Art Magic

The spontaneous and natural communion with spiritual beings, whether it be exercised by communities or individuals, we may term Spiritism. The arts by which this communion is procured through prepared conditions, should with equal propriety be designated Magic, and whether these arts be practiced for good or evil purposes, their methods must involve a knowledge of the occult forces existing in nature, and the means of calling them forth and utilizing them. If the understanding and application of Nature's laws in any one department of being is a science, then must all knowledge and all arts, which are but the application of knowledge, be included in the term science, hence magic, however ominous its name may sound in superstitious ears, and however much it may have been perverted to purposes of evil, is still a branch of science, and as such, should be studied and legitimately used.

Magic may be termed the science of Spiritism, and whilst it would be as idle to tender it to the acceptance of those whose natural endowments supply them with the art it professes to teach, as to paint the cheek of the rose, or blanch the lily white, its careful study may furnish us with a clue to the better use and guidance of natural gifts, and where there are lacking, instruct us in the methods of supplying the deficiency. In order to point out the spheres of power in which magic operates, it is necessary to define the order of communion which nature permits, through the exceptional endowments of her highly gifted children, the world's Seers, Prophets, Sybils, and Mediums.

The first gift included in the discernment of Spiritual beings is that of vision, or the faculty of seeing Spirits, recognizing their signs in aerial pictures, their writings when inscribed in spiritual substances, also of perceiving the spirits of fellow-men, reading the thoughts and characteristics masked to the mortal eye, and taking cognizance generally of the spiritual part of things in the Universe.

The second gift of the prophetic order is, the faculty of hearing sounds, whether in the form of spirit voices, music, or other vibrations made on the ethereal medium in which spirits live, rather than on the atmosphere which mortals breathe and dwell in.

The power of seeing and hearing spirits, opens up two of the principal avenues of intelligence to our Souls, and in like manner, the spiritual senses of smell, taste, and touch can be operated upon.

Through one or other of these gates to the inner consciousness, all spiritualistic phenomena must act, but the phenomena themselves are very various.

Something the Soul of man itself, looks forth through its material encasements, acting from within, and sees, hears, tastes, smells, and touches spiritual entities.

Sometimes ministering spirits produce effects acting from without upon the inner senses of man. Both methods are common, both belong to the one gifted individual.

Sometimes the influx of spiritual ideas is so silent, natural, and unmarked by physical disturbances, that their subject knows not that an Angel speaks, or that the soul has transcended the laws of sensuous perception, and derived ideas unconsciously from its near proximity to the realms of spiritual entities.

To account for the operation of the powers describe above, it is necessary to revert to the last section of the First Part, and bear in mind, that the realms of spiritual being are very near, in fact, all around and about us; that, though spirits of every grade and class swarm through the universe, ranged in their different spheres and orders, yet that the "spirit world," or the spheres through which the souls of men are making pilgrimage upwards and onwards to heaven are approximate to this earth, even as the soul of man is related to his body; that these spheres interpenetrate every atom of matter on this globe with a spiritual element, and again, as the disembodied spirits of earth are in the most direct, natural, and harmonious proximity to their still embodied friends, it is to the spirit spheres of humanity, that the most ready access to the human soul is obtained, and through which the most constant influx into the natural world transpires. To expect that the realms of disembodied human spirits should be the nearest in atmospheric proximity to man, the most in accordance with his grade of intelligence, and the most prompt to serve, bless and instruct him by ties of love, kindness, and adaptation, is just as rational as to suppose that the human mother would be the first to render aid to her suffering child, or that the child would be more likely to appeal for that aid to a tender parent than to some unsympathizing stranger. This phase of intercourse between spirits and mortals, we distinguish as Mundane Spiritism, and this we claim to be the most natural, direct, and spontaneous product of that divine plan which connects all conditions of being, from the highest to the lowest, in one unbroken chain of love and harmony, the links of which are millions of spheres of super-mundane, and sub-mundane spiritual existences.

There are but few analogies discoverable on the surface of mundane life, between the laws which separately govern Spirit and matter, but the closer we pursue our researches, the more clearly we recognize correspondence, if not actual analogies, between those elements. Amongst these are the laws of physical and moral gravitation.

As the heaviest and grossest bodies sink to the centre, so the least intelligent and exalted conditions of spiritual being obey the same law, and hence, sub-mundane Spiritism consists in communion with these lower orders of being, who are in point of position in the Universe, no less than in moral and mental unfoldment, lower than man, and whom the philosophers and mystics of old have significantly denominated, "the Elementaries."

It would be impossible to do justice to the immense multitudes of those beings who crowd the elements, and exist in all grades of semi-spiritual, semi-material bodies, from such progressed, but still rudimental conditions, as almost impinge upon the perfection of manhood, down to the "Pigmies," who emerge from rude, almost inorganic life, evolved from minerals, plants, water, earth, atmosphere and fire.

There are luxuriant and enormous growths, gigantic forms, exceeding the proportions of humanity, who abound in forests, mountains, hills, and desert places; stunted, dwarfish beings who frequent mines, caverns, and the deep recesses of earth, corresponding to the undeveloped elements of inorganic nature.

Beautiful, though still embryonic existences there are, who belong to the finer spheres, corresponding to flowers and air. Fantastic and diffusive shapes of elementary life crowd the waters, and resplendent globular unparticled essences exist, and can be detected in the realms of light and heat represented by fire. All are included in the title of Elementaries. All possess different functions, exert power in the particular elements to which they belong, are neither good nor evil per se, but malignant or beneficent in part, to those whom they affect or dislike; they possess, in short, varied powers and characteristics; and communion with them may be classed in the category of Sub-mundane Spiritism.

Myriads upon myriads there are in whom special animal instincts prevail, giving to their embryonic forms a similarity to the creatures whose natures they correspond to. These elementary spirits are all ranged and classed in the divine order of creation, under the same law of adaption that is manifest in the plants, animals and other products of different countries and climes. Every creature is as much in its place, and an inhabitant of its appropriate sphere, as is the material particle to which it corresponds. Hanging on the same divine thread of beneficence which binds man to the heart of Deity, these Elementaries could no more be riven away from the interminable chain of being, than the Planetary order of the skies could afford to part with Mercury, the youngest child of the solar system, because it is not so perfectly developed as Mars, nor yet cast out of the shining, starry family that circles round the parent sun, the planet Earth, because it has not attained to the size, lustre and glory of Jupiter.

"I number up my Jewels!" says the God of the sparkling sky; and which of his blazing sons of light could he disperse with, without throwing the whole scheme of revolving worlds out of eternal harmony?

"I number up my Jewels!" cries the Tutelary Angel of Earth, in the tender and merciful tones of divine Fatherhood; and which of his immortal soul gems could he afford to annihilate as his vision ranges, and his justice prevails, from the monarch on his throne, to the dying wretch in the cell of earthly condemnation?

"I number up my Jewels!" cries the Archangel of the grand solar system, and which of his minutest sparks of spiritual fire could he afford to extinguish, whether it blazed in the soul of a Copernicus, or glimmered in the uncouth form of a pigmy Elementary, on the lowest round of the ladder of sub-mundane pilgrimage?

Oh proud, disdainful man! disdainful and proud only in your ignorance! Which of you can say from whence you came, or deny what you might have been, however you may rejoice in the heigh to which you have now attained; however you may rest in the assurance that there is no such thing as retrogression, and that you cannot sink lower than you will to fall? Which of you who so cheerfully accept the vague theory of inductive science, that teaches you to believe men were once apes, need shrink back with contempt from the idea that your spirits were as rudimental as your bodies? Which of you that so fiercely reject the Darwinian theory, yet offer no better hypothesis for human origin - who would rather fancy you were nothing, than anything lower than you arrogance deems worthy of you - which of you can believe that from nothing sprang something, or that you suddenly appeared on the theatre of existence, a full-fledged immortal Soul, with a hitherward, but no whence - a heavenly goal to attain to, but no beginning to spring from?

The world that sees its Julius Caesars and Napoleon Bonapartes commence life as helpless, wailing babes, and end it as Masters of Europe and Lords over millions of their fellow-creatures, still scoffs at the idea that the race of man ever had a similar infancy.

The full-grown man of the nineteenth century repels with indignation the idea that he could have ever been related to the world of elementary being, and can see no justice, divinity, beauty, or order in the scheme that sows a germ of spiritual life in the most rudimental of material forms, and then expands it through a natural series of births and deaths, until it becomes fitted to take its place as a purely perfected and self-conscious spirit entity, in those realms where it awaits, in common with myriads of other spirits, a mortal birth on this or some other earth in the Universe. Yet such is God's plan, at least such does it appear to the most patient of students; those who have toiled through the esoteric significations of human history, and learned their spiritualistic lessons from the very beings who are in the experience of the truth they reveal. Such is God's plan, unless the philosophic minds, who have gathered up the accumulated wisdom of past ages, and studied nature and the mysteries of spiritual existence in their profoundest depths, have learned less than modern theorists, who never study such subjects at all.

Either the wisdom and occult knowledge of cycles of ages is wroth less than the scornful denial of utterly uninformed skepticism, or our brief review of sub-mundane Spiritism is a correct one as far as it goes.

Reserving more particular descriptions of the elementaries for further sections, we now proceed to notice the realms of supermundane Spiritism.

Here, legions of Archangels and Angels throng the Universe, of whom the imagination may conceive, but to whose being and nature the power of language can do no justice.

In whatever realms of spiritual life the entranced soul of the ecstatic may wander, with whatever resplendent beings that would may be permitted to hold converse, the mind is always directed to higher states, and higher individualities still. Like the revelating Angel addressing the Apocalyptic writer John, every Spirit or Angel that has ever communed with man, ignores worship, and ascribes all power and all glory to something still beyond - to Deific existences, incomprehensible, but ever felt in the understanding, and ever holding that central point of all devotion and worship, which we vaguely call God. Bear this fact in mind, and we shall be held guiltless of presumption when we write of what the eyes of Seers have beheld, of spirits with whom our fathers, like John of old, have identified even the Lord of life and light, and striven to worship as God; of mighty Angels, who, like the spirit that spoke through the thunders of Sinai, or from the midst of the burning bush, seem to man the last apex of glory on which the finite mind rests its conceptions of God. Higher and still higher, ever stretching away where roads are made of star dust, and paths are strewn with glittering Suns; where time is no more, and space is lost in infinity; stretching away into hemispheres where new sideral heavens form the boundary walls and gateways to the new corridors of an Universe wherein, end there is none.

Loose the reins of the imagination, and let the fiery steeds of a new mental Phoebus seek to traverse these high-roads of infinity! People them all with Angels ascending and still ascending in the scale of grandeur, power and immensity, and then question of the highest still, and still the choiring worlds will answer, "Higher yet! higher yet! There still are realms of being higher yet!"

We veil our presumptuous eyes against these vain speculations, retreat to our spheres of littleness, content to find that Angels, Guardian spirits, and Spirit friends, surround us, minister to our earthly powers and functions only as our minds can grasp and comprehend them, and thus we may concentrate our wandering thoughts on the firm assurance that God is, though man may never know Him, and rest in the certainty that all we hope and strive for, will yet be ours, as the heirs of immortal progress.

Super-mundane Spiritism teaches of Tutelary Spirits or Gods, and Planetary Angels.

The Jehovah of the Jews affords a well marked definition of the ancient belief in Eloihim, or Tutelary Gods.

The revelating Angels so often described by the Hebrew Prophets, and He who was claimed by the authors of the Apocalypse to have mapped out the masonic order of creation in that gorgeous vision, said to have been shown in the Isle of Patmos, or the isolation of the entranced Soul, clearly illustrate the nature of these celestial visitants who in the Oriental dispensation, talked with men, face to face. In our degenerate and unspiritual age, we have little to illuminate our prosaic lives, save the revelations of our Fathers. From time to time, bright beings flash athwart our path, more glorious than the forms of men or spirits, and the assurance that the realms of space must be filled with the messengers of God, induces us to yield acceptance to the Cabbalistic division of the higher orders of Angels into "Thrones, Dominions, Powers; - Angels of the Planets, Tutelary Spirits, Guardians of Nations, Cities, Men, the Souls of Ancestors, and beloved Spirit friends." The reader will remember the description so often rendered by Swedenborg in his ecstatic wanderings through Celestial spheres, or his having seen God as a Spiritual Sun. The same statement is made by several of the best modern Brahmins who are Seers. It was re-affirmed by Cahagnet's Somnambules under the control of many spirits who professed to have beheld the glory of this Spiritual Sun, and it was stated in opposition to all the preconceived opinions of surrounding listeners, by the Spirits who spoke with human voices at Koon's Spirit room in the opening of the American Spiritual Dispensation.

It has frequently been stated to the author by teaching Spirits, that the Tutelary Angel of every planet appears only as a Spiritual Sun, himself deriving light, heat, force, and being, from the Central Sun of the Universe; that these stupendous and sublime centres, the Spiritual Suns of Earths, Planets, and Satellites, impart their life-giving light, radiance and gravitating forces to the Physical Suns of the systems to which they belong; - that these Physical Suns are the most progressed aggregations of world matter in the Universe, hence become centres and parents of revolving Satellites, who derive a certain measure of light and heat from the Sun of their system, but like that material body, they would fade, perish and dissolve into their original elements were they not vitalized by the Spiritual Sun, which is to that system, as the Soul to the human body.

To the true Hierophant who can connect ancient mysteries with personal spiritual endowments, those who wear the Prophet's mantle, yet analyze its fabric by the light of modern science, Tutelary Spirits and Planetary Angels reveal themselves as distinctly now, as when they spoke from between the Cherubim and Seraphim of the "Ark of the Covenant," or reflected their lustrous rays from mimic skies, outstretched above the Hierophants of ancient mysteries.

Planetary Spirits respond to invocations from the sincere Spiritualist, and often hold watch and ward over the favored ones of earth to whom, through prepared conditions, they communicate many of the great truths of the Universe unattainable to mortals without their aid. Few of them are inferior to the highest of human intelligences, save the Spirits of Mercury and Venus, who should seldom be invoked and encouraged to commune with Earth.

Generally speaking, the Planetary Spirits are not attracted to earth, except on special missions, or by evocations procured as above states, through prepared conditions, of which more hereafter.
Ranging under the category of Super-mundane Spiritism, we place the Souls of men who have attained to the highest conditions of Angelic exaltation, and who are attracted to Earth as messengers of beneficence, beauty, and goodness.

Souls of men that have enjoyed ages of progress, and attained to radiant conditions of celestial happiness, sometimes return to earth for material knowledge, to study lower conditions of being, and gather elements of use, imparting in return the noblest teachings, and very generally associating their mission with some master mind of earth, through whom they become, by inspiration and heavenly influence, the promoters of mighty reforms, great upheavals of human thought, culminating in social, political, or religious revolutions.

On every round of that visionary ladder, whose foot is on earth, whose apex in heaven - Angels who have once been men, Spirits who have lived and labored on earth and risen from the ashes of death, victor-browed, to a triumphant inheritance beyond; household "lares" - heart loves who have just left us, but still hover on the threshold they have crossed to smooth our rough and rugged path over the stones their torn feet have trod - all such ministers of live and blessing as these, ascend and descend on this mystic ladder, forming an interminable chain of love and harmony between the highest and the lowest, connecting each and all by the links of sympathy, bearing up the tired hands that are dropping life's burdens for very weariness - catching at the outstretched arms that are tossed abroad in the agony of frantic supplication to the God of many creeds and nations, tenderly wafting up to heaven the piteous prayers that long ago they lisped forth in accents as faltering as our own, and returning inspiration for aspiration, peace and blessing for the incoherent appeals of human ignorance and impotence.

These are the beings that fill up the sum of man's limited and finite span of knowledge, concerning Super-mundane Spiritism.