Mikki's Translation Section VIII
The way that man becomes aware of influences outside his physical world depend on two things - one internal to the person, and one external.
Man is too stupid to be able to figure things out if the operating principles were too terribly alien to what he is used to. However, there are definitely some things that are still too deep for mere mortals to figure out. Luckily, some spirits have been able to overcome Man's ignorance, and show up anyway.
We're going to ignore the petty wars between factions of spiritists and examine how people communicate with spirits.
Spirits travel by means not applicable to humans. Anyone who disagrees with the book, or who merely professes opinions, rather than the facts you'll find in this book, is wasting your time. Because of the huge numbers of people in the late 1800s, professing to see, speak to, hear, etc. with regard to ghosts or spirits, it wasn't as scary then as it was before. People used to think of these appearances as miracles, but we're far more scientific now, and understand things a lot better.
We know these things happen because they happen so often. Even though some people have been frauds in this arena, and have likely made a mint off of spiritism, there's still something to be learned here. So we will present information without attribution to higher philosophers, and let the work stand for itself.
Man is a microcosm of the universe as a whole. He is made up of body, spirit and soul. The soul is the center of his being, which corresponds to the element of Fire, which comes directly from Deity. There are many layers to this soul, called Astral Spirit, which is often misidentified as electricity, magnetism, etc.
[I have deliberately left out the attempted use of physics to bolster the author's ideas, given the author's previous confusion...]
Ancient man, and the Rosicrucians, as well as others, have been fascinated by fire, and have often likened it to God. And the element of Fire permeates the universe, and as such should be known as Celestial Fire. The combination of Celestial Fire and Astral Light makes up the soul of the universe, and as such the soul of man. The Rosicrucians were really cool and people shouldn't listen to the really awful things that were said about them. So there.
Anyway, the body is a conglomeration of bits of atoms that is powered by the Astral Spirit. Inside this Astral Spirit is the essence of whatever it is that allows a spirit to be seen by humans. It goes off with the soul at death, and the combination of the two form the spirit. The not so great layers stay on the outside and make up the manifestation or ghost that we can see.
This Astral Spirit also exists in rocks, plants, minerals, gasses, etc., as well as in space.
We get our Astral Spirit chiefly from the sun and other planets. It also comes from all organic and inorganic life. All of this combines to make the Astral Spirit of a single man. This is why astrology is so important. The sun and planetary essence that creates your Astral Spirit at birth will have great influence on your life. And because all of these entities are moving around, as they change, they continue to have influence.
This is why so many people over time have devoted themselves to study of nature for occult influences. The best people for generations dedicated themselves to studying nature. However, during the author's time, people became priests but didn't dedicate themselves properly to their priestly office. If they can't answer questions about the mysteries, they don't deserve to be priests. They are self indulgent, selfish people who look down their noses at those who actually dedicated themselves properly like ancient priests did. People who study nature solely through science will miss the big picture. Priests who gain their priesthood through "book learning" aren't real priests. You can't gain the knowledge without doing the work it takes to learn it. That includes the spiritual side as well as the book side. And while we're searching we should certainly not forget or ignore the work of the ancients.