If the doctrines of Aristotle have exercised on the later

Neo-platonists such a “dominating influence,” how is it that neither

Plotinus, nor Porphyry, nor Proclus ever accepted his theories on

dreams and prophetic soul-visions? While Aristotle held that most of

those who prophesy have “diseases of madness”[669]—thus furnishing some

American plagiarists and specialists with a few reasonable ideas to

disfigure—the views of Porphyry, hence those of Plotinus, were quite

the reverse. In the most vital questions of metaphysical speculations

Aristotle is constantly contradicted by the Neo-platonists.

Furthermore, either the Buddhistic Nirvana is not the nihilistic

doctrine, as it is now represented to be, or the Neo-platonists did

not accept it in this sense. Surely Mr. Draper will not take upon

himself to affirm that either Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus, or any

other philosopher of their mystic school, did not believe in the soul’s

immortality? To say that either of them sought ecstasy as a “foretaste

of absorption into the universal mundane soul,” in the sense in which

the Buddhist Nirvana is understood by every Sanscrit scholar, is to

wrong these philosophers. Nirvana is _not_, as Mr. Draper has it, a

“reäbsorption in the _Universal Force_, eternal rest, and bliss;” but,

when taken literally by the said scholars, means the blowing out, _the

extinction_, complete _annihilation_, and not absorption.[670] No one, {431}

so far as we know, has ever taken upon himself to ascertain the _true_

metaphysical meaning of this word, which is not to be found, even in

the _Lankâvatâra_,[671] which gives the different interpretations

of the Nirvana by the Brahmans—Tîrthakas. Therefore, for one who

reads this passage in Mr. Draper’s work, and bears in mind but the

usually-accepted meaning of the Nirvana, will naturally suppose that

Plotinus and Porphyry were _nihilists_. Such a page in the _Conflict_

gives us a certain right to suppose that either 1, the learned author

desired to place Plotinus and Porphyry on the same plane with Giordano

Bruno, of whom he makes, very erroneously, an atheist; or, 2, that he

never took the trouble of studying the lives of these philosophers and

their views.

Now, for one who knows Professor Draper, even by reputation, the

latter supposition is simply absurd. Therefore, we must think, with

deep regret, that his desire was to misrepresent their religious

aspirations. It is decidedly an awkward thing for modern philosophers,

whose sole aim seems to be the elimination of the ideas of God and

the immortal spirit from the mind of humanity, to have to treat with

historical impartiality the most celebrated of the Pagan Platonists. To

have to admit, on the one hand, their profound learning, their genius,

their achievements in the most abstruse philosophical questions, and

therefore their sagacity; and, on the other, their unreserved adhesion

to the doctrine of immortality, of the final triumph of spirit over

matter, and their implicit faith in God and the gods, or spirits; in

the return _of the dead_, apparitions, and other “spiritual” matters,

is a dilemma from which academical human nature could not reasonably be

expected to extricate itself so easily.

The plan resorted to by Lemprière,[672] in such an emergency as the

above, is coarser than Professor Draper’s, but equally effective. He

charges the ancient philosophers with deliberate falsehood, trickery,

and credulity. After painting to his readers Pythagoras, Plotinus, and

Porphyry as marvels of learning, morality, and accomplishments; as men

eminent for personal dignity, purity of lives, and self-abnegation

in the pursuit of divine truths, he does not hesitate to rank “this

celebrated philosopher” (Pythagoras) among impostors; while to Porphyry

he attributes “credulity, lack of judgment, and dishonesty.” Forced

by the facts of history to give them their just due in the course of

his narrative, he displays his bigoted prejudice in the parenthetical

comments which he allows himself. From this antiquated writer of the

last century we learn that a man may be honest, and at the same time an

impostor; pure, virtuous, and a great philosopher, and yet dishonest, a

liar, and a fool!

We have shown elsewhere that the “secret doctrine” does not concede {432}

immortality to all men alike. “The eye would never see the sun, if

it were not of the nature of the sun,” said Plotinus. Only “through

the highest purity and chastity we shall approach nearer to God, and

receive in the contemplation of Him, the true knowledge and insight,”

writes Porphyry. If the human soul has neglected during its lifetime to

receive its illumination from its Divine Spirit, our _personal_ God,

then it becomes difficult for the gross and sensual man to survive for

a great length of time his physical death. No more than the misshapen

monster can live long after its physical birth, can the soul, once

that it has become _too_ material, exist after its birth into the

spiritual world. The viability of the astral form is so feeble, that

the particles cannot cohere firmly when once it is slipped out of the

unyielding capsule of the external body. Its particles, gradually

obeying the disorganizing attraction of universal space, finally fly

asunder beyond the possibility of reaggregation. Upon the occurrence

of such a catastrophe, the individual ceases to exist; his glorious

Augoeides has left him. During the intermediary period between his

bodily death and the disintegration of the astral form, the latter,

bound by magnetic attraction to its ghastly corpse, prowls about,

and sucks vitality from susceptible victims. The man having shut out

of himself every ray of the divine light, is lost in darkness, and,

therefore, clings to the earth and the earthy.

No astral soul, even that of a pure, good, and virtuous man, is

immortal in the strictest sense; “from elements it was formed—to

elements it must return.” Only, while the soul of the wicked vanishes,

and is absorbed without redemption, that of every other person, even

moderately pure, simply changes its ethereal particles for still more

ethereal ones; and, while there remains in it a spark of the _Divine_,

the individual man, or rather, his personal _ego_, cannot die. “After

death,” says Proclus, “the soul (the spirit) continueth to linger in

the aërial body (astral form), till it is entirely purified from all

angry and voluptuous passions ... then doth it put off by a _second

dying_ the aërial body as it did the earthly one. Whereupon, the

ancients say that there is a celestial body always joined with _the

soul_, and which is _immortal_, _luminous_, and _star-like_.”

But, we will now turn from our digression to further consider the

question of _reason_ and _instinct_. The latter, according to the

ancients, proceeded from the divine, the former from the purely human.

One (the instinct) is the product of the senses, a sagaciousness

shared by the lowest animals, even those who have no reason—it

is the αισθητικον; the other is the product of the reflective

faculties—νοητικόν, denoting judiciousness and human intellectuality.

Therefore, an animal devoid of reasoning powers has in its inherent

instinct an unerring faculty which is but that spark of the divine {433}

which lurks in every particle of inorganic matter—itself materialized

spirit. In the Jewish _Kabala_, the second and third chapters of

_Genesis_ are explained thus: When the second Adam is created “out of

the dust,” matter has become so gross that it reigns supreme. Out of

its lusts evolves woman, and Lilith has the best of spirit. The Lord

God, “walking in the garden in _the cool of the day_” (the sunset of

spirit, or divine light obscured by the shadows of matter) curses not

only them who have committed the sin, but even the ground itself, and

all living things—the tempting serpent-matter above all.

Who but the kabalists are able to explain this seeming act of

injustice? How are we to understand this cursing of all created things,

innocent of any crime? The allegory is evident. The curse inheres in

matter itself. Henceforth, it is doomed to struggle against its own

grossness for purification; the latent spark of divine spirit, though

smothered, is still there; and its invincible attraction upward compels

it to struggle in pain and labor to free itself. Logic shows us that

as all matter had a common origin, it must have attributes in common,

and as the vital and divine spark is in man’s material body, so it

must lurk in every subordinate species. The latent mentality which, in

the lower kingdoms is recognized as semi-consciousness, consciousness,

and instinct, is largely subdued in man. Reason, the outgrowth of the

physical brain, develops at the expense of instinct—the flickering

reminiscence of a once divine omniscience—spirit. Reason, the badge of

the sovereignty of physical man over all other physical organisms, is

often put to shame by the instinct of an animal. As his brain is more

perfect than that of any other creature, its emanations must naturally

produce the highest results of mental action; but reason avails only

for the consideration of material things; it is incapable of helping

its possessor to a knowledge of spirit. In losing instinct, man loses

his intuitional powers, which are the crown and ultimatum of instinct.

Reason is the clumsy weapon of the scientists—intuition the unerring

guide of the seer. Instinct teaches plant and animal their seasons

for the procreation of their species, and guides the dumb brute to

find his appropriate remedy in the hour of sickness. Reason—the pride

of man—fails to check the propensities of his matter, and brooks no

restraint upon the unlimited gratification of his senses. Far from

leading him to be his _own_ physician, its subtile sophistries lead him

too often to his own destruction.

Nothing is more demonstrable than the proposition that the perfection

of matter is reached at the expense of instinct. The zoöphyte attached

to the submarine rock, opening its mouth to attract the food that

floats by, shows, proportionately with its physical structure, more

instinct than the whale. The ant, with its wonderful architectural, {434}

social, and political abilities, is inexpressibly higher in the scale

than the subtile royal tiger watching its prey. “With awe and wonder,”

exclaims du Bois-Raymond, “must the student of nature regard that

microscopic molecule of nervous substance which is the seat of the

laborious, constructive, orderly, loyal, dauntless soul of the ant!”

Like everything else which has its origin in psychological mysteries,

instinct has been too long neglected in the domain of science. “We

see what indicated the way to man to find relief for all his physical

ailings,” says Hippocrates. “It is the instinct of the earlier races,

when cold reason had not as yet obscured man’s inner vision.... Its

indication must never be disdained, for it is to instinct alone that we

owe our first remedies.”[673] Instantaneous and unerring cognition of

an omniscient mind, instinct is in everything unlike the finite reason;

and in the tentative progress of the latter, the godlike nature of

man is often utterly engulfed, whenever he shuts out from himself the

divine light of intuition. The one crawls, the other flies; reason is

the power of the man, intuition the prescience of the woman!

Plotinus, the pupil of the great Ammonius Saccas, the chief founder

of the Neo-platonic school, taught that human knowledge had three

ascending steps: opinion, science, and _illumination_. He explained

it by saying that “the means or instrument of opinion is sense, or

perception; of science, dialectics; of illumination, _intuition_ (or

divine instinct). To the last, _reason is subordinate_; it is absolute

knowledge founded on the identification of the mind with the object

known.”

Prayer opens the spiritual sight of man, for prayer is desire, and

desire develops WILL; the magnetic emanations proceeding from the body

at every effort—whether mental or physical—produce self-magnetization

and ecstasy. Plotinus recommended solitude for prayer, as the most

efficient means of obtaining what is asked; and Plato advised those who

prayed to “remain silent in the presence of the divine ones, till they

remove the cloud from thy eyes, and enable thee to see _by the light

which issues from themselves_.” Apollonius always isolated himself from

men during the “conversation” he held with God, and whenever he felt

the necessity for divine contemplation and prayer, he wrapped himself,

head and all, in the drapery of his white woolen mantle. “When thou

prayest _enter into thy closet_, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray

to thy Father in secret,” says the Nazarene, the pupil of the Essenes.

Every human being is born with the rudiment of the inner sense called

_intuition_, which may be developed into what the Scotch know as {435}

“second sight.” All the great philosophers, who, like Plotinus,

Porphyry, and Iamblichus employed this faculty, taught the doctrine.

“There is a faculty of the human mind,” writes Iamblichus, “which is

superior to all which is born or begotten. Through it we are enabled

to attain union with the superior intelligences, to being transported

beyond the scenes of this world, and to partaking the higher life and

peculiar powers of the heavenly ones.”

Were there no _inner sight_ or intuition, the Jews would never have had

their _Bible_, nor the Christians Jesus. What both Moses and Jesus gave

to the world was the fruit of their intuition or illumination. What

their subsequent elders and teachers allowed the world to understand

was—dogmatic misrepresentations, too often blasphemy.

To accept the Bible as a “revelation” and nail belief to a literal

translation, is worse than absurdity—it is a blasphemy against the

Divine majesty of the “Unseen.” If we had to judge of the Deity, and

the world of spirits, by its human interpreters, now that philology

proceeds with giant-strides on the fields of comparative religions,

belief in God and the soul’s immortality could not withstand the

attacks of _reason_ for one century more. That which supports the

faith of man in God and a spiritual life to come is _intuition_; that

divine outcome of our inner-self, which defies the mummeries of the

Roman Catholic priest, and his ridiculous idols; the thousand and one

ceremonies of the Brahman and his idols; and the Jeremiads of the

Protestant preacher, and his desolate and arid creed, with no idols,

but a boundless hell and damnation hooked on at the end. Were it not

for this intuition, undying though often wavering because so clogged

with matter, human life would be a parody and humanity a fraud. This

ineradicable feeling of the presence of some one _outside_ and _inside_

ourselves is one that no dogmatic contradictions, nor external form of

worship can destroy in humanity, let scientists and clergy do what they

may. Moved by such thoughts of the boundlessness and impersonality of

the Deity, Gautama-Buddha, the Hindu Christ, exclaimed: “As the four

rivers which fall in the Ganges lose their names as soon as they mingle

their waters with the holy river, so all who believe in Buddha cease to

be Brahmans, Kshatriyas, Vaisyas, and Sûdras!”

The _Old Testament_ was compiled and arranged from oral tradition; the

masses never knew its real meaning, for Moses was ordered to impart the

“hidden truths” but to his seventy elders on whom the “Lord” put of the

_spirit_ which was upon the legislator. Maimonides, whose authority and

whose knowledge of the sacred history can hardly be rejected, says:

“Whoever shall find out the true sense of _the book of Genesis_ ought

to take care not to divulge it.... If a person should discover _the {436}

true meaning of it_ by himself, or by the aid of another, then he ought

to be silent; or, if he speaks of it, he ought to speak of it but

obscurely and in an enigmatical manner.”

This confession, that what is written in the Holy Writ is but an

allegory, was made by other Jewish authorities besides Maimonides; for

we find Josephus stating that Moses “_philosophized_” (spoke riddles

in figurative allegory), when writing the book of _Genesis_. Therefore

modern science, by neglecting to unriddle the true sense of the

_Bible_, and by allowing the whole of Christendom to go on believing

in the dead letter of the Jewish theology, tacitly constitutes herself

the confederate of the fanatical clergy. She has no right to ridicule

the records of a people who never wrote them with the idea that they

would receive such a strange interpretation at the hands of an inimical

religion. That their holiest texts should be turned against them and

that the dead men’s bones could have smothered the spirit of truth, is

the saddest feature of Christianity!

“The gods exist,” says Epicurus, “but they are _not_ what the rabble,

οὶ πολλοι, suppose them to be.” And yet Epicurus, judged as usual by

superficial critics, is set down and paraded as a materialist.

But neither the great First Cause nor its emanation—human, immortal

spirit—have left themselves “without a witness.” Mesmerism and modern

spiritualism are there to attest the great truths. For over fifteen

centuries, thanks to the blindly-brutal persecutions of those great

vandals of early Christian history, Constantine and Justinian, ancient

wisdom slowly degenerated until it gradually sank into the deepest mire

of monkish superstition and ignorance. The Pythagorean “knowledge of

things that are;” the profound erudition of the Gnostics; the world and

time-honored teachings of the great philosophers; all were rejected

as doctrines of Antichrist and Paganism, and committed to the flames.

With the last seven wise men of the Orient, the remnant group of the

Neo-platonists, Hermias, Priscianus, Diogenes, Eulalius, Damaskius,

Simplicius and Isidorus, who fled from the fanatical persecutions of

Justinian, to Persia, the reign of wisdom closed. The books of Thoth,

or (Hermes Trismegistus), which contain within their sacred pages the

spiritual and physical history of the creation and progress of our

world, were left to mould in oblivion and contempt for ages. They

found no interpreters in Christian Europe; the Philaletheians, or

wise “lovers of the truth,” were no more; they were replaced by the

light-fleers, the tonsured and hooded monks of Papal Rome, who dread

truth, in whatever shape and from whatever quarter it appears, if it

but clashes in the least with their dogmas.

As to skeptics—this is what Professor Alexander Wilder remarks of them {437}

and their followers, in his sketches on _Neo-platonism and Alchemy_:

“A century has passed since the compilers of the French _Encyclopædia_

infused skepticism into the blood of the civilized world, and made

it disreputable to believe in the actual existence of anything that

cannot be tested in crucibles or demonstrated by critical reasoning.

Even now, it requires candor as well as courage to venture to treat

upon a subject which has been for many years discarded and contemned,

because it has not been well or correctly understood. The person

must be bold who accounts the Hermetic philosophy to be other than a

pretense of science, and so believing, demands for its enunciation a

patient hearing. Yet its professors were once the princes of learned

investigation, and heroes among common men. Besides, nothing is to

be despised which men have reverently believed; and disdain for the

earnest convictions of others is itself the token of ignorance, and of

an ungenerous mind.”

And now, encouraged by these words from a scholar who is neither a

fanatic nor a conservative, we will recall a few things reported by

travellers as having been seen by them in Thibet and India, and which

are treasured by the natives as practical proofs of the truth of the

philosophy and science handed down by their forefathers.

First we may consider that most remarkable phenomenon as seen in

the temples of Thibet and the accounts of which have reached Europe

from eye-witnesses other than Catholic missionaries—whose testimony

we will exclude for obvious reasons. Early in the present century a

Florentine scientist, a skeptic and a correspondent of the French

Institute, having been permitted to penetrate in disguise to the

hallowed precincts of a Buddhist temple, where the most solemn of all

ceremonies was taking place, relates the following as having been seen

by himself. An altar is ready in the temple to receive the resuscitated

Buddha, found by the initiated priesthood, and recognized by certain

secret signs to have reïncarnated himself in a new born infant. The

baby, but a few days old, is brought into the presence of the people

and reverentially placed upon the altar. Suddenly rising into a

sitting posture, the child begins to utter in a loud, manly voice, the

following sentences: “I am Buddha, I am his spirit; and I, Buddha, your

Dalai-Lama, have left my old, decrepit body, at the temple of ... and

selected the body of this young babe as my next earthly dwelling.” Our

scientist, being finally permitted by the priests to take, with due

reverence, the baby in his arms, and carry it away to such a distance

from them as to satisfy him that no ventriloquial deception is being

practiced, the infant looks at the grave academician with eyes that

“make his flesh creep,” as he expresses it, and repeats the words he

had previously uttered. A detailed account of this adventure, attested

with the signature of this eye-witness, was forwarded to Paris, but {438}

the members of the Institute, instead of accepting the testimony of a

scientific observer of acknowledged credibility, concluded that the

Florentine _was either suffering under an attack of sunstroke_, or had

been deceived by a clever trick of acoustics.

Although, according to Mr. Stanislas Julien, the French translator of

the sacred Chinese texts, there is a verse in the Lotus[674] which

says that “A Buddha is as difficult to be found as the flowers of

Udumbara and Palâça,” if we are to believe several eye-witnesses, such

a phenomenon does happen. Of course its occurrence is rare, for it

happens but on the death of every great Dalai-Lama; and these venerable

old gentlemen live proverbially long lives.

The poor Abbé Huc, whose works of travel in Thibet and China are so

well-known, relates the same fact of the resuscitation of Buddha. He

adds, furthermore, the curious circumstance that the baby-oracle makes

good his claim to being an old mind in a young body by giving to those

who ask him, “and who knew him in his past life, the most exact details

of his anterior earthly existence.”

It is worthy of notice, that des Mousseaux, who expatiates at length

on the phenomenon, attributing it as a matter of course to the Devil,

gravely remarks of the Abbé himself, that the fact that he had been

unfrocked (_defroqué_) “is an accident which I (he) confess scarcely

tends to strengthen our confidence.” In our humble opinion this little

circumstance strengthens it all the more.

The Abbé Huc had his work placed on the _Index_ for the truth he told

about the similarity of the Buddhistical rites with the Roman Catholic

ones. He was moreover suspended in his missionary work for being too

_sincere_.

If this example of infant prodigy stood alone, we might reasonably

indulge in some hesitation as to accepting it; but, to say nothing

of the Camisard prophets of 1707, among whom was the boy of fifteen

months described by Jacques Dubois, who spoke in good French “as though

God were speaking through his mouth;” and of the Cevennes babies,

whose speaking and prophesying were witnessed by the first savants

of France—we have instances in modern times of quite as remarkable a

character. _Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper_, for March, 1875, contained an

account of the following phenomenon: “At Saar-Louis, France, a child

was born. The mother had just been confined, the midwife was holding

forth garrulously ‘on the blessed little creature,’ and the friends

were congratulating the father on his luck, when somebody asked what

time it was. Judge of the surprise of all, on hearing the new-born babe {439}

reply distinctly ‘Two o’clock!’ But this was nothing to what followed.

The company were looking on the infant, with speechless wonder and

dismay, when it opened its eyes, and said: ‘I have been sent into the

world to tell you that 1875 will be a good year, but that 1876 will be

a year of blood.’ Having uttered this prophecy it turned on its side

and expired, aged half-an-hour.”

We are not aware that this prodigy has received official authentication

by the civil authority—of course we should look for none from the

clergy, since no profit or honor was to be derived from it—but even

if a respectable British commercial journal was not responsible for

the story, the result has given it special interest. The year 1876,

just passed (we write in February, 1877) was emphatically, and, from

the standpoint of March, 1875, unexpectedly—a year of blood. In the

Danubian principalities was written one of the bloodiest chapters of

the history of war and rapine—a chapter of outrages of Moslem upon

Christian that has scarcely been paralleled since Catholic soldiers

butchered the simple natives of North and South America by tens of

thousands, and Protestant Englishmen waded to the Imperial throne

of Delhi, step by step, through rivers of blood. If the Saar-Louis

prophecy was but a mere newspaper sensation, still the turn of events

elevated it into the rank of a fulfilled prediction; 1875 _was_ a year

of great plenty, and 1876, to the surprise of everybody, a year of

carnage.

But even if it should be found that the baby-prophet never opened

its lips, the instance of the Jencken infant still remains to puzzle

the investigator. This is one of the most surprising cases of

mediumship. The child’s mother is the famous Kate Fox, its father

H. D. Jencken, M.R.I., Barrister-at-law, in London. He was born in

London, in 1873, and before he was three months old showed evidences

of spirit-mediumship. Rappings occurred on his pillow and cradle, and

also on his father’s person, when he held the child in his lap and

Mrs. Jencken was absent from home. Two months later, a communication

of twenty words, exclusive of signature, was written through his hand.

A gentleman, a Liverpool solicitor, named J. Wason, was present at the

time, and united with the mother and nurse in a certificate which was

published in the London _Medium and Daybreak_ of May 8th, 1874. The

professional and scientific rank of Mr. Jencken make it in the highest

degree improbable that he would lend himself to a deception. Moreover,

the child was within such easy reach of the Royal Institution, of which

his father is a member, that Professor Tyndall and his associates had

no excuse for neglecting to examine and inform the world about this

psychological phenomenon.

The sacred baby of Thibet being so far away, they find their most

convenient plan to be a flat denial, with hints of sunstroke and {440}

acoustical machinery. As for the London baby, the affair is still

easier; let them wait until the child has grown up and learned to

write, and then deny the story point-blank!

In addition to other travellers, the Abbé Huc gives us an account

of that wonderful tree of Thibet called the _Kounboum_; that is to

say, the tree of the 10,000 images and characters. It will grow in no

other latitude, although the experiment has sometimes been tried; and

it cannot even be multiplied from cuttings. The tradition is that it

sprang from the hair of one of the Avatars (the Lama Son—Ka-pa) one of

the incarnations of Buddha. But we will let the Abbé Huc tell the rest

of the story: “Each of its leaves, in opening, bears either a letter or

a religious sentence, written in sacred characters, and these letters

are, of their kind, of such a perfection that the type-foundries of

Didot contain nothing to excel them. Open the leaves, which vegetation

is about to unroll, and you will there discover, on the point of

appearing, the letters or the distinct words which are the marvel of

this unique tree! Turn your attention from the leaves of the plant

to the bark of its branches, and new characters will meet your eyes!

Do not allow your interest to flag; raise the layers of this bark,

and still OTHER CHARACTERS will show themselves below those whose

beauty had surprised you. For, do not fancy that these superposed

layers repeat the same _printing_. No, quite the contrary; for each

lamina you lift presents to view its distinct type. How, then, can we

suspect jugglery? I have done my best in that direction to discover the

slightest trace of human trick, and my baffled mind could not retain

the slightest suspicion.”

We will add to M. Huc’s narrative the statement that the characters

which appear upon the different portions of the Kounboum are in the

Sansar (or language of the Sun), characters (ancient Sanscrit); and

that the sacred tree, in its various parts, contains _in extenso_ the

whole history of the creation, and in substance the sacred books of

Buddhism. In this respect, it bears the same relation to Buddhism as

the pictures in the Temple of Dendera, in Egypt, do to the ancient

faith of the Pharaohs. The latter are briefly described by Professor W.

B. Carpenter, President of the British Association, in his Manchester

Lecture on _Egypt_. He makes it clear that the Jewish book of _Genesis_

is nothing more than an expression of the early Jewish ideas, based

upon the pictorial records of the Egyptians among whom they lived.

But he does not make it clear, except inferentially, whether, he

believes either the Dendera pictures or the Mosaic account to be an

allegory or a pretended historical narrative. How a scientist who

had devoted himself to the most superficial investigation of the

subject can venture to assert that the ancient Egyptians had the same

ridiculous notions about the world’s instantaneous creation as the {441}

early Christian theologians, passes comprehension! How can he say

that because the Dendera picture happens to represent their cosmogony

in one allegory, they intended to show the scene as occurring in six

minutes or six millions of years? It may as well indicate allegorically

six successive epochs or æons, or eternity, as six days. Besides,

the _Books of Hermes_ certainly give no color to the charge, and the

_Avesta_ specifically names six periods, each embracing thousands of

years, instead of days. Many of the Egyptian hieroglyphics contradict

Dr. Carpenter’s theory, and Champollion has avenged the ancients in

many particulars. From what is gone before, it will, we think, be made

clear to the reader that the Egyptian philosophy had no room for any

such crude speculations, if the Hebrews themselves ever believed them;

their cosmogony viewed man as the result of evolution, and his progress

to be marked by immensely lengthened cycles. But to return to the

wonders of Thibet.

Speaking of pictures, the one described by Huc as hanging in a

certain Lamasery may fairly be regarded as one of the most wonderful

in existence. It is a simple canvas without the slightest mechanical

apparatus attached, as the visitor may prove by examining it at his

leisure. It represents a moon-lit landscape, but the moon is not at all

motionless and dead; quite the reverse, for, according to the abbé, one

would say that our moon herself, or at least her living double, lighted

the picture. Each phase, each aspect, each movement of our satellite,

is repeated in her _fac-simile_, in the movement and progress of the

moon in the sacred picture. “You see this planet in the painting

ride as a crescent, or full, shine brightly, pass behind the clouds,

peep out or set, in a manner corresponding in the most extraordinary

way with the real luminary. It is, in a word, a most servile and

resplendent reproduction of the pale queen of the night, which received

the adoration of so many people in the days of old.”

When we think of the astonishment that would inevitably be felt by one

of our self-complacent academicians at seeing such a picture—and it is

by no means the only one, for they have them in other parts of Thibet

and Japan also, which represent the sun’s movements—when we think, we

say, of his embarrassment at knowing that if he ventured to tell the

unvarnished truth to his colleagues, his fate would probably be like

that of poor Huc, and he flung out of the academical chair as a liar or

a lunatic, we cannot help recalling the anecdote of Tycho-Brahe, given

by Humboldt in his _Cosmos_.[675]

“One evening,” says the great Danish astronomer, “as, according to my {442}

usual habit, I was considering the celestial vault, to my indescribable

amazement, I saw, close to the zenith, in Cassiopea, a radiant star

of extraordinary size. Struck with astonishment, I knew not whether

I could believe my own eyes. Some time after that, I learned that in

Germany, cartmen, and other persons of the lower classes had repeatedly

warned the scientists that a great apparition could be seen in the sky;

which fact afforded both the press and public one more opportunity to

indulge in their usual raillery against the men of science, who, in the

cases of several antecedent comets, had not predicted their appearance.”

From the days of the earliest antiquity, the Brahmans were known to

be possessed of wonderful knowledge in every kind of magic arts.

From Pythagoras, the first philosopher who studied wisdom with the

Gymnosophists, and Plotinus, who was initiated into the mystery of

uniting one’s self with the Deity through abstract contemplation,

down to the modern adepts, it was well known that in the land of the

Brahmans and Gautama-Buddha the sources of “hidden” wisdom are to be

sought after. It is for future ages to discover this grand truth, and

accept it as such, whereas now it is degraded as a low superstition.

What did any one, even the greatest scientists, know of India,

Thibet, and China, until the last quarter of this century? That most

untiring scholar, Max Müller, tells us that before then not a single

original document of the Buddhist religion had been accessible to

European philologists; that fifty years ago “there was not a single

scholar who could have translated a line of the _Veda_, a line of the

_Zend-Avesta_, or a line of the Buddhist _Tripitâka_,” let alone other

dialects or languages. And even now, that science is in possession of

various sacred texts, what they have are but very incomplete editions

of these works, and _nothing_, positively nothing of the secret sacred

literature of Buddhism. And the little that our Sanscrit scholars have

got hold of, and which at first was termed by Max Müller a dreary

“jungle of religious literature—the most excellent hiding-place for

Lamas and Dalai-Lamas,” is now beginning to shed a faint light on

the primitive darkness. We find this scholar stating that that which

appeared at the first glance into the labyrinth of the religions of the

world, all darkness, self deceit, and vanity begin to assume another

form. “It sounds,” he writes, “like a degradation of the very name

of religion, to apply it to the wild ravings of Hindu Yogins, and

the blank blasphemies of Chinese Buddhists.... But, as we slowly and

patiently wend our way through the dreary prisons, our own eyes seem to

expand, _and we perceive a glimmer of light_, where all was darkness at

first.”[676]

As an illustration of how little even the generation which directly {443}

preceded our own was competent to judge the religions and beliefs of

the several hundred million Buddhists, Brahmans, and Parsees, let the

student consult the advertisement of a scientific work published in

1828 by a Professor Dunbar, the first scholar who has undertaken to

demonstrate that the _Sanscrit is derived from the Greek_. It appeared

under the following title:

“_An Inquiry into the structure and affinity of the Greek and Latin

languages; with occasional comparisons of the Sanscrit and Gothic; with

an Appendix, in which_ THE DERIVATION OF THE SANSCRIT FROM THE GREEK

_is endeavoured to be established. By George Dunbar, F.R. S.E., and

Professor of Greek in the University of Edinburgh. Price, 18s._”[677]

Had Max Müller happened to fall from the sky at that time, among the

scholars of the day, and with his present knowledge, we would like

to have compiled the epithets which would have been bestowed by the

learned academicians upon the daring innovator! One who, classifying

languages genealogically, says that “Sanscrit, as compared to Greek and

Latin, is an elder sister ... the earliest deposit of Aryan speech.”

And so, we may naturally expect that in 1976, the same criticisms will

be justly applied to many a scientific discovery, now deemed conclusive

and final by our scholars. That which is now termed the superstitious

_verbiage_ and gibberish of mere heathens and savages, composed many

thousands of years ago, may be found to contain the master-key to all

religious systems. The cautious sentence of St. Augustine, a favorite

name in Max Müller’s lectures, which says that “there is no false

religion which does not contain some elements of truth,” may yet be

triumphantly proved correct; the more so as, far from being original

with the Bishop of Hippo, it was borrowed by him from the works of

Ammonius Saccas, the great Alexandrian teacher.

This “god-taught” philosopher, the _theodidaktos_, had repeated

these same words to exhaustion, in his numerous works some 140 years

before Augustine. Acknowledging Jesus as “an excellent man, and the

friend of God,” he always maintained that his design was not to

abolish the intercourse with gods and demons (spirits), but simply

to purify the ancient religions; that “the religion of the multitude

went hand in hand with philosophy, and with her had shared the fate

of being by degrees corrupted and obscured with mere human conceits,

superstition, and lies: that it ought therefore to be brought back to

its _original purity_ by purging it of this dross and expounding it {444}

upon philosophical principles; and that the whole which Christ had in

view was to reinstate and restore to its primitive integrity the wisdom

of the ancients.”[678]

It was Ammonius who first taught that every religion was based on

one and the same truth; which is the wisdom found in the Books of

Thoth (Hermes Trismegistus), from which books Pythagoras and Plato

had learned all their philosophy. And the doctrines of the former he

affirmed to have been identical with the earliest teachings of the

Brahmans—now embodied in the oldest _Vedas_. “The name Thoth,” says

Professor Wilder, “means a college or assembly,”[679] and “it is not

improbable that the books were so named as being the collected oracles

and doctrines of the sacerdotal fraternity of Memphis. Rabbi Wise had

suggested a similar hypothesis in relation to the divine utterances

recorded in the Hebrew Scripture. But the Indian writers assert, that

during the reign of king Kansa, _Yadus_ (_Judeans?_) or sacred tribe

left India and migrated to the West, carrying the four _Vedas_ with

them. There was certainly a great resemblance between the philosophical

doctrines and religious customs of the Egyptians and Eastern Buddhists;

but whether the Hermetic books and the four _Vedas_ were identical, is

not now known.”

But one thing is certainly known, and that is, that before the word

philosopher was first pronounced by Pythagoras at the court of the

king of the Philiasians, the “secret doctrine” or wisdom was identical

in every country. Therefore it is in the oldest texts—those least

polluted by subsequent forgeries—that we have to look for the truth.

And now that philology has possessed itself of Sanscrit texts which

may be boldly affirmed to be documents by far antedating the Mosaic

Bible, it is the duty of the scholars to present the world with truth,

and _nothing but the truth_. Without regard to either skeptical or

theological prejudice, they are bound to impartially examine both

documents—the oldest _Vedas_ and the _Old Testament_, and then decide

which of the two is the original _Sruti_ or _Revelation_, and which but

the _Smriti_, which, as Max Müller shows, only means recollection or

_tradition_.

Origen writes that the Brahmans were always famous for the wonderful

cures which they performed by certain words;[680] and in our own

age we find Orioli, a learned corresponding member of the French

Institute,[681] corroborating the statement of Origen in the third

century, and that of Leonard de Vair of the sixteenth, in which the

latter wrote: “There are also persons, who upon pronouncing a certain

sentence—a _charm_, walk bare-footed on red, burning coals, and on

the points of sharp _knives_ stuck in the ground; and, once poised {445}

on them, _on one toe_, they will lift up in the air a heavy man or

any other burden of considerable weight. They will tame wild horses

likewise, and the most furious bulls, with a single word.”[682]

This word is to be found in the _Mantras_ of the Sanscrit _Vedas_,

say some adepts. It is for the philologists to decide for themselves

whether there is such a word in the _Vedas_. So far as human evidence

goes, it would seem that such magic words _do_ exist.

It appears that the reverend fathers of the Order of Jesuits have

picked up many such tricks in their missionary travels. Baldinger

gives them full credit for it. The _tschamping_—a Hindu word, from

which the modern word _shampooing_ is derived—is a well-known magical

manipulation in the East Indies. The native _sorcerers_ use it with

success to the present day, and it is from them that the father Jesuits

derived their wisdom.

Camerarius, in his _Horæ Subscecivæ_, narrates that once upon a

time there existed a great rivalry of “miracles” between the Austin

Friars and the Jesuits. A disputation having taken place between the

father-general of the Austin Friars, who was very learned, and the

general of the Jesuits, who was very _unlearned_, but full of _magical_

knowledge, the latter proposed to settle the question by trying their

subordinates, and finding out which of them would be the readiest to

obey his superiors. Thereupon, turning to one of his Jesuits, he said:

“Brother Mark, our companions are cold; I command you, in virtue of

the holy obedience you have sworn to me, to bring here instantly out

of the kitchen fire, and in your hands, some burning coals, that they

may warm themselves over your hands.” Father Mark instantly obeyed, and

brought in both his hands a supply of red, burning coals, and held them

till the company present had all warmed themselves, after which he took

them back to the kitchen hearth. The general of the Austin Friars found

himself crestfallen, for none of his subordinates would obey him so far

as that. The triumph of the Jesuits was thus accomplished.

If the above is looked upon as an anecdote unworthy of credence, we

will inquire of the reader what we must think of some modern “mediums,”

who perform the same while _entranced_. The testimony of several highly

respectable and trustworthy witnesses, such as Lord Adair and Mr. S.

C. Hall, is unimpeachable. “Spirits,” the spiritualists will argue.

Perhaps so, in the case of American and English _fire-proof_ mediums;

but not so in Thibet and India. In the West a “sensitive” has to be

entranced before being rendered invulnerable by the presiding “guides,”

and we defy any “medium,” in his or her normal physical state to bury {446}

the arms to the elbows in glowing coals. But in the East, whether the

performer be a holy lama or a mercenary sorcerer (the latter class

being generally termed “jugglers”) he needs no preparation or abnormal

state to be able to handle fire, red-hot pieces of iron, or melted

lead. We have seen in Southern India these “jugglers” keep their hands

in a furnace of burning coals until the latter were reduced to cinders.

During the religious ceremony of Siva-Râtri, or the vigil-night of

Siva, when the people spend whole nights in watching and praying,

some of the Sivaites called in a Tamil juggler, who produced the most

wonderful phenomena by simply summoning to his help a spirit whom they

call _Kutti-Sâttan_—the little _demon_. But, far from allowing people

to think he was _guided_ or “controlled” by this gnome—for it was a

gnome, if it was anything—the man, while crouching over his fiery

pit, proudly rebuked a Catholic missionary, who took his opportunity

to inform the by-standers that the miserable sinner “had sold himself

to Satan.” Without removing his hands and arms from the burning coals

within which he was coolly refreshing them, the Tamil only turned his

head and gave one arrogant look at the flushed missionary. “My father

and my father’s father,” he said, “had this ‘little one’ at their

command. For two centuries the Kutti is a faithful servant in our home,

and now, sir, you would make people believe that _he_ is my master! But

they know better.” After this, he quietly withdrew his hands from the

fire, and proceeded with other performances.

As for the wonderful powers of prediction and clairvoyance possessed

by certain Brahmans, they are well known to every European resident

of India. If these upon their return to “civilized” countries, laugh

at such stories, and sometimes even deny them outright, they only

impugn their good faith, not the fact. These Brahmans live principally

in “sacred villages,” and secluded places, principally on the

western coast of India. They avoid populated cities, and especially

Europeans, and it is but rarely that the latter can succeed in making

themselves intimate with the “seers.” It is generally thought that the

circumstance is due to their religious observance of the caste; but we

are firmly convinced that in many cases this is not so. Years, perhaps

centuries, will roll away before the real reason is ascertained.

As to the lower castes, some of which are termed by the missionaries

devil-worshippers, notwithstanding the pious efforts on the part of

the Catholic missionaries to spread in Europe heart-rending reports of

the misery of these people “sold to the Arch-Enemy;” and like efforts,

perhaps only a trifle less ridiculous and absurd, of Protestant

missionaries, the word devil, in the sense understood by Christians,

is a nonentity for them. They believe in good and bad spirits; but

they neither worship nor dread the Devil. Their “worship” is simply a {447}

ceremonial precaution against “terrestrial” and _human_ spirits, whom

they dread far more than the millions of elementals of various forms.

They use all kinds of music, incense, and perfumes, in their efforts

to drive away the “bad spirits” (the elementary). In this case, they

are no more to be ridiculed than the well-known scientist, a firm

spiritualist, who suggested the keeping of vitriol and powdered nitre

in the room to keep away “unpleasant spirits;” and no more than he,

are they wrong in so doing; for the experience of their ancestors,

extending over many thousands of years has taught them how to proceed

against this vile “spiritual horde.” That they are _human_ spirits is

shown by the fact that very often they try to humor and propitiate the

“larvæ” of their own daughters and relatives, when they have reason

to suspect that the latter did not die in the odor of sanctity and

chastity. Such spirits they name “Kanni,” _bad virgins_. The case was

noticed by several missionaries; Rev. E. Lewis,[683] among others.

But these pious gentlemen usually insist upon it that they worship

devils, whereas, they do nothing of the sort; for they merely try to

remain on good terms with them in order to be left unmolested. They

offer them cakes and fruit, and various kinds of food which they liked

while alive, for many of them have experienced the wickedness of these

returning “dead ones,” whose persecutions are sometimes dreadful. On

this principle likewise they act toward the spirits of all wicked men.

They leave on their tombs, if they were buried, or near the place

where their remains were burnt, food and liquors, with the object of

keeping them near these places, and with the idea that these vampires

will be prevented thereby from returning to their homes. This is no

worship; it is rather a _spiritualism_ of a practical sort. Until 1861,

there prevailed a custom among the Hindus of mutilating the feet of

executed murderers, under the firm belief that thereby the disembodied

soul would be prevented from wandering and doing more mischief.

Subsequently, they were prohibited, by the police, from continuing the

practice.

Another good reason why the Hindus should not worship the “Devil”

is that they have no word to convey such a meaning. They call these

spirits “_pûttâm_,” which answers rather to our “spook,” or malicious

imp; another expression they use is “_pey_” and the Sanscrit _pesâsu_,

both meaning ghosts or “returning ones” perhaps goblins, in some cases.

The _pûttâm_ are the most terrible, for they are literally “_haunting_

spooks,” who return on earth to torment the living. They are believed

to visit generally the places where their bodies were burnt. The “fire”

or “Siva-spirits” are identical with the Rosicrucian _gnomes_ and

_salamanders_; for they are pictured as dwarfs of a fiery appearance, {448}

living in earth and fire. The Ceylonese demon called _Dewel_ is a

stout smiling female figure with a white Elizabethan frill around the

neck and a red jacket.

As Dr. Warton justly observes: “There is no character more strictly

Oriental than the dragons of romance and fiction; they are intermixed

with every tradition of early date and of themselves confer a species

of illustrative evidence of origin.” In no writings are these

characters more marked, than in the details of Buddhism; these record

particulars of the _Nagas_, or kingly snakes, inhabiting the cavities

under the earth, corresponding with the abodes of Tiresias and the

Greek seers, a region of mystery and darkness, wherein revolves much

of the system of divination and oracular response, connected with

inflation, or a sort of possession, designating the spirit of Python

himself, the dragon-serpent slain by Apollo. But the Buddhists no more

believe in the devil of the Christian system—that is, an entity as

distinct from humanity as the Deity itself—than the Hindus. Buddhists

teach that there are inferior gods who have been men either on this or

another planet, but still who were _men_. They believe in the Nagas,

who had been _sorcerers_ on earth, _bad people_, and who give the power

to other bad and yet living men to blight all the fruit they look upon,

and even human lives. When a Cinghalese has the reputation that if he

looks on a tree or on a person both will wither and die, he is said to

have the Naga-Raja, or king-serpent on him. The whole endless catalogue

of bad spirits are not _devils_ in the sense the Christian clergy wants

us to understand, but merely _spiritually incarnated_ sins, crimes, and

human thoughts, if we may so express it. The blue, green, yellow, and

purple god-demons, like the inferior gods of Jugandere, are more of

the kind of presiding genii, and many are as good and beneficient as

the Nat deities themselves, although the Nats reckon in their numbers,

giants, evil genii, and the like which inhabit the desert of Mount

Jugandere.

The true doctrine of Buddha says that the demons, when nature produced

the sun, moon, and stars, _were human beings_, but, on account of their

sins, they fell from the state of felicity. If they commit greater

sins, they suffer greater punishments, and condemned men are reckoned

by them among the _devils_; while, on the contrary, _demons who die_

(elemental spirits) and are born or incarnated as men, and commit no

more sin, can arrive at the state of celestial felicity. Which is a

demonstration, remarks Edward Upham, in his _History and Doctrine of

Buddhism_, that all beings, divine as well as human, are subject to

the laws of transmigration, which are operative on all, according to a

scale of moral deeds. This faith then, is a complete test of a code of

moral enactments and motives, applied to the regulation and government {449}

of man an experiment, he adds, “which renders the study of Buddhism an

important and curious subject for the philosopher.”

The Hindus believe, as firmly as the Servians or Hungarians, in

vampires. Furthermore, their doctrine is that of Pierart, the famous

French spiritist and mesmerizer, whose school flourished some dozen

years ago. “The fact of a spectre returning to suck human blood,” says

this Doctor,[684] “is not so inexplicable as it seems, and here we

appeal to the spiritualists who admit the phenomenon of _bicorporeity_

or _soul-duplication_. The hands which we have pressed ... these

‘materialized’ limbs, so palpable ... prove clearly _how much is

possible for astral spectres under favorable conditions_.”

The honorable physician expresses the theory of the kabalists. The

_Shadim_ are the lowest of the spiritual orders. Maimonides, who

tells us that his countrymen were _obliged_ to maintain an intimate

intercourse with their departed ones, describes the feast of blood they

held on such occasions. They dug a hole, and _fresh blood_ was poured

in, over which was placed a table; after which the “spirits” came and

answered all their questions.[685]

Pierart, whose doctrine was founded on that of the theurgists, exhibits

a warm indignation against the superstition of the clergy which

requires, whenever a corpse is suspected of vampirism, that a stake

should be driven through the heart. So long as the astral form is not

entirely liberated from the body there is a liability that it may be

forced by magnetic attraction to reënter it. Sometimes it will be only

half-way out, when the corpse, which presents the appearance of death,

is buried. In such cases the terrified astral soul violently reënters

its casket; and then, one of two things happens—either the unhappy

victim will writhe in the agonizing torture of suffocation, or, if

he had been grossly material, he becomes a vampire. The bicorporeal

life begins; and these unfortunate buried cataleptics sustain their

miserable lives by having their astral bodies rob the life-blood from

living persons. The æthereal form can go wherever it pleases; and so

long as it does not break the link which attaches it to the body, it

is at liberty to wander about, either visible or invisible, and feed

on human victims. “According to all appearance, this ‘spirit’ then

transmits through a mysterious and invisible cord of connection, which

perhaps, some day may be explained, the results of the suction to the

material body which lies inert at the bottom of the tomb, aiding it, in

a manner, to perpetuate the state of catalepsy.”[686]

Brierre de Boismont gives a number of such cases, fully authenticated, {450}

which he is pleased to term “hallucinations.” A recent inquest,

says a French paper, “has established that in 1871 two corpses were

submitted to the infamous treatment of popular superstition, at the

instigation of the clergy ... O blind prejudice!” But Dr. Pierart,

quoted by des Mousseaux, who stoutly adheres to vampirism, exclaims:

“Blind, you say? Yes, blind, as much as you like. But whence sprang

these prejudices? Why are they perpetuated in all ages, and in so many

countries? After a crowd of facts of vampirism so often proved, should

we say that there are no more and that they never had a foundation?

Nothing comes of nothing. Every belief, every custom springs from facts

and causes which gave it birth. If one had never seen appear, in the

bosom of families of certain countries, beings clothing themselves in

the shape of the familiar dead, coming thus to suck the blood of one

or of several persons, and if the death of the victims by emaciation

had not followed, they would never have gone to disinter the corpses

in cemeteries; we would never have had attested the incredible fact

of persons buried for several years being found with the corpse soft,

flexible, the eyes open, with rosy complexions, the mouth and nose

full of blood, and of the blood running in torrents under blows, from

wounds, and when decapitated.”[687]

One of the most important examples of vampirism figures in the private

letters of the philosopher, the Marquis d’Argens; and, in the _Revue

Britannique_, for March, 1837, the English traveller Pashley describes

some that came under his notice in the island of Candia. Dr. Jobard,

the anti-Catholic and anti-spiritual Belgian _savant_, testifies to

similar experiences.[688]

“I will not examine,” wrote the Bishop d’Avranches Huet, “whether the

facts of vampirism, which are constantly being reported, are true,

or the fruit of a popular error; but it is certain that they are

testified to by so many authors, able and trustworthy, and _by so many

eye-witnesses_, that no one ought to decide upon the question without a

good deal of caution.”[689]

The chevalier, who went to great pains to collect materials for his

demonological theory, brings the most thrilling instances to prove that

all such cases are produced by the Devil, who uses graveyard corpses

with which to clothe himself, and roams at night sucking people’s

blood. Methinks we could do very well without bringing this dusky

personage upon the scene. If we are to believe at all in the return of

spirits, there are plenty of wicked sensualists, misers, and sinners {451}

of other descriptions—especially suicides, who could have rivalled

the Devil himself in malice in his best days. It is quite enough to be

actually forced to believe in what we do see, and _know to be a fact_,

namely spirits, without adding to our Pantheon of ghosts the Devil—whom

nobody ever saw.

Still, there are interesting particulars to be gathered in relation

to vampirism, since belief in this phenomenon has existed in all

countries, from the remotest ages. The Slavonian nations, the Greeks,

the Wallachians, and the Servians would rather doubt the existence of

their enemies, the Turks, than the fact that there are vampires. The

_broucolâk_, or _vourdalak_, as the latter are called, are but too

familiar guests at the Slavonian fireside. Writers of the greatest

ability, men as full of sagacity as of high integrity, have treated of

the subject and believed in it. Whence, then, such a _superstition_?

Whence that unanimous credence throughout the ages, and whence that

identity in details and similarity of description as to that one

particular phenomenon which we find in the testimony—generally sworn

evidence—of peoples foreign to each other and differing widely in

matters concerning other _superstitions_.

“There are,” says Dom Calmet, a skeptical Benedictine monk of the last

century, “two different ways to destroy the belief in these pretended

ghosts.... The first would be _to explain the_ prodigies of vampirism

by physical causes. The second way is to _deny totally_ the truth of

all such stories; and the latter plan would be undoubtedly the most

certain, as the most wise.”[690]

The first way—that of explaining it by physical, though occult causes,

is the one adopted by the Pierart school of mesmerism. It is certainly

not the spiritualists who have a right to doubt the plausibility of

this explanation. The second plan is that adopted by scientists and

skeptics. They deny point-blank. As des Mousseaux remarks, there is

no better or surer way, and none exacts less of either philosophy or

science.

The spectre of a village herdsman, near Kodom, in Bavaria, began

appearing to several inhabitants of the place, and either in

consequence of their fright or some other cause, every one of them

died during the following week. Driven to despair, the peasants

disinterred the corpse, and pinned it to the ground with a long stake.

The same night he appeared again, plunging people into convulsions of

fright, and suffocating several of them. Then the village authorities

delivered the body into the hands of the executioner, who carried it to

a neighboring field and burned it. “The corpse,” says des Mousseaux,

quoting Dom Calmet, “howled like a madman, kicking and tearing as if {452}

he had been alive. When he was run through again with sharp-pointed

stakes, he uttered piercing cries, and vomited masses of crimson blood.

The apparitions of this spectre ceased only after the corpse had been

reduced to ashes.”[691]

Officers of justice visited the places said to be so haunted; the

bodies were exhumed, and in nearly every case it was observed that the

corpse suspected of vampirism looked healthy and rosy, and the flesh

was in no way decaying. The objects which had belonged to these ghosts

were observed moving about the house without any one touching them.

But the legal authorities generally refused to resort to cremation

and beheading before they had observed the strictest rules of legal

procedure. Witnesses were summoned to appear, and evidence was heard

and carefully weighed. After that the exhumed corpses were examined;

and if they exhibited the unequivocal and characteristic signs of

vampirism, they were handed over to the executioner.

“But,” argues Dom Calmet,[692] “the principal difficulty consists

in learning _how_ these vampires can quit their tombs, and how they

reënter them, without appearing _to have disturbed the earth in the

least_; how is it that they are seen with their usual clothing; how

can they go about, and walk, and _eat_?... If this is all imagination

on the part of those who believe themselves molested by such vampires,

how happens it that the accused ghosts are subsequently found in their

graves ... exhibiting no signs of decay, full of blood, supple and

fresh? How explain the cause _of their feet found muddy and covered

with dirt on the day following the night_ they had appeared and

frightened their neighbors, while nothing of the sort was ever found on

other corpses buried in the same cemetery?[693] How is it again that

once burned they never reappear? and that these cases should happen

_so often_ in this country that it is found impossible to cure people

from this prejudice; for, instead of being destroyed, daily experience

only fortifies the superstition in the people, and increases belief in

it.”[694]

There is a phenomenon in nature unknown, and therefore rejected by

physiology and psychology in our age of unbelief. This phenomenon is a

state of _half-death_. Virtually, the body is dead; and, in cases of

persons in whom matter does not predominate over spirit and wickedness

not so great as to destroy spirituality, if left alone, their astral

soul will disengage itself by gradual efforts, and, when the last {453}

link is broken, it finds itself separated forever from its earthly

body. Equal magnetic polarity will violently repulse the ethereal man

from the decaying organic mass. The whole difficulty lies in that 1,

the ultimate moment of separation between the two is believed to be

that when the body is declared _dead_ by science; and 2, a prevailing

unbelief in the existence of either soul or spirit in man, by the same

science.

Pierart tries to demonstrate that in every case it is dangerous to

bury people too soon, even though the body may show undoubted signs

of putrefaction. “Poor dead cataleptics,” says the doctor, “buried

as if _quite_ dead, in cold and dry spots where _morbid causes are

incapable to effect the destruction of their bodies_, their (astral)

spirit enveloping itself with a _fluidic_ body (ethereal) is prompted

to quit the precincts of its tomb, and to exercise on living beings

acts peculiar to physical life, especially that of _nutrition_, the

result of which, by a mysterious link between soul and body, which

spiritualistic science will explain some day, is forwarded to the

material body lying still in its tomb, and the latter thus helped to

perpetuate its vital existence.”[695] These spirits, in their ephemeral

bodies, have been often seen _coming out from the graveyard_; they are

known to have clung to their living neighbors, and have sucked their

blood. Judicial inquiry has established that from this resulted an

emaciation of the victimized persons, which often terminated in death.

Thus, following the pious advice of Dom Calmet, we must either go on

denying, or, if human and legal testimonies are worth anything, accept

the only explanation possible. “That souls departed are embodied in

aërial or ætherial vehicles is most fully and plainly proved by those

excellent men, Dr. C. and Dr. More,” says Glanvil, “and they have

largely shown that this was the doctrine of the greatest philosophers

and most ancient and aged fathers.”[696]

Görres, the German philosopher, says to the same effect, that “God

never created man as a dead corpse, but as an animal _full of life_.

Once He had thus produced him, finding him ready to receive the

immortal breath, He breathed him in the face, and thus man became a

double masterpiece in His hands. It is in the centre of life itself

that this mysterious insufflation took place in the first man (race?);

and thence were united the _animal soul_ issued from earth, and the

_spirit_ emanating from heaven.”[697]

Des Mousseaux, in company with other Roman Catholic writers, exclaims:

“This proposition is utterly anti-Catholic!” Well, and suppose it is? {454}

It may be archi-anti-Catholic, and still be logic, and offer a solution

for many a psychological puzzle. The sun of science and philosophy

shines for every one; and if Catholics, who hardly number one-seventh

part of the population of the globe, do not feel satisfied, perhaps the

many millions of people of other religions who outnumber them, will.

And now, before parting with this repulsive subject of vampirism,

we will give one more illustration, without other voucher than the

statement that it was given to us by apparently trustworthy witnesses.

About the beginning of the present century, there occurred in Russia,

one of the most frightful cases of vampirism on record. The governor of

the Province of Tch—— was a man of about sixty years, of a malicious,

tyrannical, cruel, and jealous disposition. Clothed with despotic

authority, he exercised it without stint, as his brutal instincts

prompted. He fell in love with the pretty daughter of a subordinate

official. Although the girl was betrothed to a young man whom she

loved, the tyrant forced her father to consent to his having her marry

him; and the poor victim, despite her despair, became his wife. His

jealous disposition exhibited itself. He beat her, confined her to

her room for weeks together, and prevented her seeing any one except

in his presence. He finally fell sick and died. Finding his end

approaching, he made her swear never to marry again; and with fearful

oaths, threatened that, in case she did, he would return from his grave

and kill her. He was buried in the cemetery across the river; and the

young widow experienced no further annoyance, until, nature getting the

better of her fears, she listened to the importunities of her former

lover, and they were again betrothed.

On the night of the customary betrothal-feast, when all had retired,

the old mansion was aroused by shrieks proceeding from her room. The

doors were burst open, and the unhappy woman was found lying on her

bed, in a swoon. At the same time a carriage was heard rumbling out

of the courtyard. Her body was found to be black and blue in places,

as from the effect of pinches, and from a slight puncture on her neck

drops of blood were oozing. Upon recovering, she stated that her

deceased husband had suddenly entered her room, appearing exactly as in

life, with the exception of a dreadful pallor; that he had upbraided

her for her inconstancy, and then beaten and pinched her most cruelly.

Her story was disbelieved; but the next morning, the guard stationed at

the other end of the bridge which spans the river, reported that, just

before midnight, a black coach and six had driven furiously past them,

toward the town, without answering their challenge.

The new governor, who disbelieved the story of the apparition, took

nevertheless the precaution of doubling the guards across the bridge. {455}

The same thing happened, however, night after night; the soldiers

declaring that the toll-bar at their station near the bridge would

rise of itself, and the spectral equipage sweep by them despite their

efforts to stop it. At the same time every night, the coach would

rumble into the courtyard of the house; the watchers, including the

widow’s family, and the servants, would be thrown into a heavy sleep;

and every morning the young victim would be found bruised, bleeding,

and swooning as before. The town was thrown into consternation. The

physicians had no explanations to offer; priests came to pass the night

in prayer, but as midnight approached, all would be seized with the

terrible lethargy. Finally, the archbishop of the province came, and

performed the ceremony of exorcism in person, but the following morning

the governor’s widow was found worse than ever. She was now brought to

death’s door.

The governor was finally driven to take the severest measures to stop

the ever-increasing panic in the town. He stationed fifty Cossacks

along the bridge, with orders to stop the spectre-carriage at all

hazards. Promptly at the usual hour, it was heard and seen approaching

from the direction of the cemetery. The officer of the guard, and a

priest bearing a crucifix, planted themselves in front of the toll-bar,

and together shouted: “In the name of God, and the Czar, who goes

there?” Out of the coach-window was thrust a well-remembered head,

and a familiar voice responded: “The Privy Councillor of State and

Governor, C——!” At the same moment, the officer, the priest, and the

soldiers were flung aside as by an electric shock, and the ghostly

equipage passed by them, before they could recover breath.

The archbishop then resolved, as a last expedient, to resort to the

time-honored plan of exhuming the body, and pinning it to the earth

with an oaken stake driven through its heart. This was done with great

religious ceremony in the presence of the whole populace. The story

is that the body was found gorged with blood, and with red cheeks and

lips. At the instant that the first blow was struck upon the stake,

a groan issued from the corpse, and a jet of blood spurted high into

the air. The archbishop pronounced the usual exorcism, the body was

reïnterred, and from that time no more was heard of the vampire.

How far the facts of this case may have been exaggerated by tradition,

we cannot say. But we had it years ago from an eye-witness; and at

the present day there are families in Russia whose elder members will

recall the dreadful tale.

As to the statement found in medical books that there are frequent

cases of inhumation while the subjects are but in a cataleptic state,

and the persistent denials of specialists that such things happen,

except very rarely, we have but to turn to the daily press of every {456}

country to find the horrid fact substantiated. The Rev. H. R. Haweis,

M. A., author of _Ashes to Ashes_,[698] enumerates in his work, written

in advocacy of cremation, some very distressing cases of premature

burial. On page forty-six occurs the following dialogue:

“But do you know of many cases of premature burial?”

“Undoubtedly I do. I will not say that in our temperate climate they

are frequent, but they do occur. Hardly a graveyard is opened but

coffins are found containing bodies not only turned, but skeletons

contorted in the last hopeless struggle for life underground. The

turning may be due to some clumsy shaking of the coffin, _but not the

contortion_.”

After this he proceeds to give the following recent cases:

“At Bergerac (Dordogne), in 1842, the patient took a sleeping draught

... but he woke not.... They bled him, and he woke not.... At last they

declared him to be dead, and buried him. After a few days, remembering

the sleeping draught, they opened the grave. The body had turned and

_struggled_.”

“The _Sunday Times_, December 30, 1838, relates that at Tonneins, Lower

Garonne, a man was buried, when an indistinct noise proceeded from

the coffin; the reckless grave-digger fled.... The coffin was hauled

up and burst open. A face stiffened in terror and despair, a torn

winding-sheet, contorted limbs, told the sad truth—_too late_.”

“The _Times_, May, 1874, states that in August of 1873, a young lady

died soon after her marriage.... Within a year the husband married

again, and the mother of his first bride resolved to remove her

daughter’s body to Marseilles. They opened the vault and found the

poor girl’s body prostrate, her hair dishevelled, her shroud torn to

pieces.”[699]

As we will have to refer to the subject once more in connection with

Bible miracles, we will leave it for the present, and return to magical

phenomena.

If we were to give a full description of the various manifestations

which take place among adepts in India and other countries, we might

fill volumes, but this would be profitless, as there would remain no

space for explanation. Therefore we select in preference such as either

find their parallels in modern phenomena or are authenticated by legal

inquiry. Horst tried to present an idea of certain Persian spirits

to his readers, and failed; for the bare mention of some of them is

calculated to set the brains of a believer in a whirl. There are the

Devs and their specialities; the Darwands and their gloomy tricks; the

Shadim and Djinnas; the whole vast legion of spirits, demons, goblins, {457}

and elves of the Persian calendar; and, on the other hand, the Jewish

Seraphim, Cherubim, Izeds, Amshaspands, Sephiroth, Malachim, Elohim;

and, adds Horst, “the millions of astral and elementary spirits, of

intermediary spirits, ghosts, and imaginary beings of all races and

colors.”[700]

But the majority of these spirits have naught to do with the phenomena

consciously and deliberately produced by the Eastern magicians. The

latter repudiate such an accusation and leave to sorcerers the help

even of elemental spirits and the elementary spooks. The adept has an

unlimited power over both, but he rarely uses it. For the production of

physical phenomena he summons the nature-spirits as obedient _powers_,

not as intelligences.

As we always like to strengthen our arguments by testimonies other than

our own, it may be well to present the opinion of a daily paper, the

Boston _Herald_, as to phenomena in general and mediums in particular.

Having encountered sad failures with some dishonest persons, who may or

may not be mediumistic, the writer went to the trouble of ascertaining

as to some wonders said to be produced in India, and compares them with

those of modern thaumaturgy.

“The medium of the present day,” he says, “bears a closer resemblance,

in methods and manipulations, to the well-known conjurer of history,

than any other representative of the magic art. How far short he still

remains of the performances of his prototypes is illustrated below. In

1615 a delegation of highly-educated and distinguished men from the

English East India Company visited the Emperor Jehangire. While on

their mission they witnessed many most wonderful performances, almost

causing them to discredit their senses, and far beyond any hint even of

solution. A party of Bengalese conjurers and jugglers, showing their

art before the emperor, were desired to produce upon the spot, and from

seed, ten mulberry trees. They immediately planted ten seeds, which,

in a few minutes produced as many trees. The ground divided over the

spot where a seed was planted, tiny leaves appeared, at once followed

by slender shoots, which rapidly gained elevation, putting out leaves

and twigs and branches, finally spreading wide in the air, budding,

blossoming and yielding fruit, which matured upon the spot, and was

found to be excellent. And this before the beholder had turned away

his eyes. Fig, almond, mango, and walnut trees were at the same time

under like conditions produced, yielding the fruit which belonged to

each. Wonder succeeded wonder. The branches were filled with birds of

beautiful plumage flitting about among the leaves and singing sweet

notes. The leaves turned to russet, fell from their places, branches {458}

and twigs withered, and finally the trees sank back into the earth,

out of which they had all sprang within the hour.

“Another had a bow and about fifty steel-pointed arrows. He shot an

arrow into the air, when, lo! the arrow became fixed in space at a

considerable height. Another and another arrow was sent off, each

fixing itself in the shaft of the preceding, until all formed a chain

of arrows in the air, excepting the last shot, which, striking the

chain, brought the whole to the ground in detachments.

“They set up two common tents facing each other, and about a bowshot

apart. These tents were critically examined by the spectators, as are

the cabinets of the mediums, and pronounced empty. The tents were

fastened to the ground all around. The lookers-on were then invited to

choose what animals or birds they would have issue from these tents to

engage in a battle. Khaun-e-Jahaun incredulously asked to see a fight

between ostriches. In a few minutes an ostrich came out from each tent,

rushed to combat with deadly earnestness, and from them the blood soon

began to stream; but they were so nearly matched that neither could

win the victory, and they were at last separated by the conjurers

and conveyed within the tents. After this the varied demands of the

spectators for birds and animals were exactly complied with, always

with the same results.

“A large cauldron was set, and into it a quantity of rice thrown.

Without the sign of fire this rice soon began to boil, and out from the

cauldron was taken more than one hundred platters of cooked rice, with

a stewed fowl at the top of each. This trick is performed on a smaller

scale by the most ordinary fakirs of the present day.

“But space fails to give opportunity for illustrating, from the records

of the past, how the miserably tame performances—by comparison—of the

mediums of the present day were pale and overshadowed by those of other

days and more adroit peoples. There is not a wonderful feature in any

of the so-called phenomena or manifestations which was not, nay, which

is not now more than duplicated by other skilful performers, whose

connection with earth, and earth alone, is too evident to be doubted,

even if the fact was not supported by their own testimony.”

It is an error to say that fakirs or jugglers will always claim that

they are helped by spirits. In quasi-religious evocations, such as

Jacolliot’s Kovindasami is described to have produced before this

French gentleman, when the parties desire to see real “spiritual”

manifestations, they will resort to Pitris, their disembodied

ancestors, and other _pure_ spirits. These they can evoke but through

prayer. As to all other phenomena, they are produced by the magician

and fakir at will. Notwithstanding the state of apparent abjectness in {459}

which the latter lives, he is often an initiate of the temples, and is

as well acquainted with occultism as his richer brethren.

The Chaldeans, whom Cicero counts among the oldest magicians, placed

the basis of all magic in the inner powers of man’s soul, and by the

discernment of magic properties in plants, minerals, and animals.

By the aid of these they performed the most wonderful “miracles.”

Magic, with them, was synonymous with religion and science. It is but

later that the religious myths of the Magdean dualism, disfigured by

Christian theology and euhemerized by certain fathers of the Church,

assumed the disgusting shape in which we find them expounded by such

Catholic writers as des Mousseaux. The objective reality of the

mediæval incubus and succubus, that abominable superstition of the

middle ages which cost so many human lives, advocated by this author

in a whole volume, is the monstrous production of religious fanaticism

and epilepsy. It can have no _objective_ form; and to attribute its

effects to the Devil is blasphemy: implying that God, after creating

Satan, would allow him to adopt such a course. If we are forced to

believe in vampirism, it is on the strength of two irrefragable

propositions of occult psychological science: 1. The astral soul is

a separable distinct entity of our _ego_, and can roam far away from

the body without breaking the thread of life. 2. The corpse is not

_utterly_ dead, and while it can yet be reëntered by its tenant, the

latter can gather sufficient material emanations from it to enable

itself to appear in a quasi-terrestrial shape. But to uphold, with des

Mousseaux and de Mirville, that the Devil, whom the Catholics endow

with a power which, in antagonism, equals that of the Supreme Deity,

transforms himself into wolves, snakes, and dogs, to satisfy his lust

and procreate monsters, is an idea within which lie hidden the germs

of devil-worship, lunacy, and sacrilege. The Catholic Church, which

not only teaches us to believe in this monstrous fallacy, but forces

her missionaries to preach such a dogma, need not revolt against the

devil-worship of some Parsee and South India sects. Quite the reverse;

for when we hear the Yezides repeat the well-known proverb: “Keep

friends with the demons; give them your property, your blood, your

service, and you need not care about God—_He will not harm you_,” we

find him but consistent with his belief and reverential to the Supreme;

his logic is sound and rational; he reveres God too deeply to imagine

that He who created the universe and its laws is able to hurt him, poor

atom; but the _demons_ are there; they are _imperfect_, and therefore

he has good reasons to dread them.

Therefore, the Devil, in his various transformations, can be but a

fallacy. When we imagine that we see, and hear, and feel him, it

is but too often the reflection of our own wicked, depraved, and

polluted soul that we see, hear, and feel. Like attracts like, they {460}

say; thus, according to the mood in which our astral form oozes out

during the hours of sleep, according to our thoughts, pursuits, and

daily occupations, all of which are fairly impressed upon the plastic

capsule called the _human soul_, the latter attracts around itself

spiritual beings congenial to itself. Hence some dreams and visions

that are pure and beautiful, others fiendish and beastly. The person

awakes, and either hastens to the confessional, or laughs in callous

indifference at the thought. In the first case, he is promised final

salvation, at the cost of some indulgences (which he has to purchase

from the church), and perhaps a little taste of purgatory, or even

of hell. What matter? is he not safe to be eternal and immortal, do

what he may? It is the Devil. Away with him, with bell, book, and holy

sprinkler! But the “Devil” comes back, and often the true believer is

forced to disbelieve in God, when he clearly perceives that the Devil

has the best of his Creator and Master. Then he is left to the second

emergency. He remains indifferent, and gives himself up entirely to the

Devil. He dies, and the reader has learned the sequel in the preceding

chapters.

The thought is beautifully expressed by Dr. Ennemoser: “Religion did

not here [Europe and China] strike root so deeply as among the Hindus,”

says he, arguing upon this superstition. “The spirit of the Greeks

and Persians was more volatile.... The philosophical idea in the good

and bad principle, and of the spiritual world ... must have assisted

tradition in forming visions of heavenly and hellish shapes, and the

most frightful distortions, which in India were much more simply

produced by a more enthusiastic fanaticism; there the seer _received by

divine light_; here he lost himself in a multitude of outward objects,

with which he confounded his own identity. Convulsions, accompanied

by the mind’s absence from the body, in distant countries, were here

common, for the imagination was less firm, and also less spiritual.

“The outward causes are also different; the modes of life, geographical

position, and artificial means producing various modifications. The

mode of life in Western countries has always been very variable, and

therefore disturbs and distorts the occupation of the senses, _and the

outward life is therefore reflected_ upon the inner dream-world. The

spirits, therefore, are of endless varieties of shape, and incline men

to gratify their passions, showing them the means of so doing, and

descending even to the minutest particulars, _which was so far below_

the elevated natures of Indian seers.”

Let the student of occult sciences make his own nature as pure and his

thoughts as elevated as those of these Indian seers, and he may sleep

unmolested by vampire, incubus, or succubus. Around the insensible

form of such a sleeper the immortal spirit sheds a power divine that

protects it from evil approaches, as though it were a crystal wall.

“Hæc murus æneus esto: nil conscire sibi, nulla pallascere culpa.”

CHAPTER XIII. {461}

“ALCHYMIST. Thou always speakest riddles. Tell me if thou art

that fountain of which Bernard Lord Trevigan writ?

“MERCURY. I am not that fountain, but I am the water. The

fountain compasseth me about.”

—SANDIVOGIUS, _New Light of Alchymy_.

“All that we profess to do is this: to find out the secrets of

the human frame, to know why the parts ossify and the blood

stagnates, and to apply continual preventatives to the effects

of time. _This is not magic_; it is the art of medicine rightly

understood.”—BULWER-LYTTON.

“Lo, warrior! now the cross of Red

Points to the grave of the mighty dead;

Within it burns a wondrous light,

To chase the spirits that love the night.

That lamp shall burn unquenchably

Until the eternal doom shall be.”

* * * * *

“No earthly flame blazed e’er so bright.”—SIR WALTER SCOTT.

There are persons whose minds would be incapable of appreciating the

intellectual grandeur of the ancients, even in physical science, were

they to receive the most complete demonstration of their profound

learning and achievements. Notwithstanding the lesson of caution which

more than one unexpected discovery has taught them, they still pursue

their old plan of denying, and, what is still worse, of ridiculing

that which they have no means of either proving or disproving. So, for

instance, they will pooh-pooh the idea of talismans having any efficacy

one way or the other. That the seven spirits of the _Apocalypse_

have direct relation to the seven occult powers in nature, appears

incomprehensible and absurd to their feeble intellects; and the

bare thought of a magician claiming to work wonders through certain

kabalistic rites convulses them with laughter. Perceiving only a

geometrical figure traced upon a paper, a bit of metal, or other

substance, they cannot imagine how any reasonable being should ascribe

to either any occult potency. But those who have taken the pains to

inform themselves know that the ancients achieved as great discoveries

in psychology as in physics, and that their explorations left few

secrets to be discovered.

For our part, when we realize that a pentacle is a synthetic figure

which expresses in concrete form a profound truth of nature, we can

see nothing more ridiculous in it than in the figures of Euclid, and

nothing half so comical as the symbols in a modern work on chemistry.

What to the uninitiated reader can appear more absurd than that the {462}

symbol NA₂CO₃—means soda! and that C₂H₆O is but another

way of writing alcohol! How very amusing that the alchemists should

express their Azoth, or creative principle of nature (astral light), by

the symbol

T

│

│

O──── ──——A

│

│

R[Transcriber’s note: R upside-down, A sideways]

which embraces three things: 1st, The divine hypothesis; 2d, The

philosophical synthesis; 3d, The physical synthesis—that is to say, a

belief, an idea, and a force. But how perfectly natural that a modern

chemist who wishes to indicate to the students in his laboratory the

reaction of a sodic-carbonate with cream-of-tartar in solution, should

employ the following symbol:

(Na₂CO₃ + 2HKC₄H₄O₆ + Aq)=

(2NaKC₄H₄O₆ + H₂O + Aq) + CO₂

If the uninspired reader may be pardoned for looking aghast at this

abracadabra of chemical science, why should not its teachers restrain

their mirth until they have learned the philosophical value of the

symbolism of the ancients? At least they might spare themselves from

being as ridiculous as Monsieur de Mirville, who, confounding the Azoth

of the Hermetic philosophers with the azote of the chemists, asserted

that the former worshipped nitrogen gas![701]

Apply a piece of iron to a magnet, and it becomes imbued with its

subtile principle and capable of imparting it to other iron in its

turn. It neither weighs more nor appears different from what it

was before. And yet, one of the most subtile potencies of nature

has entered into its substance. A talisman, in itself perhaps a

worthless bit of metal, a scrap of paper, or a shred of any fabric,

has nevertheless been imbued by the influence of that greatest of

all magnets, the human will, with a potency for good or ill just

as recognizable and as real in its effects as the subtile property

which the iron acquired by contact with the physical magnet. Let

the bloodhound snuff an article of clothing that has been worn by

the fugitive, and he will track him through swamp and forest to

his hiding-place. Give one of Professor Buchanan’s “psychometers”

a manuscript, no matter how old, and he will describe to you the {463}

character of the writer, and perhaps even his personal appearance.

Hand a clairvoyant a lock of hair or some article that has been in

contact with the person of whom it is desired to know something, and

she will come into sympathy with him so intimate that she may trace him

through his whole life.

Breeders tell us that young animals should not be herded with old

ones; and intelligent physicians forbid parents to have young children

occupy their own beds. When David was old and feeble his vital forces

were recruited by having a young person brought in close contact with

him so that he could absorb her strength. The late Empress of Russia,

the sister of the present German Emperor, was so feeble the last

years of her life that she was seriously advised by her physicians

to keep in her bed at night a robust and healthy young peasant-girl.

Whoever has read the description given by Dr. Kerner of the Seeress

of Prevost, Mme. Hauffe, must well remember her words. She repeatedly

stated that she supported life merely on the atmosphere of the people

surrounding her and their _magnetic emanations_, which were quickened

in an extraordinary way by her presence. The seeress was very plainly

a magnetic _vampire_, who absorbed by drawing to herself the life of

those who were strong enough to spare her their vitality in the shape

of _volatilized_ blood. Dr. Kerner remarks that these persons were all

more or less affected by this forcible loss.

With these familiar illustrations of the possibility of a subtile fluid

communicated from one individual to another, or to substances which he

touches, it becomes less difficult to understand that by a determined

concentration of the will an otherwise inert object may become imbued

with protective or destructive power according to the purpose directing.

A magnetic emanation, unconsciously produced, is sure to be overpowered

by any stronger one with which it may come into opposition. But when an

intelligent and powerful will directs the blind force, and concentrates

it upon a given spot, the weaker emanation will often master the

stronger. A human _will_ has the same effect on the _Akâsa_.

Upon one occasion, we witnessed in Bengal an exhibition of will-power

that illustrates a highly interesting phase of the subject. An adept

in magic made a few passes over a piece of common tin, the inside

of a dish-cover, that lay conveniently by, and while regarding it

attentively for a few moments, seemed to grasp the imponderable fluid

by handfuls and throw it against the surface. When the tin had been

exposed to the full glare of light for about six seconds, the bright

surface was suddenly covered as with a film. Then patches of a darker

hue began coming out on its surface; and when in about three minutes

the tin was handed back to us, we found imprinted upon it a picture, {464}

or rather a photograph, of the landscape that stretched out before us;

faithful as nature itself, and every color perfect. It remained for

about forty-eight hours and then slowly faded away.

This phenomenon is easily explained. The will of the adept condensed

upon the tin a film of _akâsa_ which made it for the time being like a

sensitized photographic plate. Light did the rest.

Such an exhibition as this of the potency of the will to effect even

objective physical results, will prepare the student to comprehend its

efficacy in the cure of disease by imparting the desired virtue to

inanimate objects which are placed in contact with the patient. When we

see such psychologists as Maudsley[702] quoting, without contradiction,

the stories of some miraculous cures effected by Swedenborg’s

father—stories which do not differ from hundreds of other cures by

other “fanatics” as he calls them—magicians, and natural healers, and,

without attempting to explain their facts, stooping to laugh at the

intensity of their faith, without asking himself whether the secret of

that healing potency were not in the control given by that faith over

occult forces—we grieve that there should be so much learning and so

little philosophy, in our time.

Upon our word, we cannot see that the modern chemist is any less a

magician than the ancient theurgist or Hermetic philosopher, except in

this: that the latter, recognizing the duality of nature, had twice as

wide a field for experimental research as the chemist. The ancients

animated statues, and the Hermetists called into being, out of the

elements, the shapes of salamanders, gnomes, undines, and sylphs, which

they did not pretend to create, but simply to make visible by holding

open the door of nature, so that, under favoring conditions, they might

step into view. The chemist brings into contact two elements contained

in the atmosphere, and by developing a latent force of affinity,

creates a new body—water. In the spheroidal and diaphanous pearls which

are born of this union of gases, come the germs of organic life, and

in their molecular interstices lurk heat, electricity, and light, just

as they do in the human body. Whence comes this life into the drop

of water just born of the union of two gases? And what is the water

itself? Have the oxygen and hydrogen undergone some transformation

which obliterates their qualities simultaneously with the obliteration

of their form? Here is the answer of modern science: “Whether the

oxygen and hydrogen exist as such, in the water, or whether they

are produced by some unknown and unconceived transformation of its

substance, is a question about which we may speculate, but in regard to

which we have no knowledge.”[703] Knowing nothing about so simple a {465}

matter as the molecular constitution of water, or the deeper problem of

the appearance of life within it, would it not be well for Mr. Maudsley

to exemplify his own principle, and “maintain a _calm acquiescence in

ignorance until light comes_?”[704]

The claims of the friends of esoteric science, that Paracelsus

produced, chemically, _homunculi_ from certain combinations as yet

unknown to exact science, are, as a matter of course, relegated to the

storehouse of exploded humbugs. But why should they? If the _homunculi_

were not made by Paracelsus they were developed by other adepts, and

that not a thousand years ago. They were produced, in fact, upon

exactly the same principle as that by which the chemist and physicist

calls to life his _animalcula_. A few years ago, an English gentleman,

Andrew Crosse, of Somersetshire, produced _acari_ in the following

manner: “Black flint burned to redness and reduced to powder was mixed

with carbonate of potash, and exposed to a strong heat for fifteen

minutes; and the mixture was poured into a blacklead crucible in an air

furnace. It was reduced to powder while warm, mixed with boiling water;

kept boiling for some minutes, and then hydrochloric acid was added to

supersaturation. After being exposed to voltaic action for twenty-six

days, a perfect insect of the _acari_ tribe made its appearance, and

in the course of a few weeks about a hundred more. The experiment was

repeated with other chemical fluids with like results. A Mr. Weeks also

produced the _acari_ in ferrocyanide of potassium.

This discovery produced a great excitement. Mr. Crosse was now accused

of impiety and aiming at creation. He replied, denying the implication

and saying he considered ”_to create was to form a something out of a

nothing_.”[705]

Another gentleman, considered by several persons as a man of great

science, has told us repeatedly that he was on the eve of proving that

even unfructified eggs could be hatched by having a negative electric

current caused to pass through them.

The mandrakes (_dudim_ or love-fruit) found in the field by Reuben,

Jacob’s son, which excited the fancy of Rachel, was the kabalistic

_mandragora_, notwithstanding denial; and the verses which refer to it

belong to the _crudest_ passages, in their esoteric meaning, of the

whole work. The mandrake is a plant having the rudimentary shape of a

human creature; with a head, two arms, and two legs forming roots. The

superstition that when pulled out of the ground it cries with a human

voice, is not utterly baseless. It does produce a kind of squeaking {466}

sound, on account of the resinous substance of its root, which it is

rather difficult to extract; and it has more than one hidden property

in it perfectly unknown to the botanist.

The reader who would obtain a clear idea of the commutation of forces

and the resemblance between the life-principles of plants, animals,

and human beings, may profitably consult a paper on the correlation

of nervous and mental forces by Professor Alexander Bain, of the

University of Aberdeen. This mandragora seems to occupy upon earth the

point where the vegetable and animal kingdoms touch, as the zoöphites

and polypi do in the sea; the boundary being in each case so indistinct

as to make it almost imperceptible where the one ceases and the other

begins. It may seem improbable that there should be _homunculi_, but

will any naturalist, in view of the recent expansion of science, dare

say it is impossible? “Who,” says Bain, “is to limit the possibilities

of existence?”

The unexplained mysteries of nature are many and of those presumably

explained hardly one may be said to have become absolutely

intelligible. There is not a plant or mineral which has disclosed the

last of its properties to the scientists. What do the naturalists know

of the intimate nature of the vegetable and mineral kingdoms? How can

they feel confident that for every one of the discovered properties

there may not be many powers concealed in the _inner_ nature of the

plant or stone? And that they are only waiting to be brought in

relation with some other plant, mineral, or force of nature to manifest

themselves in what is termed a “supernatural manner.” Wherever Pliny,

the naturalist, Ælian, and even Diodorus, who sought with such a

laudable perseverance to extricate historical truth from its medley of

exaggerations and fables, have attributed to some plant or mineral an

occult property unknown to our modern botanists and physicists, their

assertions have been laid aside without further ceremony as absurd, and

no more referred to.

It has been the speculation of men of science from time immemorial

what this vital force or life-principle is. To our mind the “secret

doctrine” alone is able to furnish the clew. Exact science recognizes

only five powers in nature—one _molar_, and four _molecular_;

kabalists, seven; and in these two additional ones is enwrapped

the whole mystery of life. One of these is immortal spirit, whose

reflection is connected by invisible links even with inorganic

matter; the other, we leave to every one to discover for himself.

Says Professor Joseph Le Conte: “What is the nature of the difference

between the living organism and the dead organism? We can detect

_none_, physical or chemical. All the physical and chemical forces

withdrawn from the common fund of nature, and embodied in the living {467}

organism, seem to be still embodied in the dead, until little by

little it is returned by decomposition. Yet the difference is immense,

is inconceivably great. What is the nature of this difference expressed

in the formula of material science? What is that that is gone, and

whither is it gone? There is something here that science cannot yet

understand. Yet it is just this loss which takes place in death, and

before decomposition, which is in the highest sense vital force!”[706]

Difficult, nay impossible, as it seems to science to find out the

invisible, universal motor of all—_Life_, to explain its nature, or

even to suggest a reasonable hypothesis for the same, the mystery

is but half a mystery, not merely for the great adepts and seers,

but even for true and firm believers in a spiritual world. To the

simple believer, unblessed with a personal organism, the delicate,

nervous sensitiveness of which would enable him—as it enables a

seer—to perceive the visible universe reflected as in a clear glass

in the Invisible one, and, as it were, objectively, there remains

divine _faith_. The latter is firmly rooted in his inner senses; in

his unerring intuition, with which cold reason has naught to do, he

_feels_ it cannot play him false. Let human-born, erroneous dogmas,

and theological sophistry contradict each other; let one crowd off the

other, and the subtile casuistry of one creed fell to the ground the

crafty reasoning of another one; truth remains one, and there is not a

religion, whether Christian or heathen, that is not firmly built upon

the rock of ages—God and immortal spirit.

Every animal is more or less endowed with the faculty of perceiving,

if not spirits, at least something which remains for the time being

invisible to common men, and can only be discerned by a clairvoyant. We

have made hundreds of experiments with cats, dogs, monkeys of various

kinds, and, once, with a tame tiger. A round black mirror, known as the

“magic crystal,” was strongly mesmerized by a native Hindu gentleman,

formerly an inhabitant of Dindigul, and now residing in a more secluded

spot, among the mountains known as the Western Ghauts. He had tamed

a young cub, brought to him from the Malabar coast, in which part

of India the tigers are proverbially ferocious; and it is with this

interesting animal that we made our experiments.

Like the ancient Marsi and Psylli, the renowned serpent-charmers, this

gentleman claimed to be possessed of the mysterious power of taming any

kind of animal. The tiger was reduced to a chronic _mental numbness_,

so to say; he had become as inoffensive and harmless as a dog. Children

could tease and pull him by the ears, and he would only shake himself

and howl like a dog. But whenever forced to look into the “magic {468}

mirror,” the poor animal was instantly excited to a sort of frenzy.

His eyes became full of a _human_ terror; howling in despair, unable

to turn away from the mirror to which his gaze seemed riveted as by

a magnetic spell, he would writhe and tremble till he convulsed with

fear at some vision which to us remained unknown. He would then lie

down, feebly groaning but still gazing in the glass. When it was taken

away from him, the animal would lie panting and seemingly prostrated

for about two hours. What did he see? What spirit-picture from his own

invisible, _animal_-world, could produce such a terrific effect on the

wild and naturally ferocious and daring beast? Who can tell? Perhaps

_he_ who produced the scene.

The same effect on animals was observed during spiritual _seances_

with some holy mendicants; the same when a Syrian, half-heathen and

half-Christian, from Kunankulam (Cochin State), a reputed sorcerer, who

was invited to join us for the sake of experimenting.

We were nine persons in all—seven men and two women, one of the

latter a native. Besides us, there were in the room, the young tiger,

intensely occupied on a bone; a _wânderoo_, or lion-monkey, which,

with its black coat and snow-white goatee and whiskers, and cunning,

sparkling eyes, looked the personification of mischief; and a beautiful

golden oriole, quietly cleaning its radiant-colored tail on a perch,

placed near a large window of the veranda. In India, “spiritual”

seances are not held in the dark, as in America; and no conditions,

but perfect silence and harmony, are required. It was in the full

glare of daylight streaming through the opened doors and windows, with

a far-away buzz of life from the neighboring forests, and jungles

sending us the echo of myriads of insects, birds, and animals. We sat

in the midst of a garden in which the house was built, and instead of

breathing the stifling atmosphere of a seance-room, we were amid the

fire-colored clusters of the erythrina—the coral tree—inhaling the

fragrant aromas of trees and shrubs, and the flowers of the bignonia,

whose white blossoms trembled in the soft breeze. In short, we were

surrounded with light, harmony, and perfumes. Large nosegays of flowers

and shrubs, sacred to the native gods, were gathered for the purpose,

and brought into the rooms. We had the sweet basil, the Vishnu-flower,

without which no religious ceremony in Bengal will ever take place; and

the branches of the _Ficus religiosa_, the tree dedicated to the same

bright deity, intermingling their leaves with the rosy blossoms of the

sacred lotos and the Indian tuberose, profusely ornamented the walls.

While the “blessed one” represented by a very dirty, but, nevertheless,

really holy fakir—remained plunged in self-contemplation, and some

spiritual wonders were taking place under the direction of his will, {469}

the monkey and the bird exhibited but few signs of restlessness. The

tiger alone visibly trembled at intervals, and stared around the

room, as if his phosphorically-shining green orbs were following some

invisible presence as it floated up and down. That which was as yet

unperceived by human eyes, must have therefore been _objective_ to him.

As to the wânderoo, all its liveliness had fled; it seemed drowsy,

and sat crouching and motionless. The bird gave few, if any, signs of

uneasiness. There was a sound as of gently-flapping wings in the air;

the flowers went travelling about the room, displaced by invisible

hands; and, as a glorious azure-tinted flower fell on the folded paws

of the monkey, it gave a nervous start, and sought refuge under its

master’s white robe. These displays lasted for an hour, and it would be

too long to relate all of them; the most curious of all, being the one

which closed that season of wonders. Somebody complaining of the heat,

we had a shower of delicately-perfumed dew. The drops fell fast and

large, and conveyed a feeling of inexpressible refreshment, drying the

instant after touching our persons.

When the fakir had brought his exhibition of _white_ magic to a close,

the “sorcerer,” or conjurer, as they are called, prepared to display

his power. We were treated to a succession of the wonders that the

accounts of travellers have made familiar to the public; showing,

among other things, the fact that animals naturally possess the

clairvoyant faculty, and even, it would seem, the ability to discern

between the good and the bad spirits. All of the sorcerer’s feats were

preceded by fumigations. He burned branches of resinous trees and

shrubs, which sent up volumes of smoke. Although there was nothing

about this calculated to affright an animal using only his natural

eyes, the tiger, monkey, and bird exhibited an indescribable terror.

We suggested that the animals might be frightened at the blazing

brands, the familiar custom of burning fires round the camp to keep

off wild beasts, recurring to our mind. To leave no doubt upon this

point, the Syrian approached the crouching tiger with a branch of the

Bael-tree[707] (sacred to Siva), and waved it several times over his

head, muttering, meanwhile, his incantations. The brute instantly

displayed a panic of terror beyond description. His eyes started

from their sockets like blazing fire-balls; he foamed at the mouth;

he flung himself upon the floor, as if seeking some hole in which to

hide himself; he uttered scream after scream, that awoke a hundred

responsive echoes from the jungle and the woods. Finally, taking a

last look at the spot from which his eyes had never wandered, he made

a desperate plunge, which snapped his chain, and dashed through the {470}

window of the veranda, carrying a piece of the frame-work with him. The

monkey had fled long before, and the bird fell from the perch as though

paralyzed.

We did not ask either the fakir or sorcerer for an explanation of

the method by which their respective phenomena were effected. If

we had, unquestionably they would have replied as did a fakir to a

French traveller, who tells his story in a recent number of a New York

newspaper, called the _Franco-Americain_, as follows:

“Many of these Hindu jugglers who live in the silence of the pagodas

perform feats far surpassing the prestidigitations of Robert Houdin,

and there are many others who produce the most curious phenomena in

magnetism and catalepsy upon the first objects that come across their

way, that I have often wondered whether the Brahmans, with their occult

sciences, have not made great discoveries in the questions which have

recently been agitated in Europe.

“On one occasion, while I and others were in a café with Sir Maswell,

he ordered his dobochy to introduce the charmer. In a few moments

a lean Hindu, almost naked, with an ascetic face and bronzed color

entered. Around his neck, arms, thighs, and body were coiled serpents

of different sizes. After saluting us, he said, ‘God be with you, I am

Chibh-Chondor, son of Chibh-Gontnalh-Mava.’

“‘We desire to see what you can do,’ said our host.

“‘I obey the orders of Siva, who has sent me here,’ replied the fakir,

squatting down on one of the marble slabs.

“The serpents raised their heads and hissed, but without showing any

anger. Then taking a small pipe, attached to a wick in his hair,

he produced scarcely audible sounds, imitating the _tailapaca_, a

bird that feeds upon bruised cocoanuts. Here the serpents uncoiled

themselves, and one after another glided to the floor. As soon as

they touched the ground they raised about one-third of their bodies,

and began to keep time to their master’s music. Suddenly the fakir

dropped his instrument and made several passes with his hands over the

serpents, of whom there were about ten, all of the most deadly species

of Indian cobra. His eye assumed a strange expression. We all felt an

undefinable uneasiness, and sought to turn away our gaze from him. At

this moment a small shocra[708] (monkey) whose business was to hand

fire in a small brasier for lighting cigars, yielded to his influence,

lay down, and fell asleep. Five minutes passed thus, and we felt that

if the manipulations were to continue a few seconds more we should all

fall asleep. Chondor then rose, and making two more passes over the

shocra, said to it: ‘Give the commander some fire.’ The young monkey

rose, and without tottering, came and offered fire to its master. {471}

It was pinched, pulled about, till there was no doubt of its being

actually asleep. Nor would it move from Sir Maswell’s side till ordered

to do so by the fakir.

“We then examined the cobras. Paralyzed by magnetic influence, they lay

at full length on the ground. On taking them up we found them stiff

as sticks. They were in a state of complete catalepsy. The fakir then

awakened them, on which they returned and again coiled themselves round

his body. We inquired whether he could make us feel his influence. He

made a few passes over our legs, and instantly we lost the use of these

limbs; we could not leave our seats. He released us as easily as he had

paralyzed us.

“Chibh-Chondor closed his seance by experimenting upon inanimate

objects. By mere passes with his hands in the direction of the

object to be acted upon, and without leaving his seat, he paled and

extinguished lights in the furthest parts of the room, moved the

furniture, including the divans upon which we sat, opened and closed

doors. Catching sight of a Hindu who was drawing water from a well in

the garden, he made a pass in his direction, and the rope suddenly

stopped in its descent, resisting all the efforts of the astonished

gardener. With another pass the rope again descended.

“I asked Chibh-Chondor: ‘Do you employ the same means in acting upon

inanimate objects that you do upon living creatures?’

“He replied, ‘I have only one means.’

“‘What is it?’

“‘The will. Man, who is the end of all intellectual and material

forces, must dominate over all. The Brahmans know nothing besides

this.’”

“Sanang Setzen,” says Colonel Yule,[709] “enumerates a variety of the

wonderful acts which could be performed through the _Dharani_ (mystic

Hindu charms). Such were sticking a peg into solid rock; restoring the

dead to life; turning a dead body into gold; penetrating everywhere _as

air does_ (in astral form); flying; catching wild beasts with the hand;

reading thoughts; making water flow backward; eating tiles; sitting in

the air with the legs doubled under, etc.” Old legends ascribe to Simon

Magus precisely the same powers. “He made statues to walk; leaped into

the fire without being burned; flew in the air; made bread of stones;

changed his shape; assumed two faces at once; converted himself into a

pillar; caused closed doors to fly open spontaneously; made the vessels

in a house move of themselves, etc.” The Jesuit Delrio laments that {472}

credulous princes, otherwise of pious repute, should have allowed

_diabolical_ tricks to be played before them, “as for example, things

of iron, and silver goblets, or other heavy articles, to be moved by

bounds, from one end of the table to the other, _without the use of a

magnet_, or of any attachment.”[710] We believe WILL-POWER the most

powerful of magnets. The existence of such magical power in certain

persons _is proved_, but the existence of the Devil is a fiction, which

no theology is able to demonstrate.

“There are certain men whom the Tartars honor above all in the world,”

says Friar Ricold, “viz., the _Baxitæ_, who are a kind of idol-priests.

These are men from India, persons of deep wisdom, _well-conducted and

of the gravest morals_. They are usually with magic arts ... they

exhibit many illusions, and predict future events. For instance, one of

eminence among them was said to fly; but the truth, however, was as it

proved, that he did not fly, but did walk close to the surface of the

ground without touching it; _and would seem to sit down without having

any substance to support him_.[711] This last performance was witnessed

by Ibn Batuta, at Delhi,” adds Colonel Yule, who quotes the friar

in the _Book of Ser Marco Polo_, “in the presence of Sultan Mahomet

Tughlak; and it was professedly exhibited by a Brahman at Madras in

the present century, a descendant doubtless of those Brahmans whom

Apollonius saw walking two cubits from the ground. It is also described

by the worthy Francis Valentyn, as a performance known and practiced in

his own day in India. It is related, he says, that “a man will first

go and sit on three sticks put together so as to form a tripod; after

which, first one stick, then a second, then a third shall be removed

from under him, and the man shall not fall but shall still remain

sitting in the air! Yet I have spoken with two friends who had seen

this at one and the same time; and one of them, I may add, mistrusting

his own eyes, had taken the trouble to feel about with a long stick

if there were nothing on which the body rested; yet, as the gentleman

told me, he could neither feel nor see any such thing. We have stated

elsewhere that the same thing was accomplished last year, before the

Prince of Wales and his suite.

Such feats as the above are nothing in comparison to what is done by

professed jugglers; “feats,” remarks the above-quoted author, “which

might be regarded as simply inventions if told by one author only, but

which seem to deserve _prominent notice_ from being recounted by a

series of authors, certainly independent of one another, and writing

at long intervals of time and place. Our first witness is Ibn Batuta, {473}

and it will be necessary to quote him as well as the others in full,

in order to show how closely their evidence tallies. The Arab traveller

was present at a great entertainment at the court of the Viceroy of

Khansa. “That same night a juggler, who was one of the Khan’s slaves,

made his appearance, and the Amir said to him, ‘Come and show us some

of your marvels.’ Upon this he took a wooden ball, with several holes

in it, through which long thongs were passed, and laying hold of one of

these, slung it into the air. It went so high that we lost sight of it

altogether.... (We were in the middle of the palace-court.) There now

remained only a little of the end of a thong in the conjurer’s hand,

and he desired one of the boys who assisted him to lay hold of it and

mount. He did so, climbing by the thong, and we lost sight of him also!

The conjurer then called to him three times, but, getting no answer,

he snatched up a knife as if in a great rage, laid hold of the thong,

and disappeared also! By and bye, he threw down one of the boy’s hands,

then a foot, then the other hand, and then the other foot, then the

trunk, and last of all the head! Then he came down himself, puffing and

panting, and with his clothes all bloody kissed the ground before the

Amir, and said something to him in Chinese. The Amir gave some order in

reply, and our friend then took the lad’s limbs, laid them together in

their places, and gave a kick, when, presto! there was the boy, who got

up and stood before us! All this astonished me beyond measure, and I

had an attack of palpitation like that which overcame me once before in

the presence of the Sultan of India, when he showed me something of the

same kind. They gave me a cordial, however, which cured the attack. The

Kaji Afkharuddin was next to me, and quoth he, ‘Wallah! ‘tis my opinion

there has been neither going up nor coming down, neither marring, nor

mending! ’Tis all _hocus-pocus_!’

And who doubts but that it is a “hocus-pocus,” an illusion, or _Maya_,

as the Hindus express it? But when such an illusion can be forced on,

say, ten thousand people at the same time, as we have seen it performed

during a public festival, surely the means by which such an astounding

hallucination can be produced merits the attention of science! When

by such _magic_ a man who stands before you, in a room, the doors of

which you have closed and of which the keys are in your hand, suddenly

disappears, vanishes like a flash of light, and you see him _nowhere_

but hear his voice from different parts of the room addressing you and

laughing at your perplexity, surely such an art is not unworthy either

of Mr. Huxley or Dr. Carpenter. Is it not quite as well worth spending

time over, as the lesser mystery—why barnyard cocks crow at midnight?

What Ibn Batuta, the Moor, saw in China about the year 1348, Colonel

Yule shows Edward Melton, “an Anglo-Dutch traveller,” witnessing in {474}

Batavia about the year 1670: “One of the same gang” (of conjurers),

says Melton,[712] “took a small ball of cord, and grasping one end of

the cord in his hand slung the other up into the air with such force

that its extremity was beyond reach of our sight. He then climbed up

the cord with indescribable swiftness.... I stood full of astonishment,

not conceiving where he had disappeared; when lo! a leg came tumbling

down out of the air. A moment later a hand came down, etc.... In short,

all the members of the body came successively tumbling from the air and

were cast together by the attendant into the basket. The last fragment

of all was the head, and no sooner had that touched the ground than he

who had snatched up all the limbs and put them in the basket, turned

them all out again topsy turvy. Then straightway we saw _with these

eyes all those limbs creep together_ again, and, in short, form a whole

man, who at once could stand and go just as before without showing the

least damage!... Never in my life was I so astonished ... and I doubted

now no longer that these misguided men did it by the help of the Devil.”

In the memoirs of the Emperor Jahangire, the performances of seven

jugglers from Bengal, who exhibited before him, are thus described:

“_Ninth._ They produced a man whom they divided limb from limb,

actually severing his head from the body. They scattered these

mutilated members along the ground, and in this state they lay some

time. They then extended a sheet over the spot, and one of the men

putting himself under the sheet, in a few minutes came from below,

followed by the individual supposed to have been cut into joints,

in perfect health and condition.... _Twenty-third._ They produced a

chain of fifty cubits in length, and in my presence threw one end of

it toward the sky, _where it remained as if fastened to something

in the air_. A dog was then brought forward and being placed at the

lower end of the chain, immediately ran up, and reaching the other

end, _immediately disappeared in the air_. In the same manner a hog, a

panther, a lion, and a tiger were successively sent up the chain, and

all equally disappeared at the upper end of the chain. At last they

took down the chain, and put it into the bag, no one ever discovering

in what way the different animals were made to vanish into the air in

the mysterious manner above described.”[713]

We have in our possession a picture painted from such a Persian

conjurer, with a man, or rather the various limbs of what was a minute

before a man, scattered before him. We have seen such conjurers, and

witnessed such performances more than once and in various places.

Bearing ever in mind that we repudiate the idea of a miracle and {475}

returning once more to phenomena more serious, we would now ask what

logical objection can be urged against the claim that the reänimation

of the dead was accomplished by many thaumaturgists? The fakir

described in the _Franco-Americain_, might have gone far enough to say

that this will-power of man is so tremendously potential that it can

reänimate a body apparently dead, by drawing back the flitting soul

that has not yet quite ruptured the thread that through life had bound

the two together. Dozens of such fakirs have allowed themselves to be

buried alive before thousands of witnesses, and weeks afterward have

been resuscitated. And if fakirs have the secret of this artificial

process, identical with, or analogous to, hibernation, why not allow

that their ancestors, the Gymnosophists, and Apollonius of Tyana, who

had studied with the latter in India, and Jesus, and other prophets and

seers, who all knew more about the mysteries of life and death than

any of our modern men of science, might have resuscitated dead men

and women? And being quite familiar with that power—that mysterious

_something_ “that science cannot yet understand,” as Professor Le Conte

confesses—knowing, moreover, “whence it came and whither it was going,”

Elisha, Jesus, Paul, and Apollonius, enthusiastic ascetics and learned

initiates, might have recalled to life with ease any man who “was not

dead but sleeping,” and that without any miracle.

If the molecules of the cadaver are imbued with the physical and

chemical forces of the living organism,[714] what is to prevent them

from being set again in motion, provided we know the nature of the

vital force, and who to command it? The materialist can certainly

offer no objection, for with him it is no question of reïnfusing a

soul. For him the soul has no existence, and the human body may be

regarded simply as a vital engine—a locomotive which will start upon

the application of heat and force, and stop when they are withdrawn. To

the theologian the case offers greater difficulties, for, in his view,

death cuts asunder the tie which binds soul and body, and the one can

no more be returned into the other without miracle than the born infant

can be compelled to resume its fœtal life after parturition and the

severing of the umbilicus. But the Hermetic philosopher stands between

these two irreconcilable antagonists, _master of the situation_. He

knows the nature of the soul—a form composed of nervous fluid and

atmospheric ether—and knows how the vital force can be made active

or passive at will, so long as there is no final destruction of some

necessary organ. The claims of Gaffarilus—which, by the bye, appeared

so preposterous in 1650[715]—were later corroborated by science. He {476}

maintained that every object existing in nature, provided it was not

artificial, when once burned still retained its form in the ashes, in

which it remained till raised again. Du Chesne, an eminent chemist,

assured himself of the fact. Kircher, Digby, and Vallemont have

demonstrated that the forms of plants could be resuscitated from their

ashes. At a meeting of naturalists in 1834, at Stuttgart, a receipt for

producing such experiments was found in a work of Oetinger.[716] Ashes

of burned plants contained in vials, when heated, exhibited again their

various forms. “A small obscure cloud gradually rose in the vial, took

a defined form, and presented to the eye the flower or plant the ashes

consisted of.” “The earthly husk,” wrote Oetinger, “remains in the

retort, while the volatile essence ascends, _like a spirit_, perfect in

form, but void of substance.”[717]

And, if the astral form of even a plant when its body is dead still

lingers in the ashes, will skeptics persist in saying that the soul of

_man_, the _inner_ ego, is after the death of the grosser form at once

dissolved, and is no more? “At death,” says the philosopher, “the one

body exudes from the other, by osmose and through the brain; it is held

near its old garment by a double attraction, physical and spiritual,

until the latter decomposes; and if the proper conditions are given

the soul can reïnhabit it and resume the suspended life. It does it

in sleep; it does it more thoroughly in trance; most surprisingly at

the command and with the assistance of the Hermetic adept. Iamblichus

declared that a person endowed with such resuscitating powers is ‘full

of God.’ All the subordinate spirits of the upper spheres are at his

command, for he is no longer a mortal, but himself a god. In his

_Epistle to the Corinthians_, Paul remarks that ‘the spirits of the

prophets _are subject to the prophets_.’”

Some persons have the natural and some the acquired power of

withdrawing the _inner_ from the _outer_ body, at will, and causing it

to perform long journeys, and be seen by those whom it visits. Numerous

are the instances recorded by unimpeachable witnesses of the “doubles”

of persons having been seen and conversed with, hundreds of miles from

the places where the persons themselves were known to be. Hermotimus,

if we may credit Pliny and Plutarch,[718] could at will fall into a

trance and then his _second_ soul proceeded to any distant place he

chose.

The Abbé Fretheim, the famous author of _Steganographie_, who lived in

the seventeenth century, could converse with his friends by the mere

power of his will. “I can make my thoughts known to the initiated,” {477}

he wrote, “at a distance of many hundred miles, without word, writing,

or cipher, by any messenger. The latter cannot betray me, for he

knows nothing. If needs be, I can dispense with the messenger. If any

correspondent should be buried in the deepest dungeon, I could still

convey to him my thoughts as clearly and as frequently as I chose, and

this quite simply, without superstition, without the aid of spirits.”

Cordanus could also send his spirit, or any messages he chose. When

he did so, he felt “as if a door was opened, and I myself immediately

passed through it, leaving the body behind me.”[719] The case of a high

German official, a counsellor Wesermann, was mentioned in a scientific

paper.[720] He claimed to be able to cause any friend or acquaintance,

at any distance, to dream of every subject he chose, or see any person

he liked. His claims were proved good, and testified to on several

occasions by skeptics and learned professional persons. He could also

cause his double to appear wherever he liked; and be seen by several

persons at one time. By whispering in their ears a sentence prepared

and agreed upon beforehand by unbelievers, and for the purpose, his

power to project the double was demonstrated beyond any cavil.

According to Napier, Osborne, Major Lawes, Quenouillet, Nikiforovitch,

and many other modern witnesses, fakirs are now proved to be able,

by a long course of diet, preparation, and repose, to bring their

bodies into a condition which enables them to be buried six feet under

ground for an indefinite period. Sir Claude Wade was present at the

court of Rundjit Singh, when the fakir, mentioned by the Honorable

Captain Osborne, was buried alive for six weeks, in a box placed in

a cell three feet below the floor of the room.[721] To prevent the

chance of deception, a guard comprising two companies of soldiers had

been detailed, and four sentries “were furnished and relieved every

two hours, night and day, to guard the building from intrusion.... On

opening it,” says Sir Claude, “we saw a figure enclosed in a bag of

white linen fastened by a string over the head ... the servant then

began pouring warm water over the figure ... the legs and arms of the

body were shrivelled and stiff, the face, full, the head reclining

on the shoulder like that of a corpse. I then called to the medical

gentleman who was attending me, to come down and inspect the body,

which he did, but could discover no pulsation in the heart, the

temples, or the arm. There was, however, _a heat about the region of

the brain_, which no other part of the body exhibited.”

Regretting that the limits of our space forbid the quotation of the {478}

details of this interesting story, we will only add, that the process

of resuscitation included bathing with hot water, friction, the removal

of wax and cotton pledgets from the nostrils and ears, the rubbing of

the eyelids with ghee or clarified butter, and, what will appear most

curious to many, the application of a hot wheaten cake, about an inch

thick “to the top of the head.” After the cake had been applied for

the third time, the body was violently convulsed, the nostrils became

inflated, the respiration ensued, and the limbs assumed a natural

fulness; but the pulsation was still faintly perceptible.“ The tongue

was then anointed with ghee; the eyeballs became dilated and recovered

their natural color, and the fakir recognized those present and

spoke.” It should be noticed that not only had the nostrils and ears

been plugged, but the tongue had been thrust back so as to close the

gullet, thus effectually stopping the orifices against the admission

of atmospheric air. While in India, a fakir told us that this was done

not only to prevent the action of the air upon the organic tissues,

but also to guard against the deposit of the germs of decay, which in

case of suspended animation would cause decomposition exactly as they

do in any other meat exposed to air. There are also localities in which

a fakir would refuse to be buried; such as the many spots in Southern

India infested with the white ants, which annoying termites are

considered among the most dangerous enemies of man and his property.

They are so voracious as to devour everything they find except perhaps

metals. As to wood, there is no kind through which they would not

burrow; and even bricks and mortar offer but little impediment to their

formidable armies. They will patiently work through mortar, destroying

it particle by particle; and a fakir, however holy himself, and strong

his temporary coffin, would not risk finding his body devoured when it

was time for his resuscitation.

Then, here is a case, only one of many, substantiated by the testimony

of two English noblemen—one of them an army officer—and a Hindu Prince,

who was as great a skeptic as themselves. It places science in this

embarrassing dilemma: it must either give the lie to many unimpeachable

witnesses, or admit that if one fakir can resuscitate after six

weeks, any other fakir can also; and if a fakir, why not a Lazarus, a

Shunamite boy, or the daughter of Jairus?[722]

And now, perhaps, it may not be out of place to inquire what assurance {479}

can any physician have, beyond _external_ evidence, that the body

is really dead? The best authorities agree in saying that there are

none. Dr. Todd Thomson, of London,[723] says most positively that “the

immobility of the body, even its cadaverous aspect, the coldness of

surface, the absence of respiration and pulsation, and the sunken state

of the eye, are no unequivocal evidences that life is wholly extinct.”

Nothing but total decomposition is an irrefutable proof that _life_

has fled for ever and that the tabernacle is tenantless. Demokritus

asserted that there existed no _certain_ signs of real death.[724]

Pliny maintained the same.[725] Asclepiades, a learned physician and

one of the most distinguished men of his day, held that the assurance

was still more difficult in the cases of women than in those of men.

Todd Thomson, above quoted, gives several remarkable cases of such

a suspended animation. Among others he mentions a certain Francis

Neville, a Norman gentleman, who twice apparently died, and was

twice in the act of being buried. But, at the moment when the coffin

was being lowered in the grave, he spontaneously revived. In the

seventeenth century, Lady Russell, to all appearance died, and was

about to be buried, but as the bell was tolling for her funeral, she

sat up in her coffin and exclaimed, “It is time to go to church!”

Diemerbroese, mentions a peasant who gave no signs of life for three

days, but when placed in his coffin, near the grave, revived and lived

many years afterward. In 1836, a respectable citizen of Brussels

fell into a profound lethargy on a Sunday morning. On Monday, as his

attendants were preparing to screw the lid of the coffin, the supposed

corpse sat up, rubbed his eyes, and called for his coffee and a

newspaper.[726]

Such cases of apparent death are not very infrequently reported in

the newspaper press. As we write (April, 1877), we find in a London

letter to the New York _Times_, the following paragraph: “Miss Annie

Goodale, the actress, died three weeks ago. Up to yesterday she was

not buried. The corpse is warm and limp, and the features as soft and

mobile as when in life. Several physicians have examined her, and have

ordered that the body shall be watched night and day. The poor lady is

evidently in a trance, but whether she is destined to come to life it

is impossible to say.”

Science regards man as an aggregation of atoms temporarily united by {480}

a mysterious force called the life-principle. To the materialist, the

only difference between a living and a dead body is, that in the one

case, that force is active, in the other latent. When it is extinct or

entirely latent the molecules obey a superior attraction, which draws

them asunder and scatters them through space.