Art Magic

Some authoritative writers intimate that it was upon the foundation of true prophetic gifts, that the Priesthood was instituted, and when it was found that Spiritual gifts belonged to special individuals - not to an office or caste - artificial means were resorted to, to supply the deficiency of natural endowments. Nature has studied to find out occult means of including vision, trance, seership and prophecy. The Priests were carefully instructed in astrology, theurgic rites, and the occult virtues of drugs, minerals, plants, words and ceremonial observances, and hence arose the art of magic, an art practiced simply as a substitute for spiritual gifts.

Amongst the Hebrews, the Prophets, as a class, acted independently of the Priesthood. They were often persons outside of the consecrated tribe of Levites, to whom the Priestly office was limited, when they were not only excluded by their birth from temple service, but they frequently acted in opposition to the Priesthood, and included them in their bold and unsparing denunciations against the corruptions of the time. Nothing can be more aggressive than the diatribes of Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, against the abominations sanctioned by a corrupt and idolatrous Priesthood. Isaiah particularizes even the ceremonials of the Jewish faith, such as the observance of new moons, Sabbaths, fasts, feasts, times and seasons, as "abominations before the Lord," when they were practiced for impure of unholy purposes.

The contrast between the bigotry and conservatism of the Jewish Priesthood, and the bold, high-toned morality of the Hebrew Prophets, is one of the most remarkable specialties of the books of the Old Testament, and speaks in most significant language of the universal faith in good works inculcated by true Spiritism, and the dependence upon magical rites of mere ceremonial religions.

It will be observed that whilst several of the most renowned of the Greek Philosophers, such as Orpheus, Thales, Solon, Pythagoras, Appolonius, and others, studied in Egypt, or claimed to have obtained their occult knowledge in that land, their biographies prove, that they were naturally endowed with the true prophetic afflatus before they graduated in Egyptian Magic, and this is a comment upon the difference between natural and acquired gifts, which we desire our readers to bear in mind.

The Greeks must have fully recognized the superiority of natural over acquired gifts of the spirit, when they were so constant in selecting women to serve as the oracles between Gods and men. Women made famous the oracles of the Pythian Apollo, and the responses of Dodona. Women's special gifts, of inspiration, have transmitted the fame of the Sybils to all ages, and made their name synonymous with spiritual gifts. Even amongst the conservative Jews, whose contempt of women is one of the chief blots on their national credit, women were perforce admitted to certain prophetic offices in the temple, and several ladies of rank amongst the Romans and Egyptians, including the daughter of the famous Egyptian Monarch, Sesostris, were renowned for their prophetic endowments.

The elevation of woman to conditions of perfect equality with man, is now acknowledged to be the highest evidence of a true and rational civilization, but whether we are treating of ancient or modern conservatism, God in nature has proved through the unbroken lines of history, that spiritual gifts are innate, intuitional, and feminine in quality, and belong to those more rare and precious attributes of being, which particularly distinguish the female sex. If Soul essence is unique, and matter is shaped and determined chiefly by the energy and quantity of the Astral Spirit, it is to that realm of being that we must look, in order to analyze the specialty that constitutes natural prophetic endowments, or spiritual gifts, whether in the male or female sex.

At the very outset of our inquiry, we find two specialties of organism which more commonly belong to the male than the female, the study of which is important to a clear understanding of our subject. The first of these representative physiques, discloses an individual with a compact self-centered, well-knit frame, inclining to the nutritive in temperament, and the adipose in tissue. In manner these individuals are generally straightforward, somewhat authoritative, occasionally egotistic, and fond of display; kind-hearted, benevolent, and especially attracted to sick persons.

They generally have a clear eye, direct glance, and sometimes a piercing expression withal. With such peculiarities of temperament, the Astral fluid exists in excess, endowing the individual with good health, a vigorous frame, a moderately active mind, and a general tendency towards social life and material enjoyment.

These persons are almost always what is popularly termed "good magnetizers," and the excess of Astral fluid which develops itself in the above described idiosyncrasies, ordinarily induces the wish to use their gift, and impels them to magnetize sick people. It was from this class that the ancients selected their Therapeutic healers and the Priests who were employed in the magnetic healing rites of Temple service. The eye as the window of the Soul, and the hand as the prime conductor of the Astral fluid, are always well developed in these natural mesmerizers.

Where the first is full, clear, and luminous, and the second soft and warm, the astral fluid is invariably of a healthful and unifying character.

Where the eye is piercing, brilliant, or distinguished by the long Oriental shape of the almond, and the hand is damp and moist, or hard and dry, look to find a stronger mental than physical impression produced, but in all varieties of this type of man, the person may be esteemed as a good mesmerizer, and the more expansive the frontal region of the brain, the better will be the effects, and the more healthful the power produced.

As the magnet or loadstone only yields up the potency to the direction of skill, so these magnetic structures require the action of well-informed mind, and concentrated will, to render them serviceable; with these mental attributes to guide their powers and direct the projection of the Astral fluid, they may become admirable healers of the sick, or skillful "biologists" over sensitive subjects.

The second individuality to which we would introduce our reader, is a more concentrated and energetic type of the first, and one in whom the intellectual temperament prevails over the nutritive or social.

In the type of man now under consideration, a vast amount of the Astral fluid circulates, but it clusters chiefly about the crowning portions of the cerebrum, elevating the cranial apex in a remarkable degree. The cerebrum and nervous system absorb the surplus of the Astral fluid, rather than the fibrous and muscular tissues. Such persons exhibit many varieties of form and feature; but their specialty is a large and finely developed head. Persons of this type become fine psychologists, or in ancient phraseology, such are "Adepts, Master Spirits, or Priestly Hierophants." In both types described above, it is the abundance of the Astral spirit, infused by inheritance and planetary and solar influence during embryonic life, and at the period of birth, which determines their characteristics; and it is the distribution of this Astral fluid, in that one, throughout the whole system, and in the other, in certain regions of the brain, which constitutes the difference between the mere magnetic healer and the psychologists. Neither of these individuals may technically recognize the peculiarities with which they are endowed, but the one will always bring a powerful and soothing influence to the sick, and the other prove a controlling and masterful mind in whatever spheres of life he may be placed. If these persons understand their soul's capacities, they will know that, by mustering the excess of Astral fluid, permeating their systems, to the dominion of the will, they can induce a self-magnetized condition, in which the body sleeps, and the soul goes forth and traverses space, as in the phenomenon of somnambulism, natural clairvoyance, or in the exit of the spirit from the body when it is seen and termed the "Double," or "Wraith." They can induce these powers in others by magnetic and psychologic contact, and it only needs self-knowledge and the exertion of strong and concentrated will to call them into exercise.

There are no phenomena produced by disembodied spirits, which may not be affected by the still embodied human spirit, provided a correct knowledge of these powers is directed by a strong and powerful will. The conditions will be described in our sections on Art Magic, but the potency of the will can never be too strongly insisted upon in all Spiritualistic operations. In the physique above described as No. 1, the excess of the Astral fluid generally clusters around the epigastric and cardiac regions, rendering the person thus endowed highly powerful in physical magnetization and healing operations, but, as before hinted, the cerebral development is rarely proportionably marked, and the best of physical magnetizers are not the giants of intellect and psychological control.

The reverse of this position obtains in the organisms classed as No. 2. In them, the Astral fluid inheres more closely to the soul than the body; exalts the top of the cranium rather than the front; compels a predominance of the organs of command and ideality; projects its sphere of indomitable influence on all around, and unfolds the intellectual faculties into singular prominence, in whatever direction they exist, rendering the individual remarkable as a Statesman, General, Author, Priest, Physician, or, if devoted to the study, irresistible as an "Adept," Magician and controller of mundane and sub-mundane spirits. Such individuals are generally as eager as they are capable of penetrating into nature's profoundest depths.

We might rank the amiable and highly gifted Anton Mesmer as a type of the organism No. 1, and the noble sages of Greece, Apollonius and Pythagoras, as shining illustrations of the type described as No. 2.

Prophets, or Mediums, are persons in whom, from inherited causes, and Astral influences prevailing at birth, an immense amount of the Astral fluid exists, but who, by the peculiar conformation of the tissues which make up their physical structures, are too ready to part with their super abundant life principle. In powerful psychologists, the Astral fluid is concentrated, the tissues of the body firm and compact, and the efflux of magnetic power is due only to its superabundance. The medium with the same excess of magnetic force is totally lacking in the concentration and solidarity which distinguishes the other class. The one in physique as in character is wholly positive; the other purely negative. The one the operator, the other the subject. The physical structure of the two may present little or no external signs of difference to those who do not study physiological types, rather than surface varieties, but the arrangement of the molecules in the two organisms, are structurally dissimilar, and this dissimilarity exhibits itself thus:

The magnetizer imparts strength from the abundance of his strength. The medium exhales the life principle to depletion, and, in the loss sustained, insensibly draws upon the forces of others. The medium is emphatically a "Sensitive." Every nerve is laid bare, every pore is a conductor of the too rapidly ebbing life fluid. When the brain is small, and the generating power of this life fluid is weak (the brain being its source), the intellectual faculties are limited and dull; the mind, incapable of drawing from the brain, becomes inactive, and the nature is stolid and unimpassioned. it is from such types as these that the superficial remark has arisen, that media should be, or always are, "very passive," unintellectual persons. There, however, are only one type of the class. A great many person, highly charged with the Astral fluid, and losing it in such rapid streams as to constitute them good mediums, are in consequence exceedingly sensitive, restlessly nervous, and susceptible to every influence they come in contact with. The life principle flows off all too rapidly through their tissues, leaving them irritable, weak and despoiled.

As nature abhors a vacuum, these organisms necessarily attract the Astral spirits of all things and persons around them, hence others in their presence often experience a sensible diminution of strength, whilst the media themselves are frequently affected painfully or pleasurably by the mere approach of certain individuals, realizing also the special influences which attach to scenes, places, houses and garments, which would produce no effect upon less susceptible persons. It is this extreme susceptibility and the negative condition produced by the loss of Astral fluid, which renders such persons fine instruments for the control of spirits.

These beings, clothed with the same Astral element which forms the spiritual body of mortals, readily effect a rapport with the class of organisms we have described. This rapport, however, most generally transpires between the spirits who are in the nearest proximity to earth.

It must be remembered that the atmosphere is as full of spiritual life, as the water is of animalculae. The Astral fluid - the element in which spirits live, and of which their external bodies are composed, permeates this atmosphere, like oceans of light, hence spiritual life is to this planet, what the Soul is to the body, only that the strata of spiritual life nearest the earth are graduated from the spirits of those who are most in rapport with earth, to elementary beings, who in reality constitute no inconsiderable portion of the earth itself, hence it is, that mediumistic persons - susceptible to the influences of varied life that swarms around them - are often moved by nameless and incomprehensible monitions of danger, the presence of evil, or the tendency to actions from which their own better natures and judgment would revolt.

The chief points of difference between the ancient Prophet, the Mediaeval Witch, and the modern Medium, consist in the aims and influences which severally actuated them, and inspired the spirits that surrounded them. The prophetic men and women of old were intensely religious persons. They lived in devotional ages, too, when their exceptional gifts marked them out for a species of reverence which almost amounted to worship. Separated from their fellow men by the peculiar sanctity attached to the prophetic character, their religious aspirations, and the asceticism of their lives, attracted to them beings of a far higher order than those whom we now invoke in the communion with family spirits and kindred ties.

Most of the ancient Prophets, Seers, and Sybils, prepared for the communion with higher intelligences than earth, by methods to be hereafter described, hence their powers were more concentrated, and phenomenally greater than those of the work-a-day trading media of the present time.

As to the Spiritism of the mediaeval ages, unless it existed in the persons of learned mystics, who cultured it after the ancient fashion, or it fell as a mantle of inspiration on poets, painters, musicians, inventors, religious reformers, etc., it degenerated into ugly and often injurious obsession, by ignorant spirits, attracted to media of a character kindred with themselves. Thus the study of different phases of spiritual influx proves how much its representation is determined by the age, spirit of the time, and character of the communicating intelligence.

Europe and America are at present in the heyday flush of materialistic civilization.

Utilitarianism is the genius of the nineteenth century. If religion could be put to some practical use, or reduced to a scientific analysis, it would be as much the fashion now as it was five thousand years ago; but whatever comes in the shape of religious belief, even scientific discoveries concerning the occult side of nature, must conform to the materialistic and utilitarian spirit of the age, or the age will none of it. Such is the crucible of human opinion through which the Spiritism of this century has to pass, and hence mediumship is a trade, an amusement, or a curiosity; Spiritism, a marketable commodity, or a fashionable mode of beguiling an idle hour. As inspiration invariably descends from the same plane to which aspiration ascends, spirit answers spirit from correspondential realms of thought and intelligence.

As it is below, so it is above; in the skies as on the earth.

Having briefly depicted the general characteristics of those through whom spirits communicate, we shall proceed to classify the groups into which prophetic or mediumistic gifts resolve themselves.

Premising that each mediumistic person is so by inheritance, or the awakening of latent but still functional powers, and that we are not now treating of that magic which compensates by art for the lack of natural endowments, we shall render such definitions of our subject, as practical experience suggests.

The Trance state ranges from that of Ecstasy, in which visions of the highest and most transcendental nature are revealed, through all the various stages of Somnambulism, to that semi-conscious sleep-waking condition, in which the ego is not lost, but wherein the origin of the thought, whether from the subject's own mind, or the impression of another's is not clearly discerned.

Inspiration is the addition of higher mentality to that of the subject's own individuality. It does not necessitate any abnegation of self-consciousness; it only stimulates that consciousness to extraordinary exaltation.

In all these states the influence of spirits is more than likely to be the superinducing cause. That influence is exerted in precisely the same fashion as the simply human processes of electro-biology, and by operators, who have either practiced this method of control on earth or been endowed with the power by nature to do so. The spirit projects his Astral spirit in the fashion of the earthly magnetizer upon his mediumistic subject; by this fluid the system becomes charged and the magnetic sleep, semi-conscious trance, or the exaltation of inspiration is induced.

These graduated conditions represent the amount of passivity or mental activity of the subject - total unconsciousness usually falling upon a very receptive and passive mind, and inspiration stimulating rather than subduing the powers of an already highly unfolded intellect. When the system is sufficiently saturated with the spiritual magnetizer's Astral fluid, as to be subject to control, the operator, by strong will, infuses high thought into the subject's mind; but whatever the specialty of thought may be, it becomes shaped, tinctured and not unfrequently marred to a greater or less degree by the idiosyncrasies of the medium's habits of speech and methods of expression. There must always be an adaptation between the subject on earth and the operator of the spheres. A spirit of a totally foreign and unsympathetic nature to the medium could not obtain control, except in the case of obsession, and that transpires through the brutal and resistless power of a gross, strong, earth-bound spirit, acting upon a generally frail, susceptible and most probably sickly organism.

In the ordinary exercise of spirit control, the spirit acting as a good magnetizer, chooses a well-adapted subject, whose mind and physique are calculated to assimilate with his own, and thus presents his ideas through the aid of a borrowed vehicle of thought. This mode of influence corresponds in many respects to the vaticinations of the Sybils and Prophetesses of old, only that the utterance of the Spirits termed Gods, or Demons, commonly took place in bodies which had previously been prepared by fastings, ablutions and sometimes by the inhalations of vapors, which subdued the senses, stimulated them to "mantic frenzy," or prepared the system for the infusion of a superior consciousness to their own.

These modes of control by spirits, speaking through the lips of entranced or inspired media, are not limited in their effects to the exhibition of merely curious mental transformations. In ancient, as in modern times, these oracular utterances have been productive of a far wider range of good and revolutionary thought than is dreamed of by those who listen, go hence, and deem they have simply been interested for the moment, and will certainly forget the ideas they have heard.

The Soul never forgets. The over-laden brain of humanity retains the impression of every image presented to it. As each fresh succession of images photographs itself on the mind's tablets, the last seem to crowd out and efface the impress of the earlier ones. They vanish from sight truly, but they are still there, and there they remain forever. Unconsciously to their possessors, they enter into every phase of character. They linger like a subtle perfume in the sphere of unconscious cerebration, pervade the sentiments, enter into the mental structure, shape the motives, externalize themselves in words which linger in others' ears, in deeds which affect others' destinies, and silently interweave themselves into invisible but indestructible images, reflected upon the Astral light of the Universe. Could this most subtle, but most potential realm of being be thoroughly explored, all the thoughts, words, and deeds, that have ever moved the race would be found in ineffaceable pictures engraved upon the billows of Astral light that heave and swell through the oceans of infinity. Nothing is lost in nature, nothing blotted out in eternity, and future generations, living, moving and breathing in the Astral realms of life imprinted with the Soul images of vanished ages, inhale them, grow in them, re-combine them into the elements of their own characters, and thus live over again, in ever rolling, but ever ascending cycles of time, every sand-grain of ideality that has ever been launched into space. hence, too, the universality of ideas; the spontaneous affection of two kindred minds unknown to each other, and removed apart by long intervals of distance, and yet how often are such at the same moment of time inspired by the same thought, moved to execute the same work, and even construct the same, yet apparently original, piece of mechanism; write the same stanzas of poetry, or arrange the same strains of melody into duplicate forms! This is the source of thought epidemics, mental contagions and infectious opinions.

The gross atmosphere of earth traversed by the seas of Astral light cannot but become charged with the images they bear, and whenever two waves of this Astral fluid unite to form an idea, some receptive mind seizes upon it. The wave flows on, the idea strikes another, and yet another mind, until the force of one leading thought sweeps on its grand career of influence, from pole to poke, and traverses the mental girth of an age, although, perchance, none but the constructive genius of a few can assimilate and utilize it. Trance mediums of the New Dispensation - Prophets of the old! Nothing is lost in Nature. Fear not for the results of they labors! Whatever is false or worthless will fade and perish - the beautiful and true never die!

The next class of media who represent the power of spirits to communicate with earth, are those impressed with artistic and intellectual ideas. They are moved to draw strange patterns, groups of flowers, portraits of deceased persons, symbolical or emblematical pictures, to write messages, words of love, poems, often containing tokens of memory which identify the controlling power with some individual who once inhabited a mortal body. Music totally foreign to the medium's mind or capacity has been thus given; foreign languages spoken and written by those unacquainted with them; pantomimic representations have been made, depicting the peculiarities of some deceased friend; and thus every sense is used, and every faculty brought into play, to prove the presence and influence of a world of being rising up like immortal blossoms from the ashes of the vanished dead.

Spirits making use of the Astral light which permeates all space, sometimes impress upon it visionary pictures of future events; sometimes shadowy representations of their own forms, and always in such shape as will identify them with those who have been deemed dead, and laid away in the quiet grave.

Spirits are full of ingenious resource, highly constructive and far more widely informed upon the arcanum of nature than mortals, hence can produce a greater variety of effects, and in much shorter period of time than we can conceive of, hence their methods of representation strike us as abnormal and magical. They are simply due to magnetization of the medium's spirits by the invisible operator, and psychological impressions produced through will upon the medium's spiritual consciousness.

The third order of media who specially distinguish themselves in the modern spiritual movement are those through, whom strong, powerful, earthbound spirits can act upon material bodies, and cause them to become telegraphic signs of their presence.

The persons through whom these theurgic signals are made, for the most part absorb the Astral fluid which is their life, through the cerebellum, the epigastric nerves, and the great solar plexus. Though not necessarily deficient in cerebral development, they are rarely distinguished in this region, and, in some instances, the preponderance of nervous force in the ganglionic or sympathetic system is greatly in excess of the cerebro-spinal, thus stimulating the instinctive appetites, especially those which correspond to animal tendencies.

This is not invariably the case, but it has and does characterize much mediumship of this order. It is also a significant fact, and one which should commend itself in the attention alike of the physiologist and psychologist, that persons afflicted with scrofula and glandular enlargements, often seem to supply the pabulum which enables spirits to produce ponderous manifestations of physical power.

Frail, delicate women - person, too, whose natures are refined, innocent and pure, but whose glandular system has been attacked by the demon of Scrofula, have frequently been found susceptible of becoming the most remarkable instruments for physical demonstrations by spirits. In some instances mediums for this class of phenomena are persons in the enjoyment of rude health and vigorous constitutions. The author has witnessed manifestations of the most astounding character eliminated through the mediumship of rugged country girls and stout men, especially the natives of Ireland and Northern Germany; but a close and careful scrutiny of those remarkably endowed media, will often reveal a tendency to epilepsy, chorea and functional derangements of the pelvic apparatus, which proves that the cerebellum and the ganglionic system of nerves are unduly charged, and that the magnetism of spirits of a similar temperament to their own may exaggerate these constitutional tendencies into excess and disease. It is a fact, which we may try to mask, or the acknowledgment of which we may indignantly protest against, yet it is a fact nonetheless, that the existence of remarkable medium powers, argues a want of balance in the system; and whilst the theory of too rapid ebb of the life forces and their excess, and unequal distribution, renders physical and scientific causes for this structural inharmony, it also proves what is the character of the pabulum which spirits use to produce the magnetic, psychologic and physical effects which are rendered through these unevenly balanced organisms.

It has frequently been asked whether there is any philosophy to explain these aberrations of nature, to which we reply, assuredly there is. The Astral fluid becomes characterized by every material atom through which it passes. It is at once the cause and effect of all varieties in nature. Its abundance, and the energy of its action, is determined by the quantity and quality of the atoms through which it flows; but once incorporated in organic bodies as their attribute, its own quality becomes materially affected by the quality of the particles it vitalizes; and here it is proper to recur to the opinion of many illuminated Seers, namely that there are several layers, or strata, of these Astral currents, forming as a totality one spiritual body. Those nearest the Soul are the finest in quality and represent the spheres related to the Solar and Astral systems. Those layers on the outer surface of the spiritual body, most nearly inhering to the material atoms, form the life spheres, permeate the body, partake of its quality, deteriorate or improve with it, are gross, coarse or dense, as the body's habits or mind's tendencies characterize it; in a word, it is this portion of the Astral spirit, which streams forth from the medium in a flood of emanation, and hence becomes the exact gauge of the medium's physical and mental state. It is particles of this latter description which form the life principle of plants and minerals.

It is these fiery elements of universal life force, which are struck out in radiant sparks from the hard flinty rock, or crystalline iron. Violent action will drive forth the lambent flames of life from every solid body, and cause them to quiver between the strokes of every concussion. They stream forth in odic lights from shells, crystals, magnets, and all magnetic bodies. They reach out their fingers of latent fiery force, to gather up kindred particles around the loadstone. They stream up in pencilled rays of many colored glory, painting over the northern skies with gorgeous illuminations in the wonderful Aurora Borealis. They form the electric paths in which rolling worlds, suns and systems are held in innumerable lines of force. They flash in the wild fires of contending cloud armies. They discharge solemn peals of heavenly artillery in the roar of the battling tempest.

They shout their anthems of power in the heaving billows, and sob away the last echos of sound in the murmur of the half slumbering waves. These invisible, latent, all-pervading flames of life, these direct emanations from the Central Sun of all being, connect suns and planets, earths and satellites by the stupendous chains of force, and fill all space with oceans of invisible, but ever living fires. They fill all creation with life, but take on the protean forms of every atom through which their living currents are forever ebbing and flowing.

Then need we not marvel that the Astral fluid which flows through the refined particles of a pure and healthful human organism, might afford intellectual spirits an opportunity of impressing the brain with high inspirational ideas, yet fail to give off that superabundance of quantity or denseness of quality, which is requisite to produce manifestations of a ponderable character - on the other hand, remembering the almost infinite varieties of exhibition which the Astral fluid assumes in accordance with the variousness of the particles through which it flows, we need not feel surprised that a human body abundantly endowed with this same life fluid, so constituted as to eliminate it through every pore, but giving off a quality which is especially redolent of influences generated in the vital and nutritive system of nerves, should furnish that pabulum which enables spirits to construct forms, and produce manifestations of a purely physical character.

In this scheme of natural order, disease must impress itself upon every imponderable particle of the Astral sphere, and since the body laboring under disease is really being disintegrated, and parts too rapidly and freely with its life principle, so do sick persons give off in the most abundance, and of the most dense quality, the element which spirits can use for the production of strong physical manifestations.

The same philosophy with certain modifications, applies to the mediumship of little children.

Endowed with a superabundance of that vital force which is necessary for the purposes of growth, young children disprove of this excess in general by violent exercise, exercise which would exhaust more mature bodies, but which nature impresses them to undertake as a safety-valve, for the escape of the vital currents, with which their young fresh frames are charged to repletion. Unscrupulous spirits who perceive the powerful aromal essences which flow forth so freely from the young, take advantage of its existence, to produce manifestations of their presence, and thus, it so often happens, that children, like sick persons, become potent media for spirits. It should be added that the practice of permitting children thus to be exercised as mediums, should only be indulged in to a very limited extent, the excessive draught procured from their tender and susceptible frames, rendering them liable to lose health, strength, and perhaps life itself, under its action.

We do not now enlarge upon the good or evil results of this kind of rapport between spirits and mortals, we simply write of its modes, and the means of ready access which spirits find for its performance.

The physical force medium is often endowed with a great variety of gifts, because the Astral fluid, charging the whole body to excess, and flowering through every pore with a profuse expenditure of the life principle, constitutes all the organs mediums. The skin is charged, rendering it liable to be impressed with fleshy letters. The eye becomes a ready conductor to the spiritual eye beneath, imparting the faculty of clairvoyance. The entire of the spiritual senses find ready expression through a physique which is all mediumistic, and a complete battery for the action of controlling spirits. Let it be remembered that in all magnetic operations every particle of the life fluid represents the whole; thus a sensitive by coming in contact with a lock of hair, a handkerchief, or the smallest piece of fabric touched by another, can psychometrically discover the entire of that other's nature. This alone would prove (were there other facts wanting), that one particle of the subtle fluid of life represents the whole, and this can only be accounted for by acknowledging the truth of a curious hypothesis, presented to the world by a celebrated physiologist, who says:

"Through the perspiratory ducts, and all the other methods by which nature supplies to the organism an apparatus for the dual functions of absorption and evaporation, the human body exhales the imponderable portions of blood, bone, nervous and muscular tissue, even the effete exhalations of hair and nails which go to make up the totality of the structure.

"All those vaporized elements are in the atmosphere, carried by the gasses, exhaled from the lungs, and swept off from the photosphere of the human body, into the atmosphere that surrounds it. If we could arrive at any method of separating the organic from the inorganic particles that fill the air, and charge the atmosphere with living emanations, where human life abounds, we might crystallize them back again into human bodies, and hence the claim of the Spiritualists to have found in spiritual magnetism that crystallizing element by which they can re-clothe the spirit with a material body, gathered up from the atmosphere which surrounds a circle of investigators, is neither so wild or improbable after all."

It would be a fact in spiritual phenomena, even if it were "wild and improbable" in hypothesis; but to those who are acquainted with the nature of the Astral fluid - its identity with the universal element we call force - its existence in man as a spiritual body, in the spirit's organism as an external body, and in the atmosphere as force per se; it only needs an appreciation of the physiological idea above suggested, as to the character of our emanations, to understand why spirits, having at command a dense and powerful stream of the Astral fluid exhaled from peculiar organisms, can easily use that as a force for crystallizing the imponderable elements, which abound in the atmosphere, into a temporary physical covering for themselves.

The medium's very flesh, and all the fluids and solids of his physique, are given off by exhalations, and remain in the atmosphere. These exhalations from the physical medium are abundant in quantity, powerful and magnetic in quality, and so long as they can be extracted by the magnetism of attendant spirits, and sustained by the combined magnetisms of other human beings, their crystallization by the aid of spiritual chemistry, can be readily effected, and spirits can thus temporarily re-clothe themselves in atoms of actual flesh and blood. They pass sparks of electricity through these imponderable exhalations, just as chemists can crystallize gases into fluids, and fluids into solids, by the same process. By aid of strong will, and having all the elements held in solution in the atmosphere, spirits can even communicate objective solidity to the images in their minds, and thus present again the ponderable semblances of ornaments, clothes, and other physical fabrics; nay more, by imparting to these temporarily formed substances a sufficient amount of the Astral fluid to produce cohesion, they can be kept in being for a considerable time after the first formative process has been effected.

There is no witchcraft or sorcery in these transformations, although they may with propriety take rank as spiritual magic; the Spirit is the Man, the Soul the designer; the Astral body the force, the mover, the motion, the executant.

The material body is only a vehicle, enabling the Soul through the Astral body or spirit to come into contact with matter. In the above necessarily brief description of spiritual phenomena, we only touch on the results of communion effected between spirits and mortals, where the former find conditions spontaneously prepared by nature for their use. We shall conclude this section by reviewing the possibilities which exist in every human being for producing extra-mundane effects through the application of natural laws to spiritual forces.

The gifts of the spirit are spiritual sight - hearing, taste, smell and touch, wholly independent of the material avenues of sense. The power of projecting the Astral fluid from one individual to another, through magnetic manipulations, contact or will, and the power of impressing the will of one individual by the superior force of another. The soul also possesses the power of so concentrating its own astral spirit, as to temporarily subjugate the other senses, steep them in forgetfulness, and then withdraw from the body, wander forth at will, preserve the body from death by leaving a sufficient portion of the Astral fluid to maintain its integrity, and subsequently return to and resume its occupancy of the body. There are still other powers of the embodied human Soul of which we shall yet speak more in detail, suffice it for the present to sum up by saying the Soul cannot only perform all the phenomena now executed by the aid of disembodied spirits, but it can command the assistance of inferior grades to man, and compel their aid in subjugating the forces of matter.

Man can read the hidden things of another's mind, and even temporarily obsess it, and by aid of inferior spirits, psychologize many persons at once, compelling them to see, hear, taste or feel the subjective images of his creation.

He can envelope some objects in the Astral fluid, rendering them invisible to the material eye; create disturbances in the atmosphere, or calm them by the same means; promote rapid and spontaneous growth in the vegetable world; wound the body and heal it in the same minute of time; render himself insensible to pain, fire, and the effects of gravitation, and so float in mid-air; cause himself to be buried alive during entrancement, and resume the functions of life when disinterred.

All these things we positively affirm men can do, through the operation of his own will, and the aid of powerful spirits, and all those things the author positively affirms he has witnessed, and proposes in the forthcoming sections to give the philosophy of, as gathered from personal experience, and the descriptions of Fakeers, Yogees, Dervishes, Bramins, and the adepts of Oriental systems of magic.

Whether our readers will observe the conditions necessary for the performance of these extra-mundane acts of spiritual power, is a question which we do not propose to decide upon; but we commend our closing remarks to special consideration.

The Soul is an emanation from Deity; therefore Deific in power and attributes. The Astral spirit which clothes the Soul and vitalizes the body, is a part of all the great motor power of the Universe, the source and cause of all motion.

The two combined, though temporarily shrouded in matter, and limited by the encasements of a material body, still form a Deific, and therefore all-powerful existence, which only requires the light of spiritual science to render its functions as Deific as its source. Something of this is shown, then the soul is emancipated from the body and returns to earth manifesting its astonishing and extended powers through what is called "spiritual phenomena."

Other glimpses of these powers shine forth, through the lives of ecstatics, seers, and magians; but what illimitable possibilities yet remain unfathomed and unheard of?

Who can say where the terminal line is drawn between God and His creatures, or why man should not manifest as a microcosm, all the creative attributes which belong to the Divine Author, the Macrocosm?

The superiority of ancient over modern Theosophy, does not arise from any retrogression in man or his planet. It is no arrest or backward step in the march of intellect; but it results from the profound devotion with which the ancient man regarded spiritual things, and the cold materialism of the present day; from the unceasing aspiration of our forefathers towards spiritual light and knowledge, and the universal contempt or indifference with which such subjects are regarded now.

The people of antiquity generally, and the priesthood in particular studied into the laws of spiritual forces, and spent generation after generation in analyzing their principles, and the relations they bear to visible nature.

Those thinkers of the nineteenth century, who strive to master the occult in nature at all, aim at doing so, by seeking for the spiritual through the laws of the material and expect to push their way upward, from the known, to the unknown, from matter to spirit.

Let those who would emulate the Divine plan, and work from the center to the circumference, from Deity to His creatures, and from Soul essence to created forms, despise not the results of human experience, and the strivings of the human mind for light and knowledge in any age, ancient or modern. Regarding the past as a stepping-stone to the present, and the lower chambers and galleries of the great Temple of humanity as the foundations upon which the integrity of the superstructure depends, let us with humble and reverent spirits avail ourselves of the successes and failures of our ancestors, as the warnings and encouragements by which our own steps may be safely guided, and boldly push on in those transcendent paths of research, in which Angels are our guides, ministering spirits our strength, the elevation and culture of the Divine Spirit within us our goal, and God the Spirit, the quenchless beacon-light by which our faltering footsteps will be ever illuminated, until we find our rest at last in Him.