon the duties of leadership to their tribes,
their young men retire into the wildernsss to fast and pray. For
the space of nine days the bravest and best of these wild races
have been accustomed thus to await in solemn preparation, the
visits of their tutelary spirits, and the direction of their future
path in life. The author has conversed with many of the ancient
men of these Indian tribes, and they have invariably confirmed
the report which all tradition alleges namely; that the spirits who
appear to the young men during, or after the probationary days.
of their long fast, are seldom human, but though they communi-
cate after the fashion of human speech, or else infuse thoughts
into the mind by the process of inspiration, their forms are gener-
ally those of birds, beast, or some member of the lower kingdoms.
During several of their ceremonial rites at which the author has
been present, their "Jokassids" or Prophets have succeeded in
summoning around them powerful spirits who could play instru-
ments, shake their lodges, beat drums, and create the wildest
clamor of unearthly voices; and in all such scenes the spiritual
performers were scarcely ever seen by clairvoyants, or known by
mediums, to wear a human form. They were often wise in coun-
sel, always prophetic, and very mighty-good to their prophets,
ART MAGIC.
261
subtle in knowledge of healing, and always faithful to those whom
they chose to protect, but still these children of the forest see
them, hear their voices, and hold inspirational communion with
them, not as with spirits of their friends and kindred, whom they
also profess to see and converse with, but as tutelary spirits—
"spirits of nature"-or as we prefer to call them, Elementaries.
.
Another marked and distinctive sphere in which these Ele-
mentaries have played their part, has been in the scenes of min-
gled ignorance, superstition and spiritual afflatus, termed "Ob-
session."
During some of those periods of moral and mental epidemic
in which vast waves of Astral fluid swept over certain districts,
kindling up into abnormal prominence the latent powers of me-
diumistic persons, and by sympathetic contagion communicating
their influence to whole communities, the Elementaries, like the
spirits of Earth, have found themselves brought into direct and
open rapport with human beings.
Conditions already prepared broke down the barriers be-
tween the three worlds.
The Elementaries, Mortals, and Spirits, steeped in cyclones
of Astral light, blowing over the Earth just as storms, tempests,
and contagious airs traverse its surface, have become at times so
curiously interblended, that they could neither one nor the other
resist the attractions that involved them. These were the periods
marked as the eras of witchcraft, ecstasy, great religious revivals,
or moral revolutions. As the aim of the Elementaries is ever to
tend upwards towards man, so that of man gravitates to the spirit
world, and aspires to the companionship of God and Angels.
In these great seasons of mental unfoldment and spiritual
trial, kindred natures attract each other, and dissimilar ones are
violently repelled; yet out of the frenzy, of these stupendous men-
tal epidemics the races emerge, disciplined, and informed of many
of the most occult mysteries of being that would otherwise remain
profound secrets, and utterly unknown.
In the early periods of the celebrated New England Witch-
craft, the afflicted children first attacked, manifested the most
marked tendency to imitate the actions of animals, crawling
around the walls and cornices of houses, climbing like squirrels
up high trees, barking, crying and mimicking the voices of ani-
mals, with a fidelity as shocking as it was unaccountable.
Similar tendencies to imitate animals and mimic their ac-
tions have marked many other great popular outbreaks of spir-
itual contagion. In Mora, Sweden, and Scotland, during the
seventeenth century; at Morzine, during the nineteenth, these
262
ART MAGIC.
;
same perplexing features occurred in the tremendous fever of
obsession that spread over whole districts, causing many of the
unhappy victims to conduct themselves more like animals than
human beings, during their paroxysms. Many of the features of
Fetichism and Vaudooism, partake of these dark characteristics,
and though the author is of opinion-founded upon deep study
of the facts-that the majority of the demonstrations produced
in Europe and America during the great dispensation termed
"Modern Spiritualism," are produced by human spirits, though
the maximum of all testimony inclines to prove that the spirits of
humanity are the nearest to mortals, the most ready to serve and
influence, and the most efficient to control, in fact that, wherever
intelligence is rendered, it is strictly human, and implies human
spiritual agency, still there are some features of mediumship, es-
pecially amongst those person's known as physical force mediums,
which long since should have awakened the attention of philo-
sophical Spiritualists to the fact, that there were influences kin-
dred only with animal natures at work somewhere, and unless
the agency of certain classes of Elementary spirits was admitted
into the category of occasional control, humanity has at times as-
sumed darker shades than we should be willing to assign to it.
Unfortunately in discussing these subjects, there are many bar-
riers to the attainment of truth on this subject. Courtesy and
compassion alike protest against pointing to illustrations in our
own time, whilst prejudice and ignorance intervene to stifle en-
quiry respecting phenomena which a long lapse of time, has left
us free to investigate.
The Judges whose ignorance and superstition disgraced the
Witchcraft trials of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
found a solvent for all occult or even suspicious circumstances, in
the control of "Satan and his Imps." The modern Spiritualists
with few exceptions, are equally stubborn in attributing every-
thing that transpires in Spiritualistic circles, even to the wilful
and cunningly contrived preparations for deception on the part of
pretended Media, to the influence of disembodied human spirits,
good, bad, or indifferent; but the author's own experience, con-
firmed by the assurances of wise-teaching spirits, impels him to
assert that the tendencies to exhibit animal proclivities, whether
mental, passional, or phenomenal, are most generally produced by
Elementaries.
The rapport with this realm of being is generally due to cer-
tain proclivities in the individual, or when whole communities are
affected, the cause proceeds from revolutionary movements, in the
realms of Astral fluid; these contingently affect the Elementaries,
ART MAGIC.
263
who in combination with low undeveloped spirits of humanity,
avail themselves of magnetic epidemics to obsess susceptible indi-
viduals, and sympathetically affect communities.
From afflictions of this character, the only successful method
of exorcism is through the magnetic passes of strong, healthful,
and well-disposed magnetizers.
Although as we have before stated, the means of summoning
Elementaries are similar to those employed in the evocation of
spirits, the aims for which their services are solicited entirely de-
termine the class of respondents. Whether the spirits invoked
become visible or not, the presence is surely there. The call is
always heard and obeyed. Man rules potentially over all lower
existences than himself; but woe to him, who by seeking aid, coun-
sel or assistance from lower grades of being, binds himself to
them; henceforth he may rest assured they will become his para-
sites and associates, and as their instincts-like those of the ani-
mal kingdom-are strong in the particular direction of their na-
ture, they are powerful to disturb, annoy, prompt to evil, and
avail themselves of the contact induced by man's invitation to
drag him down to their own level.
The legendary idea of evil compact between man and the
"Adversary," is not wholly mythical. Every wrongdoer signs.
that compact with spirits who have sympathy with his evil ac-
tions.
Many and many a hapless soul which has "shuffled off the
mortal coil," finds to his cost that his evil deeds on earth havc
been performed in obedience to evil promptings, and that when he
deemed he was procuring gratification to himself alone by the in-
dulgence of his passions, he was actually doing the bidding of
Elementaries, and undeveloped human Souls, who by virtue of his
subjection to their will, or by reasons of obligations conferred
upon him, now become his rulers, and enact in reality the fabled
myth of Satanic compacts and Satanic possessions.
Except for the purpose of scientific investigation, or with a
view of strengthening ourselves against the silent and mysterious
promptings to evil that beset us on every side, we warn mere curi-
osity seekers, or persons ambitious to attach the legions of an un-
known world to their service, against any attempts to seek com-
munion with Elementary spirits, or beings of any grade lower
than man.
•
Beings below mortality can grant nothing that mortality
ought to ask. They can only serve man in some embryonic de-
partment of nature, and man must stoop to their state before they
can thus reach him,
264
ART MAGIC.
The author has in vision, and guided by spirit friends and
radiant Planetary Angels, visited many spheres of these Element-
ary races. He has seen them in every stage of degradation and
progression, some almost ready to burst the chrysolitic shell of
their caterpillar condition, and emerge into that spiritual realm,
from which they would be attracted back to matter, and be born
as men. Others, scarcely conscious of any higher existence than
their own, rudimentary beings who would have to undergo ages
of progressive transition ere they could attain the coveted boon of
immortality.
Į
In some of these embryonic spheres, the dwellers, conscious
of the superior existence and potential influence of man, and in-
formed by their quick intuitions of the approach of spiritual vis-
itants, made great preparations for their reception, and offered
oblations and homage to them, after the fashion of deific worship.
It will be asked why we allude to experiences so recondite, and
from which we would warn others back, as we would guard them
from the unrest which attends too wide a perception of the mys-
teries of nature. We answer, knowledge is only good for us when
we can apply it judiciously. Those who investigate for the sake
of science, or with a view of enlarging the narrow boundaries of
man's egotistical opinions, may venture much farther into the
realms of the unknown, than mere curiosity seekers, or persons
who desire to apply the secrets of being to selfish purposes. It
may be as well also for man to remember that he and his planct
are not the all of being, and that besides the revelations included
in the stupendous outpouring called "Modern Spiritualism," there
are many problems yet to be solved in human life and planetary
existence, which "Spiritualism" does not cover, nor ignorance
and prejudice dream of.
1
Besides these considerations, we would warn man of the
many subtle though invisible enemies which surround him, and
rather by the instinct of their embryotic natures, than through
malice prepense, seek to lay siege to the garrison of the human
heart. We would advise him, moreover that into that sacred en-
trenchment, no power can enter, save by invitation of the Soul it-
self. Angels may solicit, or demons may tempt, but none can
compel the spirit within to action, unless it first surrenders the
will to the investing power.
After the weird clairvoyant pilgrimages into the secret
crypts or aerial kingdoms of the Elementaries alluded to above,
the author has speculated curiously upon the unborn triumphs
which Science will yet achieve, when her indomitable researches
shall have advanced from the realms of invisible gases, into those
ART MAGIC.
265
of the countless strata, which make up the imponderable element
of FORCE, the lowest of which is the realm of the Elementaries,
the highest, that of Astral Light or Spirit Land. If the telescope
can gauge the infinite realms of space, and bring to the Astron-
omer's view whole hemispheres of blazing suns, where the naked
eye could discern only darkness impenetrable; if the microscope
can reveal a kingdom of animalculae, where the unassisted vision
beholds only a drop of water, why may we not hope that the
realms of the imponderable will yet be gauged by scientific in-
struments, and the blank and non-intelligent element of Force,
yield up to view a Soul Universe, consisting of Kingdoms and Em-
pires, before whose magnitude, power and beauty, the worlds of
matter will shrink into atomic littleness! When Science stands
still or goes back, we shall see the gates of future possibilities shut
against her; until then, the conquest of two new worlds await her
discovery, those inhabited by the cnfranchised souls of men and
the Elementaries.
Of the radiant and exalted realms of being termed Planetary
Spirits, who with the countless orders of Angels and Archangels
come under the category of Super-mundane Spiritism, it seems
impossible to convey any adequate conception, save to those who
have enjoyed the glorious privilege of communion with them.
All nations of antiquity believed in and taught of them, yet
even as "tutelary spirits," they rarely communicate openly with
earth, and except to such Mystics as have by years of preparation
fitted themselves for such high communion, their natures and
functions are but little known.
Still we feel impelled to speak of their existence not alone
for the truth's sake, but also because we would enlarge that nar-
row and limited view of God's universe, which in so many minds
can never expand beyond the idea of a mortal pilgrimage and im-
mortal existence for the inhabitants of this visible earth only.
Every planet, sun, and system, is teeming with life, and life both
material and spiritual appropriate to each particular orb in space.
The higher minds of every spirit sphere, interchange communion
with others in the same system of the Universe as their own.
Clairvoyants, Seers, and instructed Magicians, can, if they will,
invoke planetary spirits, in preference to those of their own na-
tures; but here as throughout this volume, we affirm that the most
direct, normal and harmonious spheres of communion, are those.
which connect man and the spirits of ancestors, those whose im-
pelling motives in each case are love, kindness, desire for spirituai
light and progress on the one side, and the undying affection
which survives the shock of death, and urges kind spirit friends
266
ART MAGIC.
to minister tenderly to those they have left behind, on the other.
The ties which unite in bonds of natural affinity the inhabit-
ants of earth and their spirit friends and kindred, are those of
root and branch, parents and offspring, and can never be broken,
or superseded in the scale of natural harmony.
For the names and offices of the Planetary Spirits who are
chiefly instrumental in communicating with mortals, as well as
the method of invoking them, we refer the reader to the Magical
Elements of Peter D'Abano, to be found in a future section, and
for a concluding notice concerning Elementary Spirits, we point
to the following excerpts, taken from the Author's Autobiogra-
phy, entitled "Ghost Land."
"They (the Brotherhood) alleged that every fragment of mat-
ter in the universe represented a corresponding atom of Spiritual
existence, hence they claimed there were earthy spirits; spirits of
the flood, the fire, the air; spirits of various animals; spirits of
plant life, in all its varieties; spirits of the atmosphere; and plan-
etary spirits, without limit or number. The spirits of the plan-
ets, and higher worlds than earth, take rank far above any of those
that dwelt upon, or in its interior. These spirits are far more
powerful, wise, and far-seeing than the earth spirit. They as-
sumed that as man's soul was composed of all the elements which
were represented in his body, so his spirit was, as a whole, far su-
perior to the spirits of earth, water, plants, minerals, etc. To
hold communion with them, however, was deemed by the Broth-
erhood legitimate and necessary to those who would obtain a full
understanding of the special departments of Nature in which
these embryotic existences were to be found. Thus they invoked
their presence by magical rites, and sought to obtain control over
them, for the purpose of wresting from them the complete under-
standing of, and power over the secrets of Nature. They believed
that the soul's essence became progressed by entering into organic
forms, and ultimately formed portions of that exalted race of be-
ings, who ruled the fate of nations, and from time to time com-
municated with the soul of man as planetary spirits. They taught
that the elementary spirits were dissipated into space by the ac-
tion of death, but were taken up in higher organisms, and ulti-
mately entered into the composition of human spirits.... Profes-
sor M. was exceedingly generous and distributed his abundant
means with an unstinted hand. One day, discoursing with me
on the subject of his lavish expenditure, he remarked carelessly:
""There is that mineral quality in my organism, Louis, which
attracts to me, and easily subjects to my control, the elementary
spirits who rule in the mineral kingdoms. Have I not informed
ga
-
ART MAGIC.
267
you how invariably I can tell the quality of mines, however dis-
tant? how often I have stumbled, as if by accident, upon buried
treasures? and how constantly my investments and speculations
have resulted in financial successes? Louis, I attract money, be-
cause I attract mineral elements, and the spirits who rule in that
realm of Nature.
"I neither seek for, nor covet wealth. I love precious
stones for their beauty and magnetic virtues, but money, as a
mere possession, I despise. Were I as mercenary in my disposi-
tion, as I am powerful in the means of gaining wealth, I could be
richer than Croesus, and command a longer purse than Fortuna-
tus. Nevertheless the magnetic attractions which draw unto me
the metallic treasures of the earth, fail to find any response in the
attractions of my spirit; whereas, were I so constituted as to lack
the force which attracts the service of the spirits of the metals,
my whole soul would feel and yearn for a supply to the deficiency,
in constant aspiration for money and treasure.
"And that is why Professor M. was rich, but did not care for,
or value his wealth, whilst so many millions, who do not possess
in their organisms that peculiar mineral quality, which, as the
Brotherhood taught, was necessary to attract wealth, pine for its
possession, yet spend their lives vainly in its pursuit.
"Thus it is, that moral, mental, and physical equilibrium is
sustained throughout the grand machinery of the universe."
...."I must close this chapter by pointing out to the reader
how naturally a careful analysis of the human spirit throws light
upon all the psychological problems that have confused the race,
and perplexed the philosopher. One individual becomes rich
without effort, inherits wealth, finds wealth, acquires it in a thou-
sand ways, and that without needing or laboring for it. Another
spends his life in toiling to acquire it, and yet can never succeed.
No one leaves him an inheritance, he never purchases the success-
ful number in a lottery, never succeeds in a financial speculation.
"May there not be truth in the theory of the Brotherhood,
to wit, that beings potent in the realms of mineral treasure, are
magnetically attracted to such organisms, as assimilate with their
own?
"I have known one of the Brothers, who passed through nine
battles unharmed, whilst more than fifty of his acquaintances,
who had just entered the field of carnage, fell at the first or sec-
ond shot.
"Our philosophers alleged, that spirits of the fiery elements
could avert swift blows (especially such as struck fire) from those
who had a preponderance of a similar element in them, whilst
268
ART MAGIC.
F
others, deficient in that quality of being, attracted all such blows
as produced fire. They carried this theory forward into the ten-
dency to be drowned, or to avoid the action of the watery element
-to become subject to a certain class of accidents, to be in danger
from cattle, serpents, falling bodies, and indeed to all the events
of life, asserting that as spirits pervaded every atom of space, and
man's being was made up of all the elements, so when certain ele-
ments prevailed, corresponding spiritual influences were attracted
and became favorable to him; whereas the reverse of this position
obtained, in organisms deficient in special elementary forces. It
was to this cause that they attributed the good and bad luck of
different individuals, and special successes and failures in all. I
was introduced by one of the Brotherhood, to two young girls, one
of whom was passionately fond of flowers, and the other of birds.
In the clairvoyant condition, I was subsequently shown by our
ruling spirit, 'the crowned angel,' and the attendant spirits who
were attracted to these young creatures; and I now affirm, that all
the fairy tales and legends of Supernaturalism, which have been
written on the subject of Sylphs, Undines, etc., pale and grow
cold before the divine beauty, exquisite purity, and aspirational
grace, which shines out through the fleeting fragrance of those
spirits that correspond to flowers and birds."
W
"In a conversation with a beautiful Mystic, one of the au-
thor's earliest friends and associates in the realms of spiritual re-
search, now herself a glorified angel, the following items of phil-
osophy were suggested:
"Constance,' I asked, 'is it given you to know what new
form you will inhabit? Surely, one so good and beautiful can be-
come nothing less than a radiant planetary spirit?"
"I shall be the same Constance I ever was,' she replied. I
am an immortal spirit now, although bound in material chains
within this frail body.'
""Constance, you dream. Death is the end of individuality.
Your spirit may be, must be, taken up by the bright realms of
starry being, but never as the Constance you now are.'
Forever and forever, Louis, I shall be ever the same! I
have seen worlds of being, these Magians do not dream of. Worlds
of bright resurrected human souls upon whom death has had no
power, save to dissolve the earthly chains that held them in tene-
ments of clay. I have seen the soul world; I have seen that it is
imperishable.
"Louis, there are in these grasses beneath our feet spiritual
essences that never die. In my moments of happiest lucidity, my
soul winged through space and pierced into a brighter interior
ART MAGIC.
269
than they ever realized-aye, even into the real soul of the uni-
verse, not the mere magnetic envelope which binds spirit and body
together. Louis, in the first or inner recesses of nature is the
realm of force-comprising light, heat, magnetism, life, nerve-
aura, essence and all the imponderables that make up motion, for
motion is force, composed of many subdivisible parts. Here in-
here those worlds of half-formed embryotic existences with which
our teachers hold intercourse. They are the spiritual parts of mat-
ter, and supply to matter the qualities of force; but they are all
embryotic, transitory, and only partially intelligent existences.
Nothing which is imperfect is permanent, hence these elementary
spirits have no real or permanent existence, they are fragments of
being; organs, but not organisms, hence they perish-die, that we
may gather up their progressed atoms, and incarnate their separ-
ate organs into the perfected man.'
"And man himself, Constance?*
"Man as a perfected organism cannot die, Louis. The
mould in which he is formed must perish, in order that the soul
may go free.
The envelope, or magnetic body that binds body
and soul together, is formed of Force and Elementary Spirit;
hence this stays for a time with the soul after death, and enables
it to return to, or linger around the earth for providential pur-
poses, until it has become purified from sin; but even this at
length drops off, and then the soul lives as pure spirit, in spirit
realms, gloriously bright, radiantly happy, strong, powerful, eter-
nal, infinite. That is heaven; that it is to dwell with God; such
souls are His angels.
""The hand is not the body; the eye is not the head; neither
are the thin, vapory essences that constitute the separate organs,
of which the world of force is composed, the soul. Mark me,
Louis! Priests dream of the existence of soul worlds; the Broth-
erhood of the beings in the world of force. The priests call the
Elementary spirits of the mid-region mere creations of human
fancy and superstition. The Brothers charge the same hallucina-
tion upon the priests. Both are partly right and partly wrong,
for the actual experiences of the soul will prove, that beings exist
of both natures, and that both realms are verities; only the Ele-
mentary spirits in the realms of force are like the earth, perishable
and transitory, and the perfected spirits in the realm of soul are
immortal and never die."
270
ART MAGIC.
SECTION XVIII.
SPIRITISM AND MAGIC IN TRANSITIONAL ERAS.
WITCHCRAFT-SPIRIT OF PERSECUTION IN CHRISTIAN CHURCHES-
CAUSES OF THE UNPOPULARITY OF SPIRITISM-ALCHEMISTS
THE PHILOSOPHER'S STONE AND ELIXIR VITÆ.
The history of Spiritism and Magic recedes from view and
becomes dim to the eye of the superficial observer, as the night of
ruin and decay deepens into impenetrable gloom, and settles over
the splendid Orient and the classic beauty of Greece and Rome.
+
With the extinction of national life and glory in these once
powerful dynasties, the spiritualistic influences they diffused
throughout the world seem to wane, and finally vanish from the
page of history, becoming only a memory, a tradition, or a sacred
myth.
But this absence of metaphysical life from physical history
is more apparent than real. Many causes combined to prejudice
public opinion against the belief in Spiritism, yet Spiritism
stretching forward in one unbroken chain of influence from an-
cient to modern times, has never ceased to exist, and the changes
effected by altered conditions, altered opinions, and the rise and
fall of dynasties, have no more succeeded in obliterating spirit
manifestations from the page of human destiny, than the over-
shadowing pall of midnight crushes out the fragrance and bloom
of the flowers it effectually conceals.
The early Christian Fathers not only retained their faith in
the power and ministry of Angels and Spirits, on earth, but they
proved that faith by the works of the Spirit, which they per-
formed as their Master commanded them, and for some centuries
after His death they looked with suspicion on those who failed
to render this important testimony to their belief in Christianity.
Tertullian, one of the most zealous of the second century
converts to Christianity, sternly advised that, "any persons call-
A
ART MAGIC.
271
ing themselves Christians, who could not even expel demons, or
heal the sick, should be put to death as impostors."
The celebrated Bishops Montanus and Gregory, Origen, St.
Martin, Theophilus, and numerous other eminent Christian Fath-
ers, urged that the same tests suggested by Tertullian should be
required of professing Christians. They alleged their own will-
ingness to submit to such an ordeal, and report affirms that they
gave continual evidence of their ability to sustain their claims.
މ
So long as Greece and Rome maintained an independent
nationality, spiritual influences ruled their councils, and inter-
penetrated every phase of their history. In China, Thibet, India
and amongst the Northern Asiatic nations, Spiritism has never
died out, and continues in force, subject only to modifications
in the decadence of religious zeal and fervor to this day.
In every land where gregarious man yet resolves himself
into national communities, the exceptional gifts of Seers and
Prophets have furnished means by which spirit visitants glance
athwart the darkened paths of mortality. Spirit voices have re-
sounded in the air. The semblances of the buried dead have
glided through the open door, mounted the stair, and flashed upon
our sight like glimpses of moonlight breaking through thick
banks of clouds. Luminous forms radiant with the glory of the
better land; shapes of woe, shipwrecked waifs from the shores of
a retributive hereafter, have come and gone, forming a perpetual
chain of spiritual revelation, which time and change have never
had power to break. The realms of spiritual existence have never
been without some witness in human consciousness. Blank ma-
terialism or bigoted ecclesiasticism have never had the excuse to
say, in any decade of time, "The vision is closed;" "the gates of
the eternal city are shut;" "the canon of revelation is ended."
Magic as an art may have been pursued in the middle ages,
only at spasmodic intervals, and that under the ban of the churcli,
and the prohibitory frown of the State.
We are not writing the history of Spiritism and Magic, other-
wise we could assign reasons in abundance for this decadence in
the faith of old; a few suggestions, however, we feel compelled to
make in this direction, and commence by claiming that the brand
of reprobation first launched against the name and fame of Spir-
itism was cast by the hands of Christian Ecclesiastics.
By internal luxury and external pride, the aristocratic rulers
of the Christian churches in the sixth and seventh centuries suc-
ceeded in driving spirit influence from their midst, and finding
themselves deprived of spiritual gifts, and rebuked by the sight
of laymen performing those apostolic works required of them in
?
272
ART MAGIC.
proof of their faith, they resolved in solemn council that hence-
forth it should be unlawful for any layman to attempt the rites
of exorcism, or the cure of disease, by the laying on of hands.
Public opinion once impelled in this direction soon gained force
by momentum.
In Great Britain the ignorant and prejudiced missionaries.
who were sent to convert the poor natives to Christianity, com-
menced their work by leveling their bitterest diatribes against
the prevailing worship of Druidism.
The ancient rites of the Druids consisted of solar and sex
worship interblended. The heaps of stones sometimes piled in
single cairns, sometimes arranged in circles, but above all, those
gigantic rings formed of upright unhewn stones, with others hori-
zontally laid across them, were all symbolical of the ancient faith
of the Sun worshiper, blending with those emblems significant
of the Eastern Phallus and Yoni. The upright unhewn pillars
.!

mettan
J
Stone Henge.
or Lithoi were Phallic emblems, the horizontal slabs formed the
mystic Gate or Tau, both important symbols of Phallic worship.
Other Druidical altars formed of stones there were, which, either
under the subtle influences communicated to them by powerful
Priests and Priestesses, or from some peculiar virtue in the stone
itself, when balanced one mass on another, could be caused to rock
and thus give responses to inquiring worshipers, just as the mod-
ern Spiritists obtain communications through the movements of
inanimate bodies.
The curious investigator of Druidical remains and ancient
faiths will find abundant evidence to show that these "Cromlechs"
or rocking stones were nothing less than oracular tables used by
the Priestly orders to obtain responses from the invisible world.
ART MAGIC.
273
The nature of these weird rites was known to the ancient
Britons, and when they became converts to Christianity, the Pro-
phetic powers of the Priests and Priestesses, connected, as they
were, with dreadful sacrificial offerings, in which the sacred hu-
man form was not always exempt, left such impressions of mys-
tery and awe upon their untaught minds, that it was not difficult
for their Christian Teachers to convince them that this powerful
Priesthood wrought their marvels and obtained responses through
the devils whom they propitiated with human sacrifices.
Thus the early Christians in Great Britain grew up with an
instinctive horror of Spiritualistic rites, and never failed to con-
nect them with the influence of evil spirits and Satanic worship.
In Continental Europe whenever spiritual gifts were mani-
fested in the Convents or Monasteries, they were deemed evi-
dences of the special favor of God, and signs of extraordinary
sanctity. The individuals thus highly favored were canonized
after death as saints, and vast revenues accrued to the shrines,
which enclosed their ashes, from the miracles they were assumed
to work.
That the lives of the saints, and holy ascetics of the Chris-
tian Monasteries should be full of spiritual works, was naturally
to be expected. The conditions for the unfoldment of latent
spiritual powers were as rigidly enforced in monastic rule as they
were voluntarily endured by Hindoo Fakeers. The severe disci-
pline, numerous fasts, vigils, and penances of these gloomy re-
cluses, produced the same physiological and psychological changes
which have been indicated as resulting from Hindoo and Egyptian
methods of Initiation. By the same law, the fires of persecution
and continual prospects of martyrdom only served to quicken
the zeal and stimulate the devotion of the early Christians, until
they actually attained to those degrees of exalted insensibility to
pain, that mark even now the self-inflicted mutilations of Eastern
Ecstatics.
}
The rack and the thumb-screw, the convent and the mon-
astery, each produced their legitimate fruits in legions of wonder-
working saints and inspired martyrs, and these sufficed to supply
the Christian Church with all the spiritism it was either safe or
politic to encourage.
As it became the interest of the Christianity Hierarchy to
attribute all marvels wrought in Monastic Institutions to the
special favor of God, and the incomparable sanctity of Catholic
devotees, so it was also necessary to reserve such vast auxiliaries
to Clerical power within clerical boundaries, and hence, all who
presumed to manifest miraculous powers outside the privileged
274
ART MAGIC.
pale of the church and its dependencies, were at once branded
with the odious charge of witchcraft, necromancy and black
magic.
The more vague these charges were, and the more difficult
of definition, the more they struck terror into the mind of an
ignorant populace, until it was deemed the highest act of piety
on the part of laymen to accuse, and churchmen to destroy, every
hapless creature whom the superstition of the time, or the posses-
sion of actual spiritual endowments, furnished excuses to brand
with the fearful charge of witchcraft.
It must be remembered that whilst the power of life and
death was vested in the hands of civil governments, the power of
conferring eternal life or eternal torments, was claimed by the
Ecclesiastical Hierarchy of the middle ages.
The Church, usurping the name and authority of Christ,
claimed not only to be God's vicegerent on earth, and to hold
the keys of the kingdom, but to be the very porter and door-
keeper of heaven, peddling out passports and selling seats for the
divine amphitheatres of eternity, to those who could pay best, or
confer the richest benefits on its luxurious orders.
A
If Spiritual gifts had passed away from such a Church, if
its well-fed, pampered and ambitious disciples could no longer
perform the works enjoined on them by the houseless and wander-
ing Nazarene, was not that sufficient reason why no one else
should presume to do more than themselves?—that is no one out-
side of ecclesiastical dependencies--for it was as much the policy
of such a Church to encourage the prestige of miraculous gifts
within the limits of its own holy "ring" as it was to burn, crush,
torture, hang, drown, and slay generally, all who made profession
of the same stupendous powers, outside their special jurisdiction.
Every layman who could perform the works which Chris-
tian ecclesiastics ought to have done, was a living rebuke to them
for their lack of faith, and so there was but one remedy, and that
the all potential one of death. Thus perished to the number of
nine thousand, the brave and devoted Stedinger, a section of the
Frieslanders, who fired with the love of freedom, protested against
the insolent autocracy of the Church, and so under letter of
authority from the Pope and their Catholic Majesties of Germany,
they were exterminated root and branch. Thus died the noble
Waldenses, a sect of early Protestants, whose death warrant was
sealed for the same cause and by the same murderous hands.
J
Thus in the fourteenth century perished miserably, fifty-nine
of the celebrated military knights of the Holy Temple with their
brave and noble Commanders Jaques de Molay and Guy of Nor-
ART MAGIC.
275
mandy, all roasted alive before slow fires by Christian Priests,
and that under the accusation of excelling in those very arts for
which the model man of the Christian Bible, the great law-giver
of the Jews-Moses-had proved himself to be so accomplished
an adept, namely, magic. According to the most authentic rec-
ords of the times, and from transcripts of the very trials them-
selves, we learn that between the twelfth and eighteenth centuries,
thus perished amidst tortures too shocking for recital, and under
circumstances that curdle the blood to remember, over 200,000
persons of both sexes and all ages, and that in Continental Europe
alone! These murders were perpetrated by roasting alive, hang-
ing, burning, slaying and crushing. They included the destruc-
tion of the pure, pious, self-devoted and Angel-led Joan of Arc,
the Savior of her country, and the ungrateful monsters who pub-
licly burned her, and all thus perished, either being totally guilt-
less of any crime, or charged only with the possession of those
spiritual gifts which the founder of Christianity demanded as
the evidence of Christian faith.
In all lands but those dominated by Christianity, Spiritism
has not only prevailed, but it still exists; has been, and is, openly
taught as an art, engrafted on the services of religion and cul-
tured as a science. Under Christian rule alone have its hapless
votaries' powers been crushed out by torture, or silenced by death;
and thus it is that so strange and sudden a decadence appears on
the page of history to have fallen upon the once popular and uni-
versal methods of intercourse which prevailed between spirits
and mortals in the early ages. The attitude of the Christian Min-
istry towards the spiritual side of man's nature has been that of
unceasing hostility and presumptuous denunciation; can we won-
der then, that a final eclipse of faith has fallen upon the people
thus materialized by the very power to whom they have entrusted
the charge of their spiritual relations, or that the soul of Christian
humanity has become secularized, and its spiritual functions
dwarfed almost to annihilation by such a-process of training?
To gather up the scattered fragments of spiritual life and
phenomena which have burst forth like pent-up fires from every
hamlet, city, or nation, of civilization, during the bitter clerical
proscriptions of the midddle ages, would be impossible in a book
of this character. Nothing less than a consecutive and all-em-
bracing history could do justice to so vast a theme; our part, there-
fore, must now be limited to a few brief notices, and for this pur-
pose we select five classes of representative Spiritists, who figured
most prominently during the middle ages, and connected the first
or ancient era of spiritual history with the present time.
276
ART MAGIC.
.
The three first of these are the Alchemists, Rosicrucians, and
Mesmerizers; a noble triad of scholarly men, who, inspired with
the belief that spiritual powers and forces must be based upon
scientific laws, endeavored to discover and practicalize these, by
occult researches into nature, and the revival of magical rites and
ceremonials.
The two remaining classes included all those unfortunates
branded with the crime of witchcraft, and unquestionably in
many instances endowed with true prophetic powers, and finally
the Modern Spiritualists.
Of the Alchemists, as a class, we have but little now to say.
Although they professed to be engaged in seeking that myste-
rious stone, which would enable them to transmute base metals
into gold, and by expressing the virtues of certain drugs and herbs
compound an elixir which should prolong life indefinitely, it is
well known to modern scholars that the prestige of these pursuits
was designed in many instances to conceal a more occult and
spiritual idea. Alchemy owed its introduction into Europe to
the Arabians, amongst whom Alfarabi and Avicenna were the
most celebrated.
These men were no idle pretenders to the Hermetic philos-
ophy. They were both instructed Physicians, wise Magnetists,
and profound Psychologists. Some of their cures effected by the
laying on of hands and inimitable performances on the lute and
other instruments of music, proved them to be adepts, if not in
magical art, at least in the powers of magnetism and psychology.
The first Alchemist of any repute, whose writings are preserved,
was Geber, supposed to have been an Arabian, but historically
proved to have been a German. This philosopher claimed that
Alchemy was first practiced by Noah, and transmitted to his son
Shem, from whom the derivation of the word Alchemy was
traced. He proved that which the Jesuit Father Martini and
Lenglet du Fresnoy, in their several histories of the Hermetic
philosophy, have clearly shown, namely: that Alchemy was bc-
lieved in, and its principles attempted, if not successfully prac-
ticed, in most early periods of time. The Chinese taught of its
possibility more than two thousand years before the birth of
Christ, and many learned Alchemists claimed both Abraham and
Moses as brothers of their craft.
The facts were, that the bitter persecutions heaped upon
all dissenters from the stereotyped doctrines of Christianity, as
enunciated by the Roman Catholic Hierarchy, compelled the con-
cealment of heretical opinions beneath some external form of sci-
ence, whose semblance could give no offense to the ruling powers.
ART MAGIC.
277
The Arabian Alchemists and their philosophic successors-
the German Rosicrucians-were all waifs drifted off from the
great ocean of natural Theosophy, whose source was to be found
in the East, and whose origin dates back to the foundations of
Sabaism and Ancient Masonry, in Chaldea, India and Egypt.
These men were essentially the "Fire Philosophers" of the
middle ages, and their doctrines and practices were derived from
a profound study of the truths discoverable only in the powers of
nature.
-
They assumed that matter was resolvable back into two,
three, or at most, four primordial conditions. That by various
combinations of these original elements all the varieties of mater-
ial form and substance were produced, hence gold (in these phil-
osophers' opinion) was but a result of the highest combination of
elements, and the most perfect experiments of nature.
pagkaka
J
If then, they argued, they could reduce matter back to its
primordial states and then recombine, leaving out the subsidence
or flux, and preserving only the finer particles, they could make
gold at will, and that from the very same substances that pro-
duced iron, lead, and all the baser metals, which were really gold
in embryonic condition
To find the great factor by whose universal agency these
natural transmutations proceeded in the bowels of the earth, they
had only to resort to the Rosicrucian theory of latent, divine, in-
visible fire, permeating every portion of matter, theories of which
we have written in former sections. Time, experience, and deep
study discovered to many ancient philosophers a resemblance be-
tween the virtues which proceeded from certain stones, crystals,
minerals, drugs, herbs, and plants; astral, solar and lunar influ-
ences and the touch of the human hand, or even the contact of
any object which had been worn by human beings.
These, together with the mysterious powers of the loadstone,
and the universal correspondence which the realms of nature
and the sidereal heavens disclosed, convinced these fire philos-
ophers that the great hidden virtue, the universal motor of being,
was this all-pervading latent fire, or that which we call magnetism
in the earth and minerals; attraction and repulsion in the load-
stone; electricity in the clouds and plants, and sparks evolved
from batteries; life in animated bodies; and force throughout the
Universe of moving forms. In recondite treatises elaborating the
ideas which we have thus briefly summed up, the ancient Fire
Worshipers, Mediaeval Alchemists and Rosicrucians, dilated on
the Universal Force of being, as the "Philosopher's Stone," which
applied to chemical lore could make and unmake worlds-dissolve
-278
ART MAGIC.
all bodies, and recombine them in whatever proportions the ac-
complished chemist desired, or if expressed into juices and mixed
in such degrees as would preserve the largest amount of this force
in a liquid form, it would be the "Elixir Vitae" of which those
who partook, drinking in the true element of life, might prolong
it at will, or if supplied with a sufficient quantity from time-to
time, live forever!
Had Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, Geber, Artephius,
Friar Roger Bacon, and other great and truly learned students
of these occult ideas, once beheld a Voltaic pile reducing huge
bars of metal into a few particles of ash in a single flash, could
they have seen similar lightning sparks passing through invisible
airs, crystallizing them into drops of water, or acting upon water,
solidifying it into hard crystals-could they have witnessed pro-
cesses now so simple, then so stupendously magical, and beheld
as the only visible agent of these wonderful transmutations, noth-
ing but a flash of lightning, who can question that their faith in
the philosopher's stone would have been sealed into certainty,
and that they would have joined in the choral cry "Eureka! The
grand Hermetic secret is revealed!"
Again, had these Adepts behield, as the author has, a frail,
wasted, dying creature, extending its emaciated frame on the
couch over which the shadows of impending death were falling
fast, and watched, as the author has, a simple, untaught country-
man waving his rough warm hands over the helpless sufferer, until,
without an atom of visible matter used, a single particle of sensu-
ous cause discoverable, the color returned to the wan cheek, light
to the glazing eye, the crimson glow of life to the pallid lip, and
strength to the wasted form, until upspringing from the couch
of death and agony, the sufferer becomes a man again quite re-
stored to life, strength, and health, would not the watching Sages
have pertinently asked, "Do you now question the potency of the
Elixir Vitae, or doubt that under its influence the mortal might
become immortal and live forever?"
With every day's experience in marvels of transformation,
transmutation and chemical change wrought by the all-potential.
magician Electricity, with an equal opportunity for experience
to those who dare avail themselves of it, of the no less marvellous
potency of vital magnetism, as a restorative of health, a healer
of disease, nay, a very Messiah who can restore the entranced and
semi-dead to life again, who can question that the Alchemists of
old were Prophets of the new? and that their labors, veiled mys-
ticism, and occult symbolism, only hovered on the threshold of
those sublime truths, which Mesmer and Franklin have since
•
ART MAGIC.
279
demonstrated, and that even now, modern science is applying the
philosopher's stone to every act of simple electrotyping, and mod-
ern magnetizers are administering draughts of the Elixir Vitae
with every wave of their life-bringing hands.
It boots not now to rehearse the names and exploits of the
many wise and patient scholars, whose heretical beliefs were nec-
essarily hidden under the jargon of alchemical discourses, and
pretended researches into physical science. The Alchemists
started upon metaphysical propositions, and arguing from the
original sacredness of fire, the Deific principle hidden away under
every atom of matter, they proceeded to physical experiments, in
order to utilize this divine fire, and obtain a perfect command over
all the elements of nature.
They discovered in the course of their varied wanderings,
from the visible to the invisible, many useful chemical combina-
tions. Roger Bacon, for example, eliminated many profound
truths in Astronomy, and improved upon, if he did not actually
invent the telescope, burning-glasses and gunpowder. Arnold
de Villeneuve, Raymond Lulli, Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aqui-
nas, and many others more or less renowned, preserving faith in
the wonders of chemistry, added constantly to the sum of human
knowledge in this direction, besides advancing step after step into
those realms of power and achievement which enabled Sweden-
borg, Mesmer, Franklin, Galvani, Volta, and even the scoffing
Faraday, to found upon the experiments of unknown and de-
spised builders, those triumphant galleries and corridors of mes-
meric, magnetic and electrical science, of which the Ancient Al-
chemists and Rosicrucians laid the foundation stones.
N
280
ART MAGIC.
/
SUPPLEMENT TO SECTION XVIII.
I
ALCHEMISTS AND PHILOSOPHERS.
HISTORY OF THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES-THE
GENERAL UNIFORMITY OF THEIR OPINIONS-THE CELEBRATED
GILLES DE LAVAL AND HIS INFAMOUS PRACTICES.
It would be impossible in a work of this limited nature tɔ
cite all the names, much less the opinions, of that numerous class
distinguished either as Alchemists, Rosicrucians, Astrologers, or
Philosophers, who formed the ranks of Mysticism during the sev-
enteenth and eighteenth centuries. Amongst the most distin-
guished of these ill-understood classes, were Nostradamus, a cel-
ebrated astronomer, and an expert Astrologer; Paracelsus, an ex-
cellent Physician and a scholar, who either accidentally, or as the
result of research, discovered those truths concerning mineral
and animal magnetism which Mesmer subsequently reduced to
a system; Van Helmont, a truly prophetic person, but one who
cultivated his gifts of Seership by the study and practice of mag-
ical arts; Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, Artephius, Arnold
de Villeneuve, Raymond Lulli, Roger Bacon, Nicholas Flammel,
George Ripley, and many other practical chemists, who perceived
the possibilities of Alchemy, and who distinguished themselves
from the thirteenth to the eighteenth centuries in writing on this
subject and awakening the terror of the ignorant, and the denun
ciations of the bigoted.
*
In the early part of the fifteenth century, the study of Al-
chemy and the practices of Magic became at once famous and
infamous, through the influence of the celebrated Gilles de Laval,
a marshal of France, whose wealth, unbridled luxury and shame-
less debaucheries led him to the practices of magical art, for the
sake of administering to the vilest of passions, and the replenish-
ment of his exhausted coffers, drained by his unparalleled extrav-
agance. As this monster in human form supplied to the fiction
mongers of later times the original of the famous drama of "Blue
-
ART MAGIC.
281
Beard," some idea may be formed of the vast notoriety to which
his crimes attained.
Neither the historical facts, nor the exaggerated tales which
combined to render the name of Marshal de Retz memorable
through all time, belong to this record; it is enough to add that
the magical practices to which he resorted in aid of his unholy
purposes, contributed greatly to deepen the horror with which
this art was regarded-especially in an age too ignorant and
priest-ridden to distinguish the nature of occult science from its
worst abuse.
It was during the fifteenth century that Henry Cornelius
Agrippa flourished, an adept in physical science, scholarly attain-
ments, as well as occult art, which made him the honored officer
of Kings and Princes, the friend, adviser and Physician of Queens
and Princesses, and the Paragon of Magicians, in all ages. It is
from a compendium of his occult practices that we are enabled
to present our readers in the following section with a complete
Arbatel of Magic, or full directions for the performance of those
curious rites in which Agrippa and many of his cotemporaries
claimed to be able to control the legions of Planetary Spirits.
CORNELIUS AGRIPPA.

From a rare print in the Strasburg Collection.
It must be remembered that this distinguished Knight and
great Adept was a devout Roman Catholic, hence he employed
those sacred names, garments and forms, which belonged to his
Church, just in the same manner as the Arabians, Greeks, Chal-
deans and Egyptians employed the names and formulae of be-
282
ART MAGIC.
lief peculiar to their time in their magical rites. Let it be borne
in mind, however, that such features of each system are but the
exoteric forms in which the esoteric principles are wrapped up.
They have no real potency beyond the satisfaction they procure
to pious minds, that they are engaged in no ceremonials dis-
pleasing to their Gods, or contrary to their forms of worship.
Provided always that the magician is duly prepared by fast-
ing, abstinence, prayer, and contemplation-provided that his
magnetism is potent and his will all-powerful-the spirits will
obey and answer him, whether he conjures them in the name of
Buddha, Osiris, Christ or Mahomet. The true potency resides in
the quantity and quality of the Astral fluid, by which the operator
furnishes means for the use of the spirits, and the power of
the will, by which he compels beings less potent than him-
self to obey him. With these premises we shall only add, that
after a careful study of the occult works of Cornelius Agrippa,
we found it wholly impossible to reduce their quaint and involved
style to the comprehension of the nineteenth century reader, with-
out infringing upon the integrity of the text. Happily for our
purpose, the same idea occurred to a distinguished philosopher
said to have been a pupil of the great Agrippa's-one who, with
much more perspicuity of style, undertakes to reduce the magical
elements of his renowned prototype into much plainer language.
As there is not the slightest shadow of difference between the
systems of Agrippa and Abano, except in the superior clearness
of the latter's style, and as both were translated into English in
1664 by the same scholarly editor, Robert Turner, of London,
England, we select Abano's version as the one which cannot fail
to prove the most acceptable to our readers.
All the signs, sigils, names of angels, etc., have been faith-
fully copied with the utmost care.
.
ART MAGIC.
283
SECTION XIX.
HEPTAMERON, OR MAGICAL ELEMENTS OF PETER D' ABANO.
CIRCLES AND THE COMPOSITION THEREOF SIGNS, SIGILS, NAMES
OF ANGELS, ETC.-THE BENEDICTION OF PERFUMES--THE GAR-
MENT AND PENTACLE-FORM OF A PENTACLE-APPARITIONS.
点
​In the former book of Agrippa, it is sufficiently spoken con-
cerning Magical Ceremonies, and Initiations.
But because he seemeth to have written to the learned, and
well experienced in this Art; because he doth not specially treat
of the Ceremonies, but rather speaketh of them in general, it
was therefore thought good to adde hereunto the Magical Ele-
ments of Peter de Abano: that those who are hitherto ignorant,
and have not tasted of Magical Superstitions, may have them
in readiness, how they may exercise themselves therein. For we
see in this book, the distinct functions of spirits, how they may
be drawn to discourse and communication; what is to be done
every day, and every hour, and how they shall be read( as if they
were described sillable by sillable.
In brief, in this book are kept the principles of Magical con-
veyances. But because the greatest power is attributed to the
Circles; (for they are certain fortresses to defend the operators
safe from the evil Spirits). In the first place we will treat con-
cerning the composition of a Circle.
OF THE CIRCLE, AND THE COMPOSITION THEREOF.
The form of Circles is not always the same; but useth to be
changed, according to the order of the spirits that are to be called,
their places, daies, and hours. In making a Circle, it ought to be
considered in what time of the year, day, and hour you make the
Circle; what Spirits you call, to what Star and Region they do
belong, and what functions they have. Therefore let there be
made three Circles of the latitude of nine foot, and let them be
distant one from another a hand's breadth; and in the middle Cir-
284
ART MAGIC.
cle, first, write the name of the hour wherein you do the work.
In the second place, write the name of the Angel of the hour.
In the third place, the sigil of the Angel of the hour. Fourthly,
the name of the Angel that ruleth that day, and the names of his
Ministers. In the fifth place, the name of the present time.
Sixthly, of the Spirits ruling in that part of time, and their Pres-
idents. Seventhly, the name of the head of the Signe ruling in
that part of time wherein you work. Eighthly, the name of the
earth, according to that time. Ninthly, and for the completing of
the Middle Circle, write the name of the Sun and Moon, accord-
ing to the said rule of time, for as the time is changed, so the
names are to be altered. And in the outermost Circle let there be
drawn in the four angles, the names of the presidential Angels of
the Air, that day wherein you work; to-wit, the name of the King
and his three ministers. Without the Circle, in four angles, let
Pentagones be made. In the inner Circle, let there be written
four divine names with crosses interposed in the middle of the
Circle; to-wit, towards the East let there be written Alpha, and
towards the West let there be written Omega; and let a cross
divide the middle of the Circle. When the Circle is thus finished,
according to the rule now before written, you shall proceed.
Of the names of the Angels and their Sigils, it shall be
spoken in their proper places. Now let us take a view of the
names of the times. A year is fourfold, and is divided into
Spring, Summer, Harvest, and Winter; the names whereof are
these:
A
Autumne,
The Spring, Taloi. The Summer, Casmaran.
Adarael. Winter, Earlas.
The Angels of the Spring: Caracasa, Core, Amatiel, Com-
missoros.
The head of the Signe of the Spring: Spugliguel.
The name of the Earth in the Spring: Amadai.
The names of the Sun and Moon in the Spring: The Sun,
Abraym. The Moon, Agusita.
The Angels of the Summer: Gargatel, Tariel, Gaviel.
The head of the Signe of the Summer: Tubiel.
The name of the Earth in Summer: F'estativi.
The names of the Sun and Moon in Summer:
Athemay. The Moon, Armatus.
The Angels of Autumne: Tarquam, Gnabarel.
The head of the Signe of Autumne: Torquaret.
The name of the Earth in Autumne: Rabianara.
The Sun,
The names of the Sun and Moon in Autumne: The Sun,
Commutaff. The Moon, Affaterium.
ART MAGIC.
285
THE CONSECRATIONS AND BENEDICTIONS, AND
FIRST OF THE BENEDICTION OF THE CIRCLE.
When the Circle is ritely perfected, sprinkle the same with
holy water and say, "Thou shalt purge me with hysop, O Lord,
and I shall be clean; thou shalt wash me, and I shall be whiter
than snow."
THE BENEDICTION OF PERFUMES.
"The God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, bless
here the creatures of these kindes, that they may fill up the
power and vertue of their odours; so that neither the enemy nor
any false imagination may be able to enter into them, through
our Lord Jesus Christ, &c." Then let them be sprinkled with
holy water.
THE EXORCISME OF FIRE UPON WHICH THE PER-
FUMES ARE TO BE PUT.
The fire which is to be used for fumigations is to be in a new
vessel of earth or iron, and let it be exorcised after this manner:
"I exorcise thee, O thou creature of fire, by him by whom all
things are made, that forthwith thou cast away every phantasme
from thee, that it shall not be able to do any hurt in anything.
Then say, "Bless O Lord this creature of fire, and sanctifie it,
that it may be blessed to set forth the praise of thy holy name,
that no hurt may come to the exorcisers or Spectators, through
our Lord Jesus Christ, &c."
OF THE GARMENT AND PENTACLE.
Let it be a Priest's garment if it can be; but if it cannot be
had, let it be of linen, and clean. Then take this Pentacle made
in the day and hour of Mercury, the Moon increasing, written in
parchment made of a kid's skin. But first let there be said over
it the mass of the Holy Ghost, and let it be sprinkled with water
of baptism.
AN ORATION TO BE SAID WHEN THE VESTURE IS
PUT ON.
"Ancor, Amacor, Theodonius, Anitor, by the merits of thy
Angels, O Lord, I will put on the garment of Salvation, that this
which I desire may bring to effect, through thee, the most holy
Adonay, whose Kingdom endureth forever and ever, Amen."
OF THE MANNER OF WORKING.
Let the Moon be increasing and equal, if it may then be
done, and let her not be combust.
i
286
ART MAGIC.
The Operator ought to be clean and purified for the space
of nine days before the beginning of the work, and to be con-
fessed and receive the Holy Communion. Let him have ready the
perfume appropriated to the day wherein he would perform the
work. He ought also to have holy water from a Priest, and a
new earthen vessel with fire, a Vesture and Pentacle; and let all

H
A
C
1
XPHS.
us.
A
G
*
Form of a Pentacle.
these things be rightly consecrated and prepared. Let one of the
servants carry the earthen vessel full of fire and the perfumes,
and let another bear the Book, another the Garment and Pen-
tacle, and let the Master carry the Sword, over which there must
be said one Mass of the Holy Ghost; and on the middle of the
Sword let there be written this name: Alga; and on the other side
thereof, the name On. And as he goeth to the consecrated place,
let him continually read Litanies, the servants answering; and
when he cometh to the place where he will erect the Circle, let
him draw the lines of the Circle, as we have before taught; and
after he hath made it, let him sprinkle the Circle with holy
water, saying: Asperges me Domine, etc.
The Master, therefore, ought to be purified with fasting,
chastity and abstinency from all luxury the space of three whole
ART MAGIC.
287
days before the day of the operation; and on the day that he
would do the work, being clothed with pure garments, and fur-
nished with Pentacles, perfumes and other things necessary here-
unto, let him enter the Circle, and call the Angels, from the four
parts of the world, which do govern the seven Planets, the seven
dayes of the week, Colours and Metals, whose name you shall see
in their places, and with bended knees invocating the said Angels
particularly, let him say: "O Angeli supradicti, estate adjutores
mea petitioni, et in adjutorium mibi, in meis rebus et petition-
ibus."
Then let him call the Angels from the four parts of the world
that rule the Air the same day wherein he doth the work; and
having implored specially all the names and Spirits written in the
Circle, let him say: "O vos omnes, adjuro atque contestor per sc-
dum Adonay, per Hagios, Theos, Ischyros, Athanatos, Paracletos,
Alpha et Omega, et per hoc tria nomina secreta, Agla, On, Tetra-
grammaton, quod bodie debeatis adimplere quod cupio."
These things being performed, let him read the Conjuration
assigned for the day wherein he maketh the experiment; but if
they shall be pertinacious, and will not yield themselves obedient
neither to the Conjuration assigned to the day, nor to the pray-
ers before made, then use the Conjurations and Exorcisms fol-
lowing.
AN EXORCISM OF THE SPIRITS OF THE AIR.
We being made after the Image of God, endued with power
from God, and after his Will, do exorcise you by the most mighty
and powerful name of God, El, strong and wonderful (here he
shall name the spirits he would have appear, of what Order soever
they be), and we command you by him, who said the word and it
was done, and by all the names of God, and by the name Adonay,
El, Elohim, Elohe, Lebaoth, Elion, Escerchie,Jah, Tetragrammaton,
Saday, Lord God most high: We powerfully command you, that
you forthwith appear unto us, here before this Circle, in a fair
humane shape, without any deformity or tortuosity; come ye all
such, because we command you by the name of God; and by these
three secret names, Agla, On, Tetragrammaton, I do adjure you;
and by all the other names of the living and true God, I exorcise
and command you, that you appear here before this Circle to ful-
fill our will in all things which shall seem good unto us; and by
this name Primeumaton, which Moses named, and the earth
opened and swallowed up Corah, Dathan and Abiram; and we
curse you and deprive you from all your office, joy and place, and
do bind you in the depth of the bottomless Pit, there to remain
288
ART MAGIC.
until the day of the last Judgment; unless you forthwith appear
before this Circle to do our will; Therefore come ye, come ye,
come ye, Adonay commandeth you; Saday, the most mighty and
dreadful King of Kings, whose power no creature is able to re-
sist, be unto you most dreadful, unless ye obey, and forthwith ap-
pear before this Circle, let miserable ruin and fire unquenchable
remain with you; therefore come ye in the name of Adonay Le-
baoth, Adonay Amioram; come, come, why stay you? hasten!
Adonay, Saday, the King of Kings commands you; El, Aty, Azia,
Hin, Jen, Achaden, Vay, El, El, El, Hau, Hau, Hau, Va, Va, Va.
A PRAYER TO GOD TO BE SAID IN THE FOUR PARTS
OF THE WORLD, IN THE CIRCLE.
♪
*
"O my most merciful heavenly Father, have mercy upon me,
although a sinner, make appear the arm of thy power in me this
day (although thy unworthy child) against these obstinate and
pernicious Spirits. I humbly implore and beseech thee, that
these Spirits which I call may be bound and constrained to come,
and give true and perfect answers to those things which I shall
ask them, and that they may declare and shew those things which
by me shall be commanded them." Then let him stand in the
middle of the Circle, and hold his hand towards the Pentacle, and
say: "By the pentacle of Solomon I have called you, give me a
true answer." Then let him say: "By the most mighty Kings
and Potentates, and the most powerful Princes, Ministers of the
Tartarean Seat, chief Prince of the Seat of the ninth Legion; I
invoke you, and conjure you, and strongly command you, by him
who spoke and it was done, and by this ineffable name Tetra-
grammaton Jehovah, which being heard, the Elements are over-
thrown, the Air is shaken, the Sea runneth back, the Fire is
quenched, the Earth trembleth, and all the Hosts of Celestials,
Terrestrials, and Infernals do tremble, and are confounded to-
gether; wherefore forthwith and without delay, do you come
from all parts of the world, and make rational answers unto all
things I shall ask of you; and come ye now without delay mani-
festing what we desire, being conjured by the Name of the eter-
nal, living, and true God Helioren and fulfill our commands,. in-
telligibly and without any ambiguity."
mag
VISIONS AND APPARITIONS.
These things duly performed, there will appear infinite Vis-
ions and Phantasms, beating of Organs and all kinds of Musical
Instruments, which is done by the Spirits, that with the terror
they might force the Companions to go out of the Circle, because
P
ART MAGIC.
289
they can do nothing against the Master. After this you shall see
an infinite Company of Archers, with a great multitude of hor-
rible beasts, which will so compose themselves as if they would de-
vour the fellows: nevertheless, fear nothing.
Then the Priest or Master, holding his hand towards the
Pentacle shall say, "Avoid hence these iniquities by virtue of
the Banner of God;" and then will the Spirits be compelled to
obey the Master, and the Company shall see no more.
Then let the Exorcist, stretching out his hand to the Pen-
tacle, say, "Behold the Pentacle of Solomon which I have brought
before your presence. Behold the person of the Exorcist in tlie
middle of the Exorcism, who is armed by God, and without fear,
and well provided, who potently invocateth and calleth you, come
therefore with speed, in the virtue of these names, Aye, Serave,
Aye, Seraye; defer not to come by the eternal Names of the living
and true God, Eloy, Archima, Rabur, and by the Pentacle here
present, which powerfully reigns over you, and by virtue of the
Celestial Spirits your Lords, make haste to come and yield obedi-
ence to your Master.” This being performed, there will be hiss-
ings in the four parts of the world, and then immediately you
shall see great motions; and when you see them, say, "Why stay
you? wherefore do you delay? prepare yourselves and be obedient
to your Master."
Then they will immediately come in their proper form; and
when you see them before the Circle, shew them the Pentacle
covered with fine linen; uncover it and say, "Behold your conclu-
sion, if you refuse to be obedient;" and suddenly they will appear
in a peaceable form, and will say, "Ask what you will, for we are
prepared to fulfill all your commands, for the Lord hath sub-
jected us hereunto;" and when the Spirits have appeared, then
you shall say, "Welcome Spirits, or most noble Kings, because I
have called you through him to whom every knee doth bow, both
of things in Heaven and things in Earth, and things under the
Earth, in whose hands are all the Kingdoms of Kings, neither is
there any that can contradict his Majesty. Wherefore I bind you,
that you remain affable and visible before this Circle, neither shall
you depart without my license, until you have truly and without
any fallacy performed my will, by virtue of his power who hath
set the Sea her bounds, nor go beyond the law of his Power, the
most high God, who hath created all things, Amen. In the name
of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, go in peace
unto your places; peace be between us and you, be ye ready to
come when ye are called."
290
ART MAGIC.
THE FIGURE OF A CIRCLE FOR THE FIRST HOUR OF
THE LORD'S DAY IN SPRING-TIME.
X

Cynabal
higpopow
bigbnds's
Amatiel Commissoros.
eliAmaday Abraym Aguista Yayn Michel W
Varcan Rex
etragrammation
Al = pha
DJ BY
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et
SouQJ USUIDADƆ !MJ, L. NAD Wing. P
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hel Ins
Adonay
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Eloy
Tus
Sopup
These are the things which Peter de Abano hath spoken con-
cerning Magical Elements.
But that you may the better know the manner of composing
a Circle, I will set down one scheme; so that if any would make
a Circle in Spring time, for the first hour of the Lord's day, it
must be in the same manner as in the preceeding illustration.
It remaineth now, that we explain the Week, the several days
thereof, and the first of the Lord's day.
CONSIDERATIONS OF THE LORD'S DAY.
The Angel of the Lord's day, his Sigil, Planet, Sign of the
Planet, and the name of the fourth Heaven.
O
Michatel
ZRE Machen


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ART MAGIC.
291
The Angels of the Lord's day: Michael Dardiel, Huralapal.
The Angels of the Air ruling on the Lord's day: Varcan,
King.
His Ministers: Tus, Andas, Cynabal.
The winde which the Angels of the Air above said are under:
The North-winde.
The Angel of the fourth Heaven, ruling on the Lord's day,
which ought to be called from the four parts of the world.
At the East: Samael, Baciel, Atel, Gabriel, Vionatraba.
At the West: Anael, Pabel, Vstael, Burshat, Suceratos, Capa-
bili.
At the North: Atiel, Auiel, vel Aquiel, Masgabriel, Sapiel,
Matuyel.
At the South: Haludiel, Machasiel, Charsiel, Vriel, Naromiel.
The perfume of the Lord's day: Red Sanders.
THE CONJURATION OF THE LORD'S DAY.
"I conjure and confirm you, ye strong and holy Angels of
God, in the name Adonay, Eye Eye, Eya, which is he who was,
and is, and is to come, Eye Abray, and in the name Saday, Cados,
Cados, Cados, sitting on high upon the Cherubin; and by the
great Name of God himself, strong and powerful, who is exalted
above all Heavens, and by the name of the holy Angels who rule
in the fourth Heaven, and by the name of his Star, which is Sol;
and by his Sign; and by all the names aforesaid, I conjure thee,
Michael, oh, great Angel, who art chief Ruler of the Lord's day;
That thou labor for me, and fulfill all my petitions, according to
my will and desire, in my cause and business.
""
And here thou shalt declare thy cause and business, and for
what thing thou makest this Conjuration.
The Spirits of the Air of the Lord's day are under the North-
winde; their nature is to procure Gold, Gemmes, Carbuncles,
Riches; to cause one to obtain favor and benevolence; to dissolve
the enmities of men; to raise men to honors; to carry or take away
infirmities. But in what manner they appear, it's spoken already
in the former Book of Magical Ceremonies.
CONSIDERATIONS OF MUNDAY.
The Angel of Munday, his Sigil, Planet, the Sign of the
Planet, and name of the first Heaven.
Gabriel
Jpbmbane
C
Shanaiu
7


17
292
ART MAGIC.
į
The Angels of Munday: Gabriel, Michael, Samael.
The Angels of the Air ruling on Munday: Arcan, King.
His Ministers: Bilet, Missabu, Abuzaha.
The winde which the said Angels of the Air are subject to:
The West winde.
.
The Angels of the first Heaven ruling on Munday, which
ought to be called from the four parts of the world.
From the East: Gabriel, Gabrael, Madiel, Deamiel, Janael.
From the West: Sachiel, Laniel, Habaiel, Bachanael, Cora-
bael.
From the North: Mael, Uvael, Valuum, Baliel, Balay, Hu-
mastrau.
From the South: Chrauiel, Dabriel, Darqueil, Hanun, Anayi,
Vetuel.
The perfume of Munday: Aloes.
THE CONJURATION OF MUNDAY.
"I conjure and confirm upon you, ye strong and good An-
gels, in the name Adonay, Adonay, Eye, Eye, Eye, Cados, Cados,
Cados, Achim, Achim, Ja, Ja, strong Ja, who appeared in Mount
Sinai with the glorification of King Adonay, Saday, who created
the sea and all lakes and waters in the second day, and sealed the
sea in his high name, and gave it bounds beyond which it cannot
pass; and by the names of the Angels, who rule in the first Legion,
who serve Orphauael, a great and honorable Angel, and by the
name of his Star, and by all the names aforesaid-I conjure thee,
Gabriel, who art chief Ruler of Munday, that for me thou labour
and fulfill," &c., as in the Conjuration of Sunday.
The Spirits of the Air of Munday are subject to the West-
winde, which is the winde of the Moon; their nature is to give sil-
ver, to convey things from place to place; to make horses swift,
and to disclose the secrets of persons both present and future; but
in what manner they appear, you may see in the former book.
CONSIDERATIONS OF TUESDAY.
1
The Angel of Tuesday, his Sigil, his planet, the sign govern-
ing that Planet, and the name of the fifth Heaven.
Samad Machon.
Şamael...
H
m
K


The Angel of Tuesday: Samael, Satael, Amabiel.
The Angels of the Air ruling on Tuesday: Samax, King.
ART MAGIC.
293
His Ministers: Carmax, Ismoli, Paffrau.
The winde to which the said Angels are subject: The East-
winde.
The Angels of the fifth Heaven ruling on Tuesday, which
ought to be called from the four parts of the world.
At the East: Fringne, Guael, Damael, Calza, Arragon.
At the West: Lama, Astagna, Lobquin, Sencas, Jazel, Isiael,
Irel.
At the North: Rahumel, Hyniel, Rayel, Seraphiel, Mathiel,
Fraciel.
At the South: Sacriel, Janiel, Galdel, Osael, Vianuel, Laliel.
The Perfume of Tuesday: Pepper.
THE CONJURATION OF TUESDAY.
"I Conjure and confirm upon you, ye strong and holy Angels,
by the name of Ya, Ya, Ya, He, He, He, Va, Hy, Hy Ha, Ha, Va,
Va, An, An, Aie, Aie, Éloim, Eloim; and by the name of that high
God who made the dry land appear, and called it Earth, and
brought forth herbs and trees out of the same; and by the name of
the Angels ruling in the fifth Heaven, who serve Acimoy, a great
Angel, strong and honourable; and by the name of his Starre,
which is Mars, and by the names aforesaid, I Conjure upon thee,
Samael, who art a great Angel and chiefe ruler of Tuesday; and
by the name Adonay, the living and true God, that for me thou
labour and fulfill," &c., as in the Conjuration of Sunday.
The Spirits of the Air of Tuesday are under the East-winde;
their nature is to cause wars, mortality, death and combustions,
and to give two thousand Souldiers at a time; to bring death, in-
firmities or health. The manner of their appearing you may see
in the former book.
CONSIDERATIONS OF WEDNESDAY.
The Angel of Wednesday, his Sigil, Planet, the Signe gov-
erning the Planet, and the name of the second Heaven.
Raphael
spe
FOLE
X
The Angels of Wednesday: Raphael, Miel, Serapiel.
The Angels of the Air ruling on Wednesday: Mediat or Mo-
diat, Rex.

+ 1
Requie
Ministers: Suquinos, Sallales, Blaef.
The winde to which the said Angels are subject: The South-
west-winde.
294
ART MAGIC.
The Angels of the second heaven governing Wednesday,
which ought to be called from the four parts of the world.
At the East: Mathlai, Tarmiel, Barabo.
At the West: Jerescus, Mitraton.
At the North: Thiel, Rael, Jeriabel, Venabel, Velel, Abniori,
Veirnuel.
f
At the South: Miliel, Nelapa, Babel, Caluel, Vel, Laquel.
The Fumigation of Wednesday: Mastick.
THE CONJURATION OF WEDNESDAY.
"I Conjure and confirm upon you, ye strong, holy and potent
Angels, in the name of the most dreadful and blessed Ja, Adonay,
Eloim, Saday, Sady, Eie, Eie, Eie, Asamie, Asaraie; and in the
name of Adonay, the God of Israel, who created the two great
lights to distinguish the day from the night, and by the name of
all the Angels serving in the second host, before Tetra, a great
and powerful Angel; and by the name of his Star, which is Mer-
cury; and by the name of the Seal, which is sealed by God most
mighty and honourable; by all things before spoken, I Conjure
upon thee, Raphael, a great Angel, who art chief ruler of the
fourth day; and by the name of the seat of the Animals having
six wings, that for me thou labor," etc., as in the Conjuration of
Sunday.
The Spirits of the Air of Wednesday are subject to the South-
west winde; their nature is to give all Metals; to reveal all earthly
things, past, present and to come; to pacifie Judges, to give vic-
tories in war, to re edifie, and teach experiments and all decayed.
Sciences, and to change bodies mixt of Elements conditionally
out of one into another; to give infirmities or health; to raise the
poor, and cast down the high ones; to binde or loose Spirits; to
open locks or bolts; such kind of Spirits have the operation of
others; but not in their perfect power, but in virtue or knowledge.
In what manner they appear it is before spoken.
CONSIDERATIONS OF THURSDAY.
The Angel of Thursday, his Sigil, Planet, the Signe of the
Planet and the name of the Sixth Heaven.
Sachiel.
L
1x
>
Zebul.
The Angels of Thursday: Sachiel, Castiel, Asasiel.
The Angels of the Air governing Thursday: Suth, Rex.


A
1/44

ART MAGIC.
295
Ministers: Maguth, Gutrix, Pacifer.
The winde which the said Angeis of the Air are under: The
South-winde.
But because there are no Angels of the Air to be found above
the fifth heaven, therefore on Thursday say the prayers following
in the four parts of the world.
At the East: "O great and most high God, honored world
without end.”
At the West: "O wise, pure, and just God, of divine clem-
ency, I beseech thee, most holy Father, that this day I may per-
fectly understand and accomplish my petition. Thou who livest
and reignest world without end, Amen."
At the North: "O God, strong and mighty from everlasting."
At the South: "O mighty and merciful God."
The perfume of Thursday: Saffron.
THE CONJURATION OF THURSDAY.
"I Conjure and Confirm upon you, ye holy Angels, and by
the name Cados, Cados, Cados, Eschereie, Eschereie, Eschereie,
Hatim, Ya, strong founder of the worlds, Cantine, Jaym, Janic,
Auie, Calbot, Sabbac, Berisay, Alnaym; and by the name Adonay,
who created Fishes, and creeping things in the waters, and Birds
upon the face of the earth, and by the names of the angels serv-
ing in the sixth host, before Pastor, a holy Angel, and a great
Prince; and by the name of his Star, which is Jupiter, and by the
name of his Seal, and by the name Adonay, the great God, crc-
ator of all things; and by the name of all the Stars and
by their power, and by all the names aforesaid, I conjure thee,
Sachiel, a great Angel, who art chief ruler of Thursday, that for
me thou labor," etc., as in the Conjuration of the Lord's day.
The Spirits of the Air of Thursday are subject to the South-
winde; their nature is to procure the love of women, to cause men
to be merry and joyful; to pacifie strife and contentions; to ap-
pease enemies; to heal the diseased, and to disease the whole; and
procureth losses, or taketh them away. Their manner of appear-
ing is spoken of already.
11
CONSIDERATIONS OF FRIDAY.
The Angel of Friday, his Sigil, his Planet, the Signe govern-
ing that Planet, and name of the third heaven.
Anaël.
*
Sagno.
P


296
ART MAGIC.
The Angels of Friday: Anael, Rachiel, Sachiel.
The Angels of the Air reigning on Friday: Sarabotes, King.
Ministers: Amahiel, Aba, Abalidoth.
The winde which the said Angels of the Air are under: The
West-winde.
}
1
Angels of the third Heaven, ruling on Friday, which are to
be called from the four parts of the world.
At the East: Setchiel, Chedusitaniel, Corat, Tamael, Te-
naciel.
At the West: Turiel, Coniel, Babiel, Kadie, Maltiel, Hup-
haltiel.
At the North: Peniel, Penael, Periat, Raphael, Rainel, Dore-
miel.
At the South: Porna, Sachiel, Chermiel, Samael, Santanael,
Famiel.
The perfume of Friday: Pepperwort.
}
THE CONJURATION OF FRIDAY.
"I Conjure and Confirm upon you, ye strong Angels, holy
and powerful; in the name On, Hey, Heya, Ja, Je, Adonay, Saday,
and in the name Saday, who created four-footed beasts, and
creeping things, and man in the sixth day, and gave to Adam
power over all creatures; and by the name of the Angels serving
in the third host, before Dagiel, a great Angel and powerful
Prince; and by the name of the Star which is Venus, and by his
Seal which is holy, and by all the names aforesaid, I conjure upon
thee Anael, who art chief ruler of the sixth day, that thou labour
for me," etc., as before in the Conjuration of Sunday.
The Spirits of the Air of Friday, are subject to the West-
winde; their nature is to give silver; to excite men, and incline
them to luxury; and to make marriages; to allure men to love
women; to cause or take away infirmities; and to do all things
which have motion.
CONSIDERATIONS OF SATURDAY, OR THE SABBATH
DAY.
The Angel of Saturday, his Seal, his Planet, and the Signe
governing the Planet.


+
Caffiel
心
​焉
​The Angels of Saturday: Sassiel, Machatan, Uriel.
ART MAGIC.
297
The Angels of the Air ruling on Saturday: Maymon, King.
Ministers: Abumalith, Assaibi, Balidet.
The winde which the said Angels of the Air aforesaid arc
under: The Southwest-winde.
The fumigation of Saturday: Sulphur.
It is already declared in the Consideration of Thursday, that
there are no Angels ruling the Air, above the fifth heaven; there-
fore in the four angles of the world, use those Orations which you
see applied to that purpose on Thursday.
THE CONJURATION OF SATURDAY.
"I Conjure and Confirm upon you, Caphriel or Cassiel, Ma-
chator, and Seraquiel, strong and powerful Angels; and by the
name Adonay, Eie, Acim, Cados, Lord and Maker of the world,
who rested on the seventh day; and by the names of the Angels
serving in the seventh host, before Booel, a great Angel, and
powerful Prince; and by the name of his Star, which is Saturn;
and by his holy Seal; and by the names before spoken, I Con-
jure upon thee Caphriel, who art chiefe ruler of the seventh day,
which is the Sabbath day, that for me thou labor," etc., as it is
set down in the Conjuration of the Lord's day.
The Spirits of the Air of Saturday, are subject to the South-
west-winde; the nature of them is to sow discords, hatred, evil
thoughts and cogitations; to give leave freely to slay and kill every
one, and to lame or maim every member. Their manner of ap-
pearing is declared in the former book.
OF THE NAMES OF THE HOURS AND THE ANGELS
RULING THEM.
It is also to be known, that the Angels do rule the hours in
a successive order, according to the course of the Heavens and
Planets unto which they are subject, so that that spirit which gov-
erneth the day, ruleth also the first hour of the day; the second
from this governeth the second hour; the third, the third hour,
and so consequently; and when seven Planets and hours have
made their revolution, it returneth again to the first which ruleth
the day: therefore, we shall first speak of the names of the hours.
Hours of the day: 1. Yain, 2. Janor, 3. Nasmia, 4. Salla, 5.
Sadedalia, 6. Thamur, 7. Ourer, 8. Thamic, 9. Neron, 10. Jayon,
11. Abai, 12. Natalen.
Hours of the night: 1. Beron, 2. Barol, 3. Thami, 4. Athar,
5. Methon, 6. Rana, 7. Nėtos, 8. Infrac, 9. Sassur, 10. Aglo, 11.
Çalerva, 12. Salam.
298
ART MAGIC.
TABLES OF THE ANGELS OF THE HOURS ACCORDING
TO THE COURSE OF THE DAYES.
Sunday.-Angels of the hours of the day: 1. Michael, 2.
Anael, 3. Raphael, 4. Gabriel, 5. Cassiel, 6. Sachiel, 7. Samael,
8. Michael, 9. Anael, 10. Raphael, 11. Gabriel, 12. Cassiel.
Angels of the hours of the night: 1. Sachiel, 2. Samael, 3.
Michael, 4. Anael, 5. Raphael, 6. Gabriel, 7. Cassiel, 8. Sachiei,
9. Samael, 10. Michael, 11. Anael, 12. Raphael.
Munday.-Angels of the hours of the day: 1. Gabriel, 2.
Cassiel, 3. Šachiel, 4. Samael, 5. Michael, 6. Anael, 7. Raphael,
8. Gabriel, 9. Cassiel, 10. Sachiel, 11. Samael, 12. Michael.
Angels of the hours of the night: 1. Anael, 2. Raphael, 3
Gabriel, 4. Cassiel, 5. Sachiel, 6. Samael, 7. Michael, 8. Anael,
9. Raphael, 10. Gabriel, 11. Cassiel, 12. Sachiel.
Tuesday.-Angels of the hours of the day: 1. Samael, 2.
Michael, 3. Anael, 4. Raphael, 5. Gabriel, 6. Cassiel, 7. Sachiel,
8. Samael, 9. Michael, 10. Anael, 11. Raphael, 12. Gabriel.
Angels of the hours of the night: 1. Cassiel, 2. Sachiel, 3.
Samael, 4. Michael, 5. Anael, 6. Raphael, 7. Gabriel, 8. Cassiel,
9. Sachiel, 10. Samael, 11. Michael, 12. Anael.
Wednesday.-Angels of the hours of the day: 1. Raphael,
2. Gabriel, 3. Čassiel, 4. Sachiel, 5. Samael, 6. Michael, 7. Anael,
8. Raphael, 9. Gabriel, 10. Cassiel, 11. Sachiel, 12. Samael.
Angels of the hours of the night: 1. Michael, 2. Anael,
3. Raphael, 4. Gabriel, 5. Cassiel, 6. Sachiel, 7. Samael, 8. Michael,
9. Anael, 10. Raphael, 11. Gabriel, 12. Cassiel.
Thursday. Angels of the hours of the day: 1. Sachiel, 2.
Samael, 3. Michael, 4. Anael, 5. Raphael, 6. Gabriel, 7. Cassiel,
8. Sachiel, 9. Samael, 10. Michael, 11. Anael, 12. Raphael.
Angels of the hours of the night: 1. Gabriel, 2. Cassiel, 3.
Sachiel, 4. Samael, 5. Michael, 6. Anael, 7. Raphael, 8. Gabriel,
9. Cassiel, 10. Sachiel, 11. Samael, 12. Michael.
Friday.-Angels of the hours of the day: 1. Anael, 2. Ra-
phael, 3. Gabriel, . Cassiel, 5. Sachiel, 6. Samael, 7. Michael, 8.
Anael, 9. Raphael, 10. Gabriel, 11. Cassiel, 12. Sachiel.
Angels of the hours of the night: 1. Samael, 2. Michael, 3.
Anael, 4. Raphael, 5. Gabriel, 6. Cassiel, 7. Sachiel, 8. Samael, 9.
Michael, 10. Anael, 11. Raphael, 12. Gabriel.
Saturday.-Angels of the hours of the day: 1. Cassiel, 2.
Sachiel, 3. Samael, 4. Michael, 5. Anael, 6. Raphael, 7. Gabriel,
8. Cassiel, 9. Sachiel, 10. Samael, 11. Michael, 12. Anael.
Angels of the hours of the night: 1. Raphael, 2. Gabriel, 3.
Cassiel, 4. Sachiel, 5. Samael, 6. Michael, 7. Anael, 8. Raphael,
9. Gabriel, 10. Cassiel, 11. Sachiel, 12. Samael.
ART MAGIC.
299.
But this is to be observed by the way, that the first hour of
the day, of every country, and in every season whatsoever, is to be
assigned to the sun-rising, when he first appeareth arising in the
horizon; and the irst hour of the night is to be the thirteenth
hour, from the first hour of the day; but of these things it is
sufficiently spoken.
[The worthy "Pupil," or rather student and admirer of the
great Cornelius Agrippa, in his introduction to the Magical Ele-
ments of Peter d'Abano conveys the impression to the reader's
mind that the "Heptameron" given above, was written after the
time of Agrippa, as a digest of that great Sage's magical method.
Those who are versed in the lives and chronological appearances
of the Alchemists are aware that Peter d'Abano flourished some
two hundred years earlier than Agrippa, whilst Robert Turner's
Compendium of the philosophy of both was "done into English"
nearly two centuries later than the period of Agrippa's birth.
Though Abano's method is decidedly the same as Agrippa's, the
Translator has wisely given the former credit for superior per-
spicuity of style, hence the above selection of Abano's Hep.-
tameron]
300.
ART MAGIC.
SECTION XX.
CORNELIUS AGRIPPA'S PHILOSOPHY.
PARACELSUS-THE POWER OF THE MAGNET AND WILL
SALVE—WITCHCRAFT-THE CASE OF JANE BROOKS—OCCULT
VIRTUES OF HERBS, STONES, GEMS AND CRYSTALS.
r
Although there are many remarkable features of interest in
the writings of Cornelius Agrippa, we deem it unnecessary to give
farther citations of magical practices. The reader, desirous to
accomplish himself in the Magician's art, would derive but little
encouragement from a study of Agrippa's works, especially as
he repeatedly affirms that "a man must be born a Magician frora
his mother's womb." This passage, with others of a kindred char-
acter, plainly imply the great Magician's belief, that what we have
so often termed naturally prophetic, or Mediumistic endowments,
are far more available to procure communion with, and control
of spirits, than any arts which he can recommend. Again and
again, too, Agrippa enlarges on the potency of the will to produce
magical results. His opinion of this great instrument of power
is conveyed in the following quaint passage:
-WEAPON
"Notwithstanding the use of all these signs, and whether
or no the Magician shall make every pentacle duly, and write.
every name in order, even if he do speak all which is here set down
in every circumstance; yet, when no spirit cometh, it is the mind.
of the invocant which doth fail him, for all these things are but
as winds, which do blow on the temper of the mind, to stir it up.
to action." "Unless a man be born a Magician, and God have
destined him even from his birth to the work, so that spirits do
willingly come of their own accord-which doth happen to few
a man must use only of these things herein set down, or writ-
ten in our other books of occult philosophy, as means to fix the
mind upon the work to be done; for it is in the power of the mind
itself that spirits do come and go, and magical works are done,
ART MAGIC.
301
and all things in nature are but as uses to induce the will to rest
upon the point desired."
Agrippa, like Dee, Lilly, and other professors of the astro-
logical art, teaches that it is an exact science, which can be learned
and practiced independently of other magical formulae. In this
as in his ceremonial directions, the great philosopher's language
is too involved to be available to the general reader.
Next to Cornelius Agrippa, one of the most famous of all
the middle age Mystics, was Paracelsus, a Physician, Philosopher
and writer, whose usefulness and practical sense justly entitle
him to the high rank assigned him as the founder of a new and
revolutionary system of practice in the curative art. Whilst his
voluminous works form a perfect storehouse of suggestive thought
and ideality in the realm of metaphysics, our space will only allow
us to notice the remarkable uses which he claimed to have discov-
ered by the application of the magnet and the potency of the hu-
man will in the cure of disease. Paracelsus himself affirms, that
he relied chiefly on those two elements of power for effecting the
many extraordinary cures attributed to him.
The famous "weapon salve," by which he was said to heal
the most dangerous wounds, simply through anointing the weap-
ons which had inflicted them, was no doubt only a means of
psychological effect analogous to those now so familiarly
in use amongst Electro-biologists. Being as the narrative of his
life proves a powerful magnetizer and still more potential psy-
chologist, the effects he produced through these supreme agen-
cies, naturally enough seemed miraculous in the eyes of an igno-
rant and superstitious community, hence it would be difficult to
credit all the extraordinary achievements and magical perform-
ances attributed to him, without an understanding of the true
secret of his power. Paracelsus wrote many elaborate treatises
on the occult virtues of herbs, precious stones, gems, and crystals.
He himself was a fine clairvoyant and accomplished in the faculty
of crystal seeing. Hence arose the belief that he kept a familiar
spirit imprisoned in a splendid crystal which he wore in the hilt
of his sword, and that from this demon he derived his theurgic
powers and remarkable gifts of healing.
Paracelsus was a bitter opponent of the then popular system
of drug medication, and as his denunciations of Apothecaries
nostrums, and medical charlatanism, were fulminated with all the
unsparing violence of an impulsive and fearless opponent, it is
no wonder that he was loaded with opprobrium by the rival prac-
titioners of his time, fiercely denounced by one party, and as ex-
travagantly eulogized by another, hence his real claims to consid-
M
Gadg
302
ART MAGIC.
eration as a bold and scientific innovator, and an original discov-
erer, have scarcely received justice at the hands of posterity. The
following brief excerpts from his treatise on the Magnet, and
his views of the potency of the human will, afford some in-
sight into the basic ideas of his philosophy.
PARACELSUS.

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From a rare print in the Strasbourg Collection.
He says:
"The magnet has lain before all eyes, yet no one has ever
thought whether it was of any further use than that of attracting
iron. The sordid doctors throw it in my face that I will not fol-
low the ancients. But in what should I follow them? All that
they have said of the magnet is nothing save what every peasant
sees; namely, that it attracts iron. But a wise man must enquire
and experiment for himself, and thus it is that I have discovered
that the magnet possesses quite another, though concealed, power,
from that visible to every one.
"In sickness you must lay the magnet in the centre from
whence the sickness proceeds. The magnet has two poles-an
attracting and a repelling one. It is not a matter of indifference
how these poles are applied; for instance: where the attack
affects the head, it is proper to lay four magnets on the lower
part of the body, with the attracting pole turned upwards, and on
the head place only one with the reflecting pole downwards, and
then you bring other means to your aid." "I cure by this means:
epilepsy, defluxions of the eyes, ears, nose, and all manner of dis-
"I find such secrets hidden in the magnet that
without it I could in many cases have effected nothing."
"
eases.
The religious and magical philosophy of Paracelsus, is essen-
tially that of the Cabala, from which he derived, not only his
views of Creation, Deity, angelic essences, the doctrine of ema-
nations, etc., but hints concerning the occult secrets of nature,
ART MAGIC.
303
which he, as a practical and scientific Physician, utilized in his
system of cure, by herbs, magnetic crystals, and psychological
impressions.
Although often quoted in fragmentary sketches of Paracel-
site philosophy, we deem the following opinions concerning the
power of the human will eminently worthy to be noted in a book
of magic, and more illustrative of the real mind of the philosopher
than the vague and shadowy speculations of so many of his fol-
lowers. In the Strasbourg edition of Paracelsus' voluminous
writings, he says:
"It is possible that my spirit, without the help of my body
may through a fiery will alone, and without a sword, stab and
wound others.
·
"It is also possible that I can bring my adversary's spirit
into an image (wraith), then double him up, and lame him at
pleasure. You are to know that the will is a most potent opera-
tor in medicine. Man can hang a disease on man or beast through
curses, but it does not take effect through an image of virgin
"De-
wax, but by means of the strength of fixed will.”.
termined imagination is the beginning of all magical operations.
It is a spell from which there is no escape but by reversing the
operator's intent.” "The imagination of another may be
able to kill me or save me."
"No armor protects me
against magic, for it injures the inward spirit of life.”
"The human spirit is so great a thing that no man can express it.
God himself is unchangeable and almighty, so also is the mind of
man." "If we rightly esteemed the power of man's mind, noth-
ing on earth would be impossible to him."
It would be needless to offer further quotations from the
writings of the numerous mystics who flourished from the thir-
teenth up to the beginning of the nineteenth centuries. The
doctrines of the famous Rosicrucians have already been suffi-
ciently noted. Of their existence or even origin as an order, we
do not feel called upon to dilate, neither would such a discussion
throw any additional light on that art which we have shown in
former sections to be dependent upon natural endowments, or
methods of culture sufficiently defined for all practical purposes.
It only remains now for us to analyze somewhat more in detail
than formerly, the characteristics of that wonderful and mysteri-
ous drama which occupied such a prominent place during the
middle ages under the title of Witchcraft.
Although the narratives on this subject are so numerous,
and accounts of the trials in various countries so fully set forth in
the writings of many eminent authorities, that any reiteration of
304
ART MAGIC.
them in this place would be superfluous, still we feel that more
attention has been given to the details of events than to the elim-
ination of a philosophy, the attempts at explanation rendered by
the Savants of the time being limited to the universal solvent of
the Devil and his Imps, and those of the modern Spiritualists to
the sole agency of the spirits of deceased persons.
When we can obtain a fair statement and a scientific classifi-
cation of the phenomena exhibited in this weird movement, we
shall assuredly find a broad field of action left untouched by either
of these inefficacious attempts of explanation.
In the first place a large mass of the accusations were ficti-
tious, especially in the case of those victims of the popular fury,
whose age, helplessness, and ignorance, rendered them fit subjects
for superstitious dread. Still another class were unconsciously
and perhaps involuntarily, the victims-not of beneficent or even
undeveloped human spirits-whose intelligence and humanity
would have led them to manifest their presence in human modes
—but of Elementaries, whose sub-mundane propensities were ex-
hibited in animal actions, and deeds of folly and malignity, which
favored the popular idea of a Satanic origin. It must be remem-
bered that there is as much irrationality in wholesale and obsti-
nate skepticism, as in credulity. The trials for witchcraft and
the numerous narratives put forth concerning it, prove that there
existed a certain family resemblance amongst its details which
suggests a basis of facts even for the most exaggerated accusa-
tions. For example: The "spectres" or "wraiths" of the accused
were frequently seen apart from their bodies. The modern Psy-
chologist must be aware that the phenomenon of the "doppel
ganger," or the apparition of the "living spirit," is too well estab-
lished a phenomenon to be denied.
Many of the accused confessed to the practice of anointing
their bodies with the famous "witch salve," largely composed of
Napellus, Aconite, Belladonna, Henbane, and other herbs which
notoriously produce the sensation, of flying through the air.
May we not here find a clue to the universal idea, that these
self-deluded beings-who, in some instances at least, flattered
themselves that they could communicate with occult powers by
occult practices-actually induced the sensations and visions they
related by the narcotics they indulged in? None can deny that
the aspirations after the unknown, and the longing to communi-
cate with the invisible world, to say nothing of the attempts to
improve upon miserable human conditions by the aid of infernal
or any available arts that could be arrived at-have stimulated
humanity in every age; hence, let us be just, and whilst we may
ART MAGIC.
305
and must admit that a fearful amount of superstitious error pre-
vailed on the subject of witchcraft, and an incalculable sum of
cruelty and sacrifice of human life was the consequence, we must
still allow that there was a substratum of truth in the universal
belief, which the ignorance of the age could not separate from
malevolent accusations against innocent persons, and which the
superstition of time could not reduce into the application of true
occult powers.
It was clearly proved that some of the accused persons did at
times make use of charms, spells, amulets, unguents, talismans,
invocations, and other magical arts.
The part of true philosophy should be to consider whether
any of these practices contain elements of potency-not to dismiss
them all as idle and baseless superstitions. Is it possible to sup-
pose that such arts should have been handed down from the days
of Moses, and perhaps for thousands of years previous, and sur-
viving all the changes of time, and humane opinion, continue to
crop out in every age and country, unless they originated in some
foundation of natural law? As we shall devote the next section
to a review of possibilities that belong to this occult and ill-un-
derstood subject, we close this necessarily brief review of the
Witchcraft mania, by presenting one illustration of that most
common of all its phenomenal phases, which proves the uncon-
scious, yet potential action of Magnetism and Psychology. Al-
though the narrative we select is one which the zeal of Glanville,
from whose writings we quote it, has made familiar, doubtless, to
most of our readers, we deem it the best illustration we can offer
of a majority of the cases for which so many unfortunates suf-
fered the horrors of the rack and stake.
Glanville, Chaplain to Charles II., of England, writing in de-
fense of the truth of Witchcraft, or rather its actuality, as it oc-
curred in the seventeenth century, says:
"On Sunday, 15th of November, 1657, about three of the
clock in the afternoon, Richard Jones, then a sprightly youth
about twelve years old, son of Henry Jones, of Shepton Mallet, in
the county of Somerset, being in his father's house alone, and per-
ceiving some one looking in at the windows, went to the door,
where one Jane Brooks of the same town (but then by name un-
known to this boy) came to him. She desired him to give her a
piece of close bread, and gave him an apple. After which she
also stroked him down the right side, shook him by the hand, and
so bid him good-night. The youth returned to the house, where
he had been left well, when his father and one Gibson went from
him; but at their return, which was within an hour, they found
306
ART MAGIC.
him ill and complaining of his right side, in which the pain con-
tinued the most part of that night. And on Monday following,
in the evening, the boy roasted the apple he had of Jane Brooks,
and having eaten about half of it, was extremely ill, and some-
times speechless, but being recovered, he told his father that a
woman of the town on the Sunday before had given him that
apple, and that she stroked him on the side. He said he knew not
her name, but should her person if he saw her. Upon this Jones
was advised to invite the women of Shepton to come to his housc
upon the occasion of his son's illness, and the child told him, that
in case the woman should come in when he was in his Fit, if he
were not able to speak, he would give him an intimation by a jogg,
and desired that his father would lead him through the room, for
he said he would put his hand upon her if she were there. After
this, he continuing very ill, many women came daily to see him.
And Jane Brooks, the Sunday after came in with two of her sis-
ters, when several other women of the neighborhood were there.
!
"Upon her coming in, the boy was taken so ill that for some
time he could not see nor speak; but having recovered his sight,
he gave his father the Item, and he led him about the room. The
boy drew towards Jane Brooks, who was behind her two sisters
among the other women, and put his hand upon her, which his
father perceiving, immediately scratched her face and drew blood
from her. The youth then presently cried out that he was well,
and so continued seven or eight days; but then meeting with Alice
Coward, sister to Jane Brooks, who passing by, said to him: 'How
do you, my Honey?' he presently fell ill again. And after that,
the said Coward and Brooks often appeared to him. The boy
would describe the clothes and habit they were in at the time ex-
actly, as the constable and others have found upon repairing to
them, though Brooks' house was at a good distance from Jones'.
This they often tryed and always found the boy right in his de-
scriptions.
"On a certain Sunday about noon, the child being in a room
with his father and one Gibson, and in his fit, he on the sudden
called out that he saw Jane Brooks on the wall, and pointed to the
place, where immediately Gibson struck with a knife; upon which
the boy cried out: 'O, father, Coz. Gibson hath cut Jane Brooks'
hand and 'tis bloody.' The father and Gibson immediately re-
paired to the constable, a discreet person, and acquainting him
with what had passed, desired him to go with them to Jane
Brooks' house, which he did. They found her sitting in her room
on a stool with one hand over the other. The constable asked her
how she did? She answered, not well. He asked again why she
ART MAGIC.
307
sate with one hand over the other? She replied, she was wont to
do so. He enquired if anything were amiss with her hand? Her
answer was, it was well enough. The constable desired that he
might see the hand that was under; which, she being unwilling to
show him, he drew out and found it bloody, according to what the
boy had said. Being asked how it came so, she said, I was
stratched with a great pin.'
"2
"On the 8th of December, 1657, the Boy, Jane Brooks and
Alice Coward, appeared at Castle Cary, before the Justices, M.
Hunt and M. Cary. The Boy having begun to give his testimony,
upon the coming in of the two women, and their looking on him,
was instantly taken speechless, and so remained till the women
were removed out of the room, and then in a short time, upon ex-
amination, he gave a full relation of the mentioned particulars.
"On the 11th of January following, the Boy was again exam-
ined before the same Justices at Shepton Mallet, and upon sight
of Jane Brooks was again taken speechless, but was not so after-
wards when Alice Coward came into the room to him.
"On the next appearance at Shepton, which was on the 17th
of February, there were present many gentlemen, ministers and
others; the Boy fell into his fit upon the sight of Jane Brooks,
and lay in a man's arms like a dead person; the woman was then
willed to lay her hand on him, which she did, and he thereupon
started and sprang out in a very strange and unusual manner.
One of the Justices, to prevent all possibilities of Legerdemain,
caused Gibson and the rest to stand off from the boy, and then
the Justice himself held him. The youth being blindfolded,
the Justice called as if Brooks should touch him, but winked to
others to do it, which two or three successively did, but the boy
appeared not concerned. The Justice then called on the father
to take him, but had privately before desired Mr. Geoffry Strode.
to bring Jane Brooks to touch him, at such time as he
should call for his father; which was done, and the boy
immediately sprang cut after a very odd and violent fashion. He
was after touched by several persons and moved not; but Jane
Brooks being caused to put her hand upon him, he started and
sprang out twice or thrice, as before. All this while he remained
in his fit, and sometime after; and being then laid on a bed in the
same room, the people present could not for a long time bow
either of his arms or legs."
.
"Between the mentioned 15th of November and the 11th of
January, the two women appeared often to the Boy, their hands
cold, their eyes staring, and their lips and cheeks looking pale.
In this manner on a Thursday about noon, the Boy being newly
308
ART MAGIC.
laid into his bed, Jane Brooks and Alice Coward appeared to him,
and told him that what they had begun, they could not perform,
but if he would say no more of it, they would give him money,
and so put a two-pence into his pocket. After which they took
him out of his bed, laid him on the ground, and vanished; and the
boy was found by those that came next into the room, lying ou
the floor, as if he had been dead. The two-pence was seen by
many, and when it was put into the fire, and hot, the boy would
fall ill; but as soon as it was taken out, and cold, he would be
again as well as before. This was seen and observed by a minis-
ter, a discreet person, when the boy was in one room and the two-
pence (without his knowledge) put into the fire in another; and
this was divers times tried in the presence of several persons.
"On the 25th of February between two and three in the af-
ternoon, the boy being at the house of Richard Isles at Shepton
Mallet, went out of the room into the garden; Isles's wife followed
him, and was within two yards when she saw him rise up from the
ground before her, and so mounted higher and higher, till he
passed in the air over the garden wall, and was carried so above
ground more than 30 yards, falling at last at one Jordan's door at
Shepton, where he was found as dead for a time. But coming to
himself, told Jordan that Jane Brooks had taken him up by the
arm out of Isles's garden, and carried him in the air, as related.
"The Boy at several other times was gone on the suddain, and
upon search after him found in another room as dead, and at
sometimes strangely hanging above ground, his hands being flat
against a great beam in the top of the room, and all his body two
or three feet from ground. There he hath hung a quarter of an
hour together; and being afterwards come to himself, he told
those that found him that Jane Brooks had carried him to that
place and held him there. Nine people at a time saw the boy
so strangely hanging by the beam.
"From the 15th of November to the 10th of March following,
he was by reason of his fits much wasted in his body, and unspir-
ited; but after that time, being the day the two women were sent
to Gaol, he had no more of those fits.
"Jane Brooks was condemned and executed at Charde As.
sizes, March 26th, 1658.
"This is the sum of M. Hunt's narrative, which concludes
with both the justices' attestation, thus:-"The aforesaid passages
were some of them seen by us, and the rest, and some other re-
markable ones not here set down, were, upon examination of sev
eral credible witnesses, taken upon Oath before us.
(Signed)
""ROBERT HUNT.
"JOHN CARY,"
-
•
**
ART MAGIC.
309
•
-
Thousands, and tens of thousands of narratives have been
already published on the subject of Witchcraft, some colored by
the wildest exaggeration, others circumstantial in detail, and as
matter-of-fact as the one quoted above-all tend to prove the ex-
istence of unknown and occult forces pervading human history,
equally influential upon individuals and communities, and perpet-
ually challenging the attention of the wise and philosophic for a
classification of the facts, and the evolvement of some basic
principles of spiritual science by which to explain, govern and
control them.

WINIDIA
M
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Sucke
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Newes
Matthew Hopkins Witch Finder Génerall
AMBER
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#3113
Holt
Jarmara
VIVISIMIL
Vinegar
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2 Pyewackett
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Myimps names are
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(From a Very Rare Print.)
banditas
۱۱۲ ۱۱
3 Pecke in the Crowne
4 Grizzell Greedigutt
MITHanni
FUTU
TRYALLE OF A WITCH BEFORE MATTHEW HOPKINS,
PORTRAITS OF MY IMPS."
ART MAGIC.
311
SECTION XXI.
MAGICAL ELEMENTS.
DIVINATION-BELOMANCY-ELISHA AND THE ARROWS-CLEOMANCY
-GEOMANCY-CRYSTAL SEEING BATH KOL-CHIROMANCY
THE COLOR DOCTOR-MUSIC-SPELLS-AMULETS, ETC.
It has been intimated in various parts of this volume that the
ancients attached the idea of occult virtue to herbs, plants, flow-
ers, earths, minerals, metals, certain beasts, insects and reptiles,
colors, tones, words, forms, magical names, invocations, spells,
charms, talismans, and fumigations.
Every object that could impress the senses-stimulate them
to mantic frenzy, or subdue them into somnambulism, formed
some element in ancient magical practice. We have written of
the faith which all nations of antiquity cherished in astrological
calculations, and unhesitatingly affirmed that the foundations for
that faith exist to-day in as much force as in the Chaldaic Era,
and that the basic idea of astrological truth is to be found in the
fundamental principles which bind up the whole universe in one
compendious system of mutual interdependencies.
Divination was also obtained through an immense variety of
modes, chief amongst which were those already alluded to in the
Section on Jewish Magic. Another was performed amongst the
Arabians by the flight of arrows, and called Belomancy. Some
allusion to this method is made in the Bible when Elisha the
Prophet in his last hours was consulted by King Joash, whom he
commanded to take bow and arrows and shoot forth from the win-
dow saying, "the arrow of the Lord's deliverance, and the arrow of
deliverance from Syria," &c., &c.
In the Arabian method it was customary to write on slips of
paper, and attach them to the arrows, when, according to the
place in which they alighted, or the object which they struck, so
was the inscribed sentence accepted as oracular.
At the celebrated Temple of Hercules, in Achaia, the priests
312
ART MAGIC.
!
were accustomed to obtain oracular replies by the tossing of dice
or marked stones; this mode was called Cleomancy.
Cicero describes several modes of divining by birds, in which
the color, the number in a flock, their direction, and divers other
minutiae were accepted as auguries for good or evil.
Sacrificial rites were in all ancient countries deemed infal-
lible means of Soothsaying. The motions of the victim, his
struggles or submission, the condition of the intestines, the direc-
tion of the smoke, and other items too numerous and too petty to
be dwelt on, were all deemed indications of the deepest moment,
and on them, often depended the fate of nations, and the destiny
of Kings. There were several modes of divination by water, by
the swinging of rings, or other light objects suspended from
sacred books, which were deemed infallible as portents. To this
species of chance divination belongs that method so elaborately
described by Cornelius Agrippa, but invented ages before his time,
called "Geomancy," that is, divination by points or dots set down
at random. This mode was supposed to be practiced by the Per-
sian Magi, who made clefts in the ground, and then, from the
numbers of marks found, they composed a magical figure, which
they interpreted into an oracle. From the use of the ground as
the tablet of inscription, comes the term "Geomancy."
Endless are the practices by which the ancients sought to ob-
tain that divine direction which they prized, far above all earthly
counsel or human judgment. They cultivated the art of crystal-
seeing, gazing into mirrors and still water to obtain visions.
They attached especial importance to dreams, and often accepted
as oracular the voices of passers by, and the sentences they ut-
tered, as they sat waiting by the wayside, or at the gates of their
Temples "for a sign." This method amongst the Jews was
termed Bath-Kol, or the Daughter of a voice, and was used by
them when the mysterious tones of the spirit who was wont to
speak from between the Cherubim and Seraphim became hushed
forever.
Chiromancy, or the art of divining by the lines of the hand,
still maintains its hold upon the faith of a goodly number of mod-
ern votaries. Amongst the Sybilline people skillful to a proverb
in this art, are the Gipsies of England, the Zingari of Spain, and
the Bohemians of Paris. The success of these vagrant wanderers
in reading the character, and not unfrequently the destiny of
those whose hands they examine, has often been attributed to
clairvoyance, a gift peculiar to most nomadic tribes, especially to
the Arabians and Gipsies, still there are not wanting men of mark
ART MAGIC.
313
T
and learning who claim as much for Palmistry or Chiromancy as
for Physiognomy or even Phrenology.
In this art, as in Geomancy, astrological science is called into
play, as it is claimed the hand is the chart of the whole body, and
as this is under asiral and solar control, so the peculiar shape of
the hand and the lines on its inner surface indicate planetary
configurations, which bear an immediate relation to destiny, and
the influence of the stars.
Pythagoras attached the utmost importance to the given
name of individuals, and the number of letters it contained, and
this belief prevailed so generally amongst many of the Grecian
philosophers, that it became reduced to a sort of science, and ob-
tained the title of Onomancy.
In Wm. Howitt's delightful sketches of Rural Life in Ger-
many, and Ennemoser's History of Magic, are whole chapters con-
cerning the popular superstitions of the middle, aye, and later
ages, too, in which almost every motion, and every object, becomes
interpreted into an omen.
Doubtless it is from the alternations of fear and hope, be-
tween which man is forever oscillating, as he pursues his toilsomc
pilgrimage through life's rough and rugged paths, that he so con-
tinually ransacks nature to her inmost depths, to discover signs
of warning or encouragement to guide him. And are these signs
so entirely unreliable? Is this research so utterly fruitless? Is
not man the creature of Nature as much as of God? Built up of
her whole three lower kingdoms, drinking from her rivers and
fountains, inhaling her breathing winds, constantly shedding im-
palpable emanations to feed her vegetable kingdom, and as con-
stantly receiving in exchange the aromal essences of all that earth
contains; how deep, how intimate must be the sympathy between
this microcosmic man and all things else in being! Whatever this
planet may be interiorly, all its separate parts must be organs of
"one stupendous whole." The men of the wilds of Africa can
not be dissevered from the influences which convulse their west-
ern brothers. The air, the tides, the secret crypts of earth trav-
ersed by magnetic currents and electric fires, are links which bind
the inhabitants of every land in one unbroken chain of harmony.
Does the brow ache without the hand becoming heavy? Does
fever scorch the veins without exhibiting its lurid light in the
glittering eye? Can we injure one single fibre without a sympa-
thetic thrill quivering through the entire system? Then why
sneer at the idea that the separate parts of nature-all organs, and
essential ones, too, in her sublime structure-should so sympa-
thetically act and react with each other, that those who can read
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ART MAGIC.
►
one part may comprehend the whole, or those who feel the pang
that rends her heart, will be sure her sacred frame will shudder,
even to the farthest extremities of being! As man is the crown-
ing apex of all created forms, as in him are centred all powers,
forces, and elements that compose the natural body of the planet,
is it not reasonable to suppose that all the lesser parts are in sub-
jection to him, and in sympathetic rapport with his destiny? We
may mistake the indications of these deep sympathies, and, in our
egotism, imagine they cluster too thickly around our own ind¹-
vidual pathway. Still they exist, and only need a scientific, in-
stead of an imaginative understanding of their profound utter-
ances, to show us that all nature is a grand volume, in which the
hieroglyphics of universal being are inscribed in characters of im-
mutable fate; in sand-grains and mountains, in daisies and forest
trees, in ocean billows and murmuring brooklets, in chirping in
sects and the peals of heaven's artillery, in fluttering wings of
birds and hovering angels.
The great and wise Swedenborg often mistook the art of
correspondences, but never the truth of the science itself.
W
The Magians of old, better instructed in the occult powers of
nature than we, who have strayed so far from her revealments in
the paths of artifice, comprehended the laws of sympathy exist-
ing between all orders of being and man; hence their correct in-
terpretation of signs, tokens, omens and monitions. They under-
stood that all nature rendered homage to man, and that a quiver
shook her mighty frame in response to every chord struck on the
harp of life by man's master hand. We have no such knowledge
now, and so little interior light to guide us that the signs fail,
the tokens are misunderstood, and the attempts we make to force
them into meaning, betray us into error and convert the child-like
faiths of antiquity, into vain superstition.
OF STONES, GEMS AND COLORS.
The splendid array of expériments by which Baron Von
Reichenbach has, within the last half century and under the most
stringent test conditions, proved that magnetic emanations
streamed from shells, stones and crystals, displaying different de-
grees of force and different shades of color, form and radiance,
supplement the opinions of the most authoritative writers of dif
ferent ages on the same subject.
That all metals and crystalline bodies give off magnetic force,
is now proved beyond question; that they are capable of producing
somnambulic or ecstatic effects in different degrees, Von Reich-
enbach's experiments, with over a hundred and fifty sensitives,
H
ART MAGIC.
315
have abundantly demonstrated; hence we may be justified in re-
garding with some interest, the classification of the different
qualities of minerals and precious stones, put forth by Rabbi
Benoni, learned writer of the fourteenth century, said to be one
of the most profound Alchemists of his time, who alleges that
"the loadstone, sapphire and diamond are all capable of producing
Somnambulism, and when combined into a talisman, attract such
powerful Planetary Spirits, as render the bearer almost invin-
cible." All precious stones when cut with smooth surfaces and
intently gazed upon, are capable of producing somnambulism in
the same degree as the crystal, also of inducing visions.
Their varieties of color prove that they absorb different de-
grees of light, and they are said to impart unequal degrees of heat.
The Buddhists esteemed the sapphire above all gems, claiming
that it produces tranquillity of mind, and when worn by one.
wholly pure and devoted to God, ensures protection against dis-
ease, danger, and venomous reptiles.
Orpheus exalts the virtues of the loadstone almost as highly
as did Paracelsus that of the Magnet. The former says: "With
this stone you can hear the voices of the Gods, and learn heavenly
things."
"It will confer strength, banish disease, and when worn con-
stantly about the person, ward off epidemics and plagues. Sitting
down before it and fixing your gaze earnestly upon it, you have
but to ask of the Gods for light on any subject, and the answer
will come breathed out through the stone. Your soul will hear
it, and your senses will discover it clearly." Orpheus says of
stones in general: "The earth produces every good and evil to
man, but she also provides a remedy for every ill. These are to
be found chiefly in stones. Every virtue lays hidden within
them."
Benoni affirms that the diamond will deprive the loadstone of
its virtue, and is the most powerful of all stones to promote spir-
itual ecstasy. Amongst a great variety of similar aphorisms he
says:
"The agate quenches thirst if held in the mouth, and soothes
fever.
"The amethyst banishes the desire for drink, and promotes
chastity.
"The garnet preserves health and joy.
"The sapphire impels to all good things like the diamond.
"The red coral is a cure for indigestion, when worn con-
stantly about the person.
"Amber is a cure for sore throat and glandular swellings.
316
ART MAGIC.
"The crystal promotes sweet sleep and good dreams.
"The emerald promotes friendship and constancy of mind.
"The onyx is a demon imprisoned in stone, who wakes only
of a night, causing terror and disturbance to sleepers who wear it.
"The opal is fatal to love, and sows discord between the giver
and receiver.
"The topaz is favorable for all haemorrhages, and imparts
strength and good digestion."
We give these quaint aphorisms not as guides or scientific in-
dications, but to show the ideas which the latent powers of mag-
netic bodies suggested to observers of natural forces. As to the
effect of colors on the mind, whatever physical influence they
may be supposed to produce, it would be in vain to deny their pe-
culiar efficacy in psychological effects. In Emma Hardinge's
noble work, "The History of Modern American Spiritualism," a
chapter is devoted to the recital of that lady's interview with a
singular individual residing in St. Louis, Missouri, and professing
to make cures by detecting the peculiar colors which belonged to
certain organisms, the plus or minus of which-according to his
theory-was the cause of all disease. This chapter, like every
other line in this exhaustive treatise, is a mine of psychologic
wealth.
i
The "Color Doctor," as he was termed, being a veritable ec-
static, would, on the first entrance of his visitors, go through
many of the extraordinary motions, gyrations and contortions.
peculiar to the Hindoo Fakeers. Having induced in himself and
his visitors the necessary condition of rapport, scenes amounting
to mantic frenzy would ensue, during which he is reported to
have effected the most wonderful and unaccountable cures. His
particular theory of color influence was demonstrated on the oc-
casion of Emma Hardinge's visit, in the following manner:
Placing the lady and several witnesses in one apartment, he, with
an equal number of persons, remained in another, where no pos-
sible chance could have permitted the one party to observe the
actions of the other, though all could hear and communicate tʊ-
gether.
The Operator then touched a piece of cloth of a certain color,
upon which the lady in the next apartment became impelled to
represent in pantomimic action some scene signifying deep men-
tal emotion, for example: When the Doctor held a piece of yellow
cloth in his hand, the subject immediately prostrated herself in
the attitude of adoration, and uttered fervent prayers to the Deity.
On assuming the color of scarlet, the subject became violently
enraged and threatened war and destruction to all around her.
ART MAGIC.
317
A certain shade of grey caused the representation of a rattlesnake,
and the signification of treachery; pink occasioned great joy and
gladness; violet evidently deepened the spiritual afflatus, and
wrapped the subject in heavenly contemplation; green excited her
aversion; and blue restored her to perfect peace and equanimity,
seeming, in fact, to represent her own nature. Many rapid
changes were effected in the assumption of these and other col-
ors; but always with the same effect, and unvarying fidelity of
representation. The lady concludes a long and most wonderful
narrative, witnessed as the scene was too, by several scientific and
distinguished residents of St. Louis, by the following pertinent
remarks:
در
K
"When after two hours captivity to this fearful spell, I was
at length released, and permitted to reflect upon the singular part
I had been compelled to play, the idea forced itself upon my mind,
that in this exhibition, was a complete arcanum of occult discov-
ery. A clue was at once afforded me, to the strong predilections
which I had always cherished for certain colors and my dislike to
others. I remembered the same things of almost every one I
knew, and felt certain that as colors corresponded to the passions
of the human soul, so the predominance of special tendencies of
mind might be supposed to indicate a corresponding preponder-
ance in the physical system, of special rays of color.
Whether this theory be founded in truth or error, the fact
remains that the weird Color Doctor of St. Louis, effected many
marvellous cures by imparting psychologically as he assumed, the
particular rays of color in which some of his patients were defi-
cient, or reducing those which prevailed to such an excess in oth-
ers as to create inflammation and disease.
M
In the experiment above related, he assured his visitors he
used no psychological art whatever. He believed that special
colors prevailed in special organisms, and that the plus or minus
of the shade natural to them, caused disease, but until the chance
experiment which occurred through a chance visit of Mrs. Har-
dinge and her friends, he had no idea of the intimate relation of
colors to the mental emotions, and the scene so briefly described
above was as much a revelation to him as to the witnesses.
In carefully conducted Seances for spiritual manifestations,
the Author and his mediumistic friends have frequently remarked
the different shades of light which emanated from different in- .
dividuals and sometimes attended the demonstrations of certain
spirits,also it has been noticed that spirits attached great im-
portance to colors, and taught that in the spheres, where all
things assume moral correspondences to physical objects, spirits
318
ART MAGIC.
were compelled to display their moral qualities and states of pro-
gression by the color of their garments, or the nature of the flow-
ers, ornaments, or animal representations, with which they were
surrounded.
The reader may be assured there is a magical arcanum in
color, the study of which would tend to promote much more har-
monious arrangements in dress, furniture, and physical surround-
ings, than mankind enjoys.
OF MUSIC-NOISE-WORDS AND TONES.
To avoid inflicting on our readers the recitation of mathe-
matical principles in defining the difference between noise and
music, and yet to account for their effects on the human systern,
we lay down a brief summary of axiomatic ideas in the following
propositions. Sound is an impulse communicated from one body
to another and transmitted to the ear through waves or vibrations
in the air, caused by the original impulse. Many definitions have
been rendered to show the difference produced upon the ear by
noise and music, but we may say in brief that, when the waves of
air set in motion by an original impulse are unequal in length,
one wave being short and angular, another long and scarcely
curved, and the wholc mass of vibratory element is moved in un-
equal undulations, the result to the ear is noise.
•
When the impulse given communicates to the air a perfectly
regular series of undulations, each wave assuming the same curve
and length, the result on the ear is music. The effect of these
different motions on the mind, need not be discussed here. To
all civilized nations, and, with a few rare exceptions to every indi-
vidual, the difference in effect is analogous to pain and pleasure;
for, although there are some few individuals who do not know
noise from music, as a general rule the appreciation of the differ-
ence between these two varieties of sound, and their effects upon
the taste of communities, forms a good gauge of national civiliza-
tion.
The lower a people may be sunk in the scale of barbarism,
the greater is their predilection for noise and general insensibility
to music; whilst the higher the status of civilization ranges, the
greater is the perfection to which the cultivation of music attains.
It has been shown in the magical history of nations, that
sounds are amongst the most potential means of exciting the
ecstatic afflatus. The effects of sound are both physical and
mental.
It is of course generally understood that concussions violent
enough to create loud sounds-such as thunder, explosions, the
firing of artillery, heavy blows, etc., etc.-will not only cause
!!
}
ART MAGIC.
319
powerful vibrations in all surrounding objects, but frequently
break, displace, or even totally destroy them. Witness the effect
on houses shattered by explosions transpiring at considerable dis-
tances, windows broken, and furniture thrown down by the firing
of artillery, or other concussive disturbances of the atmosphere.
Similar vibrations may be felt, though in a far less degree, by the
sound of a powerful organ, or a mass of wind instruments.
If such effects can operate on the comparatively unyielding
tissues of inanimate substances, may we not reasonably expect
that analogous motions must be transpiring within our own
highly strung and vibratory organisms? Is it not certain in
fact, that the elastic fibres of the human system-especially the
delicate medullary tissues of the nerves-must quiver and re-
spond to every tone that vibrates through the air, whether it be
soft or loud, musical or simply noisy? The correspondential ef-
fects on the mind cannot be questioned, and it is doubtless from
the combination of mental and physical influences that we see
how distracting clamors, especially if long continued, will in-
duce catalepsy, convulsion, spasm, or even frenzy.
The effects of music, on the contrary, are delightful and ex-
alting. To susceptible and highly cultivated natures, music is
capable of awakening every emotion of the human soul, from the
most rapt devotion to the wildest exhilaration, from the most pas-
sionate grief to the excess of mirthfulness. Music pierces, pene-
trates, thrills, never shocks. It plays along the fibres of the
nerves, quickens the pulse, stimulates the circulation, exalts
the mind, alters even the molecular arrangement of the phys-
ical atoms, and partly by the harmonious order into which it
resolves the layers of the atmosphere, partly by its entrancing ef-
fects upon the soul, it fills the listener with a divine magnetism,
and, for the time being, translates him into a superior condition.
The Rosicrucians' theory of music is that-
"The whole world is a musical instrument, a chromatic, sen-
sible instrument; life a chromatic and diatonic scale of musical
tones. The axis or pole of the celestial world is intersected by
the spiritual sun, or centre of sentient being, and from thence
stream forth rays of light, which, divided, form color, which, by
motion, gives off tones of music, filling the universe with celestial
sound. Every man has a spark or microcosmic sun in his own
being, and thus microcosmically diffuses rays of light, and tones,
broken by the incoherencies of matter 'tis true, but still in es-
sence, musical tones. Earthly music is the faintest tradition of
the angelic state. It remains in the mind of man as the dream of
a lost paradise.
►
320
ART MAGIC.
i
"Music is yet master of man's emotions, and therefore of
man. Heavenly music is produced from impact upon the paths
of planets, which stand as chords or strings to the rays of the sun,
hence light and heat, travelling between solar centres and circum-
ferences, waken tones, notes, chords, the sum of which is ethereal
music."
"Thus is earthly music a relic, a dream, a memory of heaven,
an efflux from the motion of planetary bodies, a celestial speech,
whose dim echoes are heard and imitated on earth, and thus are
light and tone, colors and music, inextricably combined by one.
producing cause."
If the eyes of mortals could be opened to behold the condi-
tions of the atmosphere during the yells, shrieks and cries of a
party of howling dervishes, the beating of "tom-toms" (drums),
or crashing cymbals in the mantic rites of a party of Siberian
Schamans, Lapps, or Thibetian Lamas, they would see the air
tossed and torn into angular curves, jagged prominences, literally
driven about into crooked turns and sharp corners.
This is no
exaggeration, no mere flight of a mystic's fancy. If we cannot.
see it, the science of acoustics assures us it must be so, and this
accounts for the wild and mantic character of barbaric spiritism,
induced, as it often is, by noise. On the other hand, the same
clairvoyant vision would behold the atmosphere vibrating to fine
music, full of regular undulating lines, every curve, swell and de-
pression equal throughout the whole length of the waves, and
though the lines might vary, each would bear such harmonious.
and graceful relations to the other, that the whole atmosphere
would appear as an exquisite landscape; blended lights and shad-
ows wonderfully graduated into an ocean of billowy air, where
not a single wave presented an angular, inharmonious, or irreg-
ular curve. And these delightfully organized strata of atmos-
pheres impinge upon the physical forms of the listeners, penetrate
the very marrow in the bone, and re-arrange the very structure of
every fibre in the system. Can the reader now understand the
mysteries of snake-charming by the sweet and monotonous effect
of certain musical instruments? Why, moreover, nearly every
beast and bird partakes of the spell which music imparts?
We could fill a volume with narratives of the potent effects
of music upon the animal kingdom, and the variety of those ef-
fects upon different creatures, under the influence of different
tones. The reader, too, may understand why the distracting
clamors of the battle-field, the bombardment of a city, the dances
and whoops of the red Indians, the shouts and howls of Dervishes,
and other ecstatics of low grades, summon from the crypts of the
ART MAGIC.
321
earth embryotic Elementaries, and fire the brains of listening
mortals with madness or ecstasy. The spells of enchantment,
fascinations, delight, health, and harmony, that sweet music pro-
duces, no language can describe; but our readers need question no
more its uses in sacred services, solemn invocations, spirit circles,
or any scenes where it is desirable to lift a mortal up to heaven,
and draw an angel down.
OF STONES, HERBS, FLOWERS, FUMIGATIONS, CRYS-
TALS, SPELLS, AMULETS, AND TALISMANS.
Stones of every kind emit those magnetic rays, which meas-
urably serve to entrance those who gaze steadily upon their pol-
ished surfaces, but plants are all aromal, and give off either in
perfume, or essence, the finest particles of their life at every in-
stant that they subsist. When pressed, or crushed, this aroma is
more readily liberated, and when the juice of the plant is ex-
tracted and drank, its quality enters with still more potency into
the system.
Some of the virtues of drugs and minerals are to be found in
the vegetable kingdom, but the possibility of extracting from both
departments of nature narcotics and stimulants, and the universal
use to which they have been applied in the practice of ancient
magic, has already been fully shown. It is also well known that
the Asiatics and Orientals of the present day, together with a
larger number of Europeans than is generally supposed, resort to
the use of hasheesh, opium, soma drink, and other pernicious
narcotics, as temporary stimulants, or to induce ecstasy and the
trance condition. The mediaeval mystics, and even the poor ig-
norant beings accused of witchcraft, resorted still more frequently
to unguents and fumigations. The latter were invariably used in
all magical rites, they being deemed efficacious in gratifying the
spirits summoned, also in preparing the atmosphere for their
demonstrations no less than in exerting an influence upon the in-.
vocants, by stupefying or stimulating the senses.
In the Magical elements of Peter d'Abano, the proper fumi-
gations for different days and seasons are fully set forth; but, as a
general rule, magical rites are best promoted by the burning of
fragrant herbs, aromatic spices, ambergris, frankincense, fine in-
cense, etc., etc.
To those who are curious to know the composition of the
famous "Witch Salve," or unguent, with which it was supposed-
in the middle ages-those who designed to attend the "Witches'
Sabbaths," must anoint their bodies in order to facilitate their
transport through the air on "broomstick" steeds, "seive" char-
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ART MAGIC.
1
iots, or more properly speaking, on the wings of imagination dis-
torted by the use of powerful narcotics, we may give on the au-
thority of Grimm, Horst, Van Helmont, and others, the following
list of medicaments:
The deadly nightshade, the napellas, fox glove, betony root,
sweet fern, ground ivy, origanum, toad stool and fungi of various
kinds pounded up; mandrake, gall apple, savin, vervain, sorrel
and fennel seeds. These and other herbs of a narcotic, or deadly
character, were bruised and pressed into unguents, or distilled
into drinks with all manner of formidable rites, spells and incan-
tations.
Sticks and staffs were to be made from the hazel tree, and
fern seed was always carried around the person. A favorite nos-
trum of the witches by way of food, was boiled chestnuts and
-sorrel; also, they used ointments made from the oil of hemlock,
aconite, henbane, and four other herbs selected from the above
choice repertoire.
As to the spells, charms and talismans most popular in the
processes of Witchcraft, our pen would fail even to catalogue their
number, much less to attempt a description of their absurd and
meaningless character.
We may mention one custom very generally adopted and
supposed to be peculiarly effective in working harm to distant per-
sons. This was done by constructing an image, as nearly resem-
bling the person of the victim as possible. It was assumed that,
as this image was slowly roasted before a fire, or pierced with pins,
knives or other sharp instruments, corresponding pains and sick-
nesses would be induced in the subject of the fiendish rites, and
even death could be thus procured.
To injure the fields, crops or cattle of an enemy, dust grains
or sharp instruments were cast into the air, accompanied by mut-
tered curses and incantations. Sometimes these foul performers
buried insects, toads, fruit or other objects for the purposes of
evil enchantment; but in whatever rites they were employed, they
never failed to recite spells or mutter curses, the variety of which
would fill a library, but their potency as methods of projecting
their psychological intention on their victims may be easily un-
derstood.
At this point our readers will exclaim, "Do you, then, at-
tribute potency to the will of a poor old half-crazed being who
mutters spells over a cauldron of stewed toads, or fricasied lizards?
Can the will of such living mummies hurt cattle, blight corn-
fields, or sap the life juices of good and true men removed from
these scenes of diablerie by great distances?"
ART MAGIC.
323
To this we answer assuredly in the affirmative. It matters
not whether the potency proceed from male or female, old or
young, rich or poor.
The bad alone will attempt such wickedness, but the true
potency is will, and should we deny the possibilities of its exercise
simply to gratify the prejudices of those who have made no study
of psychological powers, we should falsify a vast mass of historical
testimony, the authoritative experience and opinion of all ages,
and the life-long personal testimony of the Author's own senses,
which have borne witness to thousands of instances wherein the
will operated upon individuals removed by long distances from
the source of the influence.
Save and except the physical and direct effects produced
upon the system by unguents, drugs, herbs, sounds, and vapors,
all the force of Witchcraft lay in the will, which by mere super-
stitious faith in the idle rites performed, became projected with ir-
resistible power upon the victim against whom it was directed.

1
MICROCOSMOS.
V
Dragon's tail.
Tot
Dragon's head.
&
MICROCOSMOS.
Man, the Microcosm of the Universe.
We have already intimated that mischievous Elementaries
who have not yet risen into the spheres of good, are ever ready to
respond to the summons of natures similar to their own, yet
higher in the scale of creation than themselves. We repeat that
these beings are potent in the particular realm to which they be-
long, and can help wicked mortals in wicked purposes. Remem-
ber, too, the universal laws of sympathy that bind up all nature,
animate and inanimate, into one vast chain of interdependencies,
and then cease to wonder why the lower creatures can receive ban
or blessing from their sovereign ruler, man. We have already
dwelt at great length on the connection between the planetary
324
ART MAGIC.
system and man. The profoundest depths of occult philosophy
derive their basis from this correspondence. The Ancient Mys-
teries, the Ancient and Modern Free Masons, the best philoso-
phers of Greece and Germany, the Cabalists, and in a word, the
Metaphysicians of all ages, teach that man is the Microcosm of be-
ing, as God, Angels, and the upper world, form the Macrocosm.
The poorest of all literature, the penny almanack, celebrates
this wonderful correspondence in its zodiacal signs marked in
their several relations to the human body. As an illustration of
this idea, take the following few lines of Rosicrucian doctrine ex-
planatory of the sketch given on the preceding page.
2
"The Rosicrucian Čabala teaches that the three great worlds
above, namely—the Empyraeum, Etheraeum and Elementary re-
gions have their copies in the three points of the body of man;
that his head answers to the first, his breast or heart to the second,
and his ventral regions to the third. In the head rests the intel-
lect or the magnetism of the assenting judgment; in his heart is
the conscience or emotional faculty, in the umbilical regions re-
side the animal and sensuous faculties."...."Thus man bears in
his body the picture of the Triune. Reason is the head, feeling
the breast, and the mechanical means of reason and feeling is the
epigastric centre."...."The invisible magnetic geometrical lati-
tudes of these three vital points, forms the triune microcosm
which is a copy of the macrocosm or Supreme Archetype of the
Heavens."
K
We only recall in these passages the comprehensive idea of an
universal sympathy in nature which compels the re-echo of heav-
enly sounds throughout the spaces of earth;-which connects the
scenes, events, and destinies played out upon the stage of earth,
with the grander dramas of eternity performed by blazing suns,
and flashing comets-which places everything in this world in
sympathetic subjection to man, every human being in sympathetic
relations one to the other, and all to God and Angels.
In the use of spells, charms, amulets, consecrated names and
words, can we assign virtue to such objects? No more than did
Cornelius Agrippa in the many passages of protest he wrote
against this idea, one of which we have quoted. Some magnetic
virtues, some narcotic essences, and some sublunary as well as
Astral influences, inhere in every plant that grows, on every stone
beneath our feet; yet we tread on Cabalistic stones, pluck Cabalis-
tic plants, aye, and make use of Cabalistic words every day, and
-nothing comes of it!
Our poor little tortured school children painfully spell out
ART MAGIC.
325
the awful name of Jehovah, and many another unpronouncable
and "incommunicable name," day by day, and yet the earth
quakes not-rocks do not rend apart, or demons seize upon and
strangle out of life the unconscious little magicians, after the
fashion in which Cornelius Agrippa's rash student was said to
have perished. Solomon's Seal and the Crux Ansata face us in
masonic signs, patentees' trade-marks, and the humblest domestic
implements every hour, and yet no white-robed "splendors" from
the Empyrean heights of their dwelling places, flash before our
audacious eyes in majestic rebuke of our impiety. It is in the
manner of using the fiery soul spirit put into the witches' broth,
the thrice distilled dew of hatred with which the puppets are lu-
bricated, the strong passion of supplication addressed to the spir-
its of evil, that evil is wrought upon enemies.
That planets and planetary spirits rule over hours, days,
months and years, that the scheme of life works beneath their in-
fluence, and shapes our destiny according to fixed laws, is just as
certain as that the bloom of the flowers is transmitted from soil
and seed by the chemistry of the sunbeam, while the same great
alchemist converts the slime of the stagnant pond into the su-
preme purity and fragrance of the lily. But all things in heaven,
and all things above the grade of man, work together for good,
and even when sorrow and misfortune befall us, good will come
of it if we place ourselves in harmony with heaven by good in our
own lives and purposes.
Ban, cursing, evil wishes, evil deeds, are in direct antago-
nism to God and heaven, angels, and all that is above us. By
their revulsive action we precipitate ourselves out of the sphere of
good, turn our backs on heaven, throw off the protection of an-
gels, and hurl ourselves down into the abysses of rudimental
being, into the hands of evil, cruel, remorseless existences who are
all the stronger because they are of the earth sphere earthy, nearer
to man in his evil and wickedness than he is to any beings above
him, and prompt to perform any mischief that is within the limits
of their narrow yet powerful domain of being. Yet it will be
urged, "all women called witches were not evil in design, yet, like
Jane Brooks, they may be powerful as unconscious magnetizers;
neither is all magic black magic, or evil in intent, and injurious in
effect." That is true, but as the strength of will tends down-
ward, its potency is increased by the communion of low, undevel-
oped human spirits, and the aid of Elementaries.
Bright planetary spirits, and good, wise angel friends, always
counsel submission to the will of God, and recommend the
achievement of spiritual power and spiritual knowledge, prin-
1
326
ART MAGIC.
cipally as a means of elevating the soul, giving it new powers for
good, and new attributes of blessing. In communion with those.
bright beings, it will ever be found that their power and their
will is not only potent for good, but more potent than that of
man's. Human will then can only be exercised in the choice of
the soul between lower and higher existences, on the forces of
nature, relations with our fellow man, and over beings lower than
earth.

1573 VALDASA
AIDWAR
Floating a Witch.
When we operate with these lower existences, we should
endeavor to rule them for good. When with nature, to wrest
her secrets from her, only to use again for good, and with our fel-
lowmen for the same aim. Then will God and angels, heaven and
all the heavenly host be with us, and magic in that spirit becomes
man's triumph over matter, and the exaltation of his soul to the
sphere of Godhead.
ART MAGIC.
32
1
SUPPLEMENT TO SECTION XXI.
1.
THE MAGIC MIRROR-ITS COMPOSITION.
COMMUNICATION FROM A PLANETARY SPIRIT—FORMULÆ OF NOS-
TRADAMUS-CALL AND DISCHARGE FOR SPIRITS OF THE CRYS-
TAL OR MIRROR.
The following mode of preparing and using a Magic Mirror,
is recommended by Alphonse Cahagnet, author of the Celestial
Telegraph, and, as the methods prescribed are simple, and the
results obtained are generally efficacious, they are submitted to
the reader in the words of Cahagnet himself:
MAGIC MIRROR.
"I promised not to reserve to myself anything I had learned
from spirits; I will keep my word by giving the secret of the magic
mirror, revealed to me by the Spirit of Swedenborg, who himself,
possessed one, and of which I have already spoken. I made two in
the way recommended to me, one of which I presented to my
friend, M. Renard, who after several experiments, gave a favor-
able report of it; mine was equally good. This is how we should
go to work: Procure a piece of glass as fine as possible, cut it the
required size, place it over a slow fire, at the same time dissolving
some very fine black lead in a small quantity of pure oil to give it
the consistence of a liquid pomade, which may easily be spread
over the glass when well diluted.
"The glass being hot, incline it on both sides, in order that
the mixture may spread of itself all over alike; then, the glass
being placed on something quite straight and flat, let the mixture
dry without disturbing it; in a few days it will become as hard as
pewter, presenting a very fine dark polish; put your glass in a
frame, and after well wiping its surface, hang it up on a wall, as
you would a looking-glass, but always in a false light. Place the
person who desires to see a spirit, or a scene before this mirror,
station yourself behind him, fixing your eyes steadily on the
328
ART MAGIC.
:
hinder part of the brain, and summon the spirit in a loud voice in
the name of God, in a manner imposing to the individual looking
in the mirror.
i
Alfomará
16kegyte
m *******.
"It may be naturally supposed that this kind of experiment
requires certain conditions, the first of which is to find an individ-
ual endowed with this kind of vision. Nothing is general in psy-
chological facts. There was much talk at one time of the magic
mirror of Dr. Dee, which was sold, in 1842, among the curiosi-
ties in the possession of Horace Walpole, at Strawberry Hill, for
the enormous sum of three hundred and twenty-six francs. It
was simply a bit of sea-coal, perfectly polished, cut in a circular
form, with a handle. This curiosity formerly figured in the cabi-
SHEW STONE OF DR. DEE.
MAS
...
!

From the Original in the British Museum.
net of the Earl of Peterborough. In the catalogue it was thus
described: 'A black stone, by means of which Doctor Dee evoked
spirits.' It passed from the hands of the Earl into those of Lady
Elizabeth Germaine, then became the property of John, last Duke
of Argyll, whose grandson, Lord Campbell, presented it to Wal-
pole. The author of the "Theatrum Chemicum,' Elias Ashmole,
speaks of the same mirror in the following terms:
CC
'By the aid of this magic stone, we can see whatever per-
sons we desire, no matter in what part of the world they be, and
were they hidden in the most retired apartments, or even in the
caverns in the bowels of the earth.' John Dee, born in London,
in 1527, was the son of a wine-merchant; he studied the sciences
with success, and devoted himself, at an early period, to judicial
astrology; Queen Elizabeth took him under her protection; he
composed several useful works, employed much of his time in
the science of magic, conjured spirits, made predictions, and be-
held the invisible; when he had discovered his mirror he returned
thanksgivings to God. He was occupied during his whole life in
the search for the philosopher's stone, and died in London at the
age of eighty-four, in a state of abject poverty.
"The Count de Laborde brought us a somewhat similar secret
from Egypt. The Baron Dupotet communicated a like one to his
ART MAGIC.
329
subscribers, in his Journal de Magnetisme; one is much more sim-
plified than the other, and succeeds equally as well. M. de La-
borde evokes; makes use of perfumes and stands in need of the co-
operation of spirits. M. Dupotet seems only to employ the mag-
netism of thought. Cagliostro also employed a magnetism but
little suspected, by placing one hand on the head of his pupils.
The Sorcerers of our country places proceed in like manner, with
the first mirror met with, imploring the assistance of the spirits
that facilitate such experiments.
"M. de Laborde makes use of a brilliant ink which he puts
in the hollow of the looker's hand, and stimulates his nervous sys-
tem by perfumes. M. Dupotet makes use of a piece of coal with
which he describes a circle on the floor with the intention of mak-
ing perceptible to the person operated upon, such picture as the
latter desires; he keeps the subject inclined for this experiment

Wwww
Dr. Dee-from a rare print.
by thought. Sorcerers have their reputation, which is of great
assistance to them. Certain prepossessions against such or such
a person suspected of theft or aught else, their imposing air, their
supplication to spirits, without knowing positively the meaning
of what they say, this suffices, and they operate!
"Leon, of whom I have spoken, followed in their steps.
Prayer, faith and a disposition of the visual organs facilitated
his experiments. Cagliostro, preceded by his reputation as an
incomprehensible man, was often successful in consequence of
the tact he displayed in selecting his pupils, the occult magnetism
he employed, etc.; but if I ask Messrs. de Laborde, Dupotet, Cag-
liostro, the sorcerers, Leon and others, whether they themselves
saw in their mirrors or reflecting body, they will reply no; there-
fore, there must be a disposition for this kind of experiment; we
must be influenced by an imposing display, an occult magnetism,
or the aid of invocations and perfumes. Wherefore, in order to
330
ART MAGIC.
profit by my mirror, I would advise the ceremony to be performed
with a certain dignity, and to have recourse only to what may act
on the imagination or nerves, as much by a normal or spiritual
magnetism as by the assistance of perfumes. All those that bear
or shed a sweet, pleasant smell, are suitable for the good spirits;
such as incense, musk, gum-lac, etc.; and for evil spirits, the seeds
of henbane, hemp, belladonna, anise, or coriander, etc. Each
seeks his own atmosphere, or one akin to it; but, above all, shun
the assistance of evil spirits. Let the spirit of justice, discretion,
humanity predominate in you; or otherwise, woe betide you!
"It will not, perhaps, be comprehended why I should recom-
mend shunning the invocation of evil spirits, and yet make known
the perfumes they delight in. I presume that I shall be thought
sufficiently consistent to speak here only of the apparitions we
desire to obtain, on the score of thefts, or other crimes, committed
to your prejudice. It is the spirits of such culprits who will obey
your command to present themselves, and seek the nauseous smell
of these perfumes. You have nothing to fear from them, since,
on the contrary, they have everything to fear from you. What
I recommend you to avoid, when demanding apparitions of those
you desire to see is pronouncing words, the meaning of which is
unknown to you, that invite baneful spirits to your assistance.
This is true Magic.".
When M. Cahagnet informs his readers that the dis-
tinguished operators whose experiences he cites do not themselves
see aught in their mirror, he omits to add that the assistance of
one predisposed to magnetic seership is essential, in fact a magne-
tized subject is necessary to the success of these methods, unless
the operator is himself a Medium or Seer. It will be asked by the
intelligent reader if a Medium or Seer is essential to the success
of experiments by the mirror or crystal, why may not the said Me-
dium or Seer behold in vision, and without the aid of the instru-
ments, all he desires? To this we answer the magnetism of the
operator, the psychological influence of the invocation and the
fixidity of the gaze riveted upon the shining surface of the mirror
are aids to lucidity-though not its primal source-but our
opinions on the subject of Magic and natural mediumship have
already been given in detail and we only add accounts of the
methods recommended and practiced by celebrated modern Ex-
perts to supplement our views of ancient-with modern magic.
For this purpose we subjoin the following communication given
to a successful Adept of the present generation by a Planetary
spirit-the guardian of his mirror-when questioned concerning
the best method of divination, also of receiving communications
sh
ART MAGIC.
331
from spirits. The words appeared on the mirror inscribed therein
by the spirit, and were read off by the Adept:
"The best and most ancient method of divination was by the
Crystal, or Urim and Thummim.
"Its origin was divine, and the inspiration, visions and com-
munications received through this source, when man was pure and
holy, were free from all human agency, wholly divine. The use
of the crystal in modern times, is almost as potent as the Urim
and Thummim of the Jews, and provided it is in the hands of one
gifted with clear sight, its revelations are infallible.
"Spirits do not actually appear in the crystal, but the seer is
magnetically assisted to look through its pellucid depths into the
spirit world. In this way he or she is brought in such near con-
tact with spirits that they can readily converse with mortals."....
Another planetary spirit, questioned on the same subject,
said:
"Whenever guardian spirits, or angels of the higher orders
move in the spirit world, the air that surrounds them is cleared
of everything that is, in any degree, more gross than themselves.
"Thus, if an atmospheric spirit meet a more heavenly spirit,
the atmospheric spirit yields to the presssure of the air that sur-
rounds the other, and retires to let him pass. In this way spirits
visit the atmosphere, and the spheres lower than their own, also
the earth, without once coming in contact with those below him,
unless he wishes to do so. Thus, too, when he is 'called' to con-
verse with human beings, the Invocant's thoughts, or rather will,
immediately reach him, and he appears separating and sending
before him all influences less angelical than his own.
"Guardian spirits and angels of high degree are only seen in
the Urim and Thummim, the crystal and the mirror, the other
modes of divining, by vessels of water, by circle work, by shades,
by bands, or black fluids, are only available for seeing deceased
persons, atmospheric spirits, wandering spirits, evil or undevel-
oped spirits."
The following method, especially commendable for its sim-
plicity, has been frequently employed with success in magical evo-
cations of Planetary or other spirits by Adepts in the nineteenth
century.
It is selected from hundreds of others in the author's pos-
session, chiefly from the perspicuity of its wording, and the ab-
sence of mystic assumptions.
Its composition is attributed to the celebrated Astrologer
and Crystal Seer, Nostradamus.
332
ART MAGIC.
DIRECTIONS FOR CRYSTAL SEEING.
"Having procured a good, clear stone, one that no spirit has
been called into before, the Seer must determine to use it for no
bad purpose. I do not say determine to use it only for good pur-
poses, because many frivolous and trifling things might occur that
would induce one to use it for the knowledge of things appertain-
ing to the world; but, having determined to use it for no bad or
unholy purpose, he should dedicate it first with a fervent prayer
to God.

2222
Nostradamus.
"Do not make use of a mediator, but firmly, yet humbly,
trust that God will put you in possession of a Guardian Spirit
that will show you the visions you may thereafter wish."
"Having done this, inspect the Crystal, and before asking
to see any vision, ask first to see the name of your Guardian
Spirit; having done this, ask to see him; when he appears, ask
him to give you any advice he may deem fit in using it. Ask him
to name the days and hours that he will appear, and also those on
which you may call other spirits. Ask him to become the Guar-
dian Spirit of your Crystal; to prevent any evil spirit from appear-
ART MAGIC.
333
ing, and to give you timely notice of anything about to happen
to you that you may prevent it, or that he may prevent it for
you.
"This done, you must discharge him. He should not be
kept more than half an hour at the first meeting.
When you invoke him the next time, exorcise with a strong
and determined will three times before you ask him any ques-
tions; if at those three times he does not vanish, you may perfectly
rely upon him.
"After the first time you may keep him as long as it may suit
yours and his convenience; if he wishes to leave, he can do so
without a discharge; but be careful that you always use a dis-
charge after having finished of a night.
"When invoking any Atmospheric Spirit, or a spirit of any
inferior degree, such as those of living as well as dead people, al-
ways use the term 'if convenient and agreeable,' etc.; or, 'at your
pleasure;' but more particularly of a living person; to your Guard-
ian Spirit, or a Spirit of a High order, it is not necessary.
"But above all, do not use it in any way, or make it directly
or indirectly an object for the gaining of money. It may appear
to go on smoothly for a few times. You may have the informa-
tion and the visions you wish for; but in the end the consequences
are lamentable, and they come sooner or later.
"When you have got used to a Crystal, feel confidence in it,
and assured in many ways of the Truth of it, then you can use a
Mirror, which is by a very great deal the best.
"The Mirror is to be used the same as a Crystal, but from
seeing visions so large and life-like, and from the size of the aper-
ture which is made by that into the spiritual world, it enables you
to come more closely in contact with the spirits you address.
"Of all modes of divining, this is the easiest and the best,
the information is given slowly at first, then gradually more and
more, until you reach the grand height of all human knowledge
upon spiritual matters, until you know as much as the human
mind can in any way comprehend of what passes beyond its own
World."
THE CALL.
"In the name of the Almighty God, in whom we live and
move and have our being, I humbly beseech the Guardian Spirit
of this Mirror or Crystal to appear.
"When appeared you can ask your questions, and obtain
instructions as to Calling-asking when he will allow you to call
him again, and fix his time for appearing,
334
ART MAGIC.
FOR A VISION.
"In the name, etc., I humbly beseech the Spirit of this Mirror
to favor me with a Vision that will interest or instruct us (or
favor us with a Vision of such and such a place or event, etc.).
TO SEE A PERSON.
"}
"In the name, etc. Then say, R. B. be pleased to appear
in this Mirror if convenient and agreeable. (Never fail in this.)
EXORCISM.
"In the name of the Almighty God, in whom we live and
move and have our being, I dismiss the Spirit now visible in this
Mirror if he is not"-"or if he is not a good and truthful Spirit.
"This must be said very intently and strongly three times,
with the finger upon the Crystal, whenever a Spirit is from any
cause suspected.
ܐ
I
DISCHARGE.
"In the name, etc., I dismiss from this Mirror all Spirits that
may have appeared therein, and the peace of God be between them
and us forever.
"This must be said three times upon closing, even if Spirits
are not seen, as they may have entered, and its neglect will soon
spoil the Mirror or Crystal."
ART MAGIC.
335
SECTION XXII.
HISTORY OF MAGNETISM.
PSYCHOLOGY-CLAIRVOYANCE-THEIR CONNECTION WITH ANCIENT
THE GREAT MODERN TRIAD-PARACELSUS-SWEDEN-
BORG AND MESMER-BILLOT-DELEUZE-CAHAGNET, ETC.
MAGIC
Those who would write the true history of Magnetism must
seek materials in that of magic, for the one is just as surely a
record of the other, as the principles of Astrology are derived
from the science of Astronomy.
We have written to little purpose if we have failed to im-
press our readers with the fact that the relations between the
worlds of invisible and visible being, are only made known
through the occult forces which enable the visible to penetrate
into the realms of the invisible-also that the means by which
Spirits, Angels, and even Tutelary Deities, communicate with
mortals, depend wholly upon these same occult forces. Whether
we call this all-pervading motor of being, "divine fire, astral light,
electricity, magnetism, or life," it is, as we have before shown,
the eternal, indestructible, universal and infinite element of force.
Magic, Deific relations, Angelic ministry, and spirit communion,
are but applications of this force operating upon man, and the
visible Universe is only a magnificent chess-board, on which Force
is playing the eternal game of creation and destruction, with Suns
and Satellites for its chess-men. Whilst it becomes evident that
the ancients obtained a wide control over this stupendous motor
power by long study and painful initiations, the men of the mid-
dle ages in a great measure lost the clue to its guidance, and the
apparitional demonstrations of its eternal activity, revealed by
glimpses from the worlds of invisible being, only served to startle
them into superstitious terror, without instructing them concern-
ing the potential agency at work.
Slowly but surely the veil of mystery is again lifting, and
again men see the Cyclops at work forging hemispheres and
336
ART MAGIC.
earths, Angels and Men, out of matter and spirit by the motor
power of this same life-lightning. The revelation now so slowly
yet surely stealing in upon human consciousness, has not been
heralded by the roar of the tempest, the boom of the thunder, or
the throes of the quaking earth.
Like the still small voice that spoke to the Prophet Elijah when
the Lord passed by-it has come in the low whispers of two new
sciences the science of Life or magnetism, and the science of
Soul, or psychology. Only the very first elements of these two
magical revelations have as yet dawned upon our age, but they
have shown us enough to be assured that when they are fully
understood and scientifically applied, they will afford a clue to all
the mysteries of the past, and enable man to achieve by natural
law, all those phenomenal demonstrations which in ancient times
were termed miraculous.
To trace the advent of these phases of spiritual science, it
will be necessary to recall the bold claims of Paracelsus for the
almost miraculous powers of the magnet, and though most of
his followers were dreamy and impractical mystics, who failed
to apply the comprehensive ideas which he suggested, they served
to keep alive the flame of occult fire which he kindled, until the
appearance on the scene of the noble and illuminated Sweden-
borg, who presented as a Seer of unequalled lucidity, that glorious
element of psychological science, which completely supplemented
the opinions of Paracelsus concerning magnetism. It remained.
for Anton Mesmer to combine these two supreme soul forces into
their correlative relations, and demonstrate by the practical ap-
plication of magnetism, the possibility of emulating the natural
endowments of Seership, through the revelations of the magnetic
sleep.
It must not be supposed that we attribute to that illustrious
triad of modern philosophers, Paracelsus, Swedenborg and Mes-
mer, any new discoveries in nature.
They only rekindled lights of divine science which ignorance
and superstition had sought to stifle if they could not extinguish
them.
Magnetism the life principle and psychology the soul power
of the Universe, had been as we have constantly alleged, the
motors of all magical operations, and the knowledge of this fact,
and an understanding of how to apply these sublime forces, con-
stituted "the wisdom of the Ancients," and the arcanum of all
their mysteries. But the master spirit of antiquity had been slain
by the destroying demons of time, change and revolution. The
Master's word was lost, and for ages the building of the grand
ART MAGIC.
987
Temple of Spiritual Science waited for the key-stone necessary
to complete the arch of the entrance gate. The Alchemists of
the twelfth and thirteenth centuries perceived the existence of.a
"philosopher's stone," but dared not declare that it was to be
found only in the universal life force of magnetism. The Rosi-
crucians of two centuries later realized the true nature of the
"Elixir Vitae" in the imperishable quality of Soul essence, but
how could they venture to reveal to a scoffing, yet superstitious
age, the stupendous fact that this Soul essence could be con-
trolled, imparted and utilized even without the agency of death to
liberate it from the body? It was because Paracelsus bravely and
openly taught of this philosopher's stone, giving its true name as
Magnetism, and Swedenborg as fearlessly displayed the latent
possibilities of spiritual communion and Seership in the human
Soul, that these noble philosophers stand confessed as the Fathers
of the new Dispensation.
L
The position of Mesmer in this great unfoldment is not less
triumphantly defined, but that the momentous revolution he
effected in spiritual science may be the more clearly understood,
we shall proceed to give a brief compendium of the theorems by
which his methods of practice were explained.
It is from Dr. Justinius Kerner's clear yet reverential notices
of the life of this inestimable man, so little appreciated in his own
time, so ill understood even yet by the cold world upon which
he opened up such a realm of spiritual sunshine, that we extract
the following items:
Anton Mesmer first saw the light at Weiler, on the Rhine,
May the 23d, 1734. As quite a young child, he is said to have
exhibited a remarkable predilection for running water, delight-
ing to follow up the course of streams and brooks to their source,
and frequently neglecting his scholastic duties for the pleasure
of hovering on the banks of the mighty Rhine, gathering stones,
shells, and disporting, with a strange joy, in the falling rain, the
wild wind, the howling tempest, and the balmy sunshine. He was
passionately addicted to the study of nature, and an insatiable
yearning led him to explore her recesses, even at an age when his
childish mind failed to command language for the expression of
the great thoughts that possessed him. During his initiatory
studies for the medical profession, he noticed and his associates
were accustomed to comment on the strange manner in which
the blood of a patient under the operation of the knife or lancet
would immediately change the course of its flow as soon as he ap-
proached. Sometimes, it is said, it would cease instantly, and
where the flow was sluggish, its increase would be immediately
338
ART MAGIC.
promoted by his touch, receding or suspending altogether when
he withdrew. A thousand petty incidents, commented on at the
time as "very curious," but subsequently remembered as tokens.
of his ever-present and spontaneous magnetic influence, were
constantly occurring from his early childhood up to the time
when his unerring instincts led him into the arcanum of his great
discovery.
How this occurred will be best rendered in the language of
Kerner, who says:
"During his fifteen years' medical practice in Vienna, he
came upon his new art of healing through observing the origin,
the form, and the career of diseases, in connection with the great
changes in our solar system and the universe; in short, in connec-
tion with what he termed Universal Magnetism. He sought for
this magnetism originally in electricity and subsequently in min-
eral magnetism. He made use of the magnet for healing at first
in 1772, led to this discovery by the astronomer, Father Hel;
using the magnet, however, simply as a conductor from his own
organism through his hands, and by this means brought forth
remarkable cures. A year subsequently, experience showed him
that without touching the magnet, through his hands alone, he
could operate much more powerfully upon the human organism,
and thus originated through him the discovery of Animal Magne-
tism, which he developed into a science.
"It was after this manner that Mesmer reasoned: "There must
exist a power which permeates the universe, and binds together
all the bodies upon earth, and it must be possible for man to bring
this influence under his command.' This power he first sought
for in the magnet; he pondered upon it with regard to man, and
immediately applied it to the cure of diseases. The remarkable
operations which were produced, and the cure of the sick, would,
in another investigator, have brought him to an end of his experi-
ments. Mesmer, however, went forward. Ever accompanied by
the idea of the primal power which must permeate the universe,
and is ever active within it, the thought occurred to him that the
influence must exist yet more powerfully in man himself than
in the magnet; since, he argued, if the magnet communicates to
the iron the same polarity which causes itself to be a magnet, an
organized body must be able to produce similar conditions in an-
other body. He thus perceived that he could not ascribe alone
to the magnet which he held in his hands the effects which he had
observed produced, since he also must in his turn influence the
magnet. Upon this he cast aside his magnet, and with his hands
alone brought forth similar and unadulterated effects."
ART MAGIC.
339
No great discovery has ever yet convulsed the world that has
not subsequently brought forth its cloud of claimants to share in
its honors. One says: "Why, this is nothing new! I always knew
it, and have observed it a hundred times." This cry is echoed
and re-echoed until an hundred, a thousand-aye, half the age,
perhaps, insists they always knew it was so; it is nothing new.
Nothing can be truer than this in relation to magnetism; yet,
with all the wise world's perception of its truth, it required the
genius of a Mesmer to practicalize, and above all, to reduce it to
scientific theorems.
Kerner gives some narratives of Mesmer's methods of treat-
ment in his earliest stages of magnetic practice, which, although
very striking, are not sufficiently germain to our purpose to admit.
of quoting here; we, therefore, omit them, and proceed to present
the conclusions they caused the narrator to draw from them. He
writes thus:
"He ascertained that the principal agent in his cures dwelt
within himself, and that its power increased by use. Neverthe-
less, the idea was never combated by Mesmer, that persons upon
whom animal magnetism exercises but a slight influence, are ren-
dered more susceptible to this influence by the assistance of elec-
tricity and galvanism.
"Seifart remarks that he had observed that Mesmer wore
beneath his linen shirt another of leather-lined with silk, and sup-
poses that Mesmer sought by this means to prevent the escape of
the magnetic fluid. He believes that Mesmer also wore natural
and artificial magnets about his person, with the intention of
strengthening the magnetic condition in himself.
"At all events it is certain that at a later period he employed
for the strengthening of the magnetic condition, an apparatus,
the Baquet, or, as he called it, the Magnetic Basin, or Paropo-
thus. This receptacle, as it was originally formed by Mesmer,
was a large pan or tub, filled with various magnetic substances,
such as water, sand, stone, glass bottles filled with water, etc. It
is a focus within which the magnetism finds itself concentrated,
and out of which a number of conductors proceed; these conduc-
tors being bent, somewhat pointed parallel iron wands, the one
end of each wand being in the tub, whilst the other end could
be applied to the seat of the disease. This arrangement might be
made use of by a number of patients seated around the tub. Any
suitably-sized receptacle for water-a pond or a fountain in a
garden-would serve a patient as a baquet so soon as the patient
made use of an iron wand to conduct the magnetism towards him
or herself."
340
ART MAGIC.
"In vain did Mesmer endeavor to convince his medical con-
temporaries of the truth and importance of his discovery; in
vain was his announcement of it to the scientific academies. With
but a single exception, he received no answer from them. This
exception was the Academy of Berlin, which passed the following
judgment:-It would in nowise enter upon an inquiry into a
matter which rested on such entirely unknown foundations.
"Upon this Mesmer brought all his discoveries into the form
of twenty-seven aphorisms, which he sent to the scientific acade-
mies in the year 1775. These aphorisms contain Mesmer's doc-
trine clearly and briefly expressed, and it is important to become
acquainted with them, since his ideas are here given in his own.
words:
"1. There exists a reciprocal influence between the heav-
enly bodies, the earth, and all living beings.
""2. A fluid which is spread everywhere, and which is so
expanded that it permits of no vacuum, of a delicacy which can
be compared to nothing besides itself, and which, through its na-
ture, is enabled to receive movement, to spread and to participate
in it, is the medium of this influence.
"3. This reciprocal activity is subject to the operation of
mechanical laws, which until now were quite unknown.
From this activity spring alternating operations, which
be compared to ebb and flow.
may
6.6
5. This ebb and flow are more or less general, more or
less complex, according to the nature of the origin which has
called them forth.
""6. Through this active principle, which is far more uni-
versal than any other in nature, originates a relative activity be-
tween the heavenly bodies, the earth, and its component parts.
"y. It immediately sets in movement-since it directly
enters into the substance of the nerves-the properties of matter
and of organized bodies, and the alternative operations of these
active existences.
""8. In human bodies are discovered properties which cor-
respond with those of the magnet. Also various opposite poles
may be distinguished, which can be imparted, changed, disturbed
and strengthened.
"9. The property of the animal body, which renders it
susceptible to the influence of the heavenly bodies, and to the
reciprocal operation of those bodies which surround it, verified
by the magnet, has induced me to term this property Animal Mag-
netism.
400
10. The power and operation thus designated as Animal
***
ART MAGIC.
341
Magnetism can be communicated to animate and inanimate
bodies; both, however, are more or less susceptible.
પ
""11. This power and operation can be increased and prop-
agated through the instrumentality of these bodies.
"12. Through experience it is observed that an efflux of
matter occurs, the volatility of which enables it to penetrate all
bodies without perceptibly losing any of its activity.
"13. Its operation extends into the distance without the
assistance of an intermediate body.
"14. It can be increased and thrown back again by means
of a mirror, as well as by light.
"15. It can be communicated, increased, and spread by
means of sound.
""16. This magnetic power can be accumulated, increased
and spread.
<< 17. I have observed that animated bodies are not all
equally fitted to receive this magnetic power. There are also
bodies, although comparatively few, which possess such opposite.
qualities that their presence destroys the operation of this magne-
tism in other bodies.
""18. This opposing power permeates equally all bodies;
it can also in the same manner be communicated, accumulated
and propagated; it streams back from the surface of mirrors, and
can be spread by means of sound. This is not alone occasioned
by a deprivation of power, but is caused by an opposing and posi-
tive power.
19.
The natural and artificial magnet is equally, with
other bodies, susceptible to animal magnetism, without, in either
case, its operation upon iron or upon the needle suffering the
slightest change.
""20. This system will place in a clearer light the nature
of fire, and of light, as well as the doctrine of attraction, of ebb
and flow, of the magnet, and of electricity.
Co
21. It will demonstrate that the magnet and artificial
electricity, with regard to sicknesses, possess simply qualities pos-
sessed in common with other active forces afforded by nature;
and that if any useful operation springs from their instrumental-
ity, we have to thank animal magnetism for it.
22. From instances deduced from my firmly established
and thoroughly proved rules, it will be easily perceived that this
principle can immediately cure diseases of the nerves.
""23. Through its assistance the physician receives much
light regarding the application of medicaments, whereby he can
342
ART MAGIC.
improve their operation, call forth more beneficial crises, and con-
duct them in such wise as to become master of them.
"24. Through communication of my method, I shall, in
unfolding a new doctrine of disease, prove the universal use of
this active principle.
""25. Through this knowledge the physician will be en-
abled to judge of the origin, the progress, and the nature even of
the most intricate diseases. He will be enabled to prevent the in-
crease of disease, and bring about the cure without exposing his
patient to dangerous effects or painful consequences, whatever
be the age, sex or temperament of the patient.
""26. Women during pregnancy and in childbirth receive
advantage therefrom.
""27. The doctrine will, at length, place the physician in
such a position that he will be able to judge the degree of health
possessed by any man, and be able to protect him from the disease
to which he may be exposed. The art of healing will by this
means attain to its greatest height of perfection.'
"Thus deeply convinced of the truth of his doctrine, it was
natural that Mesmer should feel keenly pained by the misconcep-
tion and contempt of men, for whom, in other directions, he
entertained esteem. He expresses his bitter sorrow in various of
the writings left behind him.
"This system, which led me to the discovery of animal mag-
netism,' he writes, 'was not the fruits of a single day. By degrees,
even as the hours of my life accumulated, were gathered together
in my soul the observations which led to it. The coldness with
which my earliest promulgated ideas were met filled me with
astonishment as great as though I had never foreseen such cold-
ness. The learned (and physicians especially) laughed over my
system, but quite out of place, however, for although unsupported
by experiment, it must have appeared fully as reasonable as the
greater portion of their systems, on which they bestow the grand
name of principles.
g
""This_unfavorable reception induced me again to examine
my ideas. Instead, however, of losing through this, they gained
a higher degree of manifestation, and in truth everything con-
vinced me that in science, besides the principles already accepted,
there must still be others, either neglected or not observed.'"....
As our work is simply an attempt to elucidate philosophy
from facts, we shall pursue the history of Mesmer no farther.
His followers, some few of whom were indeed worthy successors
to so great an original, added many valuable experiences to his,
but failed to evolve any ideas more thoroughly comprehensive
ART MAGIC.
343
than those given in his twenty-seven aphorisms. To show why
the mine of rich treasure opened up by Mesmer has been so slowly
and reluctantly transferred to the mint of national currency in
human practice, we have only to remember the bitter persecutions,
cruel ingratitude and misrepresentation, which followed the good
and amiable Anton Mesmer through his life, and pursued his fol-
lowers after his decease.
The narrow conservatism of the age, too, and the pitiful jeal-
ousy of the Medical Faculty, rendered it difficult and even danger-
ous, to conduct magnetic experiments openly in Europe within
several years of Mesmer's decease. Still such experiments were
not wanting, and to show their results, we give a few excerpts
from the correspondence between the famous French Magnetists,
M. M. Deleuze and Billot, from the years 1829 to 1840. By these
letters, published in two volumes in 1836, it appears that M. Bil-
lot commenced his experiments in magnetizing as early as 1789,
and that during this space of over forty years, he had an opportu-
nity of witnessing facts in clairvoyance, ecstasy, spiritual medium-
ship, and Somnambulism, which at the time of their publication
transcended the belief of the general mass of readers. On many
occasions in the presence of entranced subjects, Spirits recognized
as having once lived on earth in mortal form-would come in
bodily presence before the eyes of an assembled company, and at
request, bring flowers, fruits, and objects, removed by distance
from the scene of the experiments.
M. Deleuze frankly admits that his experience was more
limited to those phases of Somnambulism in which his subjects
submitted to amputations and severe surgical operations without
experiencing the slightest pain, also they could disclose hidden
things, find lost property, detect crime, predict the future, speak
in foreign languages, and describe distant places with great elo-
quence and power.
In a letter dated July, 1831, M. Billot writing to Deleuze,
says:
"I repeat, I have seen and known all that is permitted to
man. I have seen the stigmata arise on magnetized subjects; I
have dispelled obsessions of evil spirits with a single word. I
have seen spirits bring those material objects I told you of, and
when requested, make them so light that they would float, and,
again a small boiteau de bonbons was rendered so heavy, that I
failed to move it an inch until the power was removed."
Alfonse Cahagnet, to whose invaluable work, the "Celestial
Telegraph," allusion has already been made, published a series
344
ART MAGIC.
of experiments with a vast number of lucid subjects who by vir-
tue of his magnetism became Clairvoyants.
At first their lucidity only sufficed to discover the things
of earth, and trace earthly scenes and persons. As the magnetic
sleep took deeper hold on their senses, however, it became appar-
ent that a new world opened up before them.
Without any mental direction from their magnetizers-they
one and all persisted in describing the spirits of those whom the
world deemed dead. They discoursed with them, sometimes per-
sonated them, gave truthful accounts of their lives on earth, and
described their appearances so accurately that scores of enquir-
ing mourners, attracted by the fame of Cahagnet's Lucides, came
thither to find their dead restored to them. It was as if a gate had
suddenly been opened into the realms of paradise, and poor, suf-
fering, bereaved humanity might be seen crowding upon each
other to gaze through those golden portals and discover there all
they had loved, all they had lost, and as in a mirror behold the
delightful panoramas of being where their own tired feet were to
find rest when their bodies should sleep the last sleep of human-
ity.
To those who enjoyed the unspeakable privilege of listening
to the "Somnambules" of Billot, Deleuze, and Cahagnet, another
and yet more striking feature of unanimous revelation was poured
forth. Spirits of those who had passed away strong in the faith of
Roman Catholicism, often priests and dignitaries of that conserv-
ative church, addressing staunch and prejudiced believers in the
faith, too, always asserted "there was no creed in Heaven," no
sectarian worship, no remains of dogmatic faiths.
They taught that God was a grand Spiritual Sun-life on
earth a probation; the spheres different degrees of compensative
happiness or states of retributive suffering; each appropriate to
the good or evil deeds done on earth. They described the ascend-
ing changes open to every soul in proportion to its own efforts to
improve.
They all insisted that man was his own judge, incurred a
penalty or reward for which there was no substitution. They
taught nothing of Christ, absolutely denied the idea of vicarious
atonement-and represented man as his own Savior or destroyer.
They spoke of arts, sciences, and continued activities, as if
the life beyond was but an extension of the present on a greatly
improved scale. Descriptions of the radiant beauty, supernal hap-
piness, and ecstatic sublimity manifested by the blest spirits who
had risen to the spheres of paradise, Heaven, and the glory of
Angelic companionship, melts the heart, and fills the soul with
ART MAGIC.
345
irresistible yearnings to lay down life's weary burdens and be at
rest with them.
"O, to be there!" must be the cry of every tired spirit who
listens to these enchanting pictures of an enchanting hereafter;
one, too, which so reasonably and harmoniously meets the aspira-
tions of that human nature we yet bear about with us, which,
whilst longing for the unimaginable glories of Heaven, shrinks
back appalled from the incomprehensible mysticism of theology.
Such were some of the original and startling revealments poured
forth by the French Clairvoyants, who, during the first half of
this century, led in their somnambulic hands whole legions of
arisen spirits and teaching angels, all evidently builders, flocking
into the great workshops of modern spiritual science, to take their
places in the erection of the new Church of humanity. We can-
not close this necessarily brief summary, without quoting a few
words from that philosophic herald of Magnetism's new morning,
Baron Dupotet. This brave and skillful Scientist says:
"No one can conduct magnetic seances with patience and
fidelity, without coming to the conclusion which bursts upon my
own mind, namely: that in Magnetism I rediscover the Spirit-
ology of the ancients. Let the Savant reject the doctrine of spir-
itual apparitions as one of the great errors of the past, the results
of the Magretic seance re-affirm them all. They do more. They
prove that the healing of the sick, the ecstasy of the Saints, all
their miraculous works are ours. Is the knowledge of ancient
magic lost?—we have all the facts on which to reconstruct it.”
The learned Magnetist then recites a vast number of the
phenomena produced through his own subjects and those of Puy-
segur, Seguin, Bertrand, and many others, which fully equal in
marvel any of the magical histories of past ages.
And these discoveries multiplying in number every day, and
increasing in marvel as the Adepts became more and more accom-
plished in their art, clustered to their meridian point before the
year 1840, nearly ten years before the outbreak of modern Spirit-
ualism in America, a movement from which many date the ad-
vent of spiritual revelation in this generation.
1 As a matter of phenomenal wonder, the latter class are right
in their definition; but as the glorious triad of Masters through
whom the lodges of ancient mystery are transformed into the
temples of modern science, Paracelsus, Swedenborg and Mesmer
take rank in unapproachable honor and unrivalled distinction.
To their determined spirit of inquiry, to the patience, fidelity
and acumen with which they conducted their extensive researches,
and the unparalleled courage with which they dared to assail the
346
ART MAGIC.
prejudices of the age in which they lived, the generations to come
will owe the fact that magnetism and psychology have rediscov-
ered the lost art of ancient magic, and transmuted the visionary
stone and elixir of mediaeval mystics into the pure gold of modern
spiritual science.
SECTION XXIII.
SPIRITUALISTIC LITERATURE.
THE HARMONIAL PHILOSOPHY AND ITS FOUNDER-MODERN SPIRIT-
UALISM-ITS UNIVERSALITY OF PHENOMENA--SUGGESTIONS
FOR SCHOOL OF PROPHETS-DARK AND LIGHT CIRCLES-EPI-
LOGUE TO THE DRAMA OF "ART MAGIC."
*
We have reached that point in our review when we find our-
selves at the final stage of our journey, standing face to face in
fact with the last great spiritual dispensation of the ages, com-
monly termed "Modern Spiritualism.
""
In touching upon this part of our record the task resolves
itself chiefly into the duty of cataloguing the many lucid and val-
uable expositions of the subject which are already extant, render-
ing the least attempt to add to this vast collection of special litera-
ture, a work of supererogation. In England, "The Two Worlds,"
by Thos. Shorter; "From Matter to Spirit," by Mrs. De Morgan,
the admirable spiritualistic works of Wm. Howitt, and Mrs.
Crowe's "Night Side of Nature," offer more food for reflection
than it would seem the public mind has as yet been able to assim-
ilate, whilst hosts of tracts, pamphlets, able magazines and news-
papers, furnish continual streams of information from which no
thirsting soul need go away empty. France is equally rich in the
literature of Spiritism, although the general tone of its later writ-
ers is deflected to sustain the peculiar opinions of that body of
believers known as "Reincarnationists." It would be as useless as
impertinent to cite German literature in support of Spiritualistic
doctrines or point to its phalanx of immortal writers whose affir-
mations of the Spiritual side of man's nature have never failed
since the advent of the printing press to this hour. Holland in
its excellent periodicals, and Russia in its liberal patronage of
spirit media are also contributing their quota to the general store-
house of occult knowledge. In the meantime brave, unflinching
defenders of these truths, writing in Spain from amidst the ghost-
:
ART MAGIC.
347
:
ly shadows of the grim old Inquisition, devoted bands of Spirit-
ists, writhing under the proscriptive ban of Priestcraft in South
America, scattering forces from the Sandwich Islands, New Zea-
land, the East and West Indies, Australia, California, and indeed
wherever civilization has a foothold, all contribute to fill up the
columns of a world-wide Spiritual Almanac, and record the cease-
less irruptions of spirit people into this mundane world of ours.
There are many circumstances which combine to fix the era
of this great modern movement at or about the date assigned to
what has been popularly termed "the Rochester knockings."
Whilst it would be far more difficult to name any period of human
history when Spiritism was not, rather than when it commenced
to act, there is much propriety in assuming that the first system-
atic effort to reduce the telegraphic signals made by spirits to a
method of direct and continuous communication between them-
selves and mortals occurred at Rochester, in the State of New
York, America, and commenced in the years 1847 and '48.
The first public exhibition of Spiritual power, too, occurred
at this place and time, conducted under the direction of Spirits,
and terminating in reports of Committees elected by the people,
alleging a Spiritual cause for the disturbances, that these public
meetings were convened to inquire into. In America, also, was
presented, for the first time in history, a petition to the Govern-
ment of the country, signed by many thousands of the most re-
spectable of its citizens, praying for a scientific commission to
inquire into a purely Spiritualistic movement.
It is from these causes, together with the immense surfaces
of country embraced in the American manifestations-their pow-
er, variety, force and phenomenal wonder, the enormous masses
of its believers, and the profusion of its literature, that mankind
seem to have combined, with one accord, to yield the palm of all
potency, number and influence to American Spiritism.
Before entering upon a final summary of this movement, it
behooves us to render another reason why we should concentrate
upon the Modern Spiritism of the United States the deepest emo-
tions of respect and gratitude which mankind can render to the
movers and founders of the great spiritual outpouring.
On American soil was born, and under American skies were
first poured out, the vaticinations of a Seer, who stands second to
no prophet, religious teacher, reformer, writer, or phenomenal
wonder-worker, that the page of history has ever borne witness
of. That Seer is Andrew Jackson Davis. During a brief resi-
dence in America, some few years since, the author, being on a
visit to a friend in a charming country-seat, found himself made
348
ART MAGIC.
free of a noble library of several hundred volumes. In one por-
tion of that enchanting study, just where the beams of the sinking
sun would fall most favorably through the softened lustre of the
stained-glass windows, stood a rich ormulu table, where, in singu-
lar contrast to the luxurious objects surrounding them, were piled
up a large mass of plainly bound volumes, most of them large and
evidently sufficiently popular with their possessor, for they bore
more conclusive marks of wear than any other of the gorgeously
bound volumes that the room contained. On opening with some
curiosity the most ponderous of these books, the eye fell upon the
following passages somewhere about the 142d page:
.:
"As it was in the beginning, so the vast and boundless Uni-
vercoelum, the great sun and centre from which all these worlds
emanated, is still an exhaustless' fountain of chaotic materials and
living inherent energy to drive intó existence billions and millions
of billions of suns, with all their appendages more than have yet
been produced! For it has eternal motion and contains the forms
that all things subsequently assume; and it contains laws that are
displayed in its geometrical and mechanical structure, combina-
tions, laws, forces, forms and motions that have produced, and
will still produce, an infinitude of systems, and systems of systems,
whose concentric circles are but an expanse from the great germ
of all existence, and are incessantly acting and re-acting, chang-
ing, harmonizing, organizing, and etherealizing every particle of
chaotic and undeveloped matter that exists in the vortex!"
Struck with the peculiarity of these strange and high-strung
words, and their analogy with the opinions that he had himself
imbibed from the study of the Universe, and its laws, the author
proceeded to turn other pages of this volume, and found astound-
ing and deeply occult descriptions of God, man, creation, the
Solar and Astral systems, the mystery of force, life, being, the
order of creation, in fact, eloquent, burning words, and thoughts
almost beyond earthly comprehension for their sublimity, in every
line. Hours swept on like seconds. The wonderful volume was
glanced through, then others were opened.
The same writer's mind glowed through all those plain, cheap
books-books which should have been bound in rubies and sap-
phires-and the reader became at last almost paralyzed at the
breadth of information, the intense insight into being, and the
majesty with which some mind more than mortal had swept crea-
tion, and reduced its vast research into the holiest and most ele-
vated language.
Hours passed on. The early morning that had invited the
student into that choice retreat now deepened into the gray mists
ART MAGIC.
349
of evening; yet still the straining gaze roamed through the won-
derful stack of shabby books, until it fell upon this passage:
"The great original, ever-existing, omniscient, omnipotent
and omnipresent productive power, the Soul of all existence, is
throned in a central sphere, the circumference of which is the
boundless universe, and around which solar, sidereal and stellar
systems revolve, in silent, majestic sublimity and harmony! This
power is what mankind call Deity, whose attributes are love and
wisdom, corresponding with the principles of male and female,
positive and negative, sustaining and creative."
At this point the master of the mansion, opening the library
door, uttered an exclamation of surprise to find the guest whose
presence he had missed for upwards of twelve hours, still at
home.
The next words spoken were, "Who is the author of these
wonderful books?"
"Oh, those," replied the host, with seeming indifference,
"those books are all written by a poor shoemaker's boy of Pough-
keepsie. That one"-pointing to the largest, the one which had
first attracted the attention and awakened the astonishment of the
reader-"was written, or rather spoken, when the lad was about
sixteen years of age; he was too ignorant to write it, he could not
have even spelled the words."
"In what school was he brought up, for heaven's sake?”
"Utter destitution."
"Who taught him all these wonderful things?"
"God and the angels. He never had any human teachers.
Of that I am a living witness.”
"But how in the name of all that is weird and wonderful
were these volumes written ?"
"Oh, at first they were taken down as he spoke them by a
Scribe; because I tell you, he who discoursed of suns, stars, systems,
astronomy, geology, physiology, and every other known science,
was too uneducated to be able to write down the words he spoke,
and then, after graduating in the schools of God alone knows
where but in no college or seat of learning on this earth-he
wrote the rest himself, every line of them."
"But if God and angels taught him, is there no record as to
how he learned ?"
"Yes, one which scores of living men and women will tes-
tify to. He was magnetized as a little shoemaker's lad of the
humblest and poorest condition, and then he became an indepen-
dent clairvoyant."
"Aye, indeed! Magnetism, and then Psychology, God's psy-
350
ART MAGIC.
chology poured into the soul, when it becomes clairvoyant, and
ascends to the spheres of Deific knowledge! Why, this is ancient
magic! The secret of all spiritualistic powers and possibilities;
yet, when did any ancient Magian, any mind however aspiring,
vast, or illuminated, assume such a depth, height, and breadth
of comprehension as this? Answer me, my friend. Has such a
paragon ever existed as the author of this library?"
"Swedenborg, perhaps. You forget him."
"But these revelations are more human, more comprehensi-
ble and nearer to man's estate than Swedenborg's. They might
be breathings of Swedenborg's spirit, correcting the shortcomings
of his earthly career."
"Perhaps they are. This man believes in spirits."
"Can this wonder of the age exist and the world not know
of it?"
""
"Yes; people know all about him, but they don't care for
him now. He is living in great obscurity somewhere in Jersey, I
believe."
"But the Spiritualists-surely those immense bodies of
thinkers who have disclaimed the false assumptions of creeds and
the unscientific absurdities of ecclesiastical dogmas-do not those
people so wonderfully taught of the spirit, accept him as their
prophet, their leader, their heaven-inspired teacher?"
"Hold, hold, my friend! you know not what you say. The
Spiritualists are all individuals.' They are their own Gods, their
own Prophets, leaders and teachers; what! present any human
leader, teacher, or Prophet, to the great bulk of the American
Spiritualists! You will find you are treading on dangerous
ground, and will soon be warned back with the phrases, 'we want
no Popes, Cardinals, Bishops, or Priestly Leaders here.""
But Leaders and Teachers they must have. Do they not
sustain great mass meetings where the public gather together to
hear their opinions discussed?"
"Aye, but each one presents his own opinion, and none but
his own. Sometimes these opinions are as widely divergent as
the heavens and the earth; and sometimes not unlike in essence,
light and darkness, still their pride is to maintain a free plat-
form,' and under this appellation, the Angels of darkness are as
free to have their say as those of light."
"But this is chaos, disorder, not Spiritism, much less the
sweetness, grace and dignity of this Harmonial Philosophy!"
"The time was when Davis's revelations, startling material-
ism out of its blank negations, and compelling attention from the
wonderful and unprecedented methods of their delivery, drew
ART MAGIC.
351
around him a large class of admiring friends and elevated think-
ers, who were not ashamed to call themselves after him, 'Har-
monial Philosophers,' but in the revolutionary spirit of this great
movement Spiritualism, thousands have rushed into its ranks,
glad to escape from creeds, dogmas, and ecclesiastical despotism.
The memory of this dethroned tyranny is still too strong upon
them to admit of any present attempts to organize a new religious
system. The swing of the pendulum has carried the soul from
despotism into license, and until the revolutionary elements of
thought can subside into equilibrium, depend upon it even the
amiable and unassuming 'harmonial philosopher's' leadership can-
not be tolerated."
"But in the meantime were these stupendous revelations
given in vain? Surely so noble a philosophy, received through
an inspiration so unmistakably divine, so free from human bias
or mortal intervention, ought to commend itself to every civilized
nation of the present age!"
"My friend, you forget the elements of which this genera-
tion is composed. Setting aside the scientists who scoff out of
notice every idea connected with spiritual existence, or outside the
known routine of science, who do you expect in Catholic and
Protestant Europe to sympathize with the revelations of the
Poughkeepsie Seer? Some few there are in every country where
these plain, black volumes have made their way, who regard them
as we do. Many who even believe they are the voice of earth's
Tutelary Angel, speaking from between the Cherubim and Sera-
phim of past and future ages, but they like us, must wait until
the age is more receptive of these sublime truths. At the present
day, the great majority of European religionists hold up their
hands with holy horror at the name of A. J. Davis, and cry, 'Pan-
theist! Heathen Philosopher! This is the man who denies the
Trinity, disbelieves in the awful Jehovah with his great white
throne! This is the hard-hearted moralist who would take away
our Savior from us, deny us the consolation of the vicarious
atonement, and compel us all to do personal penance for our sins,
and even abandon them altogether! This is he who calls God a
Spiritual Sun, Jesus an amiable young man, creation an evolu-
tion, and flies in the face of Genesis and the thirty-nine articles!'"
In after years, when the author had time and opportunity
to study out the vast stores of spiritual thought and profound
philosophy, displayed in the voluminous writings of this great
modern Prophet, the admiration they excited, determined him,
if he ever more visited America, he would seek out this marvel of
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ART MAGIC.
the age, even as the Disciples of classic Greece sat at the feet of
her master spirits to learn wisdom.
The time for the fulfillment of this cherished purpose came,
and in company with an ardent Disciple of the Harmonial Phil-
osophy from a distant land, the author commenced his search.
Few Spiritualists seemed to know even of the whereabouts
of the Poughkeepsie Seer. Surely, we thought he must be at the
head of some great Church, Temple, Synagogue, a mechanic's
institute at the least, or a popular lecture hall; some place, where
spiritually starved souls could feed upon the Divine revelations
of nature as taught by one of her purest and most faithful inter-
preters! But no! the great Alchemist who had transmuted the
Magic of early ages into the gold of spiritual science, the Seer,
Philosopher, and greatest phenomenon of this or any age, had
to be sought for in a little shop in an obscure street, where, with-
out followers, disciples, admirers, and to judge from appearances
with but very few customers, amidst his neat, well ordered collec-
tion of books, ranged on their shelves in curious little delicate
curves, and tastefully adorned with illuminated mottoes, and
Autumn leaves-stood the great Seer, sellling his books for a
livelihood.
The placid mien and gentle tones of the unassuming sales-
man betrayed none of the pangs of grief, indignation and humilia-
tion which two foreigners felt for him, as they made their silent
purchase, with hearts too full for utterance, and withdrew.
"That man is nobler far in the quiet, cheerful dignity with
which he accommodates himself to the sordid necessities of a
petty trade, than when he stood as the interpreter of Angels, dic-
tating 'Nature's Divine Revelations." " Thus spoke one of the
deeply-moved visitors.
"The age is not worthy of him; he lives a century before
his time," rejoined the other.
"Aye! but his works will live after him. The truths he re-
veals are eternal, and the revelator will yet become immortal,"
was the reply. Even so. Time, the touchstone of truth, will do
justice to him-to all; and so, Andrew Jackson Davis, farewell!
But, whilst the 'Magic Staff'-Penetralia, Stellar Key, Arabula,
Harmonia and Divine Revelations are in print, or even in mem-
ory, never let American, English, French, German, or 'critic' of
any other land, presume to say: 'Spiritism has no philosophy."
In the volumes enumerated above, it has the best, broadest, holiest
and yet most practical philosophy that was ever enunciated since
God said: 'Let there be Light, and there was Light!"
We are not informed whether Mr. Davis ranks himself before
ART MAGIC.
353
the world as a Spiritist or not. Few of the brethren of that order
seem to know or care much about him now; but the mode in
which his philosophy was produced, justifies a stranger's claim
for him, to-wit: that of all the children of the Spirit that have
illuminated this great modern movement called Spiritism, one of
the best, truest and most honorable of them all is he who, in deep
obscurity, illustrates so thoroughly the proverb, "A Prophet is not
without honor, save in his own country.
ور
Our sketch of supermundane Spiritism would not be com-
plete without this humble tribute to one who forms its noblest
illustration-to one with whom the writer has never exchanged
a word on earth, and in all human probability never will, but who
rejoices to believe that name, so coldly slipping out of human re-
membrance and appreciation now, will be enshrined in the hearts
of unborn generations, and in the shining roll of immortality be
held sacred as the Founder of a Divine and natural Harmonial
Dispensation.
In commenting on American and European Spiritism, we
recognize no right to add items of history to the immense stores
already extant, nor weary our readers with descriptions of phe-
nomena which weekly and monthly periodicals have never failed
to chronicle from the opening of the movement to this day.
Deeming a work published under the peculiar limitations which
herald forth this volume will only render it an ephemera of the
day, our closing remarks will be addressed to those who must
already be informed upon every point of the passing Spiritualistic
movement. If they are not so, the works of Robert Dale Owen,
Judge Edmonds, Epes Sargent, Eugene Crowell, but, above all,
Emma Hardinge's inimitable "Twenty Years' History of Modern
Spiritualism," will bring every student face to face with the entire
details of all that has been effected by Spirits communicating to
mortals on American soil. Here, too, as in Europe, there are vast
numbers of tracts being continually issued, representing all the
various phases of the movement, besides many which do not
belong to it, but which persons, who believe in its facts, availing
themselves of its popularity, thrust before the public as Spirit-
ualistic.
Books of poems, novels, treatises, some with rare merit,
others less than mediocre, flood the age from Spiritualistic
sources. A great many newspapers and magazines have been
published in the interests of this movement, lived their time,
served their period of usefulness, and died out, others still main-
tain their hold upon the world's attention and command a full
share of patronage. The oldest, the "Banner of Light," com-
354
ART MAGIC.
menced in the earliest days of the American movement, and now
(1876) occupying the distinguished place of its leading organ,
is in itself a complete repertoire of all the astounding phenom-
ena, passing events, and celebrated personages, who constitute the
history of Spiritism.
The more detailed sources of information thus indicated, it
only remains for us to notice some of the principal characteristics
of the modern movement.
In America these are strikingly tinctured by the national
idiosyncrasies of the people, but the methods of signaling by spirit
power are alike all over the world. They consist first, of the pro-
duction of sounds by knocking; table-tilting, lifting of heavy
bodies, the transportation of small articles, such as fruits, flow-
ers, jewels, etc., etc., through the air, and their production at
points of distance from their scene of departure. The execution
of music by spirits playing upon instruments furnished by mor-
tals, and still more rarely, music sung or played by spirits, without
any visible means of its production. The voices of spirits are also
heard clairaudiently and externally, sometimes uttering words
only, at others, long addresses. Spirits display their hands, feet,
faces, and sometimes the whole form "materialized" out of the
emanations of the mediums and human beings surrounding them.
In this fleshly masquerade the spirits dance, sing, disport with
the persons around them, and perform like players on the mimic
stage of a theatre. Other demonstrations consist of resisting fire,
the extension of the body, also its elevation into the air, and float-
ing about the apartment. Spirits also exhibit feats of strength,
tying and untying their Media when bound with ropes, and exe-
cuting just such sleight-of-hand tricks as are common to jugglers.
Many higher phases of spirit power are exhibited, such as trance
speaking and writing; Seership, or the power of seeing and de-
scribing spirits, or personating their peculiarities so as to be recog-
nized; also the impressions which the mind receives from spirits,
to declare names and other signs of identity by which mortals can
be assured their spirit friends are present. Many photographic
likenesses of Spirits are said to have been produced through Me-
dia, whilst others are impelled to draw portraits of Spirits, or
flowers and allegorical scenes, others to behold visions, prophetic,
descriptive, or symbolical.
Many are impelled to describe diseases, prescribe remedies, or
effect cures by the laying on of hands. This movement has also
brought to light a great many latent powers of the soul, which
spring up under the sympathetic contagion of the time, and ex-
hibit themselves in psychometric delineations of character by
ART MAGIC.
355
touch, clairvoyance, magnetic virtue and prophetic intuition.
Another striking and curious phase is the frequent appari-
tion of the spectre, or astral spirit, disengaged from the still liv-
ing body, and manifesting its presence at a distance, with or with-
out the consciousness of the subject.
Now the great marvel and special interest which attaches to
all these manifestations of spirit power in the nineteenth cen-
tury is their original spontaneity, and the fact that they have in
most instances fallen upon the media through whom they are
produced, without solicitation or any form of preparation.
It is in this spontaneity, and the vast abundance of the phe-
nomena, that the modern movement differs so widely from all
preceding examples, where-except in rare cases-years of prep-
aration, initiation, and magical processes have been required for
the performance of occult works. Modern Spiritism also is more
characteristic of human spirit agency than that of any other era.
Up to the close of the last century, when the German and
French magnetizers so widely popularized the practices of Mes-
merism and the powers of Psychology, a belief prevailed that oc-
cult works were effected by Planetary, Elementary, and Tutelary
Spirits chiefly, and that the apparition of deceased persons was
rare and exceptional. The experiments of the magnetizers, and
the cloud of witnesses who poured in through their subjects from
the realms of spirit land, bringing indisputable proofs of their
identity with the souls of deceased ancestors, completely reversed
this opinion, and induced a prevalent belief that all manifesta-
tions of a spiritualistic character originated with the liberated
souls of humanity. The author has, in previous sections, adduced
sufficient reason for assuming a middle ground between these
opinions; and whilst there is abundant evidence to prove the con-
stant interposition of human spirits in human affairs, and the
identity of such spirits with a vast amount of the occult phenom-
ena produced in every age of the world, we may also rest assured
that the realms of the Elementaries can and do exercise consider-
able influence upon humanity, especially in relation to animal
propensities and earthly things; also that Planetary Spirits rule,
guide and interpose in human destiny, and that Tutelary Spirits
take charge of and govern nations, planets, and all bodies in
space. That all these spirits can be seen, communed with and in-
`voked, is also sufficiently proved in the course of this work.
When we consider the stupendous and revolutionary changes
of opinion that this great Spiritual outpouring induces, we are
driven to accept of three manifest conclusions; the first is, that we
cannot be too grateful for these demonstrations, nor too careful
356
ART MAGIC.
to sift them from all taint of human folly, impurity, hallucina-
tion or imposture.
Next we should recognize it as our incumbent duty, even an
urgent necessity, to preserve to ourselves and posterity, the high
privileges of this beneficent and instructive intercourse by study-
ing its laws, and endeavoring scientifically to master its methods,
so as to control the communion and be enabled to conduct it at
pleasure.
Next, it must strike every reasonable mind with indignation,
to perceive that those who have assumed the high position of
leaders either in science or ecclesiasticism, should so far abandon
their trust as to permit the people to grope their way blindfold
through the mists, obscurities, and difficulties of this vast outpour-
ing, without lending their aid to solve its mysteries, proving its
errors if it had any, conserving its truths if they exist, and dem-
onstrating whatever is true or false, valuable or pernicious in its
action.
It is an acknowledged axiom in logic, that abuse is no argu-
ment, ridicule no proof. And yet to these petty arms-pop-guns
worthy only of pugnacious school-boys-have many of the most.
eminent scientists of the day descended, when compelled by the
force of public opinion to deal with the subject of Spiritism.
High ecclesiasticism has done worse, for it has falsified the
very basis of its own pretensions, the corner-stone of its authority
being miracle. By denouncing the modern power or right to
work what has been unscientifically termed "miracle," the Church
has virtually undermined its own foundations and either proved
itself impious enough "to fight against the living God," or hypo-
critical enough to maintain an institution founded upon myth and
falsehood.
From these positions there is no escape, and though we have
no intention in these brief remarks to wage war upon materialistic
Science, or atheistic Ecclesiasticism, we point out the position to
our readers to show them why they must rely on themselves, and
cease to utter vain appeals to any human leaders to help them, or
continue their humiliating efforts to convert great men who don't
want to be converted.
Many very eminent scientists and excellent members of ec-
clesiastical bodies have-as individuals, not as official members of
an organization-taken hold of Spiritualism and hazarded name
and place in its advocacy, but it must be obvious even to these il-
luminated thinkers, that the formulae of material science and the
influences of credal faith have no connection with this great inde-
pendent movement.
ART MAGIC.
357
The Scientist finds that a new set of laws, and those purely
psychological, must be studied and obeyed, before he can make
headway with Spiritism, and the Ecclesiastic continually proves.
that the Spirits do not respond to the invocations or exorcisms of
Credal faiths, nor can the broad and unconservative revelations
of Spiritism be accommodated to the narrow dogmas of sects.
Once again, then, we recommend the study and adoption of
those principles which Spiritism itself discloses, and as these are
in the strictest relations to good order, good morals, purity of life,
and the spirit of universal brotherhood, we can do mankind no
better service than to recommend a profound study both of the
science and religion of Spiritism.
To illustrate our meaning all the more forcibly, we will refer
to the three aforesaid conclusions, which the study of Modern
Spiritism, especially the American phase of the movement, com-
pels the observer to come to: "We cannot be too grateful for these
demonstrations, nor too careful to sift them from all taint of hu-
man folly, impurity, hallucination, or imposture."
The author has taken the opportunity of making three visits
to America, and that for the sole purpose of studying the spiritual
manifestations produced on her soil.
On the last two occasions he has observed with more regret
than surprise, a gradual but evident decadence in the general feel-
ing of grateful appreciation which these manifestations at first
awakened. Some believers have become accustomed to what was
at first an exciting wonder, and their curiosity satisfied, they need
no more. Others have slackened in zeal because they have been
disappointed in some special results they anticipated; but a still
larger number have withdrawn their public support from a move-
ment where the taint of human folly and impurity has become
so evident as to brand every class of believers with the evil reputa-
tion fastened upon it by the few. Hallucination and imposture,
too, have prevailed to an alarming extent in the ranks of Spirit-
ism, and these two last elements combining with the before men-
tioned causes, have shaken the faith of many, and repelled still
more from this cause.
It is as a corrective to the errors which so prominently force
themselves into notice in connection with the first conclusion we
draw, that we recommend a careful consideration of the second,
namely: "That we should recognize it as our incumbent duty, even
an urgent necessity, to preserve to ourselves and posterity the
high privileges of this beneficent and instructive intercourse, by
studying its laws, and endeavoring scientifically to master its
358
ART MAGIC.
methods, so as to control the communion, and be enabled to con-
duct it at pleasure."
A
On this point let it be remembered that all the magical arts.
and possibilities detailed in previous sections, are as open to man-
kind to-day as ever they were. Whether it be expedient to seek
them or no, is not the question. We simply reiterate they are at-
tainable, and with the lights of science we now enjoy, especially
in our improved knowledge of magnetic, psychologic and physi-
ological laws, they can be arrived at with far less severe proba-
tionary efforts, and with far milder methods of culture than those
formerly exercised.
Superficial commentators on this subject, talk of the "lost
art of magic," and describe as impossible achievements for mod-
ern Europeans or American, the marvels enacted by Hindoo Fa-
keers, Egyptian Dervishes, and Arabian Santons, Mediaeval Ec-
statics, Witches and Wizards; but what marvels are much greater
than the talking Spirits whose truth and spiritual origin were so
clearly demonstrated at Koon's spirit rooms, even as early as
1850? (vide Hardinge's Modern American Spiritualism.) What
revelations of Zoroaster, Buddha, Pythagoras, Plato, or other
great philosophers of antiquity, have ever rendered a better code
of morals, purer life, or more scientific demonstration of creative
order, and the mysteries of the Univercoelum, than the en-
tranced Mystics, Swedenborg and Andrew Jackson Davis? Does
M. Jaccoliot give one single marvel of Hindoo Spiritism that has
not transpired in equal force and greater abundanee through the
physical force Mediums of England and America?
The Ecstatics of the Monasteries were canonized as Saints,
because the stigmata appeared on their bodies; their forms were
elevated in the air, and they could read the thoughts of others,
prophesy the future, etc., etc.
It is not our purpose to detract from the value of the abun-
dant literature now before a very unappreciative age, by repeating
the authentic and well attested narratives they contain. Any un-
prejudiced reader will find the marvels reported of the Asiatic
Mystics equaled, and in many instances transcended by the illus-
trations of spirit-power given in Hardinge's "Modern American
Spiritualism" alone.
Let it suffice to say, that the stigmata of names, figures, dates,
and signs, which have convinced thousands of darkened minds of
the Soul's immortality, have appeared on the persons of numerous
mediums of this century, and are still appearing to those who care
to seek for such evidence; that the levitation of the body is a
common occurrence; the power of prophecy has been amply dem-
ART MAGIC.
359
onstrated in thousands of well-attested instances. The capacity
to resist fire has been abundantly shown.
The vaticinations of the Greek and Roman Sybils never ex-
ceeded many of the eloquent utterances of unlettered boys and
girls in the modern Spiritual movement, and if shameful impos-
ture and very bad reputations had not intervened so frequently to
destroy faith or even patience with the modern manifestations,
they exceed in use, wonder, beauty and number, a thousand fold,
all the marvellous tales recited of Greek, Roman, Hindoo, Egyp-
tian, Persian, Chaldean, or Hebrew Spiritism, that is, when the
latter are sifted down to well proven narratives, Cabalistic sen-
tences are translated into plain sense, and allegorical flights of
fancy are reduced to actual fact.
The failures of modern Spiritism, its degradation, lack of
organic power, evil repute, and gradual but sure decadence, all
proceed from the human side of the movement. It may be diffi-
cult, perhaps impossible, to repair the errors committed by a fast
fading generation, but it is for us to lay the foundation of im-
proved conditions, by dealing with the rising generation, and for
this purpose, the wisest course we can now pursue to show our de-
votion to the interests of truth, and our duty to posterity, would
be to found a new "School of the Prophets."
C
In these, young, fresh, susceptible organisms should be se-
lected as Neophytes to fill a future order of Mediums, Priests and
Ministers. Their food should be plain and simple, their habits
pure and orderly, their lives spotless, their morals regulated by
the most exalted and dignified standards of truth, justice, piety,
and goodness. They should be under the regulation of a com-
pany of holy women and scientific men. Good, pure-minded,
healthful magnetizers should be received into fellowship with
them, and one and all should be magnetized to determine who
were operators, and who subjects. The first should be set apart
as Physicians to the sick, and operators for mediumistic and clair-
voyant development. The second as Media, Prophets, and Min-
isters.
As soon as the aforesaid powers were discovered, they should
be classified and the magnetizations continued until the subjects
felt impressed to discontinue them and stand alone. Periodical
seances should be established, at which scientific order should
strictly prevail. The floors of the circle room should be inter-
sected with plateaus of glass, to prevent the escape of the mag-
netic fluid. The air should often be purified with streams of
ozone; the walls surrounded with graceful forms of art and well
selected colors. Those destined to become Magnetizers or Physi-
360
ART MAGIC.
cians should sit in rooms well supplied with powerful magnets.
Tender, susceptible media should never commence their sittings
without first holding the poles of a good electro-magnetic battery
in their hands, closing their exercises in the same way. No
drugs, narcotics, or stimulants should be used under any circum-
stances, but all other legitimate appeals to the senses should be
put into requisition, the most potential of which should be health-
ful exercises, bathing, the performance of exquisite music, and the
sight of beautiful forms of art.
Those sensitives manifesting tendencies towards clairvoyance
should practice gazing steadily into the crystal or mirror. Those
susceptible of psychometrical delineations, should practice their
power, remembering that this, and all other Spiritual gifts, are as
much the result of culture and exercise, as are the developments
of muscular strength, or intellectual achievement.
No seances
should ever be attempted without a solemn preparatory invoca-
tion to good and wise Spirits, and to any Tutelary, Angelic
Guardian, or Deific power, in which the Invocant places faith, and
this not only for the purpose of stimulating the mind to aspira-
tion and soliciting the presence and influence of the good and
wise, but also for the purpose of banishing evil and mischievous
spirits from interfering. The same ceremonial of discharge or
dismissal should be used on breaking up a seance, in fact we would
recommend at least as much courtesy in the treatment of Angelic.
essences, as the usages of society demand for ordinary acquaint-
ances.
A "School of the Prophets" conducted on some such prin-
ciples as we have thus briefly outlined, would certainly do as much
for this generation as the mysteries and Temple services of an-
tiquity effected for the nations in which they were practiced-in
a word-it would provide a class of duly qualified Magnetic Physi-
cians, Prophets, Mediums, Clear Seers, and Spiritualistic persons,
whose morals, characters, and gifts being cultured and superin-
duced into religious and scientific methods, would fill the world.
with blessing and usefulness instead of as now, desecrating
high and holy gifts to base and sordid purposes, or disgracing
them with characteristics which we do not care to dwell upon
this volume.
in
All the public exercises of Spiritualism should be conducted
in decency and order. A general basis of principles should unite
all persons who believe in Spiritual existence and Spiritual gifts,
and well-qualified expounders of these subjects should be the offi-
ciating ministers. In these gatherings, as in the processes of sci-
entific culture, the sweetest melodies, the noblest harmonies, the
-
ART MAGIC.
361
purest flowers and fragrance, and the most pleasing association of
artistic sights with sounds should be employed. All that could
contribute to elevate, purify and exalt the Soul's noblest powers
should be resorted to, as legitimate means of influence, and noth-
ing low, degrading, slang, or impure, should be associated with
Spiritual ideas.
In private families, the practice of heterogeneous, disorderly
or idle gatherings to seek Spirit communion, should be sternly
discountenanced. The whole subject has been shamefully sec-
ularized; treated either as a common-place method of spending an
idle hour; sought for the mere purposes of curiosity, fun, fortune-
telling, or marvel-seeking.
If the theories propounded in this volume be correct, and
spirits of various grades, from the very highest to the very lowest,
hover around us, seeking to minister or pander to the motives
which impel the seekers, or the characteristics of mind which
pervade the assemblage, then what class of Spirits must inevitably
attend nine-tenths of the spirit circles now in vogue, and what
results of good, use, individual or collective elevation, can be ex-
pected to grow out of them? In the present heterogeneous con-
dition of human society, we dare not recommend the endeavor to
obtain personal communion with the spirit world to every indi-
vidual. The merchant, trader, mechanic, operative, seamstress,
shop-keepers and laborers, whose time must be nearly all con-
sumed in the routine of perpetual drudgery, and whose over-taxed
minds and bodies cannot be properly attuned to such exercises,
should not attempt to deplete their systems, or risk the integrity
of mental and physical balance, by seeking to culture Spiritual-
istic endowments.
t
Spiritism, like every other calling, demands its votaries, its
devotees, and its peculiarly-prepared ministers. Persons having
time to devote to the culture of their gifts and steady enthusiasm
to sustain them during their probationary training, are the only
classes who should attempt to teach, preach, or tender service.
publicly as Mediums between the better world of Spirits, and the
much-darkened world of poor humanity.
Far be it from the author of these pages to discourage the
sweet and loving practice of family circles, meeting together in
the pleasant and sacred seclusion of home, or the social relations.
of friendship, to invoke the dear household deities who have
passed on before, or who would be so certain to respond to the ap-
peal of those whom they have best loved on earth.
They will surely be there, those loving spirit friends; aye,
wherever two or three are gathered together in the name of the
362
ART MAGIC.
spirit, whatever spirit they summon will be there, be it God or the
Adversary; spirits of the heart's dearest affections, or goblins from
the metal crypts of earth, which avarice would fain rob of its hid-
den treasures. In the meantime, in order to systematize even
these innocent home communings, good order and strict con-
formity to scientific principles should be observed. We are not
now undertaking to lay down the exact methods in which each
circle for development or communion should be conducted. We
can only touch upon the generalities of the subject, and would
recommend well wishers to these great truths if they desire their
rapid and orderly promotion, to abandon the childish and egotis-
tical fear that now paralyzes them, lest some competent adviser
or highly inspired person should assume leadership amongst them,
and remember that to every organism there must be a head as well
as organs, to every circumference a centre, and in every nation a
governmental combination for the protection of the governed, no
less than for the restraint of the lawless. Having disposed of this
poor, envious phantom which so troubles the peace of some Spir-
itists, and convinced themselves that it is not necessary that a
well-qualified adept in spiritual things should require those whom
he counsels to place a triple crown on his head, kiss his slipper,
and pronounce his dictum infallible-let Spiritists come together
in reverent deliberation, and decide what methods of scientific in-
vestigation they can or ought to pursue so as to evolve the basic
principles upon which spirits communicate.
Let them appoint qualified persons to prepare reports and
verify their opinions by successful experiments, and until such re-
ports, conjoined with such experiments, be accepted by the sense,
reason and convicted judgment of the deliberators, let the reports
be peremptorily rejected, and the investigation continue, if it be
necessary, from generation to generation, until results are
achieved. But such a council, animated by such a spirit, would
not have to wait long. Magnetism is the pabulum by which spir-
its communicate, Psychology the influence. These are the secret
virtues of Magic, Witchcraft and Mediumship in every age, and
hurman nature changes not. If the founders of home circles will
carefully study out the rules briefly suggested as indications in
forming a school for the education and training of Media, they
will surely become, in part at least, successful enough to reward
them for some time consumed, and some sacrifices consummated.
If possible a room should be set apart, consecrated and held
consecrated to spiritual science.
No unholy thing should enter there, no unholy thoughts be
invited.
ART MAGIC.
363
The circle should meet at least once, but better twice or
thrice each week. None should enter there until they had fasted
at least four hours previously, and assemble together with clean
hands and clean hearts. Let them come as to a holy place; and
if neither vocal nor instrumental music of a sweet and harmonious
character can be procured, a small but finely toned chime of bells,
glass harmonica, or good musical box should invariably be pro-
vided; thus the atmosphere will be arranged into harmonious
strata, according to the suggestions upon music contained in a
previous Section. Let the chamber be adorned with all the little
stores of beauty and pleasant forms possible. Flowers are some-
times injurious to media, their strong perfume causing too much
excitement to the senses, but where ozone can be procured, it is
well to pass streams through the air, and the use of the electro-
magnetic battery held by two persons placed at each pole, the rest
forming a chain, ever strengthens the force, and benefits all pres-
ent. Ten minutes' use of this machine should open and close
each seance. Also, we would enforce the same rule of opening
with an invocation, and closing with a courteous discharge to the
spirits, suggested above. Family gatherings might experiment
with magnetization as before suggested, the strongest, healthiest
and most worthy of the party being selected as the operator.
Crystals and mirrors should be laid on the circle table, also writ-
ing materials and slates.
A large circle beneath the table, sufficient to insulate all the
sitters assembled, and prevent even their garments from touching
the ground, should be formed of glass, and this would greatly con-
duce to aid the manifestations by preventing the too rapid efflux
of vital force.
It should forever after be prohibited to sit in totally dark-
ened apartments. Spirits come to earth in their own Astral light,
and to this element material light is opposed; still the unqualified
abuses that have arisen from the prevalence of total darkness at
spiritual seances should induce every wise investigator to dis-
countenance them utterly.
The fact that many of the most stupendous evidences of
spirit power have been given in semi-lighted apartments, should
be a sufficient answer to those who plead for darkness as a neces-
sary condition for strong demonstrations; besides, the wise and
faithful investigator can better afford to dispense with strong
demonstrations, than good morals, decency, or spiritual agency
without human interference.
Let dark circles be abandoned to Elementary Spirits, in and
out of earthly encasements, and the impostors will find much of
their occupation gone.
364
ART MAGIC.
For more detailed instructions in this and all forms of spir-
itual culture, we commend a careful perusal and reperusal of
these pages. Attempts should be made to elaborate the many
suggestions it contains, by the aid of a council selected from ex-
perienced media and philosophic thinkers-but whilst the aim in
view should be to perfect those methods by which Spiritism can
be organized into a religion and cultivated as a science, both
Church and Lyceum should be left free to expand in every direc-
tion, open to new light, new conditions of society, and the prog-
ress of human opinion. Basic principles should be sought for
and laid down as fundamental rules from which there can be no
departure; powers of growth and advancement should be just as
liberally provided for, ever remembering that mind grows, but
writings do not, and that whilst the Universe is a stupendous or-
ganism whose centre-the grand man-the Spiritual Sun-the
Unknown and Unknowable-changes not,-the manifestations of
his infinity, his variousness, his beauty, and goodness, are out-
wrought in eternal series of changes. Light and Heat, Truth
and Love, are eternal and unchanging principles. Their mani-
festations in created being are infinite. All are tending outward
from a grand central heart to an illimitable circumference, yet all
are held in the gravitating arms of immutable law; all are moved
in the expanding grooves of inevitable progress, and all are sent
forth on Sun-like paths of ascending glory to model after God.
Study him, honor him, glorify him in thyself. Thou canst not
misunderstand or fail to know him. In Heaven, in the boundless
Universe, he is the Macrocosm, the infinitely large; on earth and
in thyself, He is the Microcosm, the infinitely little. In the un-
derstanding of the mystery of God lies all the secret potency of
Art Magic.
-
In the apprehension of his scheme, his glorious harp of crea-
tion, on which his master hand is striking tones from the lowest
bass to the highest treble; you hear the majestic symphony whose
notes are suns, systems, worlds, earth, men;-Mundane, Sub-
Mundane, and Super-Mundane Spiritism.
ART MAGIC.
365
EPILOGUE TO THE DRAMA OF ART MAGIC.
Com
Some readers there be whose chief aim is-unconsciously to
themselves, perhaps-but greatly to the detriment of their higher
natures-to search into what they read rather for the discovery of
errors in orthography, and innovations upon conservative meth-
ods of typography, than for the elimination of ideas, or the en-
joyment of soul intercourse with their author. To this class of
readers our pages will doubtless present a fruitful soil for their
special methods of criticism, and to such, we have no other apol-
ogy to offer, than that contained in the few choice and pointed
words of the Editor's Preface.
There is still another class whose methods of study have re-
ceived the peculiarly significant soubriquet of, skimming. The
chief delight of such persons is in an elaborately prepared Index,
over the columns of which they rejoice to pore, industriously
picking out just the particular words they have sympathy with,
glancing at these for Index worshipers only glance, do not read
-and abandoning the rest of the volume to more patient and ca-
pable students than themselves.
PRE
The author's life-long experience with a variety of readers,
has induced him to look upon Index worshipers, as the most su-
perficial of all book owners, and finally determined him not to
spend time in writing for them at all. In the compilation of His-
torical, Legal, Statistical or Biographical works, an Index is not
only useful, but absolutely essential. In a book of ideas only,
such an appendix offers a premium to the unworthy habit of
"skimming," and therefore, rejecting the courteous offer of our
patient and untiring Editor, to satisfy the hypercritical, by the
addition of an Index, we submit the foregoing pages for study-
study which cannot master the ideas presented in one superficial
reading, much less in Index skimming.
366
ART MAGIC.
We ask a careful perusal and reperusal of these pages, not
for their literary merit, nor the exactitude of their methods, but
for the sakes of the high themes discussed, and the weighty sub-
jects which fill up each column. When our readers have be-
stowed this much study upon the volume, they will not need an
Index; until they have done so, we have written for them in vain.
Neither have we followed the well-beaten track of custom, in giv-
ing a list of authorities cited in this volume. Whenever possible
we have given the names of such authors as have supplied us with
felicitous quotations; but we feel no impulse to burden our work
with the abomination of such signs as "vols., vers., chaps.," etc.,
etc., any more than we recognize the propriety of harassing our
readers by foot-notes, or references to literature, perhaps unat-
tainable to all but special seekers into occult lore. And now that
our work-not of apology, but of sturdy resistance to conven-
tional habits in book-making-is done, what remains, save to ten-
der everlasting thanks to our gentle, faithful and long-suffering
Editor; most kindly greetings to the brave "Banner of Light,
the "Spiritual Scientist," "London Medium," and "Spiritualist,"
who have so generously and courteously sustained her, and a po-
tential psychologic, heartfelt God-speed to the noble five hundred
who, in the face of scorn, contumely, ridicule and blatant ignor-
ance, have dared to register their honored names as subscribers to
Art Magic, four hundred, at least, of them paying their subscrip-
tions before they were due, trusting gallantly to the good faith
and honesty of Emma Hardinge Britten that they should not be
robbed of their due, and the rest signifying their insight and rec-
ognition of the divine in humanity, with an absence of all sordid
motive or fear of public opinion, which forever protests against
the doctrines of "human depravity, original sin," or aught but
the sublime truth that the word is made flesh, and dwells amongst
men now and evermore!
:}
:
KEEP YOURSELF WELL INFORMED!
YOU CAN EASILY DO SO BY READING
The Progressive Thinker.
The well-informed persons are always at the head of the
procession, while the ignorant, the lazy and unthoughtful hang
on to the rear. If a Spiritualist, you should subscribe at once
for The Progressive Thinker and keep well posted in liberal
thought. It is almost criminal for one to remain in ignorance
while the opportunity to gain knowledge is open to all at a
nominal price. Address your order to J. R. FRANCIS, 40
Loomis street, Chicago, III.





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thought all over the world, hence their minds are stimulated
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the Premium, and you will become wiser and better, and thus
be able to keep up with the procession.
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