did. As we mention this only incidentally, we may as well say at once

that two of them, the brothers N----, were very politely brought back to the frontier before they had walked sixteen miles into the weird land of Eastern Bod; and Mr. K----, an ex-Lutheran minister, could not even attempt to leave his miserable village near Leh, as from the first days he found himself prostrated with fever, and had to return to Lahore via Kashmere. But one sight seen by him was as good as if he had witnessed the reïncarnation of Buddha itself. Having heard of this “miracle” from some old Russian missionary in whom he thought he could have more faith than in Abbé Huc, it had been for years his desire to expose the “great heathen” jugglery, as he expressed it. K---- was a positivist, and rather prided himself on this anti-philosophical neologism. But his positivism was doomed to receive a death-blow.

About four days journey from Islamabad, at an insignificant mud village, whose only redeeming feature was its magnificent lake, we stopped for a few days’ rest. Our companions had temporarily separated from us, and the village was to be our place of meeting. It was there that we were apprised by our Shaman that a large party of Lamaïc “Saints,” on pilgrimage to various shrines, had taken up their abode in an old cave-temple and established a temporary Vihara therein. He added that, as the “Three Honorable Ones”[1141] were said to travel along with them, the holy Bikshu (monks) were capable of producing the greatest miracles. Mr. K----, fired with the prospect of exposing this humbug of the ages, proceeded at once to pay them a visit, and from that moment the most friendly relations were established between the two camps.

The Vihar was in a secluded and most romantic spot secured against all intrusion. Despite the effusive attentions, presents, and protestations of Mr. K----, the Chief, who was Pase-Budhu (an ascetic of great sanctity), declined to exhibit the phenomenon of the “incarnation” until a certain talisman in possession of the writer was exhibited.[1142] Upon seeing this, however, preparations were at once made, and an infant of three or four months was procured from its mother, a poor woman of the neighborhood. An oath was first of all exacted of Mr. K----, that he would not divulge what he might see or hear, for the space of seven years. The talisman is a simple agate or carnelian known among the Thibetans and others as _A-yu_, and naturally possessed, or had been endowed with very mysterious properties. It has a triangle engraved upon it, within which are contained a few mystical words.[1143]

Several days passed before everything was ready; nothing of a mysterious character occurring, meanwhile, except that, at the bidding of a Bikshu, ghastly faces were made to peep at us out of the glassy bosom of the lake, as we sat at the door of the Vihar, upon its bank. One of these was the countenance of Mr. K----’s sister, whom he had left well and happy at home, but who, as we subsequently learned, had died some time before he had set out on the present journey. The sight affected him at first, but he called his skepticism to his aid, and quieted himself with theories of cloud-shadows, reflections of tree-branches, etc., such as people of his kind fall back upon.

On the appointed afternoon, the baby being brought to the Vihara, was left in the vestibule or reception-room, as K---- could go no further into the temporary sanctuary. The child was then placed on a bit of carpet in the middle of the floor, and every one not belonging to the party being sent away, two “mendicants” were placed at the entrance to keep out intruders. Then all the lamas seated themselves on the floor, with their backs against the granite walls, so that each was separated from the child by a space, at least, of ten feet. The chief, having had a square piece of leather spread for him by the _desservant_, seated himself at the farthest corner. Alone, Mr. K---- placed himself close by the infant, and watched every movement with intense interest. The only condition exacted of us was that we should preserve a strict silence, and patiently await further developments. A bright sunlight streamed through the open door. Gradually the “Superior” fell into what seemed a state of profound meditation, while the others, after a _sotto voce_ short invocation, became suddenly silent, and looked as if they had been completely petrified. It was oppressively still, and the crowing of the child was the only sound to be heard. After we had sat there a few moments, the movements of the infant’s limbs suddenly ceased, and his body appeared to become rigid. K---- watched intently every motion, and both of us, by a rapid glance, became satisfied that all present were sitting motionless. The superior, with his gaze fixed upon the ground, did not even look at the infant; but, pale and motionless, he seemed rather like a bronze statue of a Talapoin in meditation than a living being. Suddenly, to our great consternation, we saw the child, not raise itself, but, as it were, violently jerked into a sitting posture! A few more jerks, and then, like an automaton set in motion by concealed wires, the four months’ baby stood upon his feet! Fancy our consternation, and, in Mr. K----’s case, horror. Not a hand had been outstretched, not a motion made, nor a word spoken; and yet, here was a baby-in-arms standing erect and firm as a man!

The rest of the story we will quote from a copy of notes written on this subject by Mr. K----, the same evening, and given to us, in case it should not reach its place of destination, or the writer fail to see anything more.

“After a minute or two of hesitation,” writes K----, “the baby turned his head and looked at me with an expression of intelligence that was simply awful! It sent a chill through me. I pinched my hands and bit my lips till the blood almost came, to make sure that I did not dream. But this was only the beginning. The miraculous creature, making, _as I fancied_, two steps toward me, resumed his sitting posture, and, without removing his eyes from mine, repeated, sentence by sentence, in what I supposed to be Thibetan language, the very words, which I had been told in advance, are commonly spoken at the incarnations of Buddha, beginning with ‘I am Buddha; I am the old Lama; I am his spirit in a new body,’ etc. I felt a real terror; my hair rose upon my head, and my blood ran cold. For my life I could not have spoken a word. There was no trickery here, no ventriloquism. The infant lips moved, and the eyes seemed to search my very soul with an expression that _made me think it was the face of the Superior himself_, his eyes, his very look that I was gazing upon. It was _as if his spirit had entered the little body, and was looking at me through the transparent mask of the baby’s face_. I felt my brain growing dizzy. The infant reached toward me, and laid his little hand upon mine. I started as if I had been touched by a hot coal; and, unable to bear the scene any longer, covered my face with my hands. It was but for an instant; but when I removed them, the little actor had become a crowing baby again, and a moment after, lying upon his back, set up a fretful cry. The superior had resumed his normal condition, and conversation ensued.

“It was only after a series of similar experiments, extending over ten days, that I realized the fact that I had seen the incredible, astounding phenomenon described by certain travellers, but always by me denounced as an imposture. Among a multitude of questions unanswered, despite my cross-examination, the Superior let drop one piece of information, which must be regarded as highly significant. ‘What would have happened,’ I inquired, through the shaman, ‘if, while the infant was speaking, in a moment of insane fright, at the thought of its being the “Devil,” I had killed it?’ He replied that, if the blow had not been instantly fatal, the child _alone_ would have been killed.’ ‘But,’ I continued, ‘suppose that it had been as swift as a lightning-flash?’ ‘In such case,’ was the answer, ‘_you would have killed me also_.’”

In Japan and Siam there are two orders of priests, of which one are public, and deal with the people, the other strictly private. The latter are never seen; their existence is known but to very few natives, never to foreigners. Their powers are never displayed in public, nor ever at all except on rare occasions of the utmost importance, at which times the ceremonies are performed in subterranean or otherwise inaccessible temples, and in the presence of a chosen few whose heads answer for their secrecy. Among such occasions are deaths in the Royal family, or those of high dignitaries affiliated with the Order. One of the most weird and impressive exhibitions of the power of these magicians is that of the withdrawal of the astral soul from the cremated remains of human beings, a ceremony practiced likewise in some of the most important lamaseries of Thibet and Mongolia.

In Siam, Japan, and Great Tartary, it is the custom to make medallions, statuettes, and idols out of the ashes of cremated persons;[1144] they are mixed with water into a paste, and after being moulded into the desired shape, are baked and then gilded. The Lamasery of Ou-Tay, in the province of Chan-Si, Mongolia, is the most famous for that work, and rich persons send the bones of their defunct relatives to be ground and fashioned there. When the adept in magic proposes to facilitate the withdrawal of the astral soul of the deceased, which otherwise they think might remain stupefied for an indefinite period _within_ the ashes, the following process is resorted to: The sacred dust is placed in a heap upon a metallic plate, strongly magnetized, of the size of a man’s body. The adept then slowly and gently fans it with the _Talapat Nang_,[1145] a fan of a peculiar shape and inscribed with certain signs, muttering, at the same time, a form of invocation. The ashes soon become, as it were, imbued with life, and gently spread themselves out into a thin layer which assumes the outline of the body before cremation. Then there gradually arises a sort of whitish vapor which after a time forms into an erect column, and compacting itself, is finally transformed into the “double,” or ethereal, astral counterpart of the dead, which in its turn dissolves away into thin air, and disappears from mortal sight.[1146]

The “Magicians” of Kashmir, Thibet, Mongolia, and Great Tartary are too well known to need comments. If _jugglers_ they be, we invite the most expert jugglers of Europe and America to match them if they can.

If our scientists are unable to imitate the mummy-embalming of the Egyptians, how much greater would be their surprise to see, as we have, dead bodies preserved by alchemical art, so that after the lapse of centuries, they seem as though the individuals were but sleeping. The complexions were as fresh, the skin as elastic, the eyes as natural and sparkling as though they were in the full flush of health, and the wheels of life had been stopped but the instant before. The bodies of certain very eminent personages are laid upon catafalques, in rich mausoleums, sometimes overlaid with gilding or even with plates of real gold; their favorite arms, trinkets, and articles of daily use gathered about them, and a suite of attendants, blooming young boys and girls, but still corpses, preserved like their masters, stand as if ready to serve when called. In the convent of Great Kouren, and in one situated upon the Holy Mountain (Bohté Oula) there are said to be several such sepulchres, which have been respected by all the conquering hordes that have swept through those countries. Abbé Huc heard that such exist, but did not see one, strangers of all kinds being excluded, and missionaries and European travellers not furnished with the requisite protection, being the last of all persons who would be permitted to approach the sacred places. Huc’s statement that the tombs of Tartar sovereigns are surrounded with children “who were compelled to swallow mercury until they were suffocated,” by which means “the color and freshness of the victims is preserved so well that they appear alive,” is one of these idle missionary fables which impose only upon the most ignorant who accept on hearsay. Buddhists have never immolated victims, whether human or animal. It is utterly against the principles of their religion, and no Lamaist was ever accused of it. When a rich man desired to be interred in _company_, messengers were sent throughout the country with the Lama-embalmers, and children just dead in the natural way were selected for the purpose. Poor parents were but too glad to preserve their departed children in this poetic way, instead of abandoning them to decay and wild beasts.

At the time when Abbé Huc was living in Paris, after his return from Thibet, he related, among other unpublished wonders, to a Mr. Arsenieff, a Russian gentleman, the following curious fact that he had witnessed during his long sojourn at the lamasery of Kounboum. One day while conversing with one of the lamas, the latter suddenly stopped speaking, and assumed the attentive attitude of one who is listening to a message being delivered to him, although he (Huc) heard never a word. “Then, I must go;” suddenly broke forth the lama, as if in response to the message.

“Go where?” inquired the astonished “lama of Jehovah” (Huc). “And with whom are you talking?”

“To the lamasery of * * *,” was the quiet answer. “The Shaberon wants me; it was he who summoned me.”

Now this lamasery was many days’ journey from that of Kounboum, in which the conversation was taking place. But what seemed to astonish Huc the most was, that, instead of setting off on his journey, the lama simply walked to a sort of cupola-room on the roof of the house in which they lived, and another lama, after exchanging a few words, followed them to the terrace by means of the ladder, and passing between them, locked and barred his companion in. Then turning to Huc after a few seconds of meditation, he smiled and informed the guest that “he had gone.”

“But how could he? Why you have locked him in, and the room has no issue?” insisted the missionary.

“And what good would a door be to him?” answered the custodian. “_It is he himself who went away; his body is not needed, and so he left it in my charge._”

Notwithstanding the wonders which Huc had witnessed during his perilous journey, his opinion was that both of the lamas had mystified him. But three days later, not having seen his habitual friend and entertainer, he inquired after him, and was informed that he would be back in the evening. At sunset, and just as the “other lamas” were preparing to retire, Huc heard his absent friend’s voice calling as if from the clouds, to his companion to open the door for him. Looking upward, he perceived the “traveller’s” outline behind the lattice of the room where he had been locked in. When he descended he went straight to the Grand Lama of Kounboum, and delivered to him certain messages and “orders,” from the place which he “pretended” he had just left. Huc could get no more information from him as to his _aërial_ voyage. But he always thought, he said, that this “farce” had something to do with the immediate and extraordinary preparations for the polite expulsion of both the missionaries, himself and Father Gabet, to Chogor-tan, a place belonging to the Kounboum. The suspicion of the daring missionary may have been correct, in view of his impudent inquisitiveness and indiscretion.

If the Abbé had been versed in Eastern philosophy, he would have found no great difficulty in comprehending both the flight of the lama’s astral body to the distant lamasery while his physical frame remained behind, or the carrying on of a conversation with the Shaberon that was inaudible to himself. The recent experiments with the telephone in America, to which allusion was made in Chapter V. of our first volume, but which have been greatly perfected since those pages went to press, prove that the human voice and the sounds of instrumental music may be conveyed along a telegraphic wire to a great distance. The Hermetic philosophers taught, as we have seen, that the disappearance from sight of a flame does not imply its actual extinction. It has only passed from the visible to the invisible world, and may be perceived by the inner sense of vision, which is adapted to the things of that other and more real universe. The same rule applies to sound. As the physical ear discerns the vibrations of the atmosphere up to a certain point, not yet definitely fixed, but varying with the individual, so the adept whose interior hearing has been developed, can take the sound at this vanishing-point, and hear its vibrations in the astral light indefinitely. He needs no wires, helices, or sounding-boards; his will-power is all-sufficient. Hearing with the spirit, time and distance offer no impediments, and so he may converse with another adept at the antipodes with as great ease as though they were in the same room.

Fortunately, we can produce numerous witnesses to corroborate our statement, who, without being adepts at all, have, nevertheless, heard the sound of aërial music and of the human voice, when neither instrument nor speaker were within thousands of miles of the place where we sat. In their case they actually heard interiorly, though they supposed their physical organs of hearing alone were employed. The adept had, by a simple effort of will-power, given them for the brief moment the same perception of the spirit of sound as he himself constantly enjoys.

If our men of science could only be induced to test instead of deriding the ancient philosophy of the trinity of all the natural forces, they would go by leaps toward the dazzling truth, instead of creeping, snail-like, as at present. Prof. Tyndall’s experiments off the South Foreland, at Dover, in 1875, fairly upset all previous theories of the transmission of sound, and those he has made with sensitive flames[1147] bring him to the very threshold of arcane science. One step further, and he would comprehend how adepts can converse at great distances. But that step will _not_ be taken. Of his sensitive--in truth, magical--flame, he says: “The slightest tap on a distant anvil causes it to fall to seven inches. When a bunch of keys is shaken, the flame is violently agitated, and emits a loud roar. The dropping of a sixpence into a hand already containing coin, knocks the flame down. The creaking of boots sets it in violent commotion. The crumpling or tearing of a bit of paper, or the rustle of a silk dress does the same. Responsive to every tick of a watch held near it, it falls and explodes. The winding up of a watch produces tumult. From a distance of thirty yards we may chirrup to this flame, and cause it to fall and roar. Repeating a passage from the _Faërie Queene_, the flame sifts and selects the manifold sounds of my voice, noticing some by a slight nod, others by a deeper bow, while to others it responds by violent agitation.”

Such are the wonders of modern physical science; but at what cost of apparatus, and carbonic acid and coal gas; of American and Canadian whistles, trumpets, gongs, and bells! The poor heathen have none such _impedimenta_, but--will European science believe it--nevertheless, produce the very same phenomena. Upon one occasion, when, in a case of exceptional importance, an “oracle” was required, we saw the possibility of what we had previously vehemently denied--namely, a simple mendicant cause a sensitive flame to give responsive flashes without a particle of apparatus. A fire was kindled of branches of the _Beal_-tree, and some sacrificial herbs were sprinkled upon it. The mendicant sat near by, motionless, absorbed in contemplation. During the intervals between the questions the fire burned low and seemed ready to go out, but when the interrogatories were propounded, the flames leaped, roaring, skyward, flickered, bowed, and sent fiery tongues flaring toward the east, west, north, or south; each motion having its distinct meaning in a code of signals well understood. Between whiles it would sink to the ground, and the tongues of flame would lick the sod in every direction, and suddenly disappear, leaving only a bed of glowing embers. When the interview with the flame-spirits was at an end, the Bikshu (mendicant) turned toward the jungle where he abode, keeping up a wailing, monotonous chant, to the rhythm of which the sensitive flame kept time, not merely like Prof. Tyndall’s, when he read the _Faërie Queene_, by simple motions, but by a marvellous modulation of hissing and roaring until he was out of sight. Then, as if its very life were extinguished, it vanished, and left a bed of ashes before the astonished spectators.

Both in Western and Eastern Thibet, as in every other place where Buddhism predominates, there are two distinct religions, the same as it is in Brahmanism--the secret philosophy and the popular religion. The former is that of the followers of the doctrine of the sect of the Sutrântika.[1148] They closely adhere to the spirit of Buddha’s original teachings which show the necessity of _intuitional_ perception, and all deductions therefrom. These do not proclaim their views, nor allow them to be made public.

“All _compounds_ are perishable,” were the last words uttered by the lips of the dying Gautama, when preparing under the Sâl-tree to enter into Nirvana. “Spirit is the sole, elementary, and primordial unity, and each of its rays is immortal, infinite, and indestructible. Beware of the illusions of matter.” Buddhism was spread far and wide over Asia, and even farther, by Dharm-Asôka. He was the grandson of the miracle-worker Chandragupta, the illustrious king who rescued the Punjâb from the Macedonians--if they ever were at Punjâb at all--and received Megasthenes at his court in Pataliputra. Dharm-Asôka was the greatest King of the Maûrya dynasty. From a reckless profligate and atheist, he had become Pryâdasi, the “beloved of the gods,” and never was the purity of his philanthropic views surpassed by any earthly ruler. His memory has lived for ages in the hearts of the Buddhists, and has been perpetuated in the humane edicts engraved in several popular dialects on the columns and rocks of Allahabad, Delhi, Guzerat, Peshawur, Orissa, and other places.[1149] His famous grandfather had united all India under his powerful sceptre. When the Nâgas, or serpent-worshippers of Kashmere had been converted through the efforts of the apostles sent out by the Sthaviras of the third councils, the religion of Gautama spread like wild-fire. Gândhara, Cabul, and even many of the Satrapies of Alexander the Great, accepted the new philosophy. The Buddhism of Nepâl being the one which may be said to have diverged less than any other from the primeval ancient faith, the Lamaism of Tartary, Mongolia, and Thibet, which is a direct offshoot of this country, may be thus shown to be the purest Buddhism; for we say it again, Lamaism properly is but an external form of rites.

The Upâsakas and Upâsakis, or male and female semi-monastics and semi-laymen, have equally with the lama-monks themselves, to strictly abstain from violating any of Buddha’s rules, and must study _Meipo_ and every psychological phenomenon as much. Those who become guilty of any of the “five sins” lose all right to congregate with the pious community. The most important of these is _not to curse upon any consideration, for the curse returns upon the one that utters it, and often upon his innocent relatives who breathe the same atmosphere with him_. To love each other, and even our bitterest enemies; to offer our lives even for animals, to the extent of abstaining from defensive arms; to gain the greatest of victories by conquering one’s self; to avoid all vices; to practice all virtues, especially humility and mildness; to be obedient to superiors, to cherish and respect parents, old age, learning, virtuous and holy men; to provide food, shelter, and comfort for men and animals; to plant trees on the roads and dig wells for the comfort of travellers; such are the moral duties of Buddhists. Every Ani or Bikshuni (nun) is subjected to these laws.

Numerous are the Buddhist and Lamaic saints who have been renowned for the unsurpassed sanctity of their lives and their “miracles.” So Tissu, the Emperor’s spiritual teacher, who consecrated Kublaï-Khan, the Nadir Shah, was known far and wide as much for the extreme holiness of his life as for the many wonders he wrought. But he did not stop at fruitless miracles, but did better than that. Tissu purified completely his religion; and from one single province of Southern Mongolia is said to have forced Kublai to expel from convents 500,000 monkish impostors, who made a pretext of their profession, to live in vice and idleness. Then the Lamaists had their great reformer, the Shaberon Son-Ka-po, who is claimed to have been immaculately conceived by his mother, a virgin from Koko-nor (fourteenth century), who is another wonder-worker. The sacred tree of Kounboum, the tree of the 10,000 images, which, in consequence of the degeneration of the true faith had ceased budding for several centuries, now shot forth new sprouts and bloomed more vigorously than ever from the hair of this avatar of Buddha, says the legend. The same tradition makes him (Son-Ka-po) ascend to heaven in 1419. Contrary to the prevailing idea, few of these saints are _Khubilhans_, or Shaberons--reïncarnations.

Many of the lamaseries contain schools of magic, but the most celebrated is the collegiate monastery of the Shu-tukt, where there are over 30,000 monks attached to it, the lamasery forming quite a little city. Some of the female nuns possess marvellous psychological powers. We have met some of these women on their way from Lha-Ssa to Candi, the Rome of Buddhism, with its miraculous shrines and Gautama’s relics. To avoid encounters with Mussulmans and other sects they travel by night alone, unarmed, and without the least fear of wild animals, _for these will not touch them_. At the first glimpses of dawn, they take refuge in caves and viharas prepared for them by their co-religionists at calculated distances; for notwithstanding the fact that Buddhism has taken refuge in Ceylon, and nominally there are but few of the denomination in British India, yet the secret Byauds (Brotherhoods) and Buddhist viharas are numerous, and every Jain feels himself obliged to help, indiscriminately, Buddhist or Lamaist.

Ever on the lookout for occult phenomena, hungering after sights, one of the most interesting that we have seen was produced by one of these poor travelling Bikshu. It was years ago, and at a time when all such manifestations were new to the writer. We were taken to visit the pilgrims by a Buddhist friend, a mystical gentleman born at Kashmir, of Katchi parents, but a Buddha-Lamaist by conversion, and who generally resides at Lha-Ssa.

“Why carry about this bunch of dead plants?” inquired one of the Bikshuni, an emaciated, tall and elderly woman, pointing to a large nosegay of beautiful, fresh, and fragrant flowers in the writer’s hands.

“Dead?” we asked, inquiringly. “Why they just have been gathered in the garden?”

“And yet, they are dead,” she gravely answered. “To be born in this world, is this not death? See, how these herbs look when alive in the world of eternal light, in the gardens of our blessed Foh?”

Without moving from the place where she was sitting on the ground, the Ani took a flower from the bunch, laid it in her lap, and began to draw together, by large handfuls as it were, invisible material from the surrounding atmosphere. Presently a very, very faint nodule of vapor was seen, and this slowly took shape and color, until, poised in mid-air, appeared a copy of the bloom we had given her. Faithful to the last tint and the last petal it was, and lying on its side like the original, but a thousand-fold more gorgeous in hue and exquisite in beauty, as the glorified human spirit is more beauteous than its physical capsule. Flower after flower to the minutest herb was thus reproduced and made to vanish, reappearing at our desire, nay, at our simple thought. Having selected a full-blown rose we held it at arm’s length, and in a few minutes our arm, hand, and the flower, perfect in every detail, appeared reflected in the vacant space, about two yards from where we sat. But while the flower seemed immeasurably beautified and as ethereal as the other spirit flowers, the arm and hand appeared like a mere reflection in a looking-glass, even to a large spot on the fore arm, left on it by a piece of damp earth which had stuck to one of the roots. Later we learned the reason why.

A great truth was uttered some fifty years ago by Dr. Francis Victor Broussais, when he said: “If magnetism were true, medicine would be an absurdity.” Magnetism _is_ true, and so we shall not contradict the learned Frenchman as to the rest. Magnetism, as we have shown, is the alphabet of magic. It is idle for any one to attempt to understand either the theory or the practice of the latter until the fundamental principle of magnetic attractions and repulsions throughout nature is recognized.

Many so-called popular superstitions are but evidences of an instinctive perception of this law. An untutored people are taught by the experience of many generations that certain phenomena occur under fixed conditions; they give these conditions and obtain the expected results. Ignorant of the laws, they explain the fact by supernaturalism, for experience has been their sole teacher.

In India, as well as in Russia and some other countries, there is an instinctive repugnance to stepping across a man’s shadow, especially if he have red hair; and in the former country, natives are extremely reluctant to shake hands with persons of another race. These are not idle fancies. Every person emits a magnetic exhalation or aura, and a man may be in perfect physical health, but at the same time his exhalation may have a morbific character for others, sensitive to such subtile influences. Dr. Esdaile and other mesmerists long since taught us that Oriental people, especially Hindus, are more susceptible than the white-skinned races. Baron Reichenbach’s experiments--and, in fact, the world’s entire experience--prove that these magnetic exhalations are most intense from the extremities. Therapeutic manipulations show this; hand-shaking is, therefore, most calculated to communicate antipathetic magnetic conditions, and the Hindus do wisely in keeping their ancient “superstition”--derived from Manu--constantly in mind.

The magnetism of a red-haired man, we have found, in almost every nation, is instinctively dreaded. We might quote proverbs from the Russian, Persian, Georgian, Hindustani, French, Turkish, and even German, to show that treachery and other vices are popularly supposed to accompany the rufous complexion. When a man stands exposed to the sun, the magnetism of that luminary causes his emanations to be projected toward the shadow, and the increased molecular action develops more electricity. Hence, an individual to whom he is antipathetic--though neither might be sensible of the fact--would act prudently in not passing through the shadow. Careful physicians wash their hands upon leaving each patient; why, then, should they not be charged with superstition, as well as the Hindus? The sporules of disease are invisible, but no less real, as European experience demonstrates. Well, _Oriental experience for a hundred centuries has shown that the germs of moral contagion linger about localities, and impure magnetism can be communicated by the touch_.

Another prevalent belief in some parts of Russia, particularly Georgia (Caucasus), and in India, is that in case the body of a drowned person cannot be otherwise found, if a garment of his be thrown into the water it will float until directly over the spot, and then sink. We have even seen the experiment successfully tried with the sacred cord of a Brahman. It floated hither and thither, circling about as though in search of something, until suddenly darting in a straight line for about fifty yards, it sank, and at that exact spot the divers brought up the body. We find this “superstition” even in America. A Pittsburg paper, of very recent date, describes the finding of the body of a young boy, named Reed, in the Monongahela, by a like method. All other means having failed, it says, “a curious superstition was employed. One of the boy’s shirts was thrown into the river where he had gone down, and, it is said, floated on the surface for a time, and finally settled to the bottom at a certain place, which proved to be the resting-place of the body, and which was then drawn out. The belief that the shirt of a drowned person when thrown into the water will follow the body is well-spread, absurd as it appears.”

This phenomenon is explained by the law of the powerful attraction existing between the human body and objects that have been long worn upon it. The oldest garment is most effective for the experiment; a new one is useless.

From time immemorial, in Russia, in the month of May, on Trinity Day, maidens from city and village have been in the habit of casting upon the river wreaths of green leaves--which each girl has to form for herself--and consulting their oracles. If the wreath sinks, it is a sign that the girl will die unmarried within a short time; if it floats, she will be married, the time depending upon the number of verses she can repeat during the experiment. We positively affirm that we have personal knowledge of several cases, two of them our intimate friends, where the augury of death proved true, and the girls _died_ within twelve months. Tried on any other day than Trinity, the result would doubtless be the same. The sinking of the wreath is attributable to its being impregnated with the unhealthy magnetism of a system which contains the germs of early death; such magnetisms having an attraction for the earth at the bottom of the stream. As for the rest, we are willing to abandon it to the friends of coincidence.

The same general remark as to superstition having a scientific basis applies to the phenomena produced by fakirs and jugglers, which skeptics heap into the common category of trickery. And yet, to a close observer, even to the uninitiated, an enormous difference is presented between the _kîmiya_ (phenomenon) of a fakir, and the _batte-bâzi_ (jugglery) of a trickster, and the necromancy of a _jâdûgar_, or _sâhir_, so dreaded and despised by the natives. This difference, imperceptible--nay incomprehensible--to the skeptical European, is instinctively appreciated by every Hindu, whether of high or low caste, educated or ignorant. The _kangâlin_, or witch, who uses her terrible _abhi-châr_ (mesmeric powers) with intent to injure, may expect death at any moment, for every Hindu finds it lawful to kill her; a _bukka-baz_, or juggler, serves to amuse. A serpent-charmer, with his _bâ-îni_ full of venomous snakes, is less dreaded, for his powers of fascination extend but to animals and reptiles; he is unable to charm human beings, to perform that which is called by the natives _mantar phûnknâ_, to throw spells on men by magic. But with the yogi, the sannyâsi, the holy men who acquire enormous psychological powers by mental and physical training, the question is totally different. Some of these men are regarded by the Hindus as demi-gods. Europeans cannot judge of these powers but in rare and exceptional cases.

The British resident who has encountered in the _maidans_ and public places what he regards as frightful and loathsome human beings, sitting motionless in the self-inflicted torture of the _ûrddwa bahu_, with arms raised above the head for months, and even years, need not suppose they are the wonder-working fakirs. The phenomenon of the latter are visible only through the friendly protection of a Brahman, or under peculiarly fortuitous circumstances. Such men are as little accessible as the real Nautch girls, of whom every traveller talks, but very few have actually seen, since they belong exclusively to the pagodas.

It is surpassingly strange, that with the thousands of travellers and the millions of European residents who have been in India, and have traversed it in every direction, so little is yet known of that country and the lands which surround it. It may be that some readers will feel inclined not merely to doubt the correctness but even openly contradict our statement? Doubtless, we will be answered that all that it is desirable to know about India is already known? In fact this very reply was once made to us personally. That resident Anglo-Indians should not busy themselves with inquiries is not strange; for, as a British officer remarked to us upon one occasion, “society does not consider it well-bred to care about Hindus or their affairs, or even show astonishment or desire information upon anything they may see extraordinary in that country.” But it really surprises us that at least travellers should not have explored more than they have this interesting realm. Hardly fifty years ago, in penetrating the jungles of the Blue or Neilgherry Hills in Southern Hindustan, a strange race, perfectly distinct in appearance and language from any other Hindu people, was discovered by two courageous British officers who were tiger-hunting. Many surmises, more or less absurd, were set on foot, and the missionaries, always on the watch to connect every mortal thing with the _Bible_, even went so far as to suggest that this people was one of the lost tribes of Israel, supporting their ridiculous hypothesis upon their very fair complexions and “strongly-marked Jewish features.” The latter is perfectly erroneous, the Todas, as they are called, not bearing the remotest likeness to the Jewish type; either in feature, form, action, or language. They closely resemble each other, and, as a friend of ours expresses himself, the handsomest of the Todas resemble the statue of the Grecian Zeus in majesty and beauty of form more than anything he had yet seen among men.

Fifty years have passed since the discovery; but though since that time towns have been built on these hills and the country has been invaded by Europeans, no more has been learned of the Todas than at the first. Among the foolish rumors current about this people, the most erroneous are those in relation to their numbers and to their practicing polyandry. The general opinion about them is that on account of the latter custom their number has dwindled to a few hundred families, and the race is fast dying out. We had the best means of learning much about them, and therefore state most positively that the Todas neither practice polyandry nor are they as few in number as supposed. We are ready to show that no one has ever seen children belonging to them. Those that may have been seen in their company have belonged to the Badagas, a Hindu tribe totally distinct from the Todas, in race, color, and language, and which includes the most direct “worshippers” of this extraordinary people. We say _worshippers_, for the Badagas clothe, feed, serve, and positively look upon every Toda as a divinity. They are giants in stature, white as Europeans, with tremendously long and generally brown, wavy hair and beard, which no razor ever touched from birth. Handsome as a statue of Pheidias or Praxiteles, the Toda sits the whole day inactive, as some travellers who have had a glance at them affirm. From the many conflicting opinions and statements we have heard from the very residents of Ootakamund and other little new places of civilization scattered about the Neilgherry Hills, we cull the following:

“They never use water; they are wonderfully handsome and noble looking, but extremely unclean; unlike all other natives they despise jewelry, and never wear anything but a large black drapery or blanket of some woollen stuff, with a colored stripe at the bottom; they never drink anything but pure milk; they have herds of cattle but neither eat their flesh, nor do they make their beasts of labor plough or work; they neither sell nor buy; the Badagas feed and clothe them; they never use nor carry weapons, not even a simple stick; the Todas can’t read and won’t learn. They are the despair of the missionaries and apparently have no sort of religion, beyond the worship of themselves as the Lords of Creation.”[1150]

We will try to correct a few of these opinions, as far as we have learned from a very holy personage, a Brahmanam-guru, who has our great respect.

Nobody has ever seen more than five or six of them at one time; they will not talk with foreigners, nor was any traveller ever inside their peculiar long and flat huts, which apparently are without either windows or chimney and have but one door; nobody ever saw the funeral of a Toda, nor very old men among them; nor are they taken sick with cholera, while thousands die around them during such periodical epidemics; finally, though the country all around swarms with tigers and other wild beasts, neither tiger, serpent, nor any other animal so ferocious in those parts, was ever known to touch either a Toda or one of their cattle, though, as said above, they never use even a stick.

Furthermore the Todas do not marry at all. They seem few in number, for no one has or ever will have a chance of numbering them; as soon as their solitude was profaned by the avalanche of civilization--which was, perchance, due to their own carelessness--the Todas began moving away to other parts as unknown and more inaccessible than the Neilgherry hills had formerly been; they are not born of Toda mothers, nor of Toda parentage; they are the children of a certain very select sect, and are set apart from their infancy for special religious purposes. Recognized by a peculiarity of complexion, and certain other signs, such a child is known as what is vulgarly termed a Toda, from birth. Every third year, each of them must repair to a certain place for a certain period of time, where each of them must meet; their “dirt” is but a mask, such as a sannyâsi puts on in public in obedience to his vow; their cattle are, for the most part, devoted to sacred uses; and, though their places of worship have never been trodden by a profane foot, they nevertheless exist, and perhaps rival the most splendid pagodas--_goparams_--known to Europeans. The Badagas are their special vassals, and--as has been truly remarked--worship them as half-deities; for their birth and mysterious powers entitle them to such a distinction.

The reader may rest assured that any statements concerning them, that clash with the little that is above given, are false. No missionary will ever catch one with his bait, nor any Badaga betray them, though he were cut to pieces. They are a people who fulfill a certain high purpose, and whose secrets are inviolable.

Furthermore, the Todas are not the only such mysterious tribe in India. We have named several in a preceding chapter, but how many are there besides these, that will remain unnamed, unrecognized, and yet ever present!

What is now generally known of Shamanism is very little; and that has been perverted, like the rest of the non-Christian religions. It is called the “heathenism” of Mongolia, and wholly without reason, for it is one of the oldest religions of India. It is spirit-worship, or belief in the immortality of the souls, and that the latter are still the same men they were on earth, though their bodies have lost their objective form, and man has exchanged his physical for a spiritual nature. In its present shape, it is an offshoot of primitive theurgy, and a practical blending of the visible with the invisible world. Whenever a denizen of earth desires to enter into communication with his invisible brethren, he has to assimilate himself to their nature, _i.e._, he meets these beings half-way, and, furnished by them with a supply of spiritual essence, endows them, in his turn, with a portion of his physical nature, thus enabling them sometimes to appear in a semi-objective form. It is a temporary exchange of natures, called theurgy. Shamans are called sorcerers, because they are said to evoke the “spirits” of the dead for purposes of necromancy. The true Shamanism--striking features of which prevailed in India in the days of Megasthenes (300 B.C.)--can no more be judged by its degenerated scions among the Shamans of Siberia, than the religion of Gautama-Buddha can be interpreted by the fetishism of some of his followers in Siam and Burmah. It is in the chief lamaseries of Mongolia and Thibet that it has taken refuge; and there Shamanism, if so we must call it, is practiced to the utmost limits of intercourse allowed between man and “spirit.” The religion of the lamas has faithfully preserved the primitive science of _magic_, and produces as great feats now as it did in the days of Kublaï-Khan and his barons. The ancient mystic formula of the King Srong-ch-Tsans-Gampo, the “Aum mani padmé houm,”[1151] effects its wonders now as well as in the seventh century. Avalokitesvara, highest of the three Boddhisattvas, and patron saint of Thibet, projects his shadow, full in the view of the faithful, at the lamasery of Dga-G’Dan, founded by him; and the luminous form of Son-Ka-pa, under the shape of a fiery cloudlet, that separates itself from the dancing beams of the sunlight, holds converse with a great congregation of lamas, numbering thousands; the voice descending from above, like the whisper of the breeze through foliage. Anon, say the Thibetans, the beautiful appearance vanishes in the shadows of the sacred trees in the park of the lamasery.

At Garma-Khian (the mother-cloister) it is rumored that bad and unprogressed spirits are made to appear on certain days, and _forced_ to give an account of their evil deeds; they are compelled by the lamaic adepts to redress the wrongs done by them to mortals. This is what Huc naïvely terms “personating evil spirits,” _i.e._, devils. Were the skeptics of various European countries permitted to consult the accounts printed daily[1152] at Moru, and in the “City of Spirits,” of the business-like intercourse which takes place between the lamas and the invisible world, they would certainly feel more interest in the phenomena described so triumphantly in the spiritualistic journals. At Buddha-lla, or rather Foht-lla (Buddha’s Mount), in the most important of the many thousand lamaseries of that country, the sceptre of the Boddhisgat is seen floating, unsupported, in the air, and its motions regulate the actions of the community. Whenever a lama is called to account in the presence of the Superior of the monastery, he knows beforehand it is useless for him to tell an untruth; the “regulator of justice” (the sceptre) is there, and its waving motion, either approbatory or otherwise, decides instantaneously and unerringly the question of his guilt. We do not pretend to have witnessed all this personally--we wish to make no pretensions of any kind. Suffice it, with respect to any of these phenomena, that what we have not seen with our own eyes has been so substantiated to us that we indorse its genuineness.

A number of lamas in Sikkin produce _meipo_--“miracle”--by magical powers. The late Patriarch of Mongolia, Gegen Chutuktu, who resided at Urga, a veritable paradise, was the sixteenth incarnation of Gautama, therefore a Boddhisattva. He had the reputation of possessing powers that were phenomenal, even among the thaumaturgists of the land of miracles _par excellence_. Let no one suppose that these powers are developed without cost. The lives of most of these holy men, miscalled idle vagrants, cheating beggars, who are supposed to pass their existence in preying upon the easy credulity of their victims, are miracles in themselves. Miracles, because they show what a determined will and perfect purity of life and purpose are able to accomplish, and to what degree of preternatural ascetism a human body can be subjected and yet live and reach a ripe old age. No Christian hermit has ever dreamed of such refinement of monastic discipline; and the aërial habitation of a Simon Stylite would appear child’s play before the fakir’s and the Buddhist’s inventions of will-tests. But the theoretical study of magic is one thing; the possibility of practicing it quite another. At _Brâs-ss-Pungs_, the Mongolian college where over three hundred magicians (_sorciers_, as the French missionaries call them) teach about twice as many pupils from twelve to twenty, the latter have many years to wait for their final initiation. Not one in a hundred reaches the highest goal; and out of the many thousand lamas occupying nearly an entire city of detached buildings clustering around it, not more than two per cent. become wonder-workers. One may learn by heart every line of the 108 volumes of _Kadjur_,[1153] and still make but a poor practical magician. There is but one thing which leads surely to it, and this particular study is hinted at by more than one Hermetic writer. One, the Arabian alchemist Abipili, speaks thus: “I admonish thee, whosoever thou art that desirest to dive into the inmost parts of nature; if that thou seekest thou findest not _within thee_, thou wilt _never find it without thee_. If thou knowest not the excellency of thine own house, why dost thou seek after the excellency of other things?... O MAN, KNOW THYSELF! IN THEE IS HID THE TREASURE OF TREASURERS.”

In another alchemic tract, _De manna Benedicto_, the author expresses his ideas of the philosopher’s stone, in the following terms: “My intent is for certain reasons not to prate too much of the matter, which yet is but one only thing, already too plainly described; for it shows and sets down such magical and natural uses of it [the stone] as many that have had it never knew nor heard of; and such as, when I beheld them, _made my knees to tremble and my heart to shake, and I to stand amazed at the sight of them_!”

Every neophyte has experienced more or less such a feeling; but once that it is overcome, the man is an ADEPT.

Within the cloisters of Dshashi-Lumbo and Si-Dzang, these powers, inherent in every man, called out by so few, are cultivated to their utmost perfection. Who, in India, has not heard of the Banda-Chan Ramboutchi, the _Houtouktou_ of the capital of Higher Thibet? His brotherhood of Khe-lan was famous throughout the land; and one of the most famous “brothers” was a _Peh-ling_ (an Englishman) who had arrived one day during the early part of this century, from the West, a thorough Buddhist, and after a month’s preparation was admitted among the Khe-lans. He spoke every language, including the Thibetan, and knew every art and science, says the tradition. His sanctity and the phenomena produced by him caused him to be proclaimed a shaberon after a residence of but a few years. His memory lives to the present day among the Thibetans, but his real name is a secret with the shaberons alone.

The greatest of the _meipo_--said to be the object of the ambition of every Buddhist devotee--was, and yet is, the faculty of walking in the air. The famous King of Siam, Pia Metak, the Chinese, was noted for his devotion and learning. But he attained this “supernatural gift” only after having placed himself under the direct tuition of a priest of Gautama-Buddha. Crawfurd and Finlayson, during their residence at Siam, followed with great interest the endeavors of some Siamese nobles to acquire this faculty.[1154]

Numerous and varied are the sects in China, Siam, Tartary, Thibet, Kashmir, and British India, which devote their lives to the cultivation of “supernatural powers,” so called. Discussing one of such sects, the _Taossé_, Semedo says: “They pretend that by means of certain exercises and meditations one shall regain his youth, and others will attain to be _Shien-sien_, _i.e._, ‘Terrestrial Beati,’ in whose state every desire is gratified, whilst they have the power to transport themselves from one place to another, _however distant_, with speed and facility.”[1155] This faculty relates but to the _projection_ of the _astral entity_, in a more or less corporealized form, and certainly not to bodily transportation. This phenomenon is no more a miracle than one’s reflection in a looking-glass. No one can detect in such an image a particle of matter, and still there stands our double, faithfully representing, even to each single hair on our heads. If, by this simple law of reflection, our double can be seen in a mirror, how much more striking a proof of its existence is afforded in the art of photography! _It is no reason, because our physicists have not yet found the means of taking photographs, except at a short distance, that the acquirement should be impossible to those who have found these means in the power of the human will itself, freed from terrestrial concern._[1156] Our thoughts are _matter_, says science; every energy produces more or less of a disturbance in the atmospheric waves. Therefore, as every man--in common with every other living, and even inert object--has an _aura_ of his own emanations surrounding him; and, moreover, is enabled, by a trifling effort, to transport himself in _imagination_ wherever he likes, why is it scientifically impossible that his thought, regulated, intensified, and guided by that powerful magician, the educated will, may become corporealized for the time being, and appear to whom it likes, a faithful double of the original? Is the proposition, in the present state of science, any more unthinkable than the photograph or telegraph were less than forty years ago, or the telephone less than fourteen months ago?

If the sensitized plate can so accurately seize upon the _shadow_ of our faces, then this shadow or reflection, although we are unable to perceive it, must be something substantial. And, if we can, with the help of optical instruments, project our _semblances_ upon a white wall, at several hundred feet distance, sometimes, then there is no reason why the adepts, the alchemists, the savants of the secret art, should not have already found out that which scientists deny to-day, but may discover true to-morrow, _i.e._, how to project electrically their astral bodies, in an instant, through thousands of miles of space, leaving their material shells with a certain amount of animal vital principle to keep the physical life going, and acting within their spiritual, ethereal bodies as safely and intelligently as when clothed with the covering of flesh? There is a higher form of electricity than the physical one known to experimenters; a thousand correlations of the latter are as yet veiled to the eye of the modern physicist, and none can tell where end its possibilities.

Schott explains that by _Sian_ or _Shin-Sian_ are understood in the old Chinese conception, and particularly in that of the Tao-Kiao (Taossé) sect, “persons who withdraw to the hills to lead the life of anchorites, and who have attained, either through their ascetic observances or by the power of charms and elixirs, to the possession of miraculous gifts and of terrestrial _immortality_”[1157](?) This is exaggerated if not altogether erroneous. What they claim, is merely their ability to prolong human life; and they can do so, if we have to believe human testimony. What Marco Polo testifies to in the thirteenth century is corroborated in our own days. “There are another class of people called _Chughi_” (Yogi), he says, “who are indeed properly called _Abraiamans_ (Brahmans?) who are extremely long-lived, every man of them living to 150 or 200 years. They eat very little, rice and milk chiefly. And these people make use of a very strange beverage, a potion of sulphur and quicksilver mixed together, and this they drink twice every month.... This, they say, gives them long life; and it is a potion they are used to take from their childhood.”[1158] Burnier shows, says Colonel Yule, the Yogis very skilful in preparing mercury “so admirably that one or two grains taken every morning restored the body to perfect health;” and adds that the _mercurius vitæ_ of Paracelsus was a compound in which entered antimony and quicksilver.[1159] This is a very careless statement, to say the least, and we will explain what we know of it.

The longevity of some lamas and Talapoins is proverbial; and it is generally known that they use some compound which “renews the old blood,” as they call it. And it was equally a recognized fact with alchemists that a judicious administration, “of _aura of silver_ does restore health and prolongs life itself to a wonderful extent.” But we are fully prepared to oppose the statements of both Bernier and Col. Yule who quotes him, that it is _mercury_ or quicksilver which the Yogis and the alchemists used. The Yogis, in the days of Marco Polo, as well as in our modern times, _do use that which may appear to be quicksilver, but is not_. Paracelsus, the alchemists, and other mystics, meant by _mercurius vitæ_, the living spirit of silver, the _aura_ of silver, not the _argent vive_; and this _aura_ is certainly not the mercury known to our physicians and druggists. There can be no doubt that the imputation that Paracelsus introduced mercury into medical practice is utterly incorrect. No mercury, whether prepared by a mediæval fire-philosopher or a modern self-styled physician, can or ever did restore the body to perfect health. Only an unmitigated charlatan ever will use such a drug. And it is the opinion of many that it is just with the wicked intention of presenting Paracelsus in the eyes of posterity as a _quack_, that his enemies have invented such a preposterous lie.

The Yogis of the olden times, as well as modern lamas and Talapoins, use a certain ingredient with a minimum of sulphur, and a milky juice which they extract from a medicinal plant. They must certainly be possessed of some wonderful secrets, as we have seen them healing the most rebellious wounds in a few days; restoring broken bones to good use in as many hours as it would take days to do by means of common surgery. A fearful fever contracted by the writer near Rangoon, after a flood of the Irrawaddy River, was cured in a few hours by the juice of a plant called, if we mistake not, Kukushan, though there may be thousands of natives ignorant of its virtues who are left to die of fever. This was in return for a trifling kindness we had done to a _simple mendicant_; a service which can interest the reader but little.

We have heard of a certain water, also, called _âb-i-hayât_, which the popular superstition thinks hidden from every mortal eye, except that of the holy sannyâsi; the fountain itself being known as the âb-i-haiwân-î. It is more than probable though, that the Talapoins will decline to deliver up their secrets, even to academicians and missionaries; as these remedies must be used for the benefit of humanity, never for money.[1160]

At the great festivals of Hindu pagodas, at the marriage feasts of rich high-castes, everywhere where large crowds are gathered, Europeans find gunî--or serpent-charmers, fakirs-mesmerizers, thaum-working sannyâsi, and so-called “jugglers.” To deride is easy--to explain, rather more troublesome--to science impossible. The British residents of India and the travellers prefer the first expedient. But let any one ask one of these Thomases how the following results--which they cannot and do not deny--are produced? When crowds of gunî and fakirs appear with their bodies encircled with cobras-de-capello, their arms ornamented with bracelets of _corallilos_--diminutive snakes inflicting certain death in a few seconds--and their shoulders with necklaces of trigonocephali, the most terrible enemy of naked Hindu feet, whose bite kills like a flash of lightning, the sceptic witness smiles and gravely proceeds to explain how these reptiles, having been thrown in cataleptic torpor, were all deprived by the gunî of their fangs. “They are harmless and it is ridiculous to fear them.” “Will the Saëb caress one of my nâg?” asked once a gunî approaching our interlocutor, who had been thus humbling his listeners with his herpetological achievements for a full half hour. Rapidly jumping back--the brave warrior’s feet proving no less nimble than his tongue--Captain B----’s angry answer could hardly be immortalized by us in print. Only the gunî’s terrible body-guard saved him from an unceremonious thrashing. Besides, say a word, and for a half-roupee any professional serpent-charmer will begin creeping about and summon around in a few moments numbers of untamed serpents of the most poisonous species, and will handle them and encircle his body with them. On two occasions in the neighborhood of Trinkemal a serpent was ready to strike at the writer, who had once nearly sat on its tail, but both times, at a rapid whistle of the gunî whom we had hired to accompany us, it stopped--hardly a few inches from our body, as if arrested by lightning and slowly sinking its menacing head to the ground, remained stiff and motionless as a dead branch, under the charm of the _kīlnā_.[1161]

Will any European juggler, tamer, or even mesmerizer, risk repeating just once an experiment that may be daily witnessed in India, if you know where to go to see it? There is nothing in the world more ferocious than a royal Bengal tiger. Once the whole population of a small village, not far from Dakka, situated on the confines of a jungle, was thrown into a panic at the appearance of an enormous tigress, at the dawn of the day. These wild beasts never leave their dens but at night, when they go searching for prey and for water. But this unusual circumstance was due to the fact that the beast was a mother, and she had been deprived of her two cubs, which had been carried away by a daring hunter, and she was in search of them. Two men and a child had already become her victims, when an aged fakir, bent on his daily round, emerging from the gate of the pagoda, saw the situation and understood it at a glance. Chanting a mantrâm he went straight to the beast, which with flaming eye and foaming mouth crouched near a tree ready for a new victim. When at about ten feet from the tigress, without interrupting his modulated prayer, the words of which no layman comprehends, he began a regular process of mesmerization, as we understood it; he made _passes_. A terrific howl which struck a chill into the heart of every human being in the place, was then heard. This long, ferocious, drawling howl gradually subsided into a series of plaintive broken sobs, as if the bereaved mother was uttering her complaints, and then, to the terror of the crowd which had taken refuge on trees and in the houses, the beast made a tremendous leap--on the holy man as they thought. They were mistaken, she was at his feet, rolling in the dust, and writhing. A few moments more and she remained motionless, with her enormous head laid on her fore-paws, and her bloodshot but now mild eye riveted on the face of the fakir. Then the holy man of prayers sat beside the tigress and tenderly smoothed her striped skin, and patted her back, until her groans became fainter and fainter, and half an hour later all the village was standing around this group; the fakir’s head lying on the tigress’s back as on a pillow, his right hand on her head, and his left thrown on the sod under the terrible mouth, from which the long red protruding tongue was gently licking it.

This is the way the fakirs tame the wildest beasts in India. Can European tamers, with their white-hot iron rods, do as much? Of course every fakir is not endowed with such a power; comparatively very few are. And yet the actual number is large. How they are _trained_ to these requirements in the pagodas will remain an eternal secret, to all except the Brahmans and the adepts in occult mysteries. The stories, hitherto considered fables, of Christna and Orpheus charming the wild beasts, thus receives its corroboration in our day. There is one fact which remains undeniable. _There is not a single European_ in India who could have, or has ever boasted of having, penetrated into the enclosed sanctuary _within_ the pagodas. Neither authority nor money has ever induced a Brahman to allow an uninitiated foreigner to pass the threshold of the reserved precinct. To use authority in such a case would be equivalent to throwing a lighted taper into a powder magazine. The Hindus, mild, patient, long-suffering, whose very apathy saved the British from being driven out of the country in 1857, would raise their hundred millions of devotees as one man, at such a profanation; regardless of sects or castes, they would exterminate every Christian. The East India Company knew this well and built her stronghold on the friendship of the Brahmans, and by paying subsidy to the pagodas; and the British Government is as prudent as its predecessor. It is the castes, and non-interference with the prevailing religions, that secure its comparative authority in India. But we must once more recur to Shamanism, that strange and most despised of all surviving religions--“Spirit-worship.”

Its followers have neither altars nor idols, and it is upon the authority of a Shaman priest that we state that their true rites, which they are bound to perform only once a year, on the shortest day of winter, cannot take place before any stranger to their faith. Therefore, we are confident that all descriptions hitherto given in the _Asiatic Journal_ and other European works, are but guess-work. The Russians, who, from constant intercourse with the Shamans in Siberia and Tartary, would be the most competent of all persons to judge of their religion, have learned nothing except of the personal proficiency of these men in what they are half inclined to believe clever jugglery. Many Russian residents, though, in Siberia, are firmly convinced of the “supernatural” powers of the Shamans. Whenever they assemble to worship, it is always in an open space, or a high hill, or in the hidden depths of a forest--in this reminding us of the old Druidical rites. Their ceremonies upon the occasions of births, deaths, and marriages are but trifling parts of their worship. They comprise offerings, the sprinkling of the fire with spirits and milk, and weird hymns, or rather, magical incantations, intoned by the officiating Shaman, and concluding with a chorus of the persons present.

The numerous small bells of brass and iron worn by them on the priestly robe of deerskin,[1162] or the pelt of some other animal reputed magnetic, are used to drive away the malevolent spirits of the air, a _superstition_ shared by all the nations of old, including Romans, and even the Jews, whose golden bells tell the story. They have iron staves also covered with bells, for the same reason. When, after certain ceremonies, the desired crisis is reached, and “the spirit has spoken,” and the priest (who may be either male or female) feels its overpowering influence, the hand of the Shaman is drawn by some occult power toward the top of the staff, which is commonly covered with hieroglyphics. With his palm pressing upon it, he is then raised to a considerable height in the air, where he remains for some time. Sometimes he leaps to an extraordinary height, and, according to the control--for he is often but an irresponsible medium--pours out prophecies and describes future events. Thus, it was that, in 1847, a Shaman in a distant part of Siberia prophesied and accurately detailed the issue of the Crimean war. The particulars of the prognostication being carefully noted by those present at the time, were all verified six years after this occurrence. Although usually ignorant of even the name of astronomy, let alone having studied this science, they often prophesy eclipses and other astronomical phenomena. When consulted about thefts and murders, they invariably point out the guilty parties.

The Shamans of Siberia are all ignorant and illiterate. Those of Tartary and Thibet--few in number--are mostly learned men in their own way, and will not allow themselves to fall under the control of spirits of any kind. The former are _mediums_ in the full sense of the word; the latter, “magicians.” It is not surprising that pious and superstitious persons, after seeing one of such crises, should declare the Shaman to be under demoniacal possession. As in the instances of Corybantic and Bacchantic fury among the ancient Greeks, the “spiritual” crisis of the Shaman exhibits itself in violent dancing and wild gestures. Little by little the lookers-on feel the spirit of imitation aroused in them; seized with an irresistible impulse, they dance, and become, in their turn, ecstatics; and he who begins by joining the chorus, gradually and unconsciously takes part in the gesticulations, until he sinks to the ground exhausted, and often dying.

“O, young girl, a god possesses thee! it is either Pan, or Hekaté, or the venerable Corybantes, or Cybelé that agitates thee!” the chorus says, addressing Phœdra, in Euripides. This form of psychological epidemic has been too well known from the time of the middle ages to cite instances from it. The _Chorœa sancti Viti_ is an historical fact, and spread throughout Germany. Paracelsus cured quite a number of persons possessed of such a spirit of imitation. But he was a kabalist, and therefore accused, by his enemies, of having cast out the devils by the power of a stronger demon, which he was believed to carry about with him in the hilt of his sword. The Christian judges of those days of horror found a better and a surer remedy. Voltaire states that, in the district of Jura, between 1598 and 1600, over 600 lycanthropes were put to death by a pious judge.

But, while the illiterate Shaman is a victim, and during his crisis sometimes sees the persons present, under the shape of various animals, and often makes them share his hallucination, his brother Shaman, learned in the mysteries of the priestly colleges of Thibet, _expels_ the elementary creature, which can produce the hallucination as well as a living mesmerizer, not through the help of a stronger demon, but simply through his knowledge of the nature of the invisible enemy. Where academicians have failed, as in the cases of the Cevennois, a Shaman or a lama would have soon put an end to the epidemic.

We have mentioned a kind of carnelian stone in our possession, which had such an unexpected and favorable effect upon the Shaman’s decision. Every Shaman has such a talisman, which he wears attached to a string, and carries under his left arm.

“Of what use is it to you, and what are its virtues?” was the question we often offered to our guide. To this he never answered directly, but evaded all explanation, promising that as soon as an opportunity was offered, and we were alone, he would ask the stone _to answer for himself_. With this very indefinite hope, we were left to the resources of our own imagination.

But the day on which the stone “spoke” came very soon. It was during the most critical hours of our life; at a time when the vagabond nature of a traveller had carried the writer to far-off lands, where neither civilization is known, nor security can be guaranteed for one hour. One afternoon, as every man and woman had left the _yourta_ (Tartar tent), that had been our home for over two months, to witness the ceremony of the Lamaïc exorcism of a Tshoutgour,[1163] accused of breaking and spiriting away every bit of the poor furniture and earthenware of a family living about two miles distant, the Shaman, who had become our only protector in those dreary deserts, was reminded of his promise. He sighed and hesitated; but, after a short silence, left his place on the sheepskin, and, going outside, placed a dried-up goat’s head with its prominent horns over a wooden peg, and then dropping down the felt curtain of the tent, remarked that now no living person would venture in, for the goat’s head was a sign that he was “at work.”

After that, placing his hand in his bosom, he drew out the little stone, about the size of a walnut, and, carefully unwrapping it, proceeded, as it appeared, to swallow it. In a few moments his limbs stiffened, his body became rigid, and he fell, cold and motionless as a corpse. But for a slight twitching of his lips at every question asked, the scene would have been embarrassing, nay--dreadful. The sun was setting, and were it not that dying embers flickered at the centre of the tent, complete darkness would have been added to the oppressive silence which reigned. We have lived in the prairies of the West, and in the boundless steppes of Southern Russia; but nothing can be compared with the silence at sunset on the sandy deserts of Mongolia; not even the barren solitudes of the deserts of Africa, though the former are partially inhabited, and the latter utterly void of life. Yet, there was the writer alone with what looked no better than a corpse lying on the ground. Fortunately, this state did not last long.

“Mahandū!” uttered a voice, which seemed to come from the bowels of the earth, on which the Shaman was prostrated. “Peace be with you ... what would you have me do for you?”

Startling as the fact seemed, we were quite prepared for it, for we had seen other Shamans pass through similar performances. “Whoever you are,” we pronounced mentally, “go to K----, and try to bring that person’s _thought_ here. See what that other party does, and tell * * * what we are doing and how situated.”

“I am there;” answered the same voice. “The old lady (kokona)[1164] is sitting in the garden ... she is putting on her spectacles and reading a letter.”

“The contents of it, and hasten,” was the hurried order while preparing note-book and pencil. The contents were given slowly, as if, while dictating, the invisible presence desired to afford us time to put down the words phonetically, for we recognized the Valachian language of which we know nothing beyond the ability to recognize it. In such a way a whole page was filled.

“Look west ... toward the third pole of the yourta,” pronounced the Tartar in his natural voice, though it sounded hollow, and as if coming from afar. “Her _thought_ is here.”

Then with a convulsive jerk, the upper portion of the Shaman’s body seemed raised, and his head fell heavily on the writer’s feet, which he clutched with both his hands. The position was becoming less and less attractive, but curiosity proved a good ally to courage. In the west corner was standing, life-like but flickering, unsteady and mist-like, the form of a dear old friend, a Roumanian lady of Valachia, a mystic by disposition, but a thorough disbeliever in this kind of occult phenomena.

“Her thought is here, but her body is lying unconscious. We could not bring her here otherwise,” said the voice.

We addressed and supplicated the apparition to answer, but all in vain. The features moved, and the form gesticulated as if in fear and agony, but no sound broke forth from the shadowy lips; only we imagined--perchance it was a fancy--hearing as if from a long distance the Roumanian words, “_Non se póte_” (it cannot be done).

For over two hours, the most substantial, unequivocal proofs that the Shaman’s astral soul was travelling at the bidding of our unspoken wish, were given us. Ten months later, we received a letter from our Valachian friend in response to ours, in which we had enclosed the page from the note-book, inquiring of her what she had been doing on that day, and describing the scene in full. She was sitting--she wrote--in the garden on that morning[1165] prosaically occupied in boiling some conserves; the letter sent to her was word for word the copy of the one received by her from her brother; all at once--in consequence of the heat, she thought--she fainted, and remembered distinctly _dreaming_ she saw the writer in a desert place which she accurately described, and sitting under a “gypsy’s tent,” as she expressed it. “Henceforth,” she added, “I can doubt no longer!”

But our experiment was proved still better. We had directed the Shaman’s inner _ego_ to the same friend heretofore mentioned in this chapter, the Kutchi of Lha-Ssa, who travels constantly to British India and back. _We know_ that he was apprised of our critical situation in the desert; for a few hours later came help, and we were rescued by a party of twenty-five horsemen who had been directed by their chief to find us at the place where we were, which no living man endowed with common powers could have known. The chief of this escort was a Shaberon, an “adept” whom we had never seen before, nor did we after that, for he never left his _soumay_ (lamasery), and we could have no access to it. But _he was a personal friend of the Kutchi_.

The above will of course provoke naught but incredulity in the general reader. But we write for those who will believe; who, like the writer, understand and know the illimitable powers and possibilities of the human astral soul. In this case we willingly believe, nay, we know, that the “spiritual double” of the Shaman did not act alone, for he was no adept, but simply a medium. According to a favorite expression of his, as soon as he placed the stone in his mouth, his “father appeared, dragged him out of his skin, and took him wherever he wanted,” and at his bidding.

One who has only witnessed the chemical, optical, mechanical, and sleight-of-hand performances of European prestidigitateurs, is not prepared to see, without amazement, the open-air and off-hand exhibitions of Hindu jugglers, to say nothing of fakirs. Of the mere displays of deceptive dexterity we make no account, for Houdin and others far excel them in that respect; nor do we dwell upon feats that permit of confederacy, whether resorted to or not. It is unquestionably true that non-expert travellers, especially if of an imaginative turn of mind, exaggerate inordinately. But our remark is based upon a class of phenomena not to be accounted for upon any of the familiar hypotheses. “I have seen,” says a gentleman who resided in India, “a man throw up into the air a number of balls numbered in succession from one upwards. As each went up--and there was no deception about their going up--the ball was seen clearly in the air, getting smaller and smaller, till it disappeared altogether out of sight. When they were all up, twenty or more, the operator would politely ask which ball you wanted to see, and then would shout out, ‘No. 1,’ ‘No. 15,’ and so on, as instructed by the spectators, when the ball demanded would bound to his feet violently from some remote distance.... These fellows have very scanty clothing, and apparently no apparatus whatever. Then, I have seen them swallow three different colored powders, and then, throwing back the head, wash them down with water, drunk, in the native fashion, in a continuous stream from a _lotah_, or brass-pot, held at arm’s length from the lips, and keep on drinking till the swollen body could not hold another drop, and water overflowed from the lips. Then, these fellows, after squirting out the water in their mouths, have spat out the three powders on a clean piece of paper, dry and unmixed.”[1166]

In the eastern portion of Turkey and Persia, have dwelt, from time immemorial, the warlike tribes of the Koordistan. This people of purely Indo-European origin, and without a drop of Semitic blood in them (though some ethnologists seem to think otherwise), notwithstanding their brigand-like disposition, unite in themselves the mysticism of the Hindu and the practices of the Assyrio-Chaldean magians, vast portions of whose territory they have helped themselves to, and will not give up, to please either Turkey or even all Europe.[1167] Nominally, Mahometans of the sect of Omar, their rites and doctrines are purely magical and magian. Even those who are Christian Nestorians, are Christians but in name. The Kaldany, numbering nearly 100,000 men, and with their two Patriarchs, are undeniably rather Manicheans than Nestorians. Many of them are Yezids.

One of these tribes is noted for its fire-worshipping predilections. At sunrise and sunset, the horsemen alight and, turning towards the sun, mutter a prayer; while at every new moon they perform mysterious rites throughout the whole night. They have a tent set apart for the purpose, and its thick, black, woolen fabric is decorated with weird signs, worked in bright red and yellow. In the centre is placed a kind of altar, encircled by three brass bands, to which are suspended numerous rings by ropes of camel’s hair, which every worshipper holds with his right hand during the ceremony. On the altar burns a curious, old-fashioned silver lamp, a relic found possibly among the ruins of Persepolis.[1168] This lamp, with three wicks, is an oblong cup with a handle to it, and is evidently of the class of Egyptian sepulchral lamps, once found in such profusion in the subterranean caves of Memphis, if we may believe Kircher.[1169] It widened from its end toward the middle, and its upper part was of the shape of a heart; the apertures for the wicks forming a triangle, and its centre being covered by an inverted heliotrope attached to a gracefully-curved stalk proceeding from the handle of the lamp. This ornament clearly bespoke its origin. It was one of the sacred vessels used in sun-worship. The Greeks gave the _heliotrope_ its name from its strange propensity to ever incline towards the sun. The ancient Magi used it in their worship; and who knows but Darius had performed the mysterious rites with its triple light illuminating the face of the king-hierophant!

If we mention the lamp at all, it is because there happened to be a strange story in connection with it. What the Koords do, during their nocturnal rites of lunar-worship, we know but from hearsay; for they conceal it carefully, and no stranger could be admitted to witness the ceremony. But every tribe has one old man, sometimes several, regarded as “holy beings,” who know the past, and can divulge the secrets of the future. These are greatly honored, and generally resorted to for information in cases of theft, murders, or danger.

Travelling from one tribe to the other, we passed some time in company with these Koords. As our object is not autobiographical, we omit all details that have no immediate bearing upon some occult fact, and even of these, have room but for a few. We will then simply state that a very expensive saddle, a carpet, and two Circassian daggers, richly mounted and chiselled in gold, had been stolen from the tent, and that the Koords, with the chief of the tribe at the head, had come, taking Allah for their witness that the culprit could not belong to their tribe. We believed it, for it would have been unprecedented among these nomadic tribes of Asia, as famed for the sacredness in which they hold their guests, as for the ease with which they plunder and occasionally murder them, when once they have passed the boundaries of their _aoûl_.

A suggestion was then made by a Georgian belonging to our caravan to have resort to the light of the _koodian_ (sorcerer) of their tribe. This was arranged in great secrecy and solemnity, and the interview appointed to take place at midnight, when the moon would be at its full. At the stated hour we were conducted to the above-described tent.

A large hole, or square aperture, was managed in the arched roof of the tent, and through it poured in vertically the radiant moonbeams, mingling with the vacillating triple flame of the little lamp. After several minutes of incantations, addressed, as it seemed to us, to the moon, the conjurer, an old man of tremendous stature, whose pyramidal turban touched the top of the tent, produced a round looking-glass, of the kind known as “Persian mirrors.” Having unscrewed its cover, he then proceeded to breathe on it, for over ten minutes, and wipe off the moisture from the surface with a package of herbs, muttering incantations the while _sotto voce_. After every wiping the glass became more and more brilliant, till its crystal seemed to radiate refulgent phosphoric rays in every direction. At last the operation was ended; the old man, with the mirror in his hand, remained as motionless as if he had been a statue. “Look, Hanoum ... look steadily,” he whispered, hardly moving his lips. Shadows and dark spots began gathering, where one moment before nothing was reflected but the radiant face of the full moon. A few more seconds, and there appeared the well-known saddle, carpet, and daggers, which seemed to be rising as from a deep, clear water, and becoming with every instant more definitely outlined. Then a still darker shadow appeared hovering over these objects, which gradually condensed itself, and then came out, as visibly as at the small end of a telescope, the full figure of a man crouching over them.

“I know him!” exclaimed the writer. “It is the Tartar who came to us last night, offering to sell his mule!”

The image disappeared, as if by enchantment. The old man nodded assent, but remained motionless. Then he muttered again some strange words, and suddenly began a song. The tune was slow and monotonous, but after he had sung a few stanzas in the same unknown tongue, without changing either rhythm or tune, he pronounced, _recitative_-like, the following words, in his broken Russian:

“Now, Hanoum, look well, whether we will catch him--the fate of the robber--we will learn this night,” etc.

The same shadows began gathering, and then, almost without transition, we saw the man lying on his back, in a pool of blood, across the saddle, and two other men galloping off at a distance. Horror-stricken, and sick at the sight of this picture, we desired to see no more. The old man, leaving the tent, called some of the Koords standing outside, and seemed to give them instructions. Two minutes later, a dozen of horsemen were galloping off at full speed down the side of the mountain on which we were encamped.

Early in the morning they returned with the lost objects. The saddle was all covered with coagulated blood, and of course abandoned to them. The story they told was, that upon coming in sight of the fugitive, they saw disappearing over the crest of a distant hill two horsemen, and upon riding up, the Tartar thief was found dead upon the stolen property, exactly as we had seen him in the magical glass. He had been murdered by the two banditti, whose evident design to rob him was interrupted by the sudden appearance of the party sent by the old Koodian.

The most remarkable results are produced by the Eastern “wise men,” by the simple act of breathing upon a person, whether with good or evil intent. This is pure mesmerism; and among the Persian dervishes who practice it the animal magnetism is often reinforced by that of the elements. If a person happens to stand facing a certain wind, there is always danger, they think; and many of the “learned ones” in occult matters can never be prevailed upon to go at sunset in a certain direction from whence blows the wind. We have known an old Persian from Baku,[1170] on the Caspian Sea, who had the most unenviable reputation for _throwing spells_ through the timely help of this wind, which blows but too often at that town, as its Persian name itself shows.[1171] If a victim, against whom the wrath of the old fiend was kindled, happened to be facing this wind, he would appear, as if by enchantment, cross the road rapidly, and breathe in his face. From that moment, the latter would find himself afflicted with every evil--he was under the spell of the “evil eye.”

The employment of the human breath by the sorcerer as an adjunct for the accomplishment of his nefarious purpose, is strikingly illustrated in several terrible cases recorded in the French annals--notably those of several Catholic priests. In fact, this species of sorcery was known from the oldest times. The Emperor Constantine (in Statute iv., _Code de Malef._, etc.) prescribed the severest penalties against such as should employ sorcery to do violence to chastity and excite unlawful passion. Augustine (_Cité de Dieu_) warns against it; Jerome, Gregory, Nazianzen and many other ecclesiastical authorities, lend their denunciation of a crime not uncommon among the clergy. Baffet (book v., tit. 19, chap. 6) relates the case of the curé of Peifane, who accomplished the ruin of a highly-respected and virtuous lady parishioner, the Dame du Lieu, by resort to sorcery, and was burned alive for it by the Parliament of Grenoble. In 1611, a priest named Gaufridy was burned by the Parliament of Provence for seducing a penitent at the confessional, named Magdelaine de la Palud, _by breathing upon her_, and thus throwing her into a delirium of sinful love for him.

The above cases are cited in the official report of the famous case of Father Girard, a Jesuit priest of very great influence, who, in 1731, was tried before the Parliament of Aix, France, for the seduction of his parishioner, Mlle. Catherine Cadière, of Toulon, and certain revolting crimes in connection with the same. The indictment charged that the offence was brought about by resort to sorcery. Mlle. Cadière was a young lady noted for her beauty, piety, and exemplary virtues. Her attention to her religious duties was exceptionally rigorous, and that was the cause of her perdition. Father Girard’s eye fell upon her, and he began to manœuvre for her ruin. Gaining the confidence of the girl and her family by his apparent great sanctity, he one day made a pretext to blow his breath upon her. The girl became instantly affected with a violent passion for him. She also had ecstatic visions of a religious character, stigmata, or blood-marks of the “Passion,” and hysterical convulsions. The long-sought opportunity of seclusion with his penitent finally offering, the Jesuit breathed upon her again, and before the poor girl recovered her senses, his object had been accomplished. By sophistry and the excitation of her religious fervor, he kept up this illicit relation for months, without her suspecting that she had done anything wrong. Finally, however, her eyes were opened, her parents informed, and the priest was arraigned. Judgment was rendered October 12th, 1731. Of twenty-five judges, twelve voted to send him to the stake. The criminal priest was defended by all the power of the Society of Jesus, and it is said that a million francs were spent in trying to suppress the evidence produced at the trial. The facts, however, were printed in a work (in 5 vols., 16mo), now rare, entitled _Recueil Général des Pièces contenues au Procez du Père Jean-Baptiste Girard, Jesuite_, etc., etc.[1172]

We have noted the circumstance that, while under the sorcerous influence of Father Girard, and in illicit relations with him, Mlle. Cadière’s body was marked with the _stigmata_ of the _Passion_, viz.: the bleeding wounds of thorns on her brow, of nails in her hands and feet, and of a lance-cut in her side. It should be added that the same marks were seen upon the bodies of six other penitents of this priest, viz.: Mesdames Guyol, Laugier, Grodier, Allemande, Batarelle, and Reboul. In fact, it became commonly remarked that Father Girard’s handsome parishioners were strangely given to ecstasies and _stigmata_! Add this to the fact that, in the case of Father Gaufridy, above noted, the same thing was proved, upon surgical testimony, to have happened to Mlle. de Palud, and we have something worth the attention of all (especially spiritualists) who imagine these _stigmata_ are produced by pure spirits. Barring the agency of the Devil, whom we have quietly put to rest in another chapter, Catholics would be puzzled, we fancy, despite all their infallibility, to distinguish between the stigmata of the sorcerers and those produced through the intervention of the Holy Ghost or the angels. The Church records abound in instances of alleged diabolical imitations of these signs of saintship, but, as we have remarked, the Devil is out of court.

By those who have followed us thus far, it will naturally be asked, to what practical issue this book tends; much has been said about magic and its potentiality, much of the immense antiquity of its practice. Do we wish to affirm that the occult sciences ought to be studied and practiced throughout the world? Would we replace modern spiritualism with the ancient magic? Neither; the substitution could not be made, nor the study universally prosecuted, without incurring the risk of enormous public dangers. At this moment, a well-known spiritualist and lecturer on mesmerism is imprisoned on the charge of raping a subject whom he had hypnotized. A sorcerer is a public enemy, and mesmerism may most readily be turned into the worst of sorceries.

We would have neither scientists, theologians, nor spiritualists turn practical magicians, but all to realize that there was true science, profound religion, and genuine phenomena before this modern era. We would that all who have a voice in the education of the masses should first know and then _teach_ that the safest guides to human happiness and enlightenment are those writings which have descended to us from the remotest antiquity; and that nobler spiritual aspirations and a higher average morality prevail in the countries where the people take their precepts as the rule of their lives. We would have all to realize that magical, _i.e._, spiritual powers exist in every man, and those few to practice them who feel called to teach, and are ready to pay the price of discipline and self-conquest which their development exacts.

Many men have arisen who had glimpses of the truth, and fancied they had it all. Such have failed to achieve the good they might have done and sought to do, because vanity has made them thrust their personality into such undue prominence as to interpose it between their believers and the _whole_ truth that lay behind. The world needs no sectarian church, whether of Buddha, Jesus, Mahomet, Swedenborg, Calvin, or any other. There being but ONE Truth, man requires but one church--the Temple of God within us, walled in by matter but penetrable by any one who can find the way; _the pure in heart see God_.

_The trinity of nature is the lock of magic, the trinity of man the key that fits it._ Within the solemn precincts of the sanctuary the SUPREME had and has no name. It is unthinkable and unpronounceable; and yet every man finds in himself his god. “Who art thou, O fair being?” inquires the disembodied soul, in the _Khordah-Avesta_, at the gates of Paradise. “I am, O Soul, _thy good and pure thoughts_, thy works and thy _good law_ ... thy angel ... and thy god.” Then man, or the soul, is reunited with ITSELF, for this “Son of God” is one with him; it is his own mediator, the _god_ of his human soul and his “Justifier.” “_God not revealing himself immediately to man, the spirit is his interpreter_,” says Plato in the _Banquet_.

Besides, there are many good reasons why the study of magic, except in its broad philosophy, is nearly impracticable in Europe and America. Magic being what it is, the most difficult of all sciences to learn experimentally--its acquisition is practically beyond the reach of the majority of white-skinned people; and that, whether their effort is made at home or in the East. Probably not more than one man in a million of European blood is fitted--either physically, morally, or psychologically--to become a practical magician, and not one in ten millions would be found endowed with all these three qualifications as required for the work. Civilized nations lack the phenomenal powers of endurance, both mental and physical, of the Easterns; the favoring temperamental idiosyncrasies of the Orientals are utterly wanting in them. In the Hindu, the Arabian, the Thibetan, an intuitive perception of the possibilities of occult natural forces in subjection to human will, comes by inheritance; and in them, the physical senses as well as the spiritual are far more finely developed than in the Western races. Notwithstanding the notable difference of thickness between the skulls of a European and a Southern Hindu, this difference, being a purely climatic result, due to the intensity of the sun’s rays, involves no psychological principles. Furthermore, there would be tremendous difficulties in the way of _training_, if we can so express it. Contaminated by centuries of dogmatic superstition, by an ineradicable--though quite unwarranted--sense of superiority over those whom the English term so contemptuously “niggers,” the white European would hardly submit himself to the practical tuition of either Kopt, Brahman, or Lama. To become a neophyte, one must be ready to devote himself heart and soul to the study of mystic sciences. Magic--most imperative of mistresses--brooks no rival. Unlike other sciences, a theoretical knowledge of formulæ without mental capacities or soul powers, is utterly useless in magic. The spirit must hold in complete subjection the combativeness of what is loosely termed educated reason, until facts have vanquished cold human sophistry.

Those best prepared to appreciate occultism are the spiritualists, although, through prejudice, until now they have been the bitterest opponents to its introduction to public notice. Despite all foolish negations and denunciations, their phenomena are real. Despite, also, their own assertions they are wholly misunderstood by themselves. The totally insufficient theory of the constant agency of disembodied human spirits in their production has been the bane of the _Cause_. A thousand mortifying rebuffs have failed to open their reason or intuition to the truth. Ignoring the teachings of the past, they have discovered no substitute. We offer them philosophical deduction instead of unverifiable hypothesis, scientific analysis and demonstration instead of undiscriminating faith. Occult philosophy gives them the means of meeting the reasonable requirements of science, and frees them from the humiliating necessity to accept the oracular teachings of “intelligences,” which as a rule have less intelligence than a child at school. So based and so strengthened, modern phenomena would be in a position to command the attention and enforce the respect of those who carry with them public opinion. Without invoking such help, spiritualism must continue to vegetate, equally repulsed--not without cause--both by scientists and theologians. In its modern aspect, it is neither a science, a religion, nor a philosophy.

Are we unjust; does any intelligent spiritualist complain that we have misstated the case? To what can he point us but to a confusion of theories, a tangle of hypotheses mutually contradictory? Can he affirm that spiritualism, even with its thirty years of phenomena, has any defensible philosophy; nay, that there is anything like an established method that is generally accepted and followed by its recognized representatives?

And yet, there are many thoughtful, scholarly, earnest writers among the spiritualists, scattered the world over. There are men who, in addition to a scientific mental training and a reasoned faith in the phenomena _per se_, possess all the requisites of leaders of the movement. How is it then, that, except throwing off an isolated volume or so, or occasional contributions to journalism, they all refrain from taking any active part in the formation of a system of philosophy? This is from no lack of moral courage, as their writings well show. Nor because of indifference, for enthusiasm abounds, and they are sure of their facts. Nor is it from lack of capacity, because many are men of mark, the peers of our best minds. It is simply for the reason that, almost without exception, they are bewildered by the contradictions they encounter, and wait for their tentative hypotheses to be verified by further experience. Doubtless this is the part of wisdom. It is that adopted by Newton, who, with the heroism of an honest, unselfish heart, withheld for seventeen years the promulgation of his theory of gravitation, only because he had not verified it to his own satisfaction.

Spiritualism, whose aspect is rather that of aggression than of defense, has tended toward iconoclasm, and so far has done well. But, in pulling down, it does not rebuild. Every really substantial truth it erects is soon buried under an avalanche of chimeras, until all are in one confused ruin. At every step of advance, at the acquisition of every new vantage-ground of FACT, some cataclysm, either in the shape of fraud and exposure, or of premeditated treachery, occurs, and throws the spiritualists back powerless because they _cannot_ and their invisible friends _will_ not (or perchance can, less than themselves) make good their claims. Their fatal weakness is that they have but _one_ theory to offer in explanation of their challenged facts--the agency of _human disembodied spirits_, and the medium’s complete subjection to them. They will attack those who differ in views with them with a vehemence only warranted by a better cause; they will regard every argument contradicting their theory as an imputation upon their common sense and powers of observation; and they will positively refuse even to argue the question.

How, then, can spiritualism be ever elevated to the distinction of a science? This, as Professor Tyndall shows, includes three absolutely necessary elements: observation of facts; induction of laws from these facts; and verification of those laws by constant practical experience. What experienced observer will maintain that spiritualism presents either one of these three elements? The medium is not uniformly surrounded by such test conditions that we may be sure of the facts; the inductions from the supposed facts are unwarranted in the absence of such verification; and, as a corollary, there has been no sufficient verification of those hypotheses by experience. In short, the prime element of accuracy has, as a rule, been lacking.

That we may not be charged with desire to misrepresent the position of spiritualism, at the date of this present writing, or accused of withholding credit for advances actually made, we will cite a few passages from the London _Spiritualist_ of March 2, 1877. At the fortnightly meeting, held February 19, a debate occurred upon the subject of “Ancient Thought and Modern Spiritualism.” Some of the most intelligent Spiritualists of England participated. Among these was Mr. W. Stainton Moses, M.A., who has recently given some attention to the relation between ancient and modern phenomena. He said: “Popular spiritualism is not scientific; it does very little in the way of scientific verification. Moreover, exoteric spiritualism is, to a large extent, devoted to presumed communion with personal friends, or to the gratification of curiosity, or the mere evolution of marvels.... The truly esoteric science of spiritualism is very rare, and not more rare than valuable. To it we must look to the origination of knowledge which may be developed exoterically.... We proceed too much on the lines of the physicists; our tests are crude, and often illusory; we know too little of the Protean power of spirit. Here the ancients were far ahead of us, and can teach us much. We have not introduced any certainty into the conditions--a necessary prerequisite for true scientific experiment. This is largely owing to the fact that our circles are constructed on no principle.... We have not even mastered the elementary truths which the ancients knew and acted on, _e.g._, the isolation of mediums. We have been so occupied with wonder-hunting that we have hardly tabulated the phenomena, or propounded one theory to account for the production of the simplest of them.... We have never faced the question: What is the intelligence? This is the great blot, the most frequent source of error, and here we might learn with advantage from the ancients. There is the strongest disinclination among spiritualists to admit the possibility of the truth of occultism. In this respect they are as hard to convince as is the outer world of spiritualism. Spiritualists start with a fallacy, viz.: that all phenomena are caused by the action of departed human spirits; _they have not looked into the powers of the human spirit_; they do not know the extent to which spirit acts, how far it reaches, what it underlies.”

Our position could not be better defined. If Spiritualism has a future; it is in the keeping of such men as Mr. Stainton Moses.

Our work is done--would that it were better done! But, despite our inexperience in the art of book-making, and the serious difficulty of writing in a foreign tongue, we hope we have succeeded in saying some things that will remain in the minds of the thoughtful. The enemies of truth have been all counted, and all passed in review. Modern science, powerless to satisfy the aspirations of the race, makes the future a void, and bereaves man of hope. In one sense, it is like the Baital Pachisi, the Hindu vampire of popular fancy, which lives in dead bodies, and feeds but on the rottenness of matter. The theology of Christendom has been rubbed threadbare by the most serious minds of the day. It is found to be, on the whole, subversive, rather than promotive of spirituality and good morals. Instead of expounding the rules of divine law and justice, it teaches but _itself_. In place of an ever-living Deity, it preaches the Evil One, and makes him indistinguishable from God Himself! “Lead us not into temptation” is the aspiration of Christians. Who, then, is the tempter? Satan? No; the prayer is not addressed to him. It is that tutelar genius who hardened the heart of Pharaoh, put an evil spirit into Saul, sent lying messengers to the prophets, and tempted David to sin; it is--the _Bible_-God of Israel!

Our examination of the multitudinous religious faiths that mankind, early and late, have professed, most assuredly indicates that they have all been derived from one primitive source. It would seem as if they were all but different modes of expressing the yearning of the imprisoned human soul for intercourse with supernal spheres. As the white ray of light is decomposed by the prism into the various colors of the solar spectrum, so the beam of divine truth, in passing through the _three-sided_ prism of man’s nature, has been broken up into vari-colored fragments called RELIGIONS. And, as the rays of the spectrum, by imperceptible shadings, merge into each other, so the great theologies that have appeared at different degrees of divergence from the original source, have been connected by minor schisms, schools, and off-shoots from the one side or the other. Combined, their aggregate represents one eternal truth; separate, they are but shades of human error and the signs of imperfection. The worship of the Vedic _pitris_ is fast becoming the worship of the spiritual portion of mankind. It but needs the right perception of things objective to finally discover that the only world of reality is the subjective.

What has been contemptuously termed Paganism, was ancient wisdom replete with Deity; and Judaism and its offspring, Christianity and Islamism, derived whatever of inspiration they contained from this ethnic parent. Pre-Vedic Brahmanism and Buddhism are the double source from which all religions sprung; Nirvana is the ocean to which all tend. For the purposes of a philosophical analysis, we need not take account of the enormities which have blackened the record of many of the world’s religions. True faith is the embodiment of divine charity; those who minister at its altars, are but human. As we turn the bloodstained pages of ecclesiastical history, we find that, whoever may have been the hero, and whatever costumes the actors may have worn, the plot of the tragedy has ever been the same. But the Eternal Night was in and behind all, and we pass from what we see to that which is invisible to the eye of sense. Our fervent wish has been to show true souls how they may lift aside the curtain, and, in the brightness of that Night made Day, look with undazzled gaze upon the UNVEILED TRUTH.

THE END.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] These figures are copied from the “Religious Statistics of the United States for the year 1871.”

[2] These are: The _Baptists_, _Congregationalists_, _Episcopalians_, Northern _Methodists_, Southern _Methodists_, Methodists _various_, Northern _Presbyterians_, Southern _Presbyterians_, _United Presbyterians_, _United Brethren_, _Brethren in Christ_, _Reformed Dutch_, _Reformed German_, _Reformed Presbyterians_, _Cumberland Presbyterians_.

[3] H. Maudsley: “Body and Mind.”

[4] “Boston Sunday Herald,” November 5, 1876.

[5] See the self-glorification of the present Pope in the work entitled, “Speeches of Pope Pius IX.” by Don Pascale de Franciscis; and the famous pamphlet of that name by the Rt. Hon. W. E. Gladstone. The latter quotes from the work named the following sentence pronounced by the Pope: “My wish is that all governments should know that I am speaking in this strain.... And I have _the right_ to speak, _even more than Nathan the prophet_ to David the king, _and a great deal more than St. Ambrose had to Theodosius_!!”

[6] See King’s “Gnostics,” and other works.

[7] Des Mousseaux: “La Magie au XIXme Siècle,” chap. i.

[8] Hargrave Jennings: “The Rosicrucians,” pp. 228-241.

[9] Des Mousseaux: “Hauts Phénomenes de la Magie.”

[10] Don Pasquale di Franciscis: “Discorsi del Sommo Pontefice Pio IX.,” Part i., p. 340.

[11] “Speeches of Pius IX.,” p. 14. Am. Edition.

[12] Vide “Speeches of Pope Pius IX.,” by Don Pasq. di Franciscis; Gladstone’s pamphlet on this book; Draper’s “Conflict between Religion and Science,” and others.

[13] The fact is given to us by an eye-witness who has visited the church several times; a Roman Catholic, who felt perfectly _horrified_, as he expressed it.

[14] Referring to the seed planted by Jesus and his Apostles.

[15] “Chips,” vol. i., p. 26, Preface.

[16] Mallet: “Northern Antiquities.”

[17] Ether is both _pure_ and _impure_ fire. The composition of the latter comprises all its visible forms, such as the “correlation of forces”--heat, flame, electricity, etc. The former is the _Spirit_ of Fire. The difference is purely alchemical.

[18] See “Inquiry into the Nature and Place of Hell,” by Rev. T. Surnden.

[19] Revelation xvi. 8-9.

[20] Aristotle mentions Pythagoreans who placed the sphere of fire in the sun, and named it _Jupiter’s Prison_. See “De Cœlo,” lib. ii.

[21] “De Civit. Dei,” 1, xxi., c. 17.

[22] “Demonologia and Hell,” p. 289.

[23] “Les Hauts Phénomènes de la Magie,” p. v., Preface.

[24] Dr. Stanley: “Lectures on the Eastern Church,” p. 407.

[25] In the government of Tambov, a gentleman, a rich landed proprietor, had a curious case happen in his family during the Hungarian campaign of 1848. His only and much-beloved nephew, whom, having no children, he had adopted as a son, was in the Russian army. The elderly couple had a portrait of his--a water-color painting-- constantly, during the meals, placed on the table in front of the young man’s usual seat. One evening as the family, with some friends, were at their early tea, the glass over the portrait, without any one touching it, was shattered to atoms with a loud explosion. As the aunt of the young soldier caught the picture in her hand she saw the forehead and head besmeared with blood. The guests, in order to quiet her, attributed the blood to her having cut her fingers with the broken glass. But, examine as they would, they could not find the vestige of a cut on her fingers, and no one had touched the picture but herself. Alarmed at her state of excitement the husband, pretending to examine the portrait more closely, cut his finger on purpose, and then tried to assure her that it was his blood and that, in the first excitement, he had touched the frame without any one remarking it. All was in vain, the old lady felt sure that Dimitry was killed. She began to have masses said for him daily at the village church, and arrayed the whole household in deep mourning. Several weeks later, an official communication was received from the colonel of the regiment, stating that their nephew was killed by a fragment of a shell which had carried off the upper part of his head.

[26] Executions for witchcraft took place, not much later than a century ago, in other of the American provinces. Notoriously there were negroes executed in New Jersey by burning at the stake--the penalty denounced in several States. Even in South Carolina, in 1865, when the State government was “reconstructed,” after the civil war, the statutes inflicting death for witchcraft were found to be still unrepealed. It is not a hundred years since they have been enforced to the murderous letter of their text.

[27] _Vide_ the title-page on the English translation of Mayerhoff’s “Reuchlin und Seine Zeit,” Berlin, 1830. “The Life and Times of John Reuchlin, or Capnion, the Father of the German Reformation,” by F. Barham, London, 1843.

[28] Lord Coke: 3 “Institutes,” fol. 44.

[29] _Vide_ “The Life of St. Gregory of Tours.”

[30] Translated from the original document in the Archives of Orleans, France; also see “Sortes and Sortilegium;” “Life of Peter de Blois.”

[31] “Miracles and Modern Spiritualism.”

[32] There were two chairs of the titular apostle at Rome. The clergy, frightened at the uninterrupted evidence furnished by scientific research, at last decided to confront the enemy, and we find the “Chronique des Arts” giving the cleverest, and at the same time most _Jesuitical_, explanation of the fact. According to their story, “The _increase_ in the number of the faithful decided Peter upon making Rome henceforth the centre of his action. The cemetery of Ostrianum was too distant and would _not suffice for the reünions of the Christians_. The motive which had induced the Apostle to confer on _Linus and Cletus_ successively the episcopal character, in order to render them capable of sharing the solicitudes of a church whose extent was to be without limits, led naturally to a multiplication of the places of meeting. The particular residence of Peter was therefore fixed at Viminal; and there was established that mysterious Chair, the symbol of power and truth. The august seat which was venerated at the Ostrian Catacombs was not, however, removed. Peter still visited this cradle of the Roman Church, and often, without doubt, exercised his holy functions there. A _second_ Chair, expressing the same mystery as the first, was set up at Cornelia, and it is this which has come down to us through the ages.”

Now, so far from it being possible that there ever were two genuine chairs of this kind, the majority of critics show that Peter never was at Rome at all; the reasons are many and unanswerable. Perhaps we had best begin by pointing to the works of Justin Martyr. This great champion of Christianity, writing in the early part of the second century _in Rome_, where he fixed his abode, eager to get hold of the least proof in favor of the truth for which he suffered, seems _perfectly unconscious of St. Peter’s existence_!!

Neither does any other writer of any consequence mention him in connection with the Church of Rome, earlier than the days of Irenæus, when the latter set himself to invent a new religion, drawn from the depths of his imagination. We refer the reader anxious to learn more to the able work of Mr. George Reber, entitled “The Christ of Paul.” The arguments of this author are conclusive. The above article in the “Chronique des Arts,” speaks of the _increase_ of the faithful to such an extent that Ostrianum could not contain the number of Christians. Now, if Peter was at Rome at all--runs Mr. Reber’s argument--it must have been between the years A. D. 64 and 69; for at 64 he was at Babylon, from whence he wrote epistles and letters to Rome, and at some time between 64 and 68 (the reign of Nero) he either died a martyr or in his bed, for Irenæus makes him deliver the Church of Rome, together with Paul (!?) (whom he persecuted and quarrelled with all his life), into the hands of _Linus_, who became bishop in 69 (see Reber’s “Christ of Paul,” p. 122). We will treat of it more fully in chapter iii.

Now, we ask, in the name of common sense, how could the _faithful_ of Peter’s Church _increase_ at such a rate, when Nero trapped and killed them like so many mice during his reign? History shows the few Christians fleeing from Rome, wherever they could, to avoid the persecution of the emperor, and the “Chronique des Arts” makes them increase and multiply! “Christ,” the article goes on to say, “willed that this visible sign of the doctrinal authority of his vicar should also have its portion of immortality; one can follow it from age to age in the documents of the Roman Church.” Tertullian formally attests its existence in his book “De Præscriptionibus.” Eager to learn everything concerning so interesting a subject, we would like to be shown when did _Christ_ WILL anything of the kind? However: “Ornaments of ivory have been fitted to the front and back of the chair, but only on those parts repaired with acacia-wood. Those which cover the panel in front are divided into three superimposed rows, each containing six plaques of ivory, on which are engraved various subjects, among others the ‘Labors of Hercules.’ Several of the plaques were wrongly placed, and seemed to have been affixed to the chair at a time when the remains of antiquity were employed as ornaments, without much regard to fitness.” This is the point. The article was written simply as a clever answer to several facts published during the present century. Bower, in his “History of the Popes” (vol. ii., p. 7), narrates that in the year 1662, while cleaning one of the chairs, “the ‘Twelve Labors of Hercules’ unluckily appeared engraved upon it,” after which the chair was removed and another substituted. But in 1795, when Bonaparte’s troops occupied Rome, the chair was again examined. This time there was found the Mahometan confession of faith, in Arabic letters: “There is no Deity but Allah, and Mahomet is his Apostle.” (See appendix to “Ancient Symbol-Worship,” by H. M. Westropp and C. Staniland Wake.) In the appendix Prof. Alexander Wilder very justly remarks as follows: “We presume that the Apostle of the Circumcision, as Paul, his great rival, styles him, was never at the Imperial City, nor had a successor there, not even in the ghetto. The ‘Chair of Peter,’ therefore, is _sacred_ rather than apostolical. Its sanctity proceeded, however, from the esoteric religion of the former times of Rome. The hierophant of the Mysteries probably occupied it on the day of initiations, when exhibiting to the candidates the _Petroma_ (stone tablet containing the last revelation made by the hierophant to the neophyte for initiation).”

[33] Joshua xxiv. 15.

[34] One of the most surprising facts that have come under our observation, is that students of profound research should not couple the frequent recurrence of these “unexpected and almost miraculous” discoveries of important documents, at the most opportune moments, with a premeditated design. Is it so strange that the custodians of “Pagan” lore, seeing that the proper moment had arrived, should cause the needed document, book, or relic to fall as if by accident in the right man’s way? Geological surveyors and explorers even as competent as Humboldt and Tschuddi, have not discovered the hidden mines from which the Peruvian Incas dug their treasure, although the latter confesses that the present degenerate Indians have the secret. In 1839, Perring, the archæologist, proposed to the sheik of an Arab village two purses of gold, if he helped him to discover the entrance to the hidden passage leading to the sepulchral chambers in the North Pyramid of Doshoor. But though his men were out of employment and half-starved, the sheik proudly refused to “sell the secret of the dead,” promising to show it _gratis_, when _the time would come for it_. Is it, then, impossible that in some other regions of the earth are guarded the remains of that glorious literature of the past, which was the fruit of its majestic civilization? What is there so surprising in the idea? Who knows but that as the Christian Church has unconsciously begotten free thought by reaction against her own cruelty, rapacity, and dogmatism, the public mind may be glad to follow the lead of the Orientalists, away from Jerusalem and towards Ellora; and that then much more will be discovered that is now hidden?

[35] “Chips from a German Workshop,” vol. i., p. 373; Semitic Monotheism.

[36] An after-thought has made us fancy that we can understand what is meant by the following sentences of _Moses of Chorenè_: “The ancient Asiatics,” says he, “five centuries before our era--and especially the Hindus, the Persians, and the Chaldeans, had in their possession a quantity of historical and scientific books. These works were partially borrowed, partially translated in the Greek language, mostly since the Ptolemies had established the Alexandrian library and encouraged the writers by their liberalities, so that the Greek language became the deposit of all the sciences” (“History of Armenia”). Therefore, the greater part of the literature included in the 700,000 volumes of the Alexandrian Library was due to India, and her next neighbors.

[37] Bonamy says in “Le Bibliotheque d’Alexandrie,” quoting, we suppose, the Presbyter Orosius, who was an eye-witness, “_thirty_ years later.”

[38] Since the above was written, the spirit here described has been beautifully exemplified at Barcelona, Spain, where the Bishop Fray Joachim invited the local spiritualists to witness a formal burning of spiritual books. We find the account in a paper called “The Revelation,” published at Alicante, which sensibly adds that the performance was “a caricature of the memorable epoch of the Inquisition.”

[39] E. Pococke gives the variations of the name Buddha as: Bud’ha, Buddha, Booddha, Butta, Pout, Pote, Pto, Pte, Phte, Phtha, Phut, etc., etc. See “India in Greece,” Note, Appendix, 397.

[40] The tiara of the Pope is also a perfect copy of that of the Dalaï-Lama of Thibet.

[41] It is the traditional policy of the College of Cardinals to elect, whenever practicable, the new Pope among the oldest valetudinarians. The hierophant of the Eleusinia was likewise always an old man, and unmarried.

[42] This is not correct.

[43] “Le Spiritisme dans le Monde,” p. 28.

[44] Translated by Prof. Draper for “Conflict between Religion and Science;” book xii.

[45] “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.”

[46] “Sohar Comment.,” Gen. xl. 10; “Kabbal. Denud.,” i., 528.

[47] “The beings which the philosophers of other peoples distinguish by the name ‘Dæmons,’ Moses names ‘Angels,’” says Philo Judæus.--“De Gigant,” i. 253.

[48] Deuteronomy xxxiii. 2., אשדת is translated “fiery law” in the English Bible.

[49] See Rees’s “Encyclopædia,” art. Kabala.

[50] “Histor. Manich.,” Liv. vi., ch. i., p. 291.

[51] “The altogether mystical coloring of Christianity harmonized with the Essene rules of life and opinions, and it is not improbable that Jesus and John the Baptist were initiated into the Essene Mysteries, to which Christianity may be indebted for many a form of expression; as indeed the community of Therapeutæ, an offspring of the Essene order, soon belonged wholly to Christianity” (“Yost,” i., 411--quoted by the author of “Sod, the Son of the Man”).

[52] A. Franck: “Die Kabbala.”

[53] “Le Spiritisme dans le Monde.”

[54] “Asiàt. Trans.,” i., p. 579.

[55] Louis Jacolliot: “The Initiates of the Ancient Temples.”

[56] Franck: “Die Kabbala.”

[57] See “Conflict between Religion and Science,” p. 224.

[58] See “Sohar;” “Kab. Den.;” “The Book of Mystery,” the oldest book of the kabalists; and Milman: “History of Christianity,” pp. 212, 213-215.

[59] Milman: “History of Christianity,” p. 280. The _Kurios_ and _Kora_ are mentioned repeatedly in “Justin Martyr.” See p. 97.

[60] See Olshausen: “Biblischer Commentar über sammtliche Schriften des Neuen Testaments,” ii.

[61] There is a wide-spread _superstition_ (?), especially among the Slavonians and Russians, that the _magician_ or wizard cannot die before he has passed the “word” to a successor. So deeply is it rooted among the popular beliefs, that we do not imagine there is a person in Russia who has not heard of it. It is but too easy to trace the origin of this superstition to the old Mysteries which had been for ages spread all over the globe. The ancient _Variago-Rouss_ had his Mysteries in the North as well as in the South of Russia; and there are many relics of the by-gone faith scattered in the lands watered by the sacred Dnieper, the baptismal Jordan of all Russia. No _Znâchar_ (the knowing one) or _Koldoun_ (sorcerer), male or female, can die in fact before he has passed the mysterious word to some one. The popular belief is that unless he does that he will linger and suffer for weeks and months, and were he even finally to get liberated, it would be only to wander on earth, unable to quit its region unless he finds a successor even after death. How far the belief may be verified by others, we do not know, but we have seen a case which, for its tragical and mysterious _dénoument_, deserves to be given here as an illustration of the subject in hand. An old man, of over one hundred years of age, a peasant-serf in the government of S----, having a wide reputation as a sorcerer and healer, was said to be dying for several days, and still unable to die. The report spread like lightning, and the poor old fellow was shunned by even the members of his own family, as the latter were afraid of receiving the unwelcome inheritance. At last the public rumor in the village was that he had sent a message to a colleague less versed than himself in the art, and who, although he lived in a distant district, was nevertheless coming at the call, and would be on hand early on the following morning. There was at that time on a visit to the proprietor of the village a young physician who, belonging to the famous school of _Nihilism_ of that day, laughed outrageously at the idea. The master of the house, being a very pious man, and but half inclined to make so cheap of the “superstition,” smiled--as the saying goes--but with one corner of his mouth. Meanwhile the young skeptic, to gratify his curiosity, had made a visit to the dying man, had found that he could not live twenty-four hours longer, and, determined to prove the absurdity of the “superstition,” had taken means to detain the coming “successor” at a neighboring village.

Early in the morning a company of four persons, comprising the physician, the master of the place, his daughter, and the writer of the present lines, went to the hut in which was to be achieved the triumph of skepticism. The dying man was expecting his liberator every moment, and his agony at the delay became extreme. We tried to persuade the physician to humor the patient, were it for humanity’s sake. He only laughed. Getting hold with one hand of the old wizard’s pulse, he took out his watch with the other, and remarking in French that all would be over in a few moments, remained absorbed in his professional experiment. The scene was solemn and appalling. Suddenly the door opened, and a young boy entered with the intelligence, addressed to the doctor, that the _koum_ was lying dead drunk at a neighboring village, and, according to _his orders_, could not be with “grandfather” till the next day. The young doctor felt confused, and was just going to address the old man, when, as quick as lightning, the Znâchar snatched his hand from his grasp and raised himself in bed. His deep-sunken eyes flashed; his yellow-white beard and hair streaming round his livid face made him a dreadful sight. One instant more, and his long, sinewy arms were clasped round the physician’s neck, as with a supernatural force he drew the doctor’s head closer and closer to his own face, where he held him as in a vise, while _whispering_ words inaudible to us in his ear. The skeptic struggled to free himself, but before he had time to make one effective motion the work had evidently been done; the hands relaxed their grasp, and the old sorcerer fell on his back--a corpse! A strange and ghostly smile had settled on the stony lips--a smile of fiendish triumph and satisfied revenge; but the doctor looked paler and more ghastly than the dead man himself. He stared round with an expression of terror difficult to describe, and without answering our inquiries rushed out wildly from the hut, in the direction of the woods. Messengers were sent after him, but he was nowhere to be found. About sunset a report was heard in the forest. An hour later his body was brought home, with a bullet through his head, for the skeptic had blown out his brains!

What made him commit suicide? What magic spell of sorcery had the “word” of the dying wizard left on his mind? Who can tell?

[62] “Anacalypsis;” also Tertullian.

[63] “Anthon,” art. Eleusinia.

[64] Dunlap: “Musah, His Mysteries,” p. 71.

[65] 1 Kings, viii. 2.

[66] Let us remember in this connection that Col. Van Kennedy has long ago declared his opinion that Babylonia was once the seat of the Sanscrit language and of Brahmanical influence.

[67] “‘The Agrouchada-Parikshai,’ which discloses, to a certain extent, the order of initiation, does not give the formula of evocation,” says Jacolliot, and he adds that, according to some Brahmans, “these formula were never written, they were and still are imparted in a whisper in the ear of the adepts” (“_mouth to ear, and the word at low breath_,” say the Masons).--“Le Spiritisme dans le Monde,” p. 108.

[68] “Le Spiritisme dans le Monde,” p. 108.

[69] W. D. Whitney: “Oriental and Linguistic Studies, The Veda, etc.”

[70] Jacolliot seems to have very logically demonstrated the absurd contradictions of some philologists, anthropologists, and Orientalists, in regard to their _Akkado and Semito_ mania. “There is not, perhaps, much of good faith in their negations,” he writes. “The scientists who invent Turanian peoples know very well that in _Manu_ alone, there is more of veritable science and philosophy than in all that this pretended Semitism has hitherto furnished us with; but they are the slaves of a path which some of them are following the last fifteen, twenty, or even thirty years.... We expect, therefore, nothing of the present. India will owe its reconstitution to the scientists of the next generation” (“Le Genèse de l’Humanité,” pp. 60-61).

[71] Cory: “Anc. Frag.”

[72] Movers: “Phoinizer,” 263.

[73] Dunlap: “Sp. Hist. of Man,” p. 281.

[74] Siva is not a god of the _Vedas_, strictly speaking. When the _Vedas_ were written, he held the rank of Maha-Deva or Bel among the gods of aboriginal India.

[75] “De Antro Nympharum.”

[76] “Navarette,” book ii., c. x.

[77] “On the Origin of Heathen Idolatry.”

[78] Isis and Osiris are said, in the Egyptian sacred books, to have appeared (_i.e._, been worshipped), on earth, later than Thot, the _first_ Hermes, called Trismegistus, who wrote all their sacred books according to the command of God or by “divine revelation.” The companion and instructor of Isis and Osiris was Thot, or Hermes II., who was an incarnation of the celestial Hermes.

[79] Lord Kingsborough: “Ant. Mex.,” p. 165.

[80] “Ap. Malal.,” lib. i., cap. iv.

[81] Payne Knight: “Phallic Worship.”

[82] The Celsus above mentioned, who lived between the second and third centuries, is not Celsus the Epicurean. The latter wrote several works against Magic, and lived earlier, during the reign of Hadrian.

[83] We have the facts from a trustworthy witness, having no interest to invent such a story. Having injured his leg in a fall from the steamer into the boat in which he was to land at the Mount, he was taken care of by these monks, and during his convalescence, through gifts of money and presents, became their greatest friend, and finally won their entire confidence. Having asked for the loan of some books, he was taken by the Superior to a large cellar in which they keep their sacred vessels and other property. Opening a great trunk, full of old musty manuscripts and rolls, he was invited by the Superior to “_amuse_ himself.” The gentleman was a scholar, and well versed in Greek and Latin text. “I was amazed,” he says, in a private letter, “and had my breath taken away, on finding among these old parchments, so unceremoniously treated, some of the most valuable relics of the first centuries, hitherto believed to have been lost.” Among others he found a half-destroyed manuscript, which he is perfectly sure must be a copy of the “True Doctrine,” the Λόγος ἀληθής of Celsus, out of which Origen quoted whole pages. The traveller took as many notes as he could on that day, but when he came to offer to the Superior to purchase some of these writings he found, to his great surprise, that no amount of money would tempt the monks. They did not know what the manuscripts contained, nor “did they care,” they said. But the “heap of writing,” they added, was transmitted to them from one generation to another, and there was a tradition among them that these papers would one day become the means of crushing the “Great Beast of the Apocalypse,” their hereditary enemy, the Church of Rome. They were constantly quarrelling and fighting with the Catholic monks, and among the whole “heap” they _knew_ that there was a “holy” relic which protected them. They did not know _which_, and so in their doubt abstained. It appears that the Superior, a shrewd Greek, understood his _bevue_ and repented of his kindness, for first of all he made the traveller give him his most sacred word of honor, strengthened by an oath he made him take on the image of the Holy Patroness of the Island, never to betray their secret, and never mention, at least, the name of their convent. And finally, when the anxious student who had passed a fortnight in reading all sorts of antiquated trash before he happened to stumble over some precious manuscript, expressed the desire to have the key, to “amuse himself” with the writings once more, he was very _naïvely_ informed that the “key had been lost,” and that they did not know where to look for it. And thus he was left to the few notes he had taken.

[84] See the historical romance of Canon Kingsley, “Hypatia,” for a highly picturesque account of the tragical fate of this young martyr.

[85] We beg the reader to bear in mind that it is the same Cyril who was accused and proved guilty of having sold the gold and silver ornaments of his church, and spent the money. He pleaded guilty, but tried to excuse himself on the ground that he had used the money for the poor, but could not give evidence of it. His duplicity with Arius and his party is well known. Thus one of the first Christian saints, and the founder of the Trinity, appears on the pages of history as a murderer and a thief!

[86] “La Démonomanie, ou traité des Sorciers.” Paris, 1587.

[87] Dr. W. G. Soldan: “Geschichte der Hexen processe, aus den Quellen dargestellt.” Stuttgart, 1843.

[88] Frederick Forner, Suffragan of Bamberg, author of a treatise against heretics and sorcerers, under the title of “Panoplia Armaturæ Dei.”

[89] “Sorcery and Magic,” by T. Wright, M.A., F.S.A., etc., Corresponding Member of the National Institute of France, vol. ii., p. 185.

[90] Besides these burnings in Germany, which amount to many thousands, we find some very interesting statements in Prof. Draper’s “Conflict between Religion and Science.” On page 146, he says: “The families of the convicted were plunged into irretrievable ruin. Llorente, the historian of the Inquisition, computes that Torquemada and his collaborators, in the course of eighteen years, burned at the stake 10,220 persons, 6,860 in effigy, and otherwise punished 97,321!... With unutterable disgust and indignation, we learn that the papal government realized much money by selling to the rich, dispensations to secure them from the Inquisition.”

[91] “Sorcery and Magic;” “The Burnings at Würtzburg,” p. 186.

[92] And retinted in the blood of the millions murdered in his name--in the no less innocent blood than his own, of the little child-_witches_!

[93] St. Augustine: “City of God,” I, xxi., ch. vi.; des Mousseaux: “Mœurs et Pratiques des Demons.”

[94] A correspondent of the London “Times” describes the Catalonian exorcist in the following lines:

“About the 14th of October it was privately announced that a young woman of seventeen or eighteen years of age, of the lower class, having long been afflicted with ‘a hatred of holy things,’ the senior priest of the Church of the Holy Spirit would cure her of her disease. The exhibition was to be held in a church frequented by the best part of the community. The church was dark, but a sickly light was shed by wax lights on the sable forms of some eighty or a hundred persons who clustered round the _presbyterio_, or sanctuary, in front of the altar. Within the little enclosure or sanctuary, separated from the crowd by a light railing, lay, on a common bench, with a little pillow for her head to recline upon, a poorly-clad girl, probably of the peasant or artisan class; her brother or husband stood at her feet to restrain her (at times) frantic kicking by holding her legs. The door of the vestry opened; the exhibitor--I mean the priest--came in. The poor girl, not without just reason, ‘had an aversion to holy things,’ or, at least, the 400 devils within her distorted body had such an aversion, and in the confusion of the moment, thinking that the father was ‘a holy thing,’ she doubled up her legs, screamed out with twitching mouth, her whole body writhing, and threw herself nearly off the bench. The male attendant seized her legs, the women supported her head and swept out her dishevelled hair. The priest advanced and, mingling familiarly with the shuddering and horror-struck crowd, said, pointing at the suffering child, now sobbing and twitching on the bench, ‘Promise me, my children, that you will be prudent (_prudentes_), and of a truth, sons and daughters mine, you shall see marvels.’ The promise was given. The exhibitor went to procure stole and short surplice (_estola y roquete_), and returned in a moment, taking his stand at the side of the ‘possessed with the devils,’ with his face toward the group of students. The order of the day’s proceedings was a lecture to the bystanders, and the operation of exorcising the devils. ‘You know,’ said the priest, ‘that so great is this girl’s aversion to holy things, myself included, that she goes into convulsions, kicks, screams, and distorts her body the moment she arrives at the corner of this street, and her convulsive struggles reach their climax when she enters the sacred house of the Most High.’ Turning to the prostrate, shuddering, most unhappy object of his attack, the priest commenced: ‘In the name of God, of the saints, of the blessed Host, of every holy sacrament of our Church, I adjure thee, Rusbel, come out of her.’ (N. B. ‘Rusbel’ is the name of a devil, the devil having 257 names in Catalonia.) Thus adjured, the girl threw herself--in an agony of convulsion, till her distorted face, foam-bespattered lips and writhing limbs grew well-nigh stiff--at full length upon the floor, and, in language semi-obscene, semi-violent, screamed out, ‘I don’t choose to come out, you thieves, scamps, robbers.’ At last, from the quivering lips of the girl, came the words, ‘I will;’ but the devil added, with traditional perversity, ‘I will cast the 100 out, but by the mouth of the girl.’ The priest objected. The exit, he said, of 100 devils out of the small Spanish mouth of the woman would ‘leave her suffocated.’ Then the maddened girl said she must undress herself for the devils to escape. This petition the holy father refused. ‘Then I will come out through the right foot, but first’--the girl had on a hempen sandal, she was obviously of the poorest class--‘you must take off her sandal.’ The sandal was untied; the foot gave a convulsive plunge; the devil and his myrmidons (so the _cura_ said, looking round triumphantly) had gone to their own place. And, assured of this, the wretched dupe of a girl lay quite still. The bishop was not cognizant of this freak of the clergy, and the moment it came to the ears of the civil authorities, the sharpest means were taken to prevent a repetition of the scandal.”

[95] Louis Jacolliot: “Le Spiritisme dans le Monde,” p. 162.

[96] St. Augustine: “City of God.”

[97] “Mœurs et Pratiques des Demons,” p. ii.

[98] Des Mousseaux: “Table des Matières.”

[99] “Demonologia;” London, 1827, J. Bumpus, 23 Skinner Street.

[100] “Traité Preparatif à l’Apologie pour Herodote,” c. 39.

[101] De Missa Privatâ et Unctione Sacerdotum.

[102] See the “Life of St. Dominick” and the story about the miraculous Rosary; also the “Golden Legend.”

[103] James de Varasse, known by the Latin name of James de Veragine, was Vicar General of the Dominicans and Bishop of Genoa in 1290.

[104] Thirteenth century.

[105] “Rituale Romanum,” pp. 475-478. Parisiis, 1852.

[106] “Mœurs et Pratiques des Demons,” p. 177.

[107] See the narrative selected from the “Golden Legend,” by Alban Butler.

[108] See the “Golden Legend;” “Life of St. Francis;” “Demonologia.”

[109] “The Mythology of the Hindus,” by Charles Coleman. Japan.

[110] “Supernatural Religion.”

[111] Neither do we, if by _true religion_ the world shall at last understand the adoration of one Supreme, Invisible, and Unknown Deity, by works and acts, not by the profession of vain human dogmas. But our intention is to go farther. We desire to demonstrate that if we exclude ceremonial and fetish worship from being regarded as essential parts of religion, then the true Christ-like principles have been exemplified, and true Christianity practiced since the days of the apostles, exclusively among Buddhists and “heathen.”

[112] “Ancient Pagan and Modern Christian Symbolism,” p. xvi.

[113] “Discourses of Miracles wrought in the Roman Catholic Church; or a full Refutation of Dr. Stillingfleet’s unjust Exceptions against Miracles.” Octavo, 1676, p. 64.

[114] After this, why should the Roman Catholics object to the claims of the Spiritualists? If, without proof, they believe in the “materialization” of Mary and John, for Ignatius, how can they logically deny the materialization of Katie and John (King), when it is attested by the careful experiments of Mr. Crookes, the English chemist, and the cumulative testimony of a large number of witnesses?

[115] The “Mother of God” takes precedence therefore of God?

[116] See the “New Era” for July, 1875. N. Y.

[117] “Paul and Plato.”

[118] See “La Magie au XIXme Siècle,” p. 168.

[119] “Rom. Rit.,” edit. of 1851, pp. 291-296, etc., etc.

[120] _Creature_ of salt, air, water, or of any object to be _enchanted_ or _blessed_, is a technical word in magic, adopted by the Christian clergy.

[121] “Rom. Rit.,” pp. 421-435.

[122] See “Art-Magic,” art. Peter d’Abano.

[123] “Ritual,” pp. 429-433; see “La Magie au XIXme Siècle,” pp. 171, 172.

[124] “Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie,” vol. ii., p. 88.

[125] “Conferences,” by Le Père Ventura, vol. ii., part i., p. lvi., Preface.

[126] “Conflict between Religion and Science,” p. 62.

[127] “De Baptismo Contra Donatistas,” lib. vi., ch. xliv.

[128] “Conflict, etc.,” p. 37.

[129] Ibid.

[130] “Paul and Plato,” by A. Wilder, editor of “The Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries,” of Thomas Taylor.

[131] “Paul and Plato.”

[132] See Taylor’s “Eleus. and Bacchic Myst.”

[133] 1 Corin., iii. 10.

[134] In its most extensive meaning, the Sanscrit word has the same literal sense as the Greek term; both imply “revelation,” by no human agent, but through the “receiving of the sacred drink.” In India the initiated received the “Soma,” sacred drink, which helped to liberate his soul from the body; and in the Eleusinian Mysteries it was the sacred drink offered at the Epopteia. The Grecian Mysteries are wholly derived from the Brahmanical Vedic rites, and the latter from the ante-vedic religious Mysteries--primitive Buddhist philosophy.

[135] It is needless to state that _the Gospel according to John_ was not written by John but by a Platonist or a Gnostic belonging to the Neo-platonic school.

[136] The fact that Peter persecuted the “Apostle to the Gentiles,” under that name, does not necessarily imply that there was no Simon Magus individually distinct from Paul. It may have become a generic name of abuse. Theodoret and Chrysostom, the earliest and most prolific commentators on the Gnosticism of those days, seem actually to make of Simon a rival of Paul, and to state that between them passed frequent messages. The former, as a diligent propagandist of what Paul terms the “antitheses of the Gnosis” (1st Epistle to Timothy), must have been a sore thorn in the side of the apostle. There are sufficient proofs of the actual existence of Simon Magus.

[137] “Introd. to Eleus. and Bacchic Mysteries,” p. x. Had we not trustworthy kabalistic tradition to rely upon, we might be, perhaps, forced to question whether the authorship of the Revelation is to be ascribed to the apostle of that name. He seems to be termed John the Theologist.

[138] Bunsen: “Egypt’s Place in Universal History,” vol. v., p. 90.

[139] See de Rougé: “Stele,” p. 44; PTAR (videus) is interpreted on it “to appear,” with a sign of interrogation after it--the usual mark of scientific perplexity. In Bunsen’s fifth volume of “Egypte,” the interpretation following is “Illuminator,” which is more correct.

[140] Bunsen’s “Egypt,” vol. v., p. 90.

[141] It is the property of a mystic whom we met in Syria.

[142] The Priests of Isis were tonsured.

[143] See “Ancient Faiths,” vol. ii., pp. 915-918.

[144] “The Gnostics and their Remains,” p. 71.

[145] See illustration in Inman’s “Ancient Pagan and Modern Christian Symbolism,” p. 27.

[146] Ibid., p. 76.

[147] Initiates and seers.

[148] The augur’s, and now bishop’s, pastoral crook.

[149] “The Heathen Religion.”

[150] “Pères du Desert d’Orient,” vol. ii., p. 283.

[151] Justin Martyr: “Quæst.,” xxiv.

[152] See Taylor’s “Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries;” Porphyry and others.

[153] Franck: “Die Kabbala.”

[154] “Mysteries of the Egyptians, Chaldeans, and Assyrians.”

[155] “Divine Legation of Moses;” The “Eleusinian Mysteries” as quoted by Thos. Taylor.

[156] This expression must not be understood literally; for as in the initiation of certain Brotherhoods it has a secret meaning, hinted at by Pythagoras, when he describes his feelings after the initiation and tells that he was crowned by the gods in whose presence he had drunk “the waters of life”--in Hindu, _â-bi-hayât_, fount of life.

[157] This original and very long sermon was preached in a church at Brooklyn, N. Y., on the 15th day of April, 1877. On the following morning, the reverend orator was called in the “Sun” a gibbering charlatan; but this deserved epithet will not prevent other reverend buffoons doing the same and even worse. And this is the religion of Christ! Far better disbelieve in him altogether than caricature one’s God in such a manner. We heartily applaud the “Sun” for the following views: “And then when Talmage makes Christ say to Martha in the tantrums: ‘Don’t worry, but sit down on this ottoman,’ he adds the climax to a scene that the inspired writers had nothing to say about. Talmage’s buffoonery is going too far. If he were the worst heretic in the land, instead of being straight in his orthodoxy, he would not do so much evil to religion as he does by his familiar blasphemies.”

[158] “Le Spiritisme dans le Monde,” p. 68.

[159] Ibid., pp. 78, 79.

[160] Louis Jacolliot: “Phénomenes et Manifestations.”

[161] Pisatshas, dæmons of the race of the gnomes, the giants and the vampires.

[162] Gandarbas, good dæmons, celestial seraphs, singers.

[163] Asuras and Nagas are the Titanic spirits and the dragon or serpent-headed spirits.

[164] See Arnolius: “Op. Cit.,” pp. 249, 250.

[165] See Inman’s “Ancient Pagan and Modern Christian Symbolism.”

[166] Introduction to Taylor’s “Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries,” published by J. W. Bouton.

[167] Illustrated figures “from an ancient Rosary of the blessed Virgin Mary, printed at Venice, 1524, with a license from the Inquisition.” In the illustrations given by Dr. Inman the Virgin is represented in an Assyrian “grove,” the _abomination in the eyes of the Lord_, according to the Bible prophets. “The book in question,” says the author, “contains numerous figures, all resembling closely the Mesopotamian emblem of _Ishtar_. The presence of the woman _therein_ identifies the two as symbolic of Isis, or _la nature_; and a man bowing down in adoration thereof shows the same idea as is depicted in Assyrian sculptures, where males offer to the goddess _symbols_ of _themselves_” (See “Ancient Pagan and Modern Christian Symbolism,” p. 91. Second edition. J. W. Bouton, publisher, New York).

[168] See King’s “Gnostics,” pp. 91, 92; “The Genealogy of the Blessed Virgin Mary,” by Faustus, Bishop of Riez.

[169] Prinseps quotes Dubois, “Edinburgh Review,” April, 1851, p. 411.

[170] “Manu,” book I., sloka 32: Sir W. Jones, translating from the Northern “Manu,” renders this _sloka_ as follows: “Having divided his own substance, the mighty Power became half male, half female, or _nature active and passive_; and from that female he produced VIRAJ.”

[171] “Enead,” i., book viii.

[172] “Commentary upon the Republic of Plato,” p. 380.

[173] Verses 33-41.

[174] “Phædrus,” p. 64.

[175] The Supreme Buddha is invoked with two of his acolytes of the theistic triad, Dharma and Sanga. This triad is addressed in Sanscrit in the following terms:

_Namo Buddhâya, Namo Dharmâya, Namo Sangâya, Aum!_

while the Thibetan Buddhists pronounce their invocations as follows:

_Nan-won Fo-tho-ye, Nan-won Tha-ma-ye, Nan-won Seng-kia-ye, Aan!_

See also “Journal Asiatique,” tome vii., p. 286.

[176] The body of man--his coat of skin--is an inert mass of matter, _per se_; it is but the _sentient_ living body within the man that is considered as the man’s body proper, and it is that which, together with the fontal soul or purely astral body, directly connected with the immortal spirit, constitutes the trinity of man.

[177] We really think that the word “witchcraft” ought, once for all, to be understood in the sense which properly belongs to it. Witchcraft may be either conscious or unconscious. Certain wicked and dangerous results may be obtained through the mesmeric powers of a so-called sorcerer, who misuses his potential fluid; or again they may be achieved through an easy access of malicious tricky “spirits” (so much the worse if human) to the atmosphere surrounding a medium. How many thousands of such irresponsible innocent victims have met infamous deaths through the tricks of those Elementaries!

[178] “Ancient Pagan and Modern Christian Symbolism,” preface, p. 34.

[179] “The Christ of Paul,” p. 123.

[180] Gospel according to Mark, viii. 33.

[181] “Supernatural Religion,” vol. ii., p. 489.

[182] “Ancient Pagan and Modern Christian Symbolism,” p. 28.

[183] See Eusebius, “Ex. H.,” bk. iv., ch. v.; “Sulpicius Severus,” vol. ii., p. 31.

[184] It appears that the Jews attribute a very high antiquity to “Sepher Toldos Jeshu.” It was mentioned for the first time by Martin, about the beginning of the thirteenth century, for the Talmudists took great care to conceal it from the Christians. Levi says that Porchetus Salvaticus published some portions of it, which were used by Luther (see vol. viii., Jena Ed.). The Hebrew text, which was missing, was at last found by Münster and Buxtorf, and published in 1681, by Christopher Wagenseilius, in Nuremberg, and in Frankfort, in a collection entitled “Tela Ignea Satanæ,” or The Burning Darts of Satan (“See Levi’s Science des Esprits”).

[185] Theodoret: “Hæretic. Fab.,” lib. ii., 11.

[186] Jervis W. Jervis: “Genesis,” p. 324.

[187] “Lightfoot,” 501.

[188] Dunlap: “Sod, the Son of the Man,” p. x.

[189] Jeremiah vii. 29: “Cut off thine hair, O Jerusalem, and cast it away, and take up a lamentation on high places.”

[190] Genesis xlix. 26.

[191] Nazareth?

[192] Otfried Müller: “Historical Greek Literature,” pp. 230-240.

[193] See “Movers,” p. 683.

[194] “Codex Nazaræus,” ii., 305.

[195] See Lucian: “De Syria Dea.”

[196] See Psalm lxxxix. 18.

[197] “Codex Nazaræus,” i. 47.

[198] Ibid.; Norberg: “Onomasticon,” 74.

[199] Alph. de Spire: “Fortalicium Fidei,” ii., 2.

[200] Hosea ix. 10.

[201] “The Essenes considered oil as a defilement,” says Josephus: “Wars,” ii., p. 7.

[202] Luke xiii. 32.

[203] Matthew ii. We must bear in mind that the Gospel according to Matthew in the New Testament is not the original Gospel of the apostle of that name. The authentic Evangel was for centuries in the possession of the Nazarenes and the Ebionites, as we show further on the admission of St. Jerome himself, who confesses that he had to _ask permission_ of the Nazarenes to translate it.

[204] Dunlap: “Sod, the Son of the Man.”

[205] “Codex Nazaræus,” vol. ii., p. 233.

[206] Preller: vol. i., p. 415.

[207] Ibid., vol. i., p. 490.

[208] The word Apocrypha was very erroneously adopted as doubtful and spurious. The word means _hidden_ and _secret_; but that which is secret may be often more true than that which is revealed.

[209] The statement, if reliable, would show that Jesus was between fifty and sixty years old when baptized; for the Gospels make him but a few months younger than John. The kabalists say that Jesus was over forty years old when first appearing at the gates of Jerusalem. The present copy of the “Codex Nazaræus” is dated in the year 1042, but Dunlap finds in Irenæus (2d century) quotations from and ample references to this book. “The basis of the material common to Irenæus and the “Codex Nazaræus” must be at least as early as the first century,” says the author in his preface to “Sod, the Son of the Man,” p. i.

[210] “Codex Nazaræus,” vol. i., p. 109; Dunlap: Ibid., xxiv.

[211] Acts xxiv. 5.

[212] Ibid., 14.

[213] “Herodotus,” ii., p. 170.

[214] The Hindu High Pontiff--the Chief of the Namburis, who lives in the Cochin Land, is generally present during these festivals of “Holy Water” immersions. He travels sometimes to very great distances to preside over the ceremony.

[215] “Ant. Jud.,” xiii., p. 9; xv., p. 10.

[216] King thinks it a great exaggeration and is inclined to believe that these Essenes, who were most undoubtedly Buddhist monks, were “merely a continuation of the associations known as Sons of the Prophets.” “The Gnostics and their Remains,” p. 22.

[217] St. Jerome: “Epistles,” p. 49 (ad. Poulmam); see Dunlap’s “Spirit-History,” p. 218.

[218] “Munk,” p. 169.

[219] Bacchus and Ceres--or the mystical _Wine_ and _Bread_, used during the Mysteries, become, in the “Adonia,” Adonis and Venus. Movers shows that “_Iao_ is Bacchus,” p. 550; and his authority is _Lydus de Mens_ (38-74); “Spir. Hist.,” p. 195. _Iao_ is a Sun-god and the Jewish Jehovah; the intellectual or Central Sun of the kabalists. See _Julian_ in _Proclus_. But this “Iao” is not the Mystery-god.

[220] Josephus: “Ant. Jud.,” iv., p. 4.

[221] Ibid., ix.; 2 Kings, i. 8.

[222] In relation to the well-known fact of Jesus wearing his hair long, and being always so represented, it becomes quite startling to find how little the unknown Editor of the “Acts” knew about the Apostle Paul, since he makes him say in 1 Corinthians xi. 14, “Doth not Nature itself teach you, that if a _man have long hair, it is a shame unto him_?” Certainly Paul could never have said such a thing! Therefore, if the passage is genuine, Paul knew nothing of the prophet whose doctrines he had embraced and for which he died; and if false--how much more reliable is what remains?

[223] Max Müller has sufficiently proved the case in his lecture on the “Zend-Avesta.” He calls Gushtasp “the mythical pupil of Zoroaster.” Mythical, perhaps, only because the period in which he lived and learned with Zoroaster is too remote to allow our modern science to speculate upon it with any certainty.

[224] Max Müller: “Zend Avesta,” 83.

[225] Philo: “De Vita. Contemp.”

[226] The real meaning of the division into _ages_ is esoteric and Buddhistic. So little did the uninitiated Christians understand it that they accepted the words of Jesus _literally_ and firmly believed that he meant the end of the world. There had been many prophecies about the forthcoming age. Virgil, in the fourth Eclogue, mentions the Metatron--a new offspring, with whom the _iron age_ shall end and a _golden one_ arise.

[227] “Palestine,” p. 525, et seq.

[228] “Sod,” vol. ii., Preface, p. xi.

[229] “Vit. Pythag.” Munk derives the name of the _Iessæns_ or Essenes from the Syriac _Asaya_--the healers, or physicians, thus showing their identity with the Egyptian Therapeutæ. “Palestine,” p. 515.

[230] Matthew xiii. 10.

[231] “Eleusinian Mysteries,” p. 15.

[232] This descent to Hades signified the inevitable fate of each soul to be united for a time with a terrestrial body. This union, or dark prospect for the soul to find itself imprisoned within the dark tenement of a body, was considered by all the ancient philosophers and is even by the modern Buddhists, as a punishment.

[233] “Eleusinian Mysteries,” p. 49, foot-note.

[234] “The profound or esoteric doctrines of the ancients were denominated _wisdom_, and afterward _philosophy_, and also the _gnosis_, or knowledge. They related to the human soul, its divine parentage, its supposed degradation from its high estate by becoming connected with “generation” or the physical world, its onward progress and restoration to God by regenerations or ... transmigrations.” Ibid, p. 2, foot-note.

[235] Cyril of Jerusalem asserts it. See vi. 10.

[236] “Phædrus,” 64.

[237] “The Golden Ass,” xi.

[238] “Apocalypse,” xix. 12.

[239] See Suet. in “Vita. Eutrop.,” 7. It is neither cruelty, nor an insane indulgence in it, which shows this emperor in history as passing his time in catching flies and transpiercing them with a golden bodkin, but religious superstition. The Jewish astrologers had predicted to him that he had provoked the wrath of Beelzebub, the “Lord of the flies,” and would perish miserably through the revenge of the dark god of Ekron, and die like King Ahaziah, because he persecuted the Jews.

[240] We believe that it was the Sadducees and not the Pharisees who crucified Jesus. They were Zadokites--partisans of the house of Zadok, or the sacerdotal family. In the “Acts” the apostles were said to be persecuted by the Sadducees, but never by the Pharisees. In fact, the latter never persecuted any one. They had the scribes, rabbis, and learned men in their numbers, and were not, like the Sadducees, jealous of their order.

[241] “Dial.,” p. 69.

[242] Fabricius: “Cod. Apoc., N. T.,” i., 243; Tischendorf: “Evang. Ap.,” p. 214.

[243] Origen: “Cont. Cels.,” 11.

[244] Rabbi Iochan: “Mag.,” 51.

[245] “Origen,” 11.

[246] Cf. “August de Consans. Evang.,” i., 9; Fabric.: “Cod. Ap. N. T.,” i., p. 305, ff.

[247] “Recog.,” i. 58; cf., p. 40.

[248] King’s “Gnostics,” p. 145; the author places this sarcophagus among the earliest productions of that art which inundated later the world with mosaics and engravings, representing the events and personages of the “New Testament.”

[249] “De Pudicitia.” See “The Gnostics and their Remains,” p. 144.

[250] Ibid., plate i., p. 200.

[251] This gem is in the collection of the author of “The Gnostics and their Remains.” See p. 201.

[252] “Hæresies,” xxvii.

[253] 1 Cor. xi. 14.

[254] See the “Israelite Indeed,” vol. ii., p. 238; “Treatise Nazir.”

[255] “Epiph. ed. Petar,” vol. i., p 117.

[256] “Kabbala Denudata,” ii., 155; “Vallis Regia,” Paris edition.

[257] Psalms viii.

[258] This contradiction, which is attributed to Paul in Hebrews, by making him say of Jesus in chapter i., 4: “Being made _so much better_ than the angels,” and then immediately stating in chapter ii. 9, “But we see Jesus, who was made _a little lower_ than the angels,” shows how unscrupulously the writings of the apostles, if they ever wrote any, were tampered with.

[259]“Codex Nazaræus,” i. 23.

[260] Ibid., preface, p. v., translated from Norberg.

[261] “According to the Nazarenes and Gnostics, the Demiurg, the creator of the material world, is not the highest God.” (See Dunlap: “Sod, the Son of the Man.”)

[262] Clemens: “Al. Strom.” vii., 7, § 106.

[263] H. E., iv. 7.

[264] The gospels interpreted by Basilides were not our present gospels, which, as it is proved by the greatest authorities, were not in his days in existence. See “Supernatural Religion,” vol. ii., chap. Basilides.

[265] The five make mystically ten. They are androgynes. “Having divided his body in two parts, the Supreme Wisdom became male and female” (“Manu,” book i., sloka 32). There are many early Buddhistic ideas to be found in Brahmanism.

The prevalent idea that the last of the Buddhas, Gautama, is the ninth incarnation of Vishnu, or the _ninth_ Avatar, is disclaimed partially by the Brahmans, and wholly rejected by the learned Buddhist theologians. The latter insist that the worship of Buddha possesses a far higher claim to antiquity than any of the Brahmanical deities of the _Vedas_, which they call secular literature. The Brahmans, they show, came from other countries, and established their heresy on the already accepted popular _deities_. They conquered the land by the sword, and succeeded in burying truth, by building a theology of their own on the ruins of the more ancient one of Buddha, which had prevailed for ages. They admit the divinity and spiritual existence of some of the Vedantic gods; but as in the case of the Christian angel-hierarchy they believe that all these deities are greatly subordinate, even to the incarnated Buddhas. They do not even acknowledge the creation of the physical universe. Spiritually and _invisibly_ it has existed from all eternity, and thus it was made merely visible to the human senses. When it first appeared it was called forth from the realm of the invisible into the visible by the impulse of A’di Buddha--the “Essence.” They reckon twenty-two such visible appearances of the universe governed by Buddhas, and as many destructions of it, by fire and water in regular successions. After the last destruction by the flood, at the end of the precedent cycle--(the exact calculation, embracing several millions of years, is a secret cycle) the world, during the present age of the Kali Yug--Maha Bhadda Calpa--has been ruled successively by four Buddhas, the last of whom was Gautama, the “Holy One.” The fifth, Maitree-Buddha, is yet to come. This latter is the expected kabalistic King Messiah, the Messenger of Light, and Sosiosh, the Persian Saviour, who will come on a _white_ horse. It is also the Christian Second Advent. See “Apocalypse” of St. John.

[266] “Irenæus,” i. 23.

[267] Tertullian reversed the table himself by rejecting, later in life, the doctrines for which he fought with such an acerbity and by becoming a Montanist.

[268] In his debate with Jacolliot upon the right spelling of the Hindu Christna, Mr. Textor de Ravisi, an ultramontane Catholic, tries to prove that the name of Christna ought to be written Krishna, for, as the latter means black, and the statues of this deity are generally black, the word is derived from the color. We refer the reader to Jacolliot’s answer in his recent work, “Christna et le Christ,” for the conclusive evidence that the name is not derived from the color.

[269] There is no equivalent for the word “miracle,” in the Christian sense, among the Brahmans or Buddhists. The only correct translation would be _meipo_, a wonder, something remarkable; but not a violation of natural law. The “saints” only produce _meipo_.

[270] “Beiträge,” vol. i., p. 40; Schleiermacher: “Sämmtl. Werke,” viii.; “Einl., N. T.,” p. 64.

[271] “Epiph. Hæra.,” xlii., p. 1.

[272] Tertullian: “Adv. Marc.,” ii. 5; cf. 9.

[273] Ibid., ii. 5.

[274] vol. ii., p. 105.

[275] Ibid., vol. ii., p. 100.

[276] “Adv. Marc.,” iv., 9, 36.

[277] “Supernatural Religion,” p. 101; Matthew v. 17.

[278] This author, vol. ii., p. 103, remarks with great justice of the “Heresiarch” Marcion, “whose high personal character exerted so powerful an influence upon his own time,” that “it was the misfortune of Marcion to live in an age when Christianity had passed out of the pure morality of its infancy; when, untroubled by complicated questions of dogma, simple faith and pious enthusiasm had been the one great bond of Christian brotherhood, into a phase of ecclesiastical development in which religion was fast degenerating into theology, and complicated doctrines were rapidly assuming the rampant attitude which led to so much bitterness, persecution, and schism. In later times Marcion might have been honored as a reformer, in his own he was denounced as a heretic. Austere and ascetic in his opinions, he aimed at superhuman purity, and, although his clerical adversaries might scoff at his impracticable doctrines regarding marriage and the subjugation of the flesh, they have had their parallels amongst those whom the Church has since most delighted to honor, and, at least, the whole tendency of his system was markedly towards the side of virtue.” These statements are based upon Credner’s “Beiträge,” i., p. 40; cf. Neander: “Allg. K. G.,” ii., p. 792, f.; Schleiermacher, Milman, etc., etc.

[279] Justin’s “Die Evv.,” p. 446, sup. B.

[280] But, on the other hand, this antagonism is very _strongly_ marked in the “Clementine Homilies,” in which Peter unequivocally denies that Paul, whom he calls Simon the Magician, has ever had a _vision_ of Christ, and calls him “an enemy.” Canon Westcott says: “There can be no doubt that St. Paul is referred to as ‘the enemy’” (“On the Canon,” p. 252, note 2; “Supernatural Religion,” vol. ii., p 35). But this antagonism, which rages unto the present day, we find even in St. Paul’s “Epistles.” What can be more energetic than such like sentences: “Such are _false_ apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ.... I suppose I was not a whit behind the very chiefest apostle” (2 Corinthians, xi.). “Paul, an apostle _not of men_, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ _and_ God the Father, who raised him from the dead ... but there be some that trouble you, and _would pervert_ the Gospel of Christ ... _false brethren_.... When Peter came to Antioch I withstood him to his face, because he was to be blamed. For before that certain came from James, _he did eat_ with the Gentiles, but when they were come he withdrew, fearing them which were of the circumcision. And the other Jews dissembled ... insomuch that Barnabas also was carried away with their _dissimulation_,” etc., etc. (Galat. i. and ii.). On the other hand, we find Peter in the “Homilies,” indulging in various complaints which, although alleged to be addressed to Simon Magus, are evidently all direct answers to the above-quoted sentences from the Pauline Epistles, and _cannot_ have anything to do with Simon. So, for instance, Peter said: “For some among the Gentiles have rejected my lawful preaching, and accepted certain _lawless_ and _foolish_ teaching of the hostile men (enemy)”--Epist. of Peter to James, § 2. He says further: “Simon (Paul) ... who came before me to the Gentiles ... and I have followed him as light upon darkness, as knowledge upon ignorance, as health upon disease” (“Homil.,” ii. 17). Still further, he calls him _Death_ and a _deceiver_ (Ibid., ii. 18). He warns the Gentiles that “our Lord and _Prophet_ (_?_) (_Jesus_) announced that he would send from among his followers, apostles to _deceive_. “Therefore, above all, remember to avoid every apostle, or teacher, or prophet, who first does not accurately compare his teaching with that of James, called the brother of our Lord” (see the difference between Paul and James on _faith_, Epist. to Hebrews, xi., xii., and Epist. of James, ii.). “Lest the Evil One should send a false preacher ... as he has sent to us Simon (?) preaching a counterfeit of truth in the name of our Lord, and disseminating error” (“Hom.” xi., 35; see above quotation from Gal. 1, 5). He then denies Paul’s assertion, in the following words: “If, therefore, our Jesus indeed appeared in a vision to you, it was only as an irritated adversary.... But how can any one through visions become wise in teaching? And if you say, ‘it is possible,’ then I ask, wherefore did the Teacher remain for a whole year and discourse to those who were attentive? And how can _we believe your story that he appeared to you_? And in what manner did he appear to you, when you hold opinions contrary to his teaching?... For you now set yourself up against me, who am a _firm rock, the foundation of the Church_. If you were not an opponent, you would not calumniate me, you would not revile my teaching ... (circumcision?) in order that, in declaring what I have myself heard from the Lord, I may not be believed, as though _I were condemned_.... But if you say that I am condemned, you blame God who revealed Christ to me.” “This last phrase,” observes the author of “Supernatural Religion,” “‘if you say that I am condemned,’ is an evident allusion to Galat. ii, 11, ‘I withstood him to the face, because he was condemned’” (“Supernatural Religion,” p. 37). “There cannot be a doubt,” adds the just-quoted author, “that the Apostle Paul is attacked in this religious romance as the great enemy of the true faith, under the hated name of Simon the Magician, whom Peter follows everywhere for the purpose of unmasking and confuting him” (p. 34). And if so, then we must believe that it was St. Paul who broke both his legs in Rome when flying in the air.

[281] “Prâtimoksha Sûtra,” Pali Burmese copy; see also “Lotus de la Bonne Loi,” translated by Burnouf, p. 444.

[282] Matthew xix. 16-18.

[283] “Pittakatayan,” book iii., Pali Version.

[284] See Judges xiii. 18, “And the angel of the Lord said unto him: Why askest thou after my name, seeing it is SECRET?”

[285] Vol. ii., p. 106.

[286] Emmanuel was doubtless the son of the prophet himself, as described in the sixth chapter; what was predicted, can only be interpreted on that hypothesis. The prophet had also announced to Ahaz the extinction of his line. “If ye will not believe, surely ye shall not be established.” Next comes the prediction of the placing of a new prince on the throne--Hezekiah of Bethlehem, said to have been Isaiah’s son-in-law, under whom the captives should return from the uttermost parts of the earth. Assyria should be humbled, and peace overspread the Israelitish country, compare Isaiah vii. 14-16; viii. 3, 4; ix. 6, 7; x. 12, 20, 21; xi.; Micah v., 2-7. The popular party, the party of the prophets, always opposed to the Zadokite priesthood, had resolved to set aside Ahaz and his time-serving policy, which had let in Assyria upon Palestine, and to set up Hezekiah, a man of their own, who should rebel against Assyria and overthrow the Assur-worship and Baalim (2 Kings xv. 11). Though only the prophets hint this, it being cut out from the historical books, it is noticeable that Ahaz offered his own child to Moloch, also that he died at the age of thirty-six, and Hezekiah took the throne at twenty-five, in full adult age.

[287] Tertullian: “Adv. Marci,” iii. 8 ff.

[288] “Sup. Rel.,” vol. ii., p. 107; “Adv. Marci,” iii. 2, § 2; cf. iii. 12, § 12.

[289] “Sup. Relig.,” vol. ii., p. 126.

[290] We give the systems according to an old diagram preserved among some Kopts and the Druses of Mount Lebanon. Irenæus had perhaps some good reasons to disfigure their doctrines.

[291] Sophia is the highest prototype of woman--the first _spiritual_ Eve. In the Bible the system is reversed and the intervening emanation being omitted, Eve is degraded to simple humanity.

[292] See “Irenæus,” book i., chap. 31-33.

[293] In King’s “Gnostics,” we find the system a little incorrect. The author tells us that he followed Bellermann’s “Drei Programmen über die Abraxas gemmen.”

[294] See “Idra Magna.”

[295] “Codex Nazaræns,” part i., p. 9.

[296] See “Codex Nazaræns,” i., 181. Fetahil, sent to frame the world, finds himself immersed in the abyss of mud, and soliloquizes in dismay until the _Spiritus_ (Sophia-Achamoth) unites herself completely with matter, and so creates the material world.

[297] “Irenæus,” 37, and Theodoret, quoted in the same page.

[298] Ibid., i. xxv.

[299] See preface to the “Apocryphal New Testament,” London, printed for W. Hone, Ludgate Hill, 1820.

[300] “It is first cited by Virgilius Tapsensis, a Latin writer of no credit, in the latter end of the fifth century, and by him it is suspected to have been forged.”

[301] “Elements of Theology,” vol. ii., p. 90, note.

[302] Parson’s “Letters to Travis,” 8vo., p. 402.

[303] The term “Paganism” is properly used by many modern writers with hesitation. Professor Alexander Wilder, in his edition of Payne Knight’s “Symbolical Language of Ancient Art and Mythology,” says: “It (‘Paganism’) has degenerated into slang, and is generally employed with more or less of an opprobrious meaning. The correcter expression would have been ‘the ancient ethnical worships,’ but it would be hardly understood in its true sense, and we accordingly have adopted the term in popular use, but not disrespectfully. A religion which can develop a Plato, an Epictetus, and an Anaxagoras, is not gross, superficial, or totally unworthy of candid attention. Besides, many of the rites and doctrines included in the Christian as well as in the Jewish Institute, appeared first in the other systems. Zoroastrianism anticipated far more than has been imagined. The cross, the priestly robes and symbols, the sacraments, the Sabbath, the festivals and anniversaries, are all anterior to the Christian era by thousands of years. The ancient worship, after it had been excluded from its former shrines, and from the metropolitan towns, was maintained for a long time by the inhabitants of humble localities. To this fact it owes its later designation. From being kept up in the _Pagi_, or rural districts, its votaries were denominated _Pagans_, or provincials.”

[304] “Super. Relig.,” vol. ii., p. 5.

[305] Norberg: Preface to “Cod. Naz.,” p. v.

[306] Epiph.: “Contra Ebionitas.”

[307] See preface, from page 1 to 34.

[308] Ibid., p. 7, preface.

[309] Hieronymus: “De Virus.,” illust., cap. 3. “It is remarkable that, while all church fathers say that Matthew wrote in _Hebrew_, the whole of them use the Greek text as the genuine apostolic writing, without mentioning what relation the _Hebrew_ Matthew has to our Greek one! It had many _peculiar additions_ which are wanting in our evangel.” (Olshausen: “Nachweis der Echtheit der sämmtlichen Schriften des Neuen Test.,” p. 32; Dunlap: “Sod, the Son of the Man,” p. 44.)

[310] Hieronymus: “Commen. to Matthew,” book ii., ch. xii., 13. Jerome adds that it was written in the Chaldaic language, but with Hebrew letters.

[311] “St. Jerome,” v., 445; “Sod, the Son of the Man,” p. 46.

[312] This accounts also for the rejection of the works of Justin Martyr, who used only this “Gospel according to the Hebrews,” as also did most probably Titian, his disciple. At what late period was fully established the _divinity_ of Christ we can judge by the mere fact that even in the fourth century Eusebius did not denounce this book as spurious, but only classed it with such as the Apocalypse of John; and Credner (“Zur Gesch. Des Kan.,” p. 120) shows Nicephorus inserting it, together with the Revelation, in his “Stichometry,” among the Antilegomena. The Ebionites, the _genuine_ primitive Christians, rejecting the rest of the apostolic writings, made use only of this Gospel (“Adv. Hær.” i., 26), and the Ebionites, as Epiphanius declares, firmly believed, with the Nazarenes, that Jesus was but a man “of the seed of a man.”

[313] See King’s “Gnostics,” p. 31.

[314] This Iove, Iao, or Jehovah is quite distinct from the God of the Mysteries, IAO, held sacred by all the nations of antiquity. We will show the difference presently.

[315] King’s “Gnostics.”

[316] Iurbo and Adunai, according to the Ophites, are names of Iao-Jehovah, one of the emanations of Ilda-Baoth. “Iurbo is called by the Abortions (the Jews) Adunai” (“Codex Nazaræus,” vol. iii., p. 73).

[317] King: “The Gnostics and their Remains,” p. 31.

[318] In the “Gospel of Nicodemus,” Ilda-Baoth is called _Satan_ by the pious and anonymous author;--evidently, one of the final flings at the half-crushed enemy. “As for me,” says Satan, excusing himself to the prince of hell, “I tempted him (Jesus), and stirred up my old people, the Jews, against him” (chap. xv. 9). Of all examples of Christian ingratitude this seems almost the most conspicuous. The poor Jews are first robbed of their sacred books, and then, in a spurious “Gospel,” are insulted by the representation of Satan claiming them as his “old people.” If they were his people, and at the same time are “God’s chosen people,” then the name of this God must be written Satan and not Jehovah. This is logic, but we doubt if it can be regarded as complimentary to the “Lord God of Israel.”

[319] This is the Nazarene system; the Spiritus, after uniting herself with Karabtanos (_matter_, turbulent and senseless), brings forth _seven badly-disposed stellars_, in the Orcus; “Seven Figures,” which she bore “witless” (“Codex Nazaræus,” i., p. 118). Justin Martyr evidently adopts this idea, for he tells us of “the sacred prophets, who say that one and the same _spirit_ is divided into _seven_ spirits (pneumata). “Justin ad Græcos;” “Sod,” vol. ii., p. 52. In the Apocalypse the Holy Spirit is subdivided into “_seven_ spirits before the throne,” from the Persian Mithraic mode of classifying.

[320] This certainly looks like the “_jealous_ God” of the Jews.

[321] It is the _Elohim_ (plural) who create Adam, and do not wish man to become “as one of US.”

[322] Theodoret: “Hæret.;” King’s “Gnostics.”

[323] “Gnostics and their Remains,” p. 78.

[324] Some persons hold that he was Bishop of Rome; others, of Carthage.

[325] His polemical work addressed against the so-called orthodox Church--the Catholic--notwithstanding its bitterness and usual style of vituperation, is far more fair, considering that the “great African” is said to have been expelled from the Church of Rome. If we believe St. Jerome, it is but the envy and the unmerited calumnies of the early Roman clergy against Tertullian which forced him to renounce the Catholic Church and become a Montanist. However, were the unlimited admiration of St. Cyprian, who terms Tertullian “The Master,” and his estimate of him merited, we would see less error and paganism in the Church of Rome. The expression of Vincent of Lerius, “that every word of Tertullian was a sentence, and every sentence a triumph _over error_,” does not seem very happy when we think of the respect paid to Tertullian by the Church of Rome, notwithstanding his partial apostasy and the _errors_ in which the latter still abides and has even enforced upon the world as _infallible_ dogmas.

[326] Were not the views of the Phrygian Bishop Montanus, also deemed a HERESY by the Church of Rome? It is quite extraordinary to see how easily the Vatican encourages the abuse of one _heretic_ Tertullian, against another _heretic_ Basilides, when the abuse happens to further her own object.

[327] Does not Paul himself speak of “_Principalities_ and _Powers_ in heavenly places” (Ephesians iii. 10; i. 21), and confess that there be _gods_ many and _Lords_ many (Kurioi)? And angels, powers (Dunameis), and _Principalities_? (See 1 Corinthians, viii. 5; and Epistle to Romans, viii. 38.)

[328] Tertullian: “Præscript.”

[329] Baur; Credner; Hilgenfeld; Kirchhofer; Lechler; Nicolas; Ritschl; Schwegler; Westcott, and Zeller; see “Supernatural Religion,” vol. ii., p. 2.

[330] See Epiphanius: “Contra Ebionitas.”

[331] The Ophites, for instance, made of Adonai the third son of Ilda-Baoth, a malignant genius, and, like his other five brothers, a constant enemy and adversary of man, whose divine and immortal spirit gave man the means of becoming the rival of these genii.

[332] The Bishop of Salamis died A.D. 403.

[333] “Epiphanius,” i., 122, 123.

[334] The “Clementines” are composed of three parts--to wit: the Homilies, the Recognitions, and an Epitome.

[335] “Supernatural Religion,” vol. ii., p. 2.

[336] “Homilies,” xviii., 1-15.

[337] “Clementine Homilies;” “Supernatural Religion,” vol. ii.

[338] “Supernatural Religion,” p. 11.

[339] Hieron.: “Opp.,” vii., p. 270, ff.; “Supernatural Religion,” p. 11.

[340] Ibid.

[341] Theodoret: “Hæret. Fab.,” ii., vii.

[342] See “Irenæus,” I., xii., p. 86.

[343] “Auszüge aus dem Sohar,” p. 12.

[344] “Cod. Naz.,” vol. ii., p. 149.

[345] Theodoret: “Hæret. Fab.,” ii., vii.

[346] “Homilies,” xvi., 15 ff.; ii., 12; iii., 57-59; x., 19. Schliemann: “Die Clementinem,” p. 134 ff., “Supernatural Religion,” vol. ii., p. 349.

[347] “Homilies,” iii., 20 f; ii., 16-18, etc.

[348] Ibid., iii., 20 ff.

[349] Schliemann: “Die Clementinem,” pp. 130-176; quoted also in “Supernatural Religion,” p. 342.

[350] We will speak of this doctrine further on.

[351] “Kabbala Denudata,” vol. ii., p. 155; “Vallis Regia.”

[352] “Hermes,” X., iv., 21-23.

[353] Idra Magna: “Kabbala Denudata.”

[354] Justin Martyr: “Apol.,” vol. ii., p. 74.

[355] Josephus: “Wars,” II., chap. 8. sec. 7.

[356] See Josephus; Philo; Munk (35). Eusebius mentions their semneion, where they perform the mysteries of a retired life (“Ecclesiastic History,” lib. ii., ch. 17).

[357] “Epiphanius,” ed. Petau, i., p. 117.

[358] Cerinthus is the same Gnostic--a contemporary of John the Evangelist--of whom Irenæus invented the following anecdote: “There are those who heard him (Polycarp) say that John, the disciple of the Lord, going to bathe at Ephesus, and perceiving Cerinthus within, rushed forth from the bath-house ... crying out, ‘Let us fly, lest the bath-house fall down, Cerinthus, the enemy of the truth, being within it’” (Irenæus: “Adv. Hær.,” iii., 3, § 4).

[359] Munk: “Palestine,” p. 525; “Sod, the Son of the Man.”

[360] “Haxthausen,” p. 229.

[361] “Shahrastâni;” Dr. D. Chwolsohn: “Die Ssabier und der Ssabismus,” ii., p. 625.

[362] Maimonides, quoted in Dr. D. Chwolsohn: “Die Ssabier und der Ssabismus,” ii., p. 458.

[363] “Ye have condemned and killed the just,” says James in his epistle to the twelve tribes.

[364] Porphyry makes a distinction between what he calls “the _Antique_ or _Oriental philosophy_,” and the properly Grecian system, that of the Neo-platonists. King says that all these religions and systems are branches of one antique and common religion, the Asiatic or Buddhistic (“Gnostics and their Remains,” p. 1).

[365] “Sod, the Son of the Man.”

[366] “Hermes Trismegistus,” pp. 86, 87, 90.

[367] It is the correct interpretation of the Bible allegories that makes the Catholic clergy so wrathful with the Protestants who freely scrutinize the Bible. How bitter this feeling has become, we can judge by the following words of the Reverend Father Parker of Hyde Park, New York, who, lecturing in St. Teresa’s Catholic Church, on the 10th of December, 1876, said: “To whom does the Protestant Church owe its possession of the Bible, _which they wish to place in the hands of every ignorant person and child_? To monkish hands, that laboriously transcribed it before the age of printing. Protestantism has produced dissension in Church, rebellions and outbreaks in State, unsoundness in social life, and will never be satisfied short of the downfall of the Bible! Protestants must admit that the Roman Church has done more to scatter Christianity and extirpate idolatry than all their sects. From one pulpit it is said that there is no hell, and from another that there is immediate and unmitigated damnation. One says that Jesus Christ was only a man; another that you must be plunged bodily into water to be baptized, and refuses the rites to infants. Most of them have no prescribed form of worship, no sacred vestments, and their doctrines are as undefined as their service is informal. The founder of Protestantism, Martin Luther, was the worst man in Europe. The advent of the Reformation was the signal for civil war, and from that time to this the world has been in a restless state, uneasy in regard to Governments, and every day becoming more skeptical. The ultimate tendency of Protestantism is clearly nothing less than the destruction of all respect for the Bible, and the disruption of government and society.” Very plain talk this. The Protestants might easily return the compliment.

[368] Eliphas Levi ascribes this narrative to the Talmudist authors of “Sota” and “Sanhedrin,” p. 19, book of “Jechiel.”

[369] This fragment is translated from the original Hebrew by Eliphas Levi in his “La Science des Esprits.”

[370] Those who know anything of the rites of the Hebrews must recognize in these lions the gigantic figures of the Cherubim, whose symbolical monstrosity was well calculated to frighten and put to flight the profane.

[371] Arnobius tells the same story of Jesus, and narrates how he was accused of having robbed the sanctuary of the secret names of the Holy One, by means of which knowledge he performed all the miracles.

[372] This is a translation of Eliphas Levi.

[373] “La Science des Esprits,” p. 37.

[374] “Israelite Indeed,” vol. iii., p. 61.

[375] “Origen,” vol. ii., p. 150.

[376] “Codex Nazaræus,” vol. i., p. 23.

[377] “In the way these call heresy I worship” (Acts xxiv. 14).

[378] “Codex Nazaræus,” vol. ii., p. 109.

[379] “Milman,” p. 200.

[380] Dunlap says in “Sod, the Son of the Man:” “Mr. Hall, of India, informs us that he has seen Sanscrit philosophical treatises in which the _Logos_ continually occur,” p. 39, foot-note.

[381] See John i.

[382] Origen: “Philosophumena,” xxiv.

[383] Kleuker: “Natur und Ursprung der Emanationslehre bei den Kabbalisten,” pp. 10, 11; see “Libri Mysterii.”

[384] “These as natural _brute beasts_.” “The dog has turned to its own vomit again; and _the sow_ that was washed to her wallowing in the mire” (22).

[385] The types of the creation, or the attributes of the Supreme Being, are through the emanations of Adam Kadmon; these are: “The _Crown_, _Wisdom_, _Prudence_, _Magnificence_, _Severity_, _Beauty_, _Victory_, _Glory_, _Foundation_, _Empire_. Wisdom is called _Jeh_; Prudence, _Jehovah_; Severity, _Elohim_; Magnificence, _El_; Victory and Glory, SABAOTH; Empire or Dominion, ADONAI.” Thus when the Nazarenes and other Gnostics of the more Platonic tendency twitted the Jews as “abortions who worship their god Iurbo, _Adunai_,” we need not wonder at the wrath of those who had accepted the old Mosaic system, but at that of Peter and Jude who claim to be followers of Jesus and dissent from the views of him who was also a Nazarene.

[386] According to the “Kabala,” _Empire_ or _Dominion_ is “the consuming fire, and his wife is the Temple or the Church.”

[387] Colossians ii. 18.

[388] It is more likely that both abused Paul, who preached against this belief; and that the Gnostics were only a pretext. (See Peter’s second Epistle.)

[389] The true name of Manes--who was a Persian by birth--was _Cubricus_. (See Epiph. “Life of Manes,” Hæret. lxv.) He was flayed alive at the instance of the Magi, by the Persian King Varanes I. Plutarch says that Manes or Manis means Masses or ANOINTED. The vessel, or vase of election, is, therefore, the vessel full of that light of God, which he pours on one he has selected for his interpreter.

[390] See King’s “Gnostics,” p. 38.

[391] Franck: “Die Kabbala,” p. 126.

[392] Philo: “Quæst. et Solut.”

[393] See Franck: “Die Kabbala,” p. 153 ff.

[394] “Kabbala Denudata;” preface to the “Sohar,” ii., p. 242.

[395] See Champollion’s “Egypte.”

[396] “Idra Rabba,” vi., p. 58.

[397] Idra Suta: “Sohar,” ii.

[398] Idra Suta: “Sohar,” iii., p. 288 a.

[399] _Ego sum qui sum_ (see “Bible”).

[400] See “Institutes of Manu,” translated by Sir William Jones.

[401] Champollion.

[402] We are fully aware that some Christian kabalists term En-Soph the “Crown,” identify him with Sephira; call En-Soph “an emanation from God,” and make the ten Sephiroth comprise “En-Soph” as a unity. They also very erroneously reverse the first two emanations of Sephira--Chochma and Binah. The greatest kabalists have always held Chochma (Wisdom) as a male and active intelligence, Jah יה, and placed it under the No. 2 on the right side of the triangle, whose apex is the crown, while Binah (Intelligence) or בינה, is under No. 3 on the left hand. But the latter, being represented by its divine name as Jehovah יהוה, very naturally showed the God of Israel as only a third emanation, as well as a feminine, passive principle. Hence when the time came for the Talmudists to transform their multifarious deities into one living God, they resorted to their Masoretic points and combined to transform Jehovah into Adonai, “the Lord.” This, under the persecution of the Mediæval kabalists by the Church, also forced some of the former to change their female Sephiroth into male, and _vice versa_, so as to avoid being accused of disrespect and blasphemy to Jehovah; whose name, moreover, by mutual and secret agreement they accepted as a _substitute_ for Jah, or the mystery name IAO. Alone the _initiated_ knew of it, but later it gave rise to a great confusion among the _uninitiated_. It would be worth while--were it not for lack of space--to quote a few of the many passages in the oldest Jewish authorities, such as Rabbi Akiba, and the “Sohar,” which corroborate our assertion. Chochma-Wisdom is a male principle everywhere, and Binah-Jehovah, a female potency. The writings of Irenæus, Theodoret, and Epiphanius, teeming with accusations against the Gnostics and “Hæresies,” repeatedly show Simon Magus and Cerenthus making of Binah the feminine divine Spirit which inspired Simon. Binah is Sophia, and the Sophia of the Gnostics is surely not a male potency, but simply the feminine Wisdom, or Intelligence. (See any ancient “Arbor Kabbalistica,” or Tree of the Sephiroth.) Eliphas Levi, in the “Rituel de la Haute Magie,” vol. i., pp. 223 and 231, places Chochma as No. 2 and as a male Sephiroth on the right hand of the Tree. In the “Kabala” the three male Sephiroth--Chochma, Chesed, Netsah--are known as the Pillar of Mercy; and the three feminine on the left, namely, Binah, Geburah, Hod, are named the Pillar of Judgment; while the four Sephiroth of the centre--Kether, Tiphereth, Jesod, and Malchuth--are called the Middle Pillar. And, as Mackenzie, in the “Royal Masonic Cyclopædia,” shows, “there is an analogy in these three pillars to the three Pillars of Wisdom, Strength, and Beauty in a Craft Lodge of Masonry, while the En-Soph forms the mysterious blazing star, or mystic light of the East.” (p. 407).

[403] Justin: “Cum. Trypho,” p. 284.

[404] A division indicative of time.

[405] Sanchoniathon calls time the oldest Æon, _Protogonos_, the “_first-born_.”

[406] Philo Judæus: “Cain and his Birth,” p. xvii.

[407] Azrael, angel of death, is also Israel. _Ab-ram_ means father of elevation, high placed father, for Saturn is the highest or outmost planet.

[408] See Genesis xiii. 2.

[409] Saturn is generally represented as a very old man, with a sickle in his hand.

[410] Bunsen: “Egypt’s Place in Universal History,” vol. v., p. 85.

[411] Idra Suta: “Sohar,” iii., p. 292 b.

[412] Bereshith Rabba: “Parsha,” ix.

[413] “Sohar,” i., p. 20 a.

[414] “The Sanscrit _s_,” says Max Müller, “is represented by the _z_ and _h_. Thus the geographical name ‘hapta hendu,’ which occurs in the ‘Avesta,’ becomes intelligible, if we retranslate the _z_ and _h_ into the Sanscrit _s_. For ‘Sapta Sindhu,’ or the seven rivers, is the old Vaidic name for India itself” (“Chips,” vol. i., p. 81). The “Avesta” is the spirit of the “Vedas”--the esoteric meaning made partially known.

[415] What is generally understood in the “Avesta” system as a _thousand_ years, means, in the esoteric doctrine, a cycle of a duration known but to the initiates and which has an allegorical sense.

[416] Matter: “Histoire Critique du Gnosticisme,” pl. x.

[417] Idra Suta: “Sohar,” iii., p. 288.

[418] Ibid., sect. ii.

[419] Ibid., vii.

[420] Jam vero quoniam hoc in loco recondita est illa plane non utuntur, et tantum de parte lucis ejus particepant quæ demittitur et ingreditur intra filum Ain Soph protensum e Persona אל (_Al_-God) deorsum: intratque et perrumpit et transit per Adam primum occultum usque in statum dispositionis transitque per eum a capite usque ad pedes ejus: _et in eo est figura hominis_ (“Kabbala Denudata,” ii., p. 246).

[421] “Sohar,” i., p. 51 a.

[422] Book iii., p. 290.

[423] “Idra Rabba,” §§ 541, 542.

[424] Ibid., iii., p. 36.

[425] Ibid., p. 171.

[426] “Nat. und Urspr. d. Emanationslehre b. d. Kabbalisten,” p. ii.

[427] “Irenæus,” p. 637.

[428] “Idra Suta,” ix.; “Kabbala Denudata;” see Pythagoras: “Monad.”

[429] “Codex Nazaræus,” i., p. 145.

[430] “Idra Rabba,” viii., pp. 107-109.

[431] “Auszüge aus dem Sohar,” p. 11.

[432] He is the universal and spiritual _germ_ of all things.

[433] “Ad. Kabb. Chr.,” p. 6.

[434] “Sohar,” p. 93.

[435] “Movers,” p. 265.

[436] “Kabbala Denudata,” vol. ii., p. 236.

[437] Champollion, Junior: “Lettres.”

[438] “Codex Nazaræus,” vol. ii., pp. 47-57.

[439] Ibid., vol. i., p. 145.

[440] Ibid., vol. ii., p. 211.

[441] Ibid., vol. i., p. 308.

[442] Sophia-Achamoth also begets her son Ilda-Baoth, the _Demiurge_, by looking into chaos or matter, and by coming in contact with it.

[443] “Codex Nazaræus,” vol. ii., p. 109. See “Sod, the Son of the Man,” for translation.

[444] Revelation iv. 5.

[445] Ezekiel.

[446] “Codex Nazaræus,” vol. ii., p. 127.

[447] The first androgyne duad being considered a _unit_ in all the secret computations, is, therefore, the Holy Ghost.

[448] “Codex Nazaræus,” vol. iii., p. 59.

[449] Ibid., vol. i., p. 285.

[450] Ibid., vol. i., p. 309.

[451] Ibid., vol. i., p. 287. See “Sod, the Son of the Man,” p. 101.

[452] John iv. 9.

[453] “Codex Nazaræus,” vol. ii., p. 123.

[454] “Then went up Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel. _And they saw the God of Israel_,” Exodus xxiv. 9, 10.

[455] Irenæus: “Clementine Homilies,” I., xxii., p. 118.

[456] “Adv. Hæs.,” III., ii., 18.

[457] See King’s “Gnostics.”

[458] Ezekiel i.-ii.

[459] “Gnostics and their Remains.”

[460] “Although this science is commonly supposed to be peculiar to the Jewish Talmudists, there is no doubt that they borrowed the idea from a foreign source, and that from the Chaldeans, the _founders of magic art_,” says King, in the “Gnostics.” The titles _Iao_ and _Abraxas_, etc., instead of being recent Gnostic figments, were indeed holy names, borrowed from the most ancient formulæ of the East. Pliny must allude to them when he mentions the virtues ascribed by the Magi to amethysts engraved with the names of the sun and moon, names not expressed in either the Greek or Latin tongues. In the “_Eternal Sun_,” the “_Abraxas_,” the “_Adonai_,” of these gems, we recognize the very amulets ridiculed by the philosophic Pliny (“Gnostics,” pp. 79, 80); _Virtutes_ (miracles) as employed by Irenæus.

[461] So called to distinguish the short-face, who _is exterior_, “from the venerable sacred ancient” (the “Idra Rabba,” iii., 36; v. 54). Seir-Anpin is the “image of the Father.” “He that hath seen me hath seen my Father” (John xiv. 9).

[462] “Codex Nazaræus,” vol. iii., p. 57.

[463] Ibid., vol. iii., p. 61.

[464] This stone, of a sponge-like surface, is found in Narmada and seldom to be seen in other places.

[465] John has an eagle near him; Luke, a bull; Mark, a lion; and Matthew, an angel--the kabalistic quaternary of the Egyptian Tarot.

[466] See Matter, upon the subject.

[467] Consult Book of Daniel, iv., v.

[468] Ahriman, the production of Zoroaster, is so called in hatred of the Arias or Aryas, the Brahmans against whose dominion the Zoroastrians had revolted. Although an Arya (a noble, a sage) himself, Zoroaster, as in the case of the Devas whom he disgraced from gods to the position of _devils_, hesitated not to designate this type of the spirit of evil under the name of his enemies, the Brahman-Aryas. The whole struggle of Ahura-mazd and Ahriman is but the allegory of the great religious and political war between Brahmanism and Zoroastrianism.

[469] “Nork,” ii., 146.

[470] Rev. Mr. Maurice takes it also to mean the cycles.

[471] “Duncker,” ii., 363; Spiegel’s “Avesta,” i., 32, 34.

[472] See the “Book of Dehesh,” 47.

[473] See King’s translation of the “Zend Avesta,” in his “Gnostics,” p. 9.

[474] The dævas or devils of the Iranians contrast with the devas or deities of India.

[475] “Nork,” ii., 146.

[476] The Bishop of Ephesus, 218 A.D.; Eusebius: “H. E.” iii., 31. Origen stoutly maintained the doctrine of eternal punishment to be erroneous. He held that at the second advent of Christ even the devils among the damned would be forgiven. The eternal damnation is a later _Christian_ thought.

[477] Luke xii. 10.

[478] “Hermes Trismegistus,” vi. 55.

[479] Plato Protogoras; “Cory,” p. 274.

[480] Panthier: “La Chine,” ii., 375; “Sod, the Son of the Man,” p. 97.

[481] Acts ii. 22.

[482] John i. 6.

[483] Ibid., 30.

[484] John viii. 40.

[485] Ibid., ix. 11.

[486] Priestley: “History of Early Christianity,” p. 2, sect. 2.

[487] Mahomet was born in 571 A.D.

[488] J. M. Peebles: “Jesus--Man, Myth, or God?”

[489] Translated from the “Hari-Purana,” by Jacolliot: “Christna, et le Christ.”

[490] Clement: “Al. Strom.,” v. 14, § 110; translation given in “Supernatural Religion,” vol. i, p. 77.

[491] This work, “The Pastor of Hermas,” is no longer extant, but appears only in the “Stichometry” of Nicephorus; it is now considered an apocrypha. But, in the days of Irenæus, it was quoted as Holy Scripture (see “Sup. Religion,” vol. i., p. 257) by the Fathers, held to be divinely inspired, and publicly read in the churches (Irenæus: “Adv. Hær.,” iv., 20). When Tertullian became a Montanist he rejected it, after having _asserted_ its divinity (Tertullian: “De Orat.,” p. 12).

[492] “Sohar,” xl., p. 10.

[493] “Codex Nazaræus,” vol. iii., pp. 60, 61.

[494] Ibid., vol. ii., p. 281; vol. iii., p. 59.

[495] We must remind the reader, in this connection, that Joshua and Jesus are one and the same name. In the Slavonian Bibles Joshua reads--_Iessus_ (or Jesus), _Navin_.

[496] “Idra Rabba,” vol. iii., § 41; the “Sohar.”

[497] “Kabbala Denudata,” vol. ii., p. 230; the “Book of the Babylonian Companions,” p. 35.

[498] “Sohar Ex.,” p. 11.

[499] “Midrash Hashirim;” “Rabbi Akaba;” “Midrash Koheleth,” vol. ii., p. 45.

[500] “Codex Nazaræus,” vol. iii., p. 60.

[501] “On the Canon,” p. 178 ff.

[502] Vol. ii., p. 57; Norberg’s “Onomasticon;” “Sod, the Son of the Man,” p. 103.

[503] “Preller,” vol. i., p. 484; K. O. Muller: “History of Greek Literature,” p. 238; “Movers,” p. 553.

[504] “Sohar,” vol. i., fol. 25.

[505] “Simil.,” vol. ix., p. 12; “Supernatural Religion,” vol. i., p. 257.

[506] Mark xiii. 32.

[507] “Apolog.,” vol. i., p. 63.

[508] “Idra Rabba,” x., p. 177.

[509] “Codex Nazaræus,” vol. i., p. 23.

[510] Philo says that the _Logos_ is the _interpreter_ of the highest God, and argues, “that he must be the God of us imperfect beings” (“Leg. Alleg.,” iii., § 73). According to his opinion man was not made in the likeness of the _most High_ God, the Father of all, but in that of the _second_ God who is his word--Logos” (Philo: “Fragments,” 1; ex. Euseb. “Præpar. Evang.,” vii., 13).

[511] “Codex Nazaræus,” p. 57; “Sod, the Son of the Man,” p. 59.

[512] “Hundert und ein Frage,” p. xvii.; Dunlap: “Sod, the Son of the Man,” p. 87; the author, who quotes Nork, says that parts of the “Midrashim” and the “Targum” of Onkelos, antedate the “New Testament.”

[513] Writing upon Ptolemæus and Heracleon, the author of “Supernatural Religion” (vol. ii., p. 217) says that “the inaccuracy of the Fathers keeps pace with their want of critical judgment,” and then proceeds to illustrate this particularly ridiculous blunder committed by Epiphanius, in common with Hippolytus, Tertullian, and Philostrius. “Mistaking a passage of Irenæus, ‘Adv. Hær.,’ i., p. 14, regarding the Sacred Tetrad (Kol-Arbas), Hippolytus supposes Irenæus to refer to another heretic leader.” He at once treats the Tetrad as such a leader named “Colarbasus,” and after dealing (vi., 4) with the doctrines of Secundus, and Ptolemæus, and Heracleon, he proposes, § 5, to show, “what are the opinions held by Marcus and _Colarbasus_,” these two being, according to him, the successors of the school of Valentinus (cf. Bunsen: “Hippolytus, U. S. Zeit.,” p. 54 f.; “Ref. Omn. Hær.,” iv., § 13).

[514] See Godf. Higgins: “Anacalypsis.”

[515] Inman: “Ancient Pagan and Modern Christian Symbolism,” p. 84.

[516] Meaning--holding up of _different views_.

[517] “This absurd mistake,” remarks the author of “Supernatural Religion,” vol. ii., p. 218, “shows how little these writers knew of the Gnostics of whom they wrote, and how the one ignorantly follows the other.”

[518] “Ref. Omn. Hær.,” iv., § 13.

[519] Epiph.: “Hær.,” xxxvi., § 1, p. 262 (quoted in “Supernatural Religion”). See Volkmar’s “Die Colorabasus-gnosis” in Niedner’s “Zeitschr. Hist. Theol.”

[520] “Gnostics and their Remains,” p. 182 f., note 3.

[521] Mosheim.

[522] Tertullian: “Despectæ,” ch. xxx.

[523] Mosheim: “Eccles. Hist.,” c. v., § 5.

[524] Socrates: “Scol. Eccl. Hist.,” b. I., c. ix.

[525] “Proverbs,” chap. xvi., p. 33. In ancient Egypt and Greece, and among Israelites, small sticks and balls called the “sacred divining lots” were used for this kind of oracle in the temples. According to the figures which were formed by the accidental juxtaposition of the latter, the priest interpreted the will of the gods.

[526] Another untrustworthy, untruthful, and ignorant writer, and ecclesiastical historian of the fifth century. His alleged history of the strife between the Pagans, Neo-platonics, and the Christians of Alexandria and Constantinople, which extends from the year 324 to 439, dedicated by him to Theodosius, the younger, is full of deliberate falsifications. Edition of “Reading,” Cantab, 1720, fol. Translated. Plon frères, Paris.

[527] “Gems of the Orthodox Christians,” vol. i., p. 135.

[528] Revelation xiv. 1.

[529] Daghôba is a small temple of globular form, in which are preserved the relics of Gautama.

[530] Prachidas are buildings of all sizes and forms, like our mausoleums, and are sacred to votive offerings to the dead.

[531] The Talmudistic records claim that, after having been hung, he was lapidated and buried under the water at the junction of two streams. “Mishna Sanhedrin,” vol. vi., p. 4; “Talmud,” of Babylon, same article, 43 a, 67 a.

[532] “Coptic Legends of the Crucifixion,” MSS. xi.

[533] The engraving represents the talisman as of twice the natural size. We are at a loss to understand why King, in his “Gnostic Gems,” represents Solomon’s seal as a five-pointed star, whereas it is six-pointed, and is the signet of Vishnu, in India.

[534] King (“Gnostics”) gives the figure of a Christian symbol, very common during the middle ages, of three fishes interlaced into a triangle, and having the FIVE letters (a most sacred Pythagorean number) Ι. Χ. ΘΥΣ engraved on it. The number five relates to the same kabalistic computation.

[535] “La Genèse de l’Humanité,” p. 9.

[536] The kabalistic Sephiroth are also ten in number, or five pairs.

[537] An avatar is a descent from on high upon earth of the Deity in some manifest shape.

[538] “Bhagavatta.”

[539] “Manu,” books i. and xii.

[540] See Cory’s “Ancient Fragments.”

[541] “Origin of Species,” first edition, p. 484.

[542] Ibid., p. 484.

[543] Ibid., pp. 488, 489.

[544] “La Genèse de l’Humanité,” p. 339.

[545] “Traditions Indo-Européennes et Africaines,” p. 291.

[546] “Traditions Indo-Européennes et Africaines,” pp. 294, 295.

[547] “Les Fils de Dieu,” p. 32.

[548] “Le Spiritisme dans le Monde,” p. 78 and others.

[549] “Les Fils de Dieu,” p. 272. While not at all astonished that Brahmans should have refused to satisfy M. Jacolliot’s curiosity, we must add that the meaning of this sign is known to the superiors of every Buddhist lamasery, not alone to the Brahmans.

[550] “La Genèse de l’Humanité,” p. 339.

[551] See “Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society,” vol. xiii., p. 79.

[552] _Lahgash_ is nearly identical in meaning with _Vâch_, the hidden power of the Mantras.

[553] In “Rig-Veda Sanhita” the meaning is given by Max Müller as the Absolute, “for it is derived from ‘_diti_,’ bond, and the negative particle _A_.”

[554] “Hymns to the Maruts” I., 89, 10.

[555] Ibid., I., 24, 1.

[556] Ibid., X., 63, 2.

[557] George Smith gives the first verses of the Akkadian _Genesis_ as found in the Cuneiform Texts on the “Lateres Coctiles.” There, also, we find _Anu_, the passive deity or En-Soph, _Bel_, the Creator, the Spirit of God (Sephira) moving on the face of the waters, hence water itself, and _Hea_ the Universal Soul or wisdom of the three combined.

The first eight verses read thus:

1. When above, were not raised the heavens; 2. and below on the earth a plant had not grown up. 3. The abyss had not broken its boundaries. 4. The chaos (or water) Tiamat (the sea) was the producing mother of the whole of them. (This is the Cosmical Aditi and Sephira.) 5. Those waters at the beginning were ordained but 6. a tree had not grown, a flower had not unfolded. 7. When the gods had not sprung up, any one of them; 8. a plant had not grown, and order did not exist.

This was the chaotic or ante-genesis period.

[558] Thus is it that we find in all the philosophical theogonies, the Holy Ghost female. The numerous sects of the Gnostics had Sophia; the Jewish kabalists and Talmudists, Shekinah (the garment of the Highest), which descended between the two cherubim upon the Mercy Seat; and we find even Jesus made to say, in an old text, “My _Mother_, the Holy Ghost, took me.”

“The waters are called _nara_, because they were the production of Nara, the Spirit of God” (“Institutes of Manu.” i. 10).

[559] Narayana, or that which moves on the waters.

[560] “Manu,” sloka 12.

[561] When a female power, she is Sephira; when male, he is Adam Kadmon, for, as the former contains in herself the other nine Sephiroth, so, in their totality, the latter, including Sephira, is embodied in the Archetypal Kadmon, the πρωτογονος.

[562] See Haug’s “Aytareya Brahmanam,” of the Rig-Veda.

[563] The same transformations are found in the cosmogony of every important nation. Thus, we see in the Egyptian mythology, Isis and Osiris, sister and brother, man and wife; and Horus, the Son of both, becoming the husband of his mother, Isis, and producing a son, _Malouli_.

[564] Mandala I., Sûkta 166, Max Müller.

[565] “Asiatic Researches,” vol. viii., pp. 402, 403; Colebrooke’s translation.

[566] As in the Pythagorean numerical system every number on earth, or the world of the effects, corresponds to its invisible prototype in the world of causes.

[567] See initial chap., vol. i., word Yajna.

[568] Eve is the trinity of nature, and Adam the unity of spirit; the former the created material principle, the latter the ideal organ of the creative principle, or, in other words, this androgyne is both the principle and the Logos, for א is the male, and ב the female; and, as Levi expresses it, this first letter of the holy language, Aleph, represents a man pointing with one hand toward the sky, and with the other toward the ground. It is the macrocosm and the microcosm at the same time, and explains the double triangle of the Masons and the five-pointed star. While the male is active the female principle is passive, for it is SPIRIT and MATTER, the latter word meaning _mother_ in nearly every language. The columns of Solomon’s temple, Jachin and Boaz, are the emblems of the androgyne; they are also respectively male and female, white and black, square and round; the male a unity, the female a binary. In the later kabalistic treatises, the active principle is pictured by the sword זכר, the passive by the sheath נקבה. See “Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie,” vol. i.

[569] The vertical line being the male principle, and the horizontal the female, out of the union of the two at the intersection point is formed the CROSS; the oldest symbol in the Egyptian history of gods. It is the key of Heaven in the rosy fingers of Neith, the celestial virgin, who opens the gate at dawn for the exit of her first-begotten, the radiant sun. It is the Stauros of the Gnostics, and the philosophical cross of the high-grade Masons. We find this symbol ornamenting the _tee_ of the umbrella-shaped oldest pagodas in Thibet, China, and India, as we find it in the hand of Isis, in the shape of the “handled cross.” In one of the Chaitya caves, at Ajunta, it surmounts the three umbrellas in stone, and forms the centre of the vault.

[570] “When this world had emerged from obscurity, the subtile elementary principles produced the vegetable germ which at first animated the plants; from the plants, life passed through the fantastic organisms which were born in the ilus (_boue_) of the waters; then through a series of forms and different animals, it at length reached man” (“Manu,” book i.; and “Bhagavatta”).

Manu is a convertible type, which can by no means be explained as a personage. Manu means sometimes humanity, sometimes man. The Manu who emanated from the uncreated Swayambhuva is, without doubt, the type of Adam Kadmon. The Manu who is progenitor of the other six Manus is evidently identical with the Rishis, or seven primeval sages who are the forefathers of the post-diluvian races. He is--as we shall show in Chapter VIII.--Noah, and his six sons, or subsequent generations are the originals of the post-diluvian and mythical patriarchs of the Bible.

[571] Cory’s “Ancient Fragments.”

[572] See Vol. I., chap. i., pp. 33, 34, of this work.

[573] “Sepher Jezireh,” chap. i., Mishna ixth.

[574] Ibid.

[575] “Sohar,” i., 2 a.

[576] “Sepher Jezireh,” Mishna ix., 10.

[577] It is interesting to recall Hebrews i. 7, in connection with this passage. “Who maketh his angels (messengers) spirits, and his ministers (servants, those who minister) a flame of fire.” The resemblance is too striking for us to avoid the conclusion that the author of “Hebrews” was as familiar with the “Kabala” as adepts usually are.

[578] “The Sons of God;” “The India of the Brahmans,” p. 230.

[579] May it not be that Hanoumā is the representative of that link of beings half-man, half-monkeys, which, according to the theories of Messrs. Hovelacque and Schleicher, were arrested in their development, and fell, so to say, into a retrogressive evolution?

[580] The Primal or Ultimate Essence has _no name_ in India. It is indicated sometimes as “That” and “This.” “This (universe) was not originally anything. There was neither heaven, nor earth, nor atmosphere. That being non-existent resolved ‘Let me be.’” (Original Sanscrit Text.) Dr. Muir, vol. v., p. 366.

[581] Coleman’s “Hindu Mythology.”

[582] The siege and subsequent surrender of Lanca (Isle of Ceylon) to Rama is placed by the Hindu chronology--based upon the Zodiac--at 7,500 to 8,000 years B.C., and the following or eighth incarnation of Vishnu at 4,800 B.C. (from the book of the Historical Zodiacs of the Brahmans).

[583] A Hanoverian scientist has recently published a work entitled _Ueber die Auflösung der Arten dinck Natürliche Jucht Wahl_, in which he shows, with great ingenuity, that Darwin was wholly mistaken in tracing man back to the ape. On the contrary, he maintains that it is the ape which has evolved from man. That, in the beginning, mankind were, morally and physically, the types and prototypes of our present race and of human dignity, by their beauty of form, regularity of feature, cranial development, nobility of sentiments, heroic impulses, and grandeur of ideal conceptions. This is a purely Brahmanic, Buddhistic, and kabalistic philosophy. His book is copiously illustrated with diagrams, tables, etc. He says that the gradual debasement and degradation of man, morally and physically, can be readily traced throughout the ethnological transformations down to our times. And, as one portion has already degenerated into apes, so the civilized man of the present day will at last, under the action of the inevitable law of necessity, be also succeeded by like descendants. If we may judge of the future by the actual present, it certainly does seem possible that so unspiritual and materialistic a body as our physical scientists should end as _simia_ rather than as seraphs.

[584] “De Bel. Jud.,” vol. ii., p. 12.

[585] “De Somniio,” p. 455 d.

[586] “Sohar,” vol. ii., p. 96.

[587] “Mishna;” “Aboth,” vol. iv., p. 29; Mackenzie’s “Royal Masonic Cyclopædia,” p. 413.

[588] “Sohar,” vol. iii, p. 61 b.

[589] Ibid., vol. i., p. 65 b.

[590] Hermetic work.

[591] “Dhamma-pada,” slokas 276 et seq.

[592] Neander: “History of the Church,” vol. i., p. 817.

[593] It is from the highest _Zion_ that Maitree-Buddha, the Saviour to come, will descend on earth; and it is also from Zion that comes the Christian Deliverer (see Romans xi. 26).

[594] 1 Corinth. ii. 6, 7, 8.

[595] “Lotus de la Bonne Loi,” p. 806.

[596] “Du Bouddhisme,” 95.

[597] Philippians iii. 11-14.

[598] “The Mahâvansa,” vol. i., Introduction.

[599] The Five Articles of Faith.

[600] Not only did the Buddhist missionaries make their way to the Mesopotamian Valley, but they even went so far west as Ireland. The Rev. Dr. Lundy, in his work on “Monumental Christianity,” referring to an Irish Round Tower, observes: “Henry O’Brien explains this Round Tower Crucifixion as that of Buddha; the animals as the elephant and the bull, sacred to Buddha, and into which his soul entered after death; the two figures standing beside the cross as Buddha’s virgin mother, and Kama his favorite disciple. The whole picture bears a close likeness to the Crucifixion, in the cemetery of Pope Julius, except the animals, which are conclusive proof that it cannot be Christian. It came ultimately from the far East to Ireland, with the Phœnician colonists, who erected the Round Towers as symbols of the life-giving and preserving power of man and nature, and how that universal life is produced through suffering and death.”

When a Protestant clergyman is thus forced to confess the pre-Christian existence of the crucifix in Ireland, its Buddhistic character, and the penetration of the missionaries of that faith even to that then remote portion of the earth, we need not wonder that in the minds of the Nazarean contemporaries of Jesus and their descendants, he should not have been associated with that universally known emblem in the character of a Redeemer.

In noticing this admission of Dr. Lundy, Mr. Charles Sotheran remarked, in a lecture before the American Philological Society, that both legends and archæological remains unite in proving beyond question “that Ireland, like every other nation, once listened to the propagandists of Siddhârtha-Buddha.”

[601] “The religion of multiplied baptisms, the scion of the still existent sect named the ‘Christians of St. John,’ or Mendæans, whom the Arabs call _el-Mogtasila_ and Baptists. The Aramean verb _seba_, origin of the name _Sabian_, is a synonym of βαπτιζω” (Renan: “Vie de Jesus”).

[602] Foh-Tchou, literally, in Chinese, meaning Buddha’s lord, or the teacher of the doctrines of Buddha--Foh.

[603] This mountain is situated southwest of China, almost between China and Thibet.

[604] SOL, being situated, on the diagram, exactly in the centre of the solar system (of which the Ophites appear to have been cognizant)--hence, under the direct vertical ray of the Higher Spiritual Sun--showers his brightness on all other planets.

[605] Speaking of Venus, Placidus, the astrologer, always maintained that “her bluish lustre denotes heat.” As to Mercury, it was a strange fancy of the Ophites to represent him as a spirit of water, when astrologically considered he is as “a cold, dry, earthy, and melancholy star.”

[606] The name which Norberg translates, in his Onomasticon to the “Codex Nazaræus,” as Ferho, stands, in the original, _Parcha Rabba_. In the “Life of Manes,” given by Epiphanius, in his “Hær.,” lxvi., is mentioned a certain priest of Mithras, a friend of the great Hæresiarch Manes, named Parchus.

[607] Its description is found in one of the magic books of the Egyptian King Nechepsos, and its use prescribed on green jasper stones, as a potent amulet. Galen mentions it in his work, “De Simp. Med.,” c. ix.

[608] Consider those two diametrically-opposed doctrines--the Catholic and the Protestant; the one preached by Paul, the semi-Platonist, and the other by James, the orthodox Talmudist.

[609] The material, bad side of Sophia-Achamoth, who emanates from herself Ilda-Baoth and his six sons.

[610] See Norberg’s translation of “Codex Nazaræus,” Preface. This proves once more the identification of Jesus with Gautama-Buddha, in the minds of the Nazarene Gnostics, as _Nebu_ or Mercury is the planet sacred to the Buddhas.

[611] Nous, the designation given by Anaxagoras to the Supreme Deity, was taken from Egypt, where he was styled NOUT.

[612] By very few though, for the creators of the material universe were always considered as subordinate deities to the Most High God.

[613] Lydus, 1. c., Ledrenus, 1. c.

[614] “Erân das Land zwischen dem Indus und Tigris.”

[615] _Asi_ means, moreover, “Thou art,” in Sanscrit, and also “sword,” “_Asi_,” without the accent on the first vowel.

[616] Professor A. Wilder.

[617] These sacred anagrams were called “Zeruph.”

[618] “Book of Numbers, or Book of the Keys.”

[619] The “Jezira,” or book of the creation, was written by Rabbi Akiba, who was the teacher and instructor of Simeon Ben Iochai, who was called the prince of the kabalists, and wrote the “Sohar.” Franck asserts that “Jezira” was written one century B.C. (“Die Kabbala,” 65), but other and as competent judges make it far older. At all events, it is now proved that Simeon Ben Iochai lived _before_ the second destruction of the temple.

[620] “Jezira,” p. 8.

[621] Ibid. See the constancy with which Ezekiel sticks in his vision to the “_wheels_” of the “living creatures” (ch. 1., passim).

[622] He was an Alexandrian Neo-platonic under the first of the Ptolemies.

[623] “Chips,” vol. i.

[624] See Max Müller’s “Our Figures.”

[625] Ibid.

[626] See King’s “Gnostics and their Remains,” plate xiii.

[627] “Vita Pythagor.”

[628] 608 B.C.

[629] This city was built 332 B.C.

[630] “Metaph.,” vii. F.

[631] See drawings from the Temple of Rama, Coleman’s “Mythology of the Hindus.” New York: J. W. Bouton, Publisher.

[632] See Hargrave Jennings: “Rosicrucians,” p. 252.

[633] K. O. Müller: “History of Greek Literature,” p. 283; “Movers,” pp. 547-553; Dunlap: “Sod, the Mysteries of Adoni,” p. 21.

[634] See “Universal History,” vol. v., p. 301.

[635] “Spirit. Hist.,” pp. 64, 67, 78.

[636] “Sod, the Mysteries of Adoni,” p. 21.

[637] See Leviticus xvi. 8, 10, and other verses relating to the biblical goat in the original texts.

[638] “Sagra Scrittura,” and “Paralipomeni.”

[639] Article “Goat,” p. 257.

[640] “Types of Mankind,” p. 600; “Royal Masonic Cyclopædia.”

[641] “Ecclesiastical History,” vol. i., pp. 381, 382. Read the whole quotations to appreciate the doctrine in full.

[642] “Anacalypsis.”

[643] Quoted in the “Seers of the Ages,” by J. M. Peebles.

[644] We hold to the idea--which becomes self-evident when the Zoroastrian imbroglio is considered--that there were, even in the days of Darius, two distinct sacerdotal castes of Magi: the initiated and those who were allowed to officiate in the popular rites only. We see the same in the Eleusinian Mysteries. Belonging to every temple there were attached the “hierophants” of the _inner_ sanctuary, and the secular clergy who were not even instructed in the Mysteries. It is against the absurdities and superstitions of the latter that Darius revolted, and “crushed them,” for the inscription of his tomb shows that he was a “hierophant” and a Magian himself. It is also but the exoteric rites of this class of Magi which descended to posterity, for the great secresy in which were preserved the “Mysteries” of the true Chaldean Magi was never violated, however much guess-work may have been expended on them.

[645] xxiii., 6.

[646] “The Gnostics and their Remains,” p. 185.

[647] These are truths which cannot fail to impress themselves upon the minds of earnest thinkers. While the Ebionites, Nazarites, Hemerobaptists, Lampseans, Sabians, and the many other earliest sects which wavered later between the varying dogmatisms suggested to them by the _esoteric_ and misunderstood parables of the Nazarene teacher, whom they justly regarded as a prophet, there were men, for whose names we would vainly search history, who preserved the secret doctrines of Jesus as pure and unadulterated as they had been received. And still, even all these above-mentioned and conflicting sects were far more orthodox in their Christianity, or rather Christism, than the Churches of Constantine and Rome. “It was a strange fate that befell these unfortunate people” (the Ebionites), says Lord Amberley, “when, overwhelmed by the flood of heathenism that had swept into the Church, they were condemned as heretics. Yet, there is no evidence that they had ever swerved from the doctrines of Jesus, or of the disciples who knew him in his lifetime.... Jesus himself was circumcised ... reverenced the temple at Jerusalem as ‘a house of prayer for all nations.’... But the torrent of progress swept past the Ebionites, and left them stranded on the shore” (“An Analysis of Religious Beliefs,” by Viscount Amberley, vol. i., p. 446).

[648] What will, perhaps, still more astonish American readers, is the fact that, in the United States, a mystical fraternity now exists, which claims an intimate relationship with one of the oldest and most powerful of Eastern Brotherhoods. It is known as the Brotherhood of Luxor, and its faithful members have the custody of very important secrets of science. Its ramifications extend widely throughout the great Republic of the West. Though this brotherhood has been long and hard at work, the secret of its existence has been jealously guarded. Mackenzie describes it as having “a Rosicrucian basis, and numbering many members” (“Royal Masonic Cyclopædia,” p. 461). But, in this, the author is mistaken; it has no Rosicrucian basis. The name Luxor is primarily derived from the ancient Beloochistan city of Looksur, which lies between Bela and Kedgee, and also gave its name to the Egyptian city.

[649] These people do not accept the name of Druzes, but regard the appellation as an insult. They call themselves the “disciples of Hamsa,” their Messiah, who came to them, in the tenth century, from the “Land of the Word of God,” and, together with his disciple, Mochtana Boha-eddin, committed this _Word_ to writing, and entrusted it to the care of a few initiates, with the injunction of the greatest secresy. They are usually called Unitarians.

[650] The Okhal (from the Arabic _akl_--intelligence or wisdom) are the initiated, or wise men of this sect. They hold, in their mysteries, the same position as the hierophant of old, in the Eleusinian and others.

[651] This is the doctrine of the Gnostics who held Christos to be the personal immortal Spirit of man.

[652] The ten Messiahs or avatars remind again of the five Buddhistic and ten Brahmanical avatars of Buddha and Christna.

[653] See, farther on, a letter from an “Initiate.”

[654] In this column the first numbers are those given in the article on the _Druzes_ in the “New American Cyclopædia” (Appleton’s), vol. vi., p. 631. The numbers in parentheses show the sequence in which the commandments would stand were they given correctly.

[655] This pernicious doctrine belongs to the old policy of the Catholic Church, but is certainly false as regards the Druzes. They maintain that it is right and lawful to _withhold the truth_ about their own tenets, no one outside their own sect having a right to pry into their religion. The _okhals_ never countenance deliberate falsehood in any form, although the laymen have many a time got rid of the spies sent by the Christians to discover their secrets, by deceiving them with sham initiations. (See the letter of Prof. Rawson to the author, p. 313.)

[656] This commandment does not exist in the Lebanon teaching.

[657] There is no such commandment, but the practice thereof exists by mutual agreement, as in the days of the Gnostic persecution.

[658] “Mount Lebanon,” vol. 3. London, 1853.

[659] Every temple in India is surrounded by such belts of sacred trees. And like the Koum-boum of Kansu (Mongolia) no one but an initiate has a right to approach them.

[660] John Yarker, Jr.: “Notes on the Scientific and Religious Mysteries of Antiquity,” etc.

[661] This “Self,” which the Greek philosophers called _Augœides_, the “Shining One,” is impressively and beautifully described in Max Müller’s “Veda.” Showing the “Veda” to be the first book of the Aryan nations, the professor adds that “we have in it a period of the intellectual life of man to which there is no parallel in any other part of the world. In the hymns of the “Veda” we see man left to himself to solve the riddle of this world.... He invokes the gods around him, he praises, he worships them. But still with all these gods ... beneath him, and above him, the early poet seems ill at rest within himself. There, too, in his own breast, he has discovered a power that is never mute when he prays, never absent when he fears and trembles. It seems to inspire his prayers, and yet to listen to them; it seems to live in him, and yet to support him and all around him. The only name he can find for this mysterious power is ‘Brahman;’ for _brahman_ meant originally force, will, wish, and the propulsive power of creation. But this impersonal brahman, too, as soon as it is named, grows into something strange and divine. It ends by being one of many gods, one of the great triad, worshipped to the present day. And still the thought within him has no real name; that power which is nothing but itself, which supports the gods, the heavens, and every living being, floats before his mind, conceived but not expressed. At last he calls it ‘Âtman,’ for Âtman, originally breath or spirit, comes to mean Self, and Self alone; _Self_, whether Divine or human; Self, whether creating or suffering; Self, whether one or all; but always Self, independent and free. ‘Who has seen the first-born,’ says the poet, when he who had no bones (_i.e._, form) bore him that had bones? Where was the life, the blood, the Self of the world? Who went to ask this from any one who knew it?” (“Rig-Veda,” i., 164, 4). This idea of a divine Self, once expressed, everything else must acknowledge its supremacy; “_Self_ is the Lord of all things, Self is the King of all things. As all the spokes of a wheel are contained in the nave and the circumference, all things are contained in this Self; all Selves are contained in this Self. Brahman itself is but Self” (Ibid., p. 478; “Khândogya-upanishad,” viii., 3, 3, 4); “Chips from a German Workshop,” vol. i., p. 69.

[662] John x. 34, 35.

[663] 2 Corinthians, vi. 16.

[664] Jacolliot: “Voyage au Pays des Éléphants.”

[665] Buddhist chief priests at Ceylon.

[666] Samenaïra is one who studies to obtain the high office of a _Oepasampala_. He is a disciple and is looked upon as a son by the chief priest. We suspect that the Catholic seminarist must look to the Buddhists for the parentage of his title.

[667] Jacolliot declares, in his “Fils de Dieu,” that he copied these dates from the “Book of the Historical Zodiacs,” preserved in the pagoda of Vilenur.

[668] We were told that there were nearly 20,000 of such books.

[669] Lepsius: “Königsbuch,” b. ii, _tal. i. dyn._ 5, h. p. In 1 Peter ii. 3, Jesus is called “the Lord Crestos.”

[670] Mackenzie: “Royal Masonic Cyclopædia,” p. 207.

[671] “Adv. Hær.,” iii., 2, § 2.

[672] Sprengel: “Histoire de la Médecine.”

[673] “Christ of Paul,” p. 188.

[674] “Adv. Hær.,” v. 33, § 4.

[675] Eusebius: “Hist. Eccles.,” iii., p. 39.

[676] Bunsen: “Egypt,” vol. i, p. 200.

[677] “Internal Development of Europe,” p. 147.

[678] “Antiquities,” lib. xviii., cap. 3.

[679] Wise man always meant with the ancients a kabalist. It means astrologer and magician. “Israelite Indeed,” vol. iii., p. 206. Hakim is a physician.

[680] Dr. Lardner rejects it as spurious, and gives _nine_ reasons for rejecting it.

[681] Revelation i. and ii.

[682] Philip, the first martyr, was one of the seven, and he was stoned about the year A.D. 34.

[683] 1 Corinthians, vii. 34.

[684] Revelation xiv. 3, 4.

[685] Philopatris, in Taylor’s “Diegesis,” p. 376.

[686] King’s “Gnostics and their Remains.”

[687] “Aug. Serm.,” clii. See Payne Knight’s “Mystic Theology of the Ancients,” p. 107.

[688] Baronius: “Annales Ecclesiastici,” t. xxi., p. 89.

[689] “Chron. de Lanercost,” ed. Stevenson, p. 109.

[690] Dulaure: “Histoire Abregée des Différens Cultes,” vol. ii., p. 285; Martezzi “Pagani é Christiani,” p. 78.

[691] Basilides is termed by Tertullian a Platonist.

[692] C. W. King: “The Gnostics and their Remains,” p. 197, foot-note 1.

[693] Plutarch: “Roman Questions,” p. 44.

[694] Linus, Anacletus, and Clement.

[695] “Life of Claudius,” sect. 25.

[696] “Vita Saturnini Vopiscus.”

[697] “The Gnostics and their Remains,” p. 68.

[698] In Payne Knight’s “Ancient Art and Mythology,” Serapis is represented as wearing his hair long, “formally turned back and disposed in ringlets falling down upon his breast and shoulders like that of women. His whole person, too, is always enveloped in drapery reaching to his feet.” (§ cxlv.). This is the conventional picture of Christ.

[699] “Vie de Jesus,” p. 405.

[700] See “Pirke Aboth;” a Collection of Proverbs and Sentences of the old Jewish Teachers, in which many New Testament sayings are found.

[701] “Buddhism,” p. 217.

[702] Max Müller: “Christ and other Masters;” “Chips,” vol. i.

[703] The “Life of Jesus” by Strauss, which Renan calls “_un livre, commode, exact, spirituel et consciencieux_” (a handy, exact, witty, and conscientious book), rude and iconoclastic as it is, is nevertheless in many ways preferable to the “Vie de Jesus,” of the French author. Laying aside the intrinsic and historical value of the two works--with which we have nothing to do, we now simply point to Renan’s distorted outline-sketch of Jesus. We cannot think what led Renan into such an erroneous delineation of character. Few of those who, while rejecting the divinity of the Nazarene prophet, still believe that he is no myth, can read the work without experiencing an uneasy, and even angry feeling at such a psychological mutilation. He makes of Jesus a sort of sentimental ninny, a theatrical simpleton, enamored of his own poetical divagations and speeches, wanting every one to adore him, and finally caught in the snares of his enemies. Such was not Jesus, the Jewish philanthropist, the adept and mystic of a school now forgotten by the Christians and the Church--if it ever was known to her; the hero, who preferred even to risk death, rather than withhold some truths which he believed would benefit humanity. We prefer Strauss who openly names him an impostor and a pretender, occasionally calling in doubt his very existence; but who at least spares him that ridiculous color of sentimentalism in which Renan paints him.

[704] See Chap. iii., p. 97.

[705] In a recent work, called the “World’s Sixteen Crucified Saviors” (by Mr. Kersey Graves) which attracted our notice by its title, we were indeed startled as we were forewarned on the title-page we should be by _historical_ evidences to be found neither in history nor tradition. Apollonius, who is represented in it as one of these sixteen “saviours,” is shown by the author as finally “_crucified_ ... having risen from the dead ... appearing to his disciples after his resurrection, and”--like Christ again--“convincing a _Tommy_(?) Didymus” by getting him to feel the print of the nails on his hands and feet (see note, p. 268). To begin with, neither Philostratus, the biographer of Apollonius, nor history says any such thing. Though the precise time of his death is unknown, no disciple of Apollonius ever said that he was either crucified, or appeared to them. So much for one “Saviour.” After that we are told that Gautama-Buddha, whose life and death have been so minutely described by several authorities, Barthelemy St. Hilaire included--was also “_crucified_ by his enemies near the foot of the Nepäl mountains” (see p. 107); while the Buddhist books, history, and scientific research tell us, through the lips of Max Müller and a host of Orientalists, that “Gautama-Buddha (Sâkya-muni) died near the Ganges.... He had nearly reached the city of Kusinâgara, when his vital strength began to fail. He halted in a forest, and while sitting under a sâl tree he gave up the ghost” (Max Müller: “Chips from a German Workshop,” vol. i., p. 213). The references of Mr. Graves to Higgins and Sir W. Jones, in some of his hazardous speculations, prove nothing. Max Müller shows some antiquated authorities writing elaborate books “... in order to prove that Buddha had been in reality the Thoth of the Egyptians; that he was Mercury, or Wodan, or Zoroaster, or Pythagoras.... Even Sir W. Jones ... identified Buddha first with Odin and afterwards with Shishak.” We are in the nineteenth century, not in the eighteenth; and though to write books on the authority of the earliest Orientalists may in one sense be viewed as a mark of respect for old age, it is not always safe to try the experiment in our times. Hence this highly instructive volume lacks one important feature which would have made it still more interesting. The author should have added after Prometheus the “Roman,” and Alcides the _Egyptian god_ (p. 266) a seventeenth “crucified Saviour” to the list, “Venus, god of the war,” introduced to an admiring world by Mr. Artemus Ward the “showman!”

[706] “Khandogya-upanishad,” viii., 3, 4; Max Müller: “Veda.”

[707] “Idra Rabba,” x., 117.

[708] Introd. in “Sohar,” pp. 305-312.

[709] John xiv.

[710] “Les Hauts Phénomènes de la Magie,” p. 74.

[711] Barthelemy St. Hilaire: “Le Buddha et sa Religion,” Paris, 1860.

[712] “Journal des Débats,” Avril, 1853.

[713] “Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie.”

[714] “Timæus;” “Polit.,” 269, E.

[715] “Timæus,” 29; “Phædrus,” 182, 247; “Repub.,” ii., 379, B.

[716] “Laws,” iv., 715, E.; x., 901, C.

[717] “Repub.,” ii., 381; “Thæt.,” 176, A.

[718] “Laws,” x., 901, D.

[719] “Laws,” iv., 716, A.; “Repub.,” x., 613, A.

[720] “Phædrus,” 246, C.

[721] E. Zeller: “Plato and the Old Academy.”

[722] “Laws,” x., 905, D.

[723] Max Müller: “Buddhism,” April, 1862.

[724] Of the Abbé Huc, Max Müller thus wrote in his “Chips from a German Workshop,” vol. i., p. 187: “The late Abbé Huc pointed out the similarities between the Buddhist and Roman Catholic ceremonials with such a _naïveté_, that, to his surprise, he found his delightful ‘Travels in Thibet’ placed on the ‘Index.’ ‘One cannot fail being struck,’ he writes, ‘with their great resemblance with the Catholicism. The bishop’s crosier, the mitre, the dalmatic, the round hat that the great lamas wear in travel ... the mass, the double choir, the psalmody, the exorcisms, the censer with five chains to it, opening and shutting at will, the blessings of the lamas, who extend their right hands over the head of the faithful ones, the rosary, the celibacy of the clergy, the penances and retreats, the cultus of the Saints, the fasting, the processions, the litanies, the holy water; such are the similarities of the Buddhists with ourselves. He might have added tonsure, relics, and the confessional.”

[725] “Crawford’s Mission to Siam,” p. 182.

[726] Many are the marvels recorded as having taken place at his death, or we should rather say his translation; for he did not die as others do, but having suddenly disappeared, while a dazzling light filled the cavern with glory, his body was again seen upon its subsidence. When this heavenly light gave place to the habitual semi-darkness of the gloomy cave--then only, says Ginsburg, “the disciples of Israel perceived that the lamp of Israel was extinguished.” His biographers tell us that there were voices heard from Heaven during the preparation for his funeral and at his interment. When the coffin was lowered down into the deep cave excavated for it, a flame broke out from it, and a voice mighty and majestic pronounced these words in the air: “This is he who caused the earth to quake, and the kingdoms to shake!”

[727] Plot: “Natural History of Staffordshire.” Published in 1666.

[728] “Die Kabbala,” 75; “Sod,” vol. ii.

[729] “Die Kabbala,” 47.

[730] He relates how Rabbi Eleazar, in the presence of Vespasian and his officers, expelled demons from several men by merely applying to the nose of the demoniac one of the number of roots recommended by King Solomon! The distinguished historian assures us that the Rabbi drew out the devils through the nostrils of the patients in the name of Solomon and by the power of the incantations composed by the king-kabalist. Josephus: “Antiquities,” VIII., ii., 5.

[731] There are _unconscious_ miracles produced sometimes, which, like the phenomena now called “Spiritual,” are caused through natural cosmic powers, mesmerism, electricity, and the invisible beings who are always at work around us, whether they be human or elementary spirits.

[732] It dates from 1540; and in 1555 a general outcry was raised against them in some parts of Portugal, Spain, and other countries.

[733] Extracts from this “Arrêt” were compiled into a work in 4 vols., 12mo., which appeared at Paris, in 1762, and was known as “Extraits des Assertions, etc.” In a work entitled “Réponse aux Assertions,” an attempt was made by the Jesuits to throw discredit upon the facts collected by the Commissioners of the French Parliament in 1762, as for the most part malicious fabrications. “To ascertain the validity of this impeachment,” says the author of “The Principles of the Jesuits,” “the libraries of the two universities of the British Museum and of Sion College have been searched for the authors cited; and in every instance where the volume was found, the correctness of the citation established.”

[734] “Theologiæ Moralis,” Tomus iv., Lugduni, 1663.

[735] Tom. iv., lib. xxviii., sect. 1, de Præcept I., c. 20, n. 184.

[736] Ibid., sect. 2, de Præcept I., Probl. 113, n. 586.

[737] Richard Arsdekin, “Theologia Tripartita,” Coloniæ, 1744, Tom. ii., Pars. ii., Tr. 5, c. 1, § 2, n. 4.

[738] “Theologia Moralis nunc pluribus partibus aucta, à R. P. Claudio Lacroix, Societatis Jesu.” Coloniæ, 1757 (Ed. Mus. Brit.).

[739] Tom. ii., lib. iii., Pars. 1, Fr. 1, c. 1, dub. 2, resol. viii. What a pity that the counsel for the defense had not bethought them to cite this orthodox legalization of “cheating by palmistry or otherwise,” at the recent religio-scientific prosecution of the medium Slade, in London.

[740] Niccolini: “History of the Jesuits.”

[741] “Royal Masonic Cyclopædia,” p. 369.

[742] Imago: “Primi Sæculi Societatis Jesu,” lib. 1., c. 3., p. 64.

[743] Anthony Escobar: “Universæ Theologiæ Moralis receptiore, absque lite sententiæ,” etc., Tomus i., Lugduni, 1652 (Ed. Bibl. Acad. Cant.). “Idem sentio, e breve illud tempus ad unius horæ spatium traho. Religiosus itaque habitum demittens assignato hoc temporis interstitio, non incurrit excommunicationem, _etiamsi dimittat non solùm ex causâ, turpi, scilicet fornicandi, aut clàm aliquid abripiendi, set etiam ut incognitus ineat lupanar_.” Probl. 44, n. 213.

[744] Pars. 11, Tra. 2, c. 31.

[745] See “The Principles of the Jesuits, Developed in a Collection of Extracts from their own Authors.” London, 1839.

[746] From the Pastoral of the Archbishop of Cambrai.

[747] See “Jerusalem Talmud, Synhedrin,” c. 7, etc.

[748] “Franck,” pp. 55, 56.

[749] Charles Antony Casnedi: “Crisis Theologica,” Ulyssipone, 1711. Tome i., Disp. 6, Sect. 2, § 1, n. 59.

[750] Ibid.

[751] Ibid., § 2, n. 78.

[752] Ibid., Sect. 5, § 1, n. 165.

[753] “Thesis propugnata in regio Soc. Jes. Collegio celeberrimæ Academiæ Cadomensis, die Veneris, 30 Jan., 1693.” Cadomi, 1693.

[754] Michelet and Quinet of the College of France: “The Jesuits.”

[755] Champollion: “Hermes Trismegistus,” xxvii.

[756] “De Cultu Adorationis Libri Tres.,” Lib. iii., Disp. i., c. 2.

[757] Ibid.

[758] “Egypt’s Place in Universal History,” vol. v., p. 94.

[759] Ibid., vol. v., p. 129.

[760] “And God created ... every _nephesh_ (life) that moveth” (Gen. i. 21), meaning animals; and (Genesis ii. 7) it is said: “And man became a _nephesh_” (living soul); which shows that the word _nephesh_ was indifferently applied to _immortal_ man and to _mortal_ beast. “And surely your blood of your _nepheshim_ (lives) will I require; at the hand of every beast will I require it, and at the hand of man” (Gen. ix. 5). “Escape for _nepheshe_” (escape for thy _life_ is translated) (Gen. xix. 17). “Let us not kill him,” reads the English version (Gen. xxxvii. 21). “Let us not kill his _nephesh_,” is the Hebrew text. “_Nephesh_ for _nephesh_,” says Leviticus (xvii. 8). “He that killeth any man shall surely be put to death.” “He that smiteth the _nephesh_ of a man” (Levit. xxiv. 17); and from verse 18 and following it reads: “And he that killeth a beast (nephesh) shall make it good.... Beast for beast,” whereas the original text has it “nephesh for nephesh.”

1 Kings i. 12; ii. 23; iii. 11; xix. 2, 3, all have _nephesh_ for life and soul. “Then shall thy _nepheshah_ for (his) _nepheshu_,” explains the prophet in 1 Kings xx. 39.

Truly, unless we read the “Old Testament” kabalistically and comprehend the hidden meaning thereof, it is very little we can learn from it as regards the soul’s immortality. The common people among Hebrews had not the slighest idea of soul and spirit, and made no difference between _life_, _blood_, and _soul_, calling the latter the “breath of life.” And King James’s translators have made such a jumble of it that _no one but a kabalist can restore the Bible to its original form_.

[761] In “Præcepta Decaloga” (Edit. of Sion Library), Tom. i., lib. iv., c. 2, n. 7, 8.

[762] Opinion of John de Dicastille, Sect. xv., “De Justitia et Jure,” etc., cens. pp. 319, 320.

[763] “Cursûs Theologici,” Tomus v., Duaci, 1642, Disp. 36, Sect. 5, n. 118.

[764] Name of the highest Egyptian hierophants.

[765] “Crata Nepoa, or the Mysteries of the Ancient Egyptian Priests.”

[766] See Matthew xvi. 18, where it is mistranslated “the gates of Hell.”

[767] Humberto Malhandrini: “Ritual of Initiations,” p. 105. Venice, 1657.

[768] Pages 43, 44, note f. Niccolini of Rome, author of “The History of the Pontificate of Pius IX.;” “The Life of Father Gavazzi,” etc.

[769] And begged in the name of _Him_ who had nowhere to lay his head!

[770] In “Egypt’s Place in Universal History,” Bunsen gives the cycle of 21,000 years, which he adopts to facilitate the chronological calculations for the reconstruction of the universal history of mankind. He shows that this cycle “for the nutation of the ecliptic,” arrived at its apex in the year 1240 of our era. He says:

“The cycle divides itself into two halves of 10,500 (or twice 5,250) years each.

“The beginning of the first half:

The highest point will be 19,760 B.C. The lowest 9,260 Consequently the middle of the descending line (beginning of second quarter) will be 14,510 The middle of the ascending line (beginning of fourth quarter) 4,010

“The new cycle, which began in 1240 of our era, will come to the end of its first quarter in 4010 A.D.”

The Baron explains that “in round numbers, the most favorable epochs for our hemisphere since the great catastrophe in Middle Asia (Deluge 10,000 years B.C.) are: the 4,000 years before, and the 4,000 years after Christ; and the beginning of the first epoch, _of which alone we can judge_, as it alone is complete before us, coincides exactly with the beginnings of national history, or (what is identical) with the beginning of _our consciousness_ of continuous existence” (“Egypt’s Place in Universal History,” Key, p. 102).

“Our consciousness” must mean, we suppose, the consciousness _of scientists_, who accept nothing _on faith_, but much on unverified hypotheses. We do not say this with reference to the above-quoted author, earnest scholar and noble champion that he is, of freedom in the Christian Church, but generally. Baron Bunsen has well found for himself that a man cannot remain an honest scientist and please the clerical party. Even the little concessions he made in favor of the antiquity of mankind, brought on him, in 1859, the most insolent denunciations, such as “We lose all faith in the author’s judgment ... he has yet to learn the very first principles of historical criticisms ... extravagant and _unscientific_ exaggeration,” and so on--the pious vituperator closing his learned denunciations by assuring the public that Baron Bunsen “_cannot even construct a Greek sentence_” (“Quarterly Review,” 1859; see also “Egypt’s Place in Universal History,” chap. on Egyptological Works and English Reviews). But we do regret that Baron Bunsen had no better opportunity to examine the “Kabala” and the Brahmanical books of the Zodiacs.

[771] “The Funeral Ritual of the Deeds of Horus.”

[772] Bunsen: “Egypt’s Place in Universal History,” vol. v., p. 133.

[773] Lepsius: “Abth.,” iii.; Bl., 276; Bunsen, 134.

[774] In the eighty-first chapter of the “Ritual” the soul is called _the germ of lights_ and in the seventy-ninth the Demiurgos, or one of the creators.

[775] “Ritual,” vi., 44; Champollion: “Manifestations to the Light;” Lepsius: “Book of the Dead;” Bunsen: “Egypt’s Place in Universal History.”

[776] We cannot help quoting a remark by Baron Bunsen in relation to the “Word” being identical with the “Ineffable Name” of the Masons and the kabalists. While explaining the “Ritual,” some of the details of which “resemble rather the _enchantments of a magician than solemn rites_, although a hidden and mystical meaning must have been attached to them” (the honest admission of this much, at least, is worth something), the author observes: “The mystery of names, the knowledge of which was a sovereign virtue, and which, at a later period, degenerated into the _rank heresy_ (?) of the Gnostics and the magic of enchanters, appears to have _existed not only in Egypt but elsewhere_. Traces of it are found in the ‘Cabala’ ... it prevailed in the Greek and Asiatic mythology” (“Egypt’s Place, etc.,” p. 147).

We then see the representatives of Science agreeing upon this one point, at least. The initiates of all countries had the same “mystery name.” And now it remains with the scholars to prove that every adept, hierophant, magician, or enchanter (Moses and Aaron included) as well as every kabalist, from the institution of the Mysteries down to the present age, has been either a knave or a fool, for believing in the efficacy of this name.

[777] See Chap. I., pp. 42, 43, note, of this volume.

[778] See “The Principles of the Jesuits, Developed in a Collection of Extracts from their own Authors,” London: J. G. and F. Rivington, St. Paul’s Churchyard, and Waterloo Place, Pall Mall; H. Wix, 41 New Bridge Street, Blackfriars; J. Leslie, Queen Street, etc., 1839. Section xvii., “High Treason and Regicide,” containing thirty-four extracts from the same number of authorities (of the Society of Jesus) upon the question, among others the opinion thereof of the famous _Robert Bellarmine_. So Emmanuel Sa says: “The rebellion of an ecclesiastic against a king, _is not a crime of high treason, because he is not subject to the king_” (“Confessarium Aphorismi Verbo Clericus,” Ed. Coloniæ, 1615, Ed. Coll. Sion). “_The people_,” says John Bridgewater, “_are not only permitted, but they are required and their duty demands_, that at the mandate of the Vicar of Christ, _who is the sovereign pastor over all nations of the earth_, the faith which they had previously made with such princes should not be kept” (“Concertatio Ecclesiæ Catholicæ in Angliâ adversus Calvino Papistas,” Resp. fol. 348).

In “De Rege et Regis Institutione, Libri Tres,” 1640 (Edit. Mus. Brit.), John Mariana goes even farther: “If the circumstances will permit,” he says, “it will be lawful to destroy with the sword the prince who is declared a public enemy.... _I shall never consider that man to have done wrong, who, favouring the public wishes, should attempt to kill him_,” and “_to put them to death is not only lawful, but a laudble and glorious action_.” Est tamen salutaris cogitatio, ut sit principibus persuasum si rempublicam oppresserint, si vitiis et fæditate intolerandi erunt, _eâ conditione vivere, ut non jure tantum, sed cum laude et gloriâ perimi possint_” (Lib. i., c. 6, p. 61).

But the most delicate piece of Christian teaching is found in the precept of this Jesuit when he argues upon the best and surest way of killing kings and statesmen. “In my own opinion,” he says, “deleterious drugs should not be given to an enemy, neither should a deadly poison be mixed with his food or in his cup.... Yet _it will indeed be lawful to use this method_ in the case in question (that _he who should kill the tyrant would be highly esteemed, both in favor and in praise_,” for “_it is a glorious thing to exterminate this pestilent and mischievous race from the community of men_), not to constrain the person who is to be killed to take of himself the poison which, inwardly received, would deprive him of life, _but to cause it to be outwardly applied by another_ without his intervention; as, when there is so much strength in the poison, that if spread upon a seat or on the clothes it would be sufficiently powerful to cause death” (Ibid., lib. i., c. f., p. 67). “It was thus that Squire attempted the life of Queen Elizabeth, at the instigation of the Jesuit Walpole.”-- Pasquier: “Catéchisme des Jésuites” (1677, p. 350, etc.), and “Rapin” (fol., Lond., 1733, vol. ii., book xvii., p. 148).

[779] Puffendorf: “Droit de la Nat.,” book iv., ch. 1.

[780] “Again, ye have heard that it hath been said by them of old time, thou shalt not forswear thyself.... But I say unto you, swear not at all,” etc. “But let your communication be yea, yea; nay, nay; for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil” (Matthew v. 33, 34, 37).

[781] Barbeyrac, in his notes on Puffendorf, shows that the Peruvians used no oath, but a simple averment before the Inca, and were never found perjuring themselves.

[782] We beg the reader to remember that we do not mean by Christianity the _teachings of Christ_, but those of his alleged servants--the clergy.

[783] Dr. Anderson’s “Defence,” quoted by John Yarker in his “Notes on the Scientific and Religious Mysteries of Antiquity.”

[784] Epiphanius included, we must think, after that, in violation of his oath, he had sent over seventy persons into exile, who belonged to the secret society he betrayed.

[785] United States Anti-Masonic Convention: “Obligation of Masonic Oaths,” speech delivered by Mr. Hopkins, of New York.

[786] John Yarker, Junr.: “Notes on the Scientific and Religious Mysteries of Antiquity; the Gnosis and Secret Schools of the Middle Ages; Modern Rosicrucianism; and the various Rites and Degrees of Free and Accepted Masonry.” London, 1872.

[787] Ibid., p. 151.

[788] John Yarker: “Notes, etc.,” p. 150.

[789] “Proceedings of the Supreme Council of Sovereign Grand Inspectors-General of the Thirty-third and Last Degree, etc., etc. Held at the city of New York, August 15, 1876,” pp. 54, 55.

[790] “Histoire des sectes religieuses,” vol. ii., pp. 392-428.

[791] “Notitia codicis græci evangelium Johannis variatum continentis,” Havaniæ, 1828.

[792] This is the reason why unto this day the fanatical and kabalistic members of the Nazarenes of Basra (Persia), have a tradition of the glory, wealth, and power of their “Brothers,” agents, or _messengers_ as they term them in Malta and Europe. There are some few remaining yet, they say, who will sooner or later restore the doctrine of their Prophet Iohanan (St. John), the son of Lord Jordan, and eliminate from the hearts of humanity every other false teaching.

[793] The two great pagodas of Madura and Benares, are built in the form of a cross, each wing being equal in extent (See Mauri: “Indian Antiquities,” vol. iii., pp. 360-376).

[794] Findel: “History of Freemasonry,” Appendix.

[795] “A Sketch of the Knight Templars and the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem,” by Richard Woof, F.S.A., Commander of the Order of Masonic Knight Templars.

[796] Findel: “History of Freemasonry,” Appendix.

[797] “General History of Freemasonry,” p. 218.

[798] See Gaffarel’s version; Eliphas Levi’s “La Science des Esprits;” Mackenzie’s “Royal Masonic Cyclopædia;” “Sepher Toldos Jeshu;” and other kabalistical and Rabbinical works. The story given is this. A virgin named Mariam, betrothed to a young man of the name of Iohanan, was outraged by another man named Ben Panther or Joseph Panther, says “Sepher Toldos Jeshu.” “Her betrothed, learning of her misfortune, left her, at the same time forgiving her. The child born was Jesus, named Joshua. Adopted by his uncle Rabbi Jehosuah, he was initiated into the secret doctrine by Rabbi Elhanan, a kabalist, and then by the Egyptian priests, who consecrated him High Pontiff of the Universal Secret Doctrine, on account of his great mystic qualities. Upon his return into Judea his learning and powers excited the jealousy of the Rabbis, and they publicly reproached him with his origin and insulted his mother. Hence the words attributed to Jesus at Cana: ‘Woman, what have I to do with thee?’ (See John ii. 4.) His disciples having rebuked him with his unkindness to his mother, Jesus repented, and having learned from them the particulars of the sad story, he declared that “My mother has not sinned, she has not lost her innocence; she is immaculate and yet she is a mother.... As for myself I have no father, in this world, I am the Son of God and of humanity!” Sublime words of confidence and trust in the unseen Power, but how fatal to the millions upon millions of men murdered because of these very words being so thoroughly misunderstood!

[799] We speak of the American Chapter of Rose Croix.

[800] Pythagoras.

[801] The first _Grand Chapter_ was instituted at Philadelphia, in 1797.

[802] See Yarker’s “Notes on the Mysteries of Antiquity,” p. 153

[803] See 2 Kings, xxiii. 7, Hebrew text, and English, the former especially. In the degree of Kadosh, a lecture is given upon the descent of Masonry through Moses, Solomon, the Essenes, and the Templars. Christian K. K.’s may get some light as to the kind of “Temple” their ancestors would, in such a genealogical descent, have been attached to, by consulting verse 13 of the same chapter as above quoted.

[804] See Eliphas Levi’s “Dogme et Rituel,” vol. i.

[805] Yeva is _Heva_, the feminine counterpart of Jehovah-Binah.

[806] We find a very suggestive point in connection with this appellation of Jehovah, “Son of ancient Kings,” in the Jaïna sect of Hindustan, known as the Sauryas. They admit that Brahma is a Devatâ, but deny his creative power, and call him the “Son of a King.” See “Asiatic Researches,” vol. ix., p. 279.

[807] As, for instance, Shaddai, Elohim, Sabaoth, etc.

[808] Cahen’s “Hebrew Bible,” iii., p. 117.

[809] The Greek monks have this “miracle” performed for the “faithful” every year on Easter night. Thousands of pilgrims are there waiting with their tapers to light them at this sacred fire, which at the precise hour and when needed, descends from the chapel-vault and hovers about the sepulchre in tongues of fire until every one of the thousand pilgrims has lighted his wax taper at it.

[810] The _Rishi_ are identical with _Manu_. The ten Pragâpati, sons of Viradj, called Maritchi, Atri, Angira, Pôlastya, Poulaha, Kratu, Pratcheta, Vasishta, Brighu, and Narada, are euhemerized _Powers_, the Hindu Sephiroth. These emanate the seven Rishi, or Manus, the chief of whom issued himself from the “uncreated.” He is the Adam of earth, and signifies man. His “sons,” the following six Manus, represent each a new race of men, and in the total they are _humanity_ passing gradually through the primitive seven stages of evolution.

[811] In days of old, when the Brahmans studied more than they do now the hidden sense of their philosophy, they explained that each of these six distinct races which preceded ours had disappeared. But now they pretend that a specimen was preserved which was not destroyed with the rest, but reached the present _seventh_ stage. Thus they, the Brahmans are the specimens of the heavenly Manu, and issued from the mouth of Brahma; while the Sudra was created from his foot.

[812] To avoid discussion we adopt the palæographical conclusions arrived at by Martin Haug and some other cautious scholars. Personally we credit the statements of the Brahmans and those of Halhed, the translator of the “Sastras.”

[813] The god Heptaktis.

[814] The sanctuary of the initiation.

[815] “Comparative Mythology.”

[816] While having no intention to enter at present upon a discussion as to the nomadic races of the “Rhematic period,” we reserve the right to question the full propriety of terming that portion of the primitive people from whose traditions the “Vedas” sprang into existence, Aryans. Some scientists find the existence of these Aryans not only unproved by science, but the traditions of Hindustan protesting against such an assumption.

[817] Without the esoteric explanation, the “Old Testament” becomes an absurd jumble of meaningless tales--nay, worse than that, it must rank high with _immoral_ books. It is curious that Professor Max Müller, such a profound scholar in Comparative Mythology, should be found saying of the pragâpatis and Hindu gods that they are masks _without actors_; and of Abraham and other mythical patriarchs that they were real living men; of Abraham especially, we are told (see “Semitic Monotheism”) that he “stands before us as a figure second only to one in the whole history of the world.”

[818] The italics are our own. “The Vedas,” lecture by Max Müller, p. 75.

[819] “Chips,” vol. i., p. 8.

[820] We believe that we have elsewhere given the contrary opinion, on the subject of “Atharva-Veda,” of Prof. Whitney, of Yale College.

[821] See Baron Bunsen’s “Egypt,” vol. v.

[822] “Chips,” vol. i.; “The Vedas.”

[823] Max Müller: Lecture on “The Vedas.”

[824] Julian: “In Matrem,” p. 173; Julian: “Oratio,” v., 172.

[825] Lyd.: “De Mensibus,” iv., 38-74; “Movers,” p. 550; Dunlap: “Saba,” p. 3.

[826] “Westminster Review:” Septenary Institutions; “Stone Him to Death.”

[827] “Di Verbo Mirifico.”

[828] Idra Suta: “Sohar,” book iii., p. 292 b. The Supreme consulting with the Architect of the world--his Logos--about creation.

[829] Idra Suta: “Sohar,” iii., 135 b. If the chapters of Genesis and the other Mosaic books, as well as the subjects, are muddled up, the fault is the compiler’s-- not that of oral tradition. Hilkiah and Josiah had to commune with Huldah, the prophetess, hence resort to _magic_ to understand the word of the “Lord God of Israel,” most conveniently found by Hilkiah (2 Kings, xxiii.); and that it has passed still later through more than one revision and remodelling is but too well proved by its frequent incongruities, repetitions, and contradictions.

[830] This assimilation of the deluge to an earthquake on the Assyrian tablets would go to prove that the antediluvian nations were well acquainted with other geological cataclysms besides the deluge, which is represented in the Bible as the _first_ calamity which befel humanity, and a punishment.

[831] George Smith notes in the tablets, first the creation of the moon, and then of the sun: “Its beauty and perfection are extolled, and the regularity of its orbit, which led to its being considered the type of a judge and the regulator of the world.” Did this story of the deluge relate simply to a cosmogonical cataclysm--even were it universal--why should the goddess Ishtara or Astoreth (the moon) speak of the _creation of the sun_ after the deluge? The waters might have reached as high as the mountain of _Nizir_ (Chaldean version), or Jebel-Djudi (the deluge-mountains of the Arabian legends), or yet Ararat (of the biblical narrative), and even Himalaya of the Hindu tradition, and yet not reach the sun--even the Bible itself stopped short of such a miracle. It is evident that the deluge of the people who first recorded it had another meaning, less problematical and far more philosophical than that of a _universal_ deluge, of which there are no geological traces whatever.

[832] The “dead letter that killeth,” is magnificently illustrated in the case of the Jesuit de Carrière, quoted in the “Bible dans l’Inde.” The following dissertation represents the spirit of the whole Catholic world: “So that the creation of the world,” writes this faithful son of Loyola, explaining the biblical chronology of Moses, “and all that is recorded in Genesis, might have become known to Moses through _recitals personally made to him by his fathers_. Perhaps, even, the memories yet existed among the Israelites, and from those recollections he may have recorded the dates of births and deaths of the patriarchs, the numbering of their children, and the names of the different countries in which each became established under the guidance _of the holy spirit, which we must always regard as the chief author of the sacred books_”!!!

[833] See chapter xv. and last of Part I.

[834] “Description, etc., of the People of India,” by the Abbé J. A. Dubois, missionary in Mysore, vol. i., p. 186.

[835] “Fétichisme, Polythéisme, Monothéisme,” pp. 170, 171.

[836] Against the latter assumption derived solely from the accounts of the Bible we have every historical fact. 1st. There are no proofs of these twelve tribes having ever existed; that of Levi was a priestly caste and all the others imaginary. 2d. Herodotus, the most accurate of historians, who was in Assyria when Ezra flourished, never mentions the Israelites at all? Herodotus was born in 484 B.C.

[837] Dr. Kennicot himself, and Bruns, under his direction, about 1780, collated 692 manuscripts of the Hebrew “Bible.” Of all these, only _two_ were credited to the tenth century, and three to a period as early as the eleventh and twelfth. The others ranged between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries.

In his “Introduzione alla Sacra Scrittura,” pp. 34-47, De Rossi, of Parma, mentions 1,418 MSS. collated, and 374 editions. The oldest manuscript “Codex,” he asserts--that of Vienna--dates A.D. 1019; the next, Reuchlin’s, of Carlsruhe, 1038. “There is,” he declares, “nothing in the manuscripts of the Hebrew ‘Old Testament’ extant of an earlier date than the eleventh century after Christ.”

[838] “India in Greece,” Preface, ix.

[839] “Chips,” vol. i.

[840] “Egypt’s Place in Universal History,” vol. v., p. 77.

[841] Ibid., p. 78.

[842] “Chips;” “Aitareya Brahmanam.”

[843] Dr. M. Haug, Superintendent of the Sanscrit studies in the Poona College, Bombay.

[844] Pococke belongs to that class of Orientalists who believe that Buddhism preceded Brahmanism, and was the religion of the earliest Vedas, Gautama having been but the restorer of it in its purest form, which after him degenerated again into dogmatism.

[845] “India in Greece,” p. 200.

[846] The Asiatic origin of the first dwellers in the Nilotic Valley is clearly demonstrated by concurrent and independent testimony. Cuvier and Blumenbach affirm that all the skulls of mummies which they had the opportunity of examining, presented the Caucasian type. A recent American physiologist (Dr. Morton) has also argued for the same conclusion (“Crania Ægyptiaca.” Philadelphia, 1844).

[847] The late Rajah of Travancore was succeeded by the elder son of his sister now reigning, the Maharajah _Rama Vurmah_. The next heirs are the sons of his deceased sister. In case the female line is interrupted by death, the royal family is obliged to adopt the daughter of some other Rajah, and unless daughters are born to this Rana another girl is adopted, and so on.

[848] There are some Orientalists who believe that this custom was introduced only after the early Christian settlements in Æthiopia; but as under the Romans the population of this country was nearly all changed, the element becoming wholly Arabic, we may, without doubting the statement, believe that it was the predominating Arab influence which had altered the earliest mode of writing. Their present method is even more analogous to the Devanāgarï, and other more ancient Indian Alphabets, which read from left to right; and their letters show no resemblance to the Phœnician characters. Moreover, all the ancient authorities corroborate our assertion still more. Philostratus makes the Brahmin Iarchus say (V. A., iii., 6) that the Æthiopians were originally _an Indian race_, compelled to emigrate from the mother-land for sacrilege and regicide (see Pococke’s “India,” etc., ii., p. 206). An Egyptian is made to remark, that he had heard from his father, that the Indians were the wisest of men, and that the Æthiopians, a colony of the Indians, preserved the wisdom and usages of their fathers, and acknowledged their ancient origin. Julius Africanus (in Eusebius and Syncellus), makes the same statement. And Eusebius writes: “The Æthiopians, emigrating from the river Indus, settled in the vicinity of Egypt” (Lemp., Barker’s edition, “Meroë”).

[849] They might have been also, as Pococke thinks, simply the tribes of the “Oxus,” a name derived from the “Ookshas,” those people whose wealth lay in the “Ox,” for he shows _Ookshan_ to be a crude form of _Ooksha_, an ox (in Sanscrit _ox_ is as in English). He believes that it was they, “the lords of the Oxus,” who gave their name to the sea around which they ruled in many a country, the _Euxine_ or Ooksh-ine. _Pali_ means a shepherd, and _s’than_ is a land. “The warlike tribes of the Oxus penetrated into Egypt, then swept onward to Palestine (PALI-STAN), the land of the Palis or shepherds, and there effected more permanent settlements” (“India in Greece”). Yet, if even so, it would only the more confirm our opinion that the Jews are a hybrid race, for the “Bible” shows them freely intermarrying, not alone with the Canaanites, but with every other nation or race they come in contact with.

[850] Prof. A. Wilder: “Notes.”

[851] Moses reigned over the people of Israel in the wilderness for over _forty_ years.

[852] The name of the wife of Moses was Zipporah (Exodus ii.).

[853] About 1040, the Jewish doctors removed their schools from Babylonia to Spain, and of the four great rabbis that flourished during the next four centuries, their works all show different readings, and abound with mistakes in the manuscripts. The “Masorah” made things still worse. Many things that then existed in the manuscripts are there no longer, and their works teem with interpolations as well as with _lacunæ_. The oldest Hebrew manuscript belongs to this period. Such is the divine revelation we are to credit.

[854] No chronology was accepted by the rabbis as authoritative till the twelfth century. The 40 and 1,000 are not exact numbers, but have been crammed in to answer monotheism and the exigencies of a religion calculated to appear different from that of the Pagans. (“Chron. Orth.,” p. 238). One finds in the “Pentateuch” only events occurring about two years before the fabled “Exodus” and the last year. The rest of the chronology is nowhere, and can be followed only through kabalistic computations, with a key to them in the hand.

[855] The Gnostics, called Collyridians, had transferred from Astoreth their worship to Mary, also Queen of Heaven. They were persecuted and put to death by the orthodox Christians as heretics. But if these Gnostics had established her worship by offering her sacrifices of cakes, cracknels, or fine wafers, it was because they imagined her to have been born of an immaculate virgin, as Christ is alleged to have been born of his mother. And now, the Pope’s _infallibility_ having been recognized and accepted, its first practical manifestation is the revival of the Collyridian belief as an article of faith (See “Apocryphal New Testament;” Hone: “The Gospel of Mary attributed to Matthew”).

[856] Hargrave Jennings: “Rosicrucians.”

[857] “Progress of Religious Ideas.”

[858] Lilith was Adam’s _first_ wife “before he _married_ Eve,” of whom “he begat nothing but devils;” which strikes us as a very novel, if pious, way of explaining a very philosophical allegory: Burton’s “Anatomy of Melancholy.”

[859] It is in commemoration of the Ark of the Deluge that the Phœnicians, those bold explorers of the “deep,” carried, fixed on the prow of their ships, the image of the goddess Astartè, who is Elissa, Venus Erycina of Sicily, and Dido, whose name is the feminine of David.

[860] Dr. Lundy: “Monumental Christianity.”

[861] Lucian, iv. 276.

[862] 1 Kings xviii. All this is allegorical, and, what is more, purely magical. For Elijah is bent upon an incantation.

[863] The Talmud books say that Noah was himself the _dove_ (spirit), thus identifying him still more with the Chaldean Nouah. Baal is represented with the wings of a dove, and the Samaritans worshipped on Mount Gerizim the image of a dove. “Talmud, Tract. Chalin.,” fol. 6, col. 1.

[864] Numbers x. 29, 31.

[865] The Bible contradicts itself as well as the Chaldean account, for in chapter vii. of Genesis it shows “every one of them” perishing in the deluge.

[866] Numbers xiii.

[867] We do not see why the clergy--especially the Catholic-- should object to our statement that the patriarchs are all signs of the zodiac, and the old gods of the “heathen” as well. There was a time, and that less than two centuries ago, when they themselves exhibited the most fervent desire to relapse into sun and star worship. This pious and curious attempt was denounced but a few months since by Camille Flammarion, the French astronomer. He shows two Augsburgian Jesuits, Schiller and Bayer, who felt quite anxious to change the names of the whole Sabean host of the starry heaven, and worship them again under Christian names! Having anathematized the idolatrous sun-worshippers for over fifteen centuries, the Church now seriously proposed to continue heliolatry--_to the letter_ this time--as their idea was to substitute for Pagan myths biblical and (in their ideas) real personages. They would have called the sun, Christ; the moon, Virgin Mary; Saturn, Adam; Jupiter, Moses (!); Mars, Joshua; Venus, John the Baptist; and Mercury, Elias. And very proper substitutes too, showing the great familiarity of the Catholic Church with ancient Pagan and kabalistic learning, and its readiness, perhaps, to at last confess the source whence came their own myths. For is not king Messiah the sun, the Demiurge of the heliolaters, under various names? Is he not the Egyptian Osiris and the Grecian Apollo? And what more appropriate name than Virgin Mary for the Pagan Diana-Astarté, “the Queen of Heaven,” against which Jeremiah exhausted a whole vocabulary of imprecations? Such an adoption would have been historically as well as religiously correct. Two large plates were prepared, says Flammarion, in a recent number of “La Nature,” and represented the heavens with Christian constellations instead of Pagan. Apostles, popes, saints, martyrs, and personages of the Old and New Testament completed this Christian Sabeanism. “The disciples of Loyola used every exertion to make this plan succeed.” It is curious to find in India among the Mussulmans the name of Terah, Abraham’s father, Azar or Azarh, and Azur, which also means fire, and is, at the same time, the name of the Hindu third solar month (from June to July), during which the sun is in _Gemini_, and the full moon near _Sagittarius_.

[868] Cicero: “De Nat. Deo.,” i., 13.

[869] “Herodotus,” ii., 145.

[870] “Monumental Christianity,” p. 3.

[871] Who but the authors of the “Pentateuch” could have invented a Supreme God or his angel so thoroughly human as to require a smear of blood upon the door-post to prevent his killing one person for another! For gross materialism this exceeds any theistical conception that we have noticed in Pagan literature.

[872] Denon: “Egypt,” ii., pl. 40, No. 8, p. 54.

[873] Pages 13 and 402.

[874] In Volney’s “Ruins of Empires” p. 360, it is remarked that as _Aries_ was in its fifteenth degree 1447 B.C., it follows that the first degree of “Libra” could not have coincided with the Vernal equinox more lately than 15,194 years B.C., to which, if you add 1790 years since Christ, it appears that 16,984 years have elapsed since the origin of the _Zodiac_.

[875] See cuts in Inman’s “Ancient Faiths.”

[876] Cicero: “De Nat. Deorum,” i., 10.

[877] Virgil: “Æneid,” vi., 724 ff.

[878] The term “coats of skin,” is the more suggestive when we learn that the Hebrew word “skin” used in the original text, means _human_ skin. The text says: “And _Java Aleim_ made for Adam and his wife כתנות עור CHITONUT OUR. The first Hebrew word is the same as the Greek χιτων--chiton--coat. Parkhurst defines it as _the skin of men_ or animals ער עור and ערה, OUR, OR, or ORA. The same word is used at Exodus xxxiv. 30, 35, when the _skin_ of Moses “shone” (A. Wilder).

[879] Here, again, the “Masorah,” by converting one name into another, has helped to falsify the little that was left original in the primitive Scriptures.

De Rossi, of Parma, says of the Massoretes, in his “Compendis,” vol. iv., p. 7: “It is known with what carefulness Esdras, the most excellent critic they have had, had _reformed_ [the text] and _corrected_ it, and restored it to its primary splendor. Of the many revisions undertaken after him, none are more celebrated than that of the Massoretes, who came after the sixth century ... and all the most zealous adorers and defenders of the “Masorah,” Christians and Jews ... ingenuously accord and confess that it, such as it exists, is _deficient_, _imperfect_, _interpolated_, _full of errors_, and _a most unsafe guide_.” The square letter was not invented till after the third century.

[880] Scorpio is the astrological sign of the organs of reproduction.

[881] The patriarchs are all convertible in their numbers as well as interchangeable. According to what they relate, they become ten, five, seven, twelve, and even fourteen. The whole system is so complicated that it is an utter impossibility in a work like this to do more than hint at certain matters.

[882] See vol. I. of the present work, p. 32. Alone, the Hindu calculation by the Zodiac, can give a key to the Hebrew chronologies and the ages of the patriarchs. If we bear in mind that, according to the former astronomical and chronological calculations, out of the fourteen manwantara (or divine ages), each of which composed of _twelve_ thousand years of the devas, multiplied by seventy-one, forms _one period_ of creation--not quite _seven_ are yet passed, the Hebrew calculation will become more clear. To help, as much as possible, those who will be sure to get a good deal bewildered in this calculation, we will remind the reader that the Zodiac is divided into 360 degrees, and every sign into thirty degrees; that in the Samaritan _Bible the age of Enoch is fixed at 360 years_; that in “Manu,” the divisions of time are given thus: “The day and the night are composed of thirty _Mouhourta_. A mouhourta contains thirty _kalâs_. A month of the mortals is of thirty days, but it is but _one_ day of the pitris.... A year of the mortals is one day of the Devas.”

[883] See Rawlinson’s “Diagrams.”

[884] In the Brahmanical Zodiac the signs are all presided over by and dedicated to one of the twelve great gods. So, 1. Mecha (Aries) is dedicated to Varuna; 2. Vricha (Taurus), to Yama; 3. Mithuna (Gemini), to Pavana; 4. Karcataca (Cancer), to Sûrya; 5. Sinha (Leo), to Soma; 6. Kanya (Virgo), to Kartikeia; 7. Toulha (Libra), to Kouvera; 8. Vristchica (Scorpio), to Kama; 9. Dhanous (Sagittarius), to Ganesa; 10. Makara (Capricornus), to Poulhar; 11. Kumbha (Aquarius), to Indra; and, 12, Minas (Pisces), to Agni.

[885] Moor’s “Hindu Pantheon,” pp. 295-302.

[886] Apollo was also _Abelius_, or Bel.

[887] Halal is a name of Apollo. The name of Ma_halal_-Eliel would then be the autumnal sun, of July, and this patriarch presides over _Leo_ (July) the zodiacal sign.

[888] See description of the Sephiroth, in chapter iv.

[889] How servile was this Chaldean _copy_ may be seen in comparing the Hindu chronology with that of the Babylonians. According to Manu, the antediluvian dynasties of the Pradjâpatis reigned 4,320,000 human years, a whole divine age of the devas in short, or that length of time which invariably occurs between life on earth and the dissolution of that life, or pralaya. The Chaldeans, in their turn, give precisely the same figures, minus _one_ cipher, to wit: they make their 120 saros yield a total of 432,000 years.

[890] Eliphas Levi gives it both in the Greek and Hebrew versions, but so condensed and arbitrarily that it is impossible for one who knows less than himself to understand him.

[891] See Rabbi Simeon’s dissertation on the primitive Man-Bull and the horns, “Sohar.”

[892] “The Nuctameron of the Hebrews;” see Eliphas Levi, vol. i.

[893] “Anszuge aus dem Sohar,” p. 13, 15.

[894] Such is the opinion of the erudite Dr. Jost and Donaldson. “The Old Testament Books, as we now find them, seem to have been concluded about 150 years B.C.... The Jews now sought the other books, which had been dispersed during the wars, and brought them into one collection” (Ghillany: “Menschenopfer der Hebraër,” p. 1). “Sod, the Son of the Man.” Appendix.

[895] “Jost,” vol. i., p. 51.

[896] Burder’s “Josephus,” vol. ii., pp. 331-335.

[897] “Die Kabbala,” p. 95.

[898] Gaffarel: Introduction to “Book of Enoch.”

[899] So firmly established seems to have been the reputation of the Brahmans and Buddhists for the highest morality, and that since time immemorial, that we find Colonel Henry Yule, in his admirable edition of “Marco Polo,” giving the following testimony: “The high virtues ascribed to the Brahman and Indian merchants were, perhaps, in part, matter of tradition ... but the eulogy is so constant among mediæval travellers _that it must have had a solid foundation_. In fact, it would not be difficult to trace a chain of similar testimony from ancient times down to our own. Arrian says no Indian was ever accused of falsehood. Hwen T’sang ascribes to the people of India eminent uprightness, honesty, and disinterestedness. Friar Jordanus (_circa_ 1330) says the people of Lesser India (Sindh and Western India) were true in speech and eminent in justice; and we may also refer to the high character given to the Hindus by Abul Fazl. But _after 150 years of European trade, indeed, we find a sad deterioration_.... Yet Pallas, in the last century, noticing the Bamyan colony at Astrakhan, says its members were notable for an upright dealing that made them greatly preferable to Armenians. And that wise and admirable public servant, the late Sir William Sleeman, in our own time, has said that he knew no class of men in the world more strictly honorable than the mercantile classes of India.”[900]

The sad examples of the rapid demoralization of _savage_ American Indians, as soon as they are made to live in a close proximity with _Christian_ officials and missionaries, are familiar in our modern days.

[900] The “Book of Ser Marco Polo, the Venetian,” translated by Colonel Henry Yule, vol. ii., p. 354.

[901] At the present moment Mr. O’Grady is Editor of the “American Builder,” of New York, and is well known for his interesting letters, “Indian Sketches--Life in the East,” which he contributed under the pseudonym of _Hadji Nicka Bauker Khan_, to the Boston “Commercial Bulletin.”

[902] Ecclesiastes xii. 13; see Tayler Lewis’s “Metrical Translation.”

“The great conclusion here; Fear God and His commandments keep, for this is all of man.”

[903] See Micah vi., 6-8, “Noyes’s Translation.”

[904] Matthew xvii., 37-40.

[905] “Les Hauts Phénomenes de la Magie,” p. 12, preface.

[906] “History of Magic, Witchcraft, and Animal Magnetism.”

[907] See Draper’s “Conflict between Religion and Science.”

[908] Gospel according to Mark, iii. 29: “He that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost, hath never forgiveness, but is in danger of eternal damnation” (αμαρτηματος, error).

[909] Gospel according to Matthew, v. 44.

[910] “Comparative Mythology,” April, 1856.

[911] 1st Epistle of John, iii. 8.

[912] 2 Kings, xviii. 4. It is probable that the fiery serpents or _Seraphim_ mentioned in the twenty-first chapter of the book of Numbers were the same as the Levites, or Ophite tribe. Compare Exodus xxxii. 26-29 with Numbers xxi. 5-9. The names Heva, חוה, _Hivi_ or Hivite, הוי, and Levi לוי, all signify a serpent; and it is a curious fact that the Hivites, or serpent-tribe of Palestine, like the Levites or Ophites of Israel, were ministers to the temples. The Gibeonites, whom Joshua assigned to the service of the sanctuary, were Hivites.

[913] 1 Chronicles, xxi. 1: “And Satan stood up against Israel and moved David to number Israel.” 2d Samuel, xxiv. 1: “And again the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he moved David against them to say: ‘Go, number Israel and Judah.’”

[914] Zechariah iii. 1, 2. A pun or play on words is noticeable; “adversary” is associated with “Satan,” as if from שטן, to oppose.

[915] Jude 9.

[916] In the “Assyrian Tablets,” Palestine is called “the land of the Hittites;” and the Egyptian Papyri, declaring the same thing, also make Seth, the “pillar-god,” their tutelar deity.

[917] _Seth_, _Suteh_, or Sat-an, was the god of the aboriginal nations of Syria. Plutarch makes him the same as Typhon. Hence he was god of Goshen and Palestine, the countries occupied by the Israelites.

[918] “Vendidad,” fargard x., 23: “I combat the dæva Æshma, the very evil.” “The Yaçnas,” x. 18, speaks likewise of Æshma-Dæva, or Khasm: “All other sciences depend upon Æshma, the cunning.” “Serv.,” lvi. 12: “To smite the wicked Auramanyas (Ahriman, the evil power), to smite Æshma with the terrible weapon, to smite the Mazanian dævas, to smite all devas.”

In the same fargard of the “Vendidad” the Brahman divinities are involved in the same denunciation with Æshma-dæva: “I combat India, I combat Sauru, I combat the Dæva Naonhaiti.” The annotator explains them to be the Vedic gods, Indus, Gaurea, or Siva, and the two Aswins. There must be some mistake, however, for Siva, at the time the “Vedas” were completed, was an aboriginal or Æthiopian God, the Bala or Bel of Western Asia. He was not an Aryan or Vedic deity. Perhaps Sûrya was the divinity intended.

[919] Jacob Bryant: “Analysis of Ancient Mythology.”

[920] Plutarch: “de Iside,” xxx., xxxi.

[921] Wilkinson’s “Ancient Egyptians,” p. 434.

[922] See “Vendidad,” fargand x.

[923] Salverte: “Des Sciences Occultes,” appendix, note A.

[924] The term πειρασμος signifies a trial, or probation.

[925] 2 Samuel, ii. 5, 15; vi. 1-4. Pliny.

[926] See 1 Corinthians, v. 5; 2 Corinthians, xi. 14; 1 Timothy, i. 20.

[927] 2d Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians, xii. In Numbers xxii. 22 the angel of the Lord is described as acting the part of a Satan to Balaam.

[928] 1 Kings, xxii. 19-23.

[929] Haug: “Essays on the Sacred Language, Writings, and Religion of the Parsees.”

[930] The “Avesta” describes the serpent Dahaka, as of the region of Bauri or Babylonia. In the Median history are two kings of the name Deiokes or Dahaka, and Astyages or Az-dahaka. There were children of Zohak seated on various Eastern thrones, after Feridun. It is apparent, therefore, that by Zohak is meant the Assyrian dynasty, whose symbol was the _purpureum signum draconis_--the purple sign of the Dragon. From a very remote antiquity (Genesis xiv.) this dynasty ruled Asia, Armenia, Syria, Arabia, Babylonia, Media, Persia, Bactria, and Afghanistan. It was finally overthrown by Cyrus and Darius Hystaspes, after “1,000 years’” rule. Yima and Thrætaona, or Jemshid and Feridun, are doubtless personifications. Zohak probably imposed the Assyrian or Magian worship of fire upon the Persians. Darius was the vicegerent of Ahura-Mazda.

[931] The name in the Gospels is βεελζεβουλ, or Baal of the Dwelling. It is pretty certain that Apollo, the Delphian God, was not Hellenian originally, but Phœnician. He was the Paian or physician, as well as the god of oracles. It is no great stretch of imagination to identify him with Baal-_Zebul_, the god of Ekron, or Acheron, doubtless changed to _Zebub_, or flies, by the Jews in derision.

[932] “Against Apion,” i. 25. “The Egyptians took many occasions to hate and envy us: in the first place because our ancestors (the Hyk-sos, or shepherds) had had the dominion over their country, and when they were delivered from them and gone to their own country, they lived there in prosperity.”

[933] Bunsen. The name _Seth_ with the syllable _an_ from the Chaldean _ana_ or Heaven, makes the term _Satan_. The punners seem now to have pounced upon it, as was their wont, and so made it _Satan_ from the verb שטן _Sitan_, to oppose.

[934] “Vendidad,” fargard x. The name _Vendidad_ is a contraction of _Vidæva-data_, ordinances against the Dævas.

[935] _Bundahest_, “Ahriman created out of the materials of darkness Akuman and Ander, then Sauru and Nakit.”

[936] See Lenoir’s “Du Dragon de Metz,” in “Mémoires de l’Académie Celtique,” i., 11, 12.

[937] Plutarch: “Isis and Osiris.”

[938] “The Origin of Serpent Worship,” by C. Staniland Wake, M.A.I. New York: J. W. Bouton, 1877.

[939] “Tree and Serpent Worship,” etc.

[940] Godfrey Higgins: “Anacalypsis;” Dupuis: “Origines des Cultes,” iii., 51.

[941] Martianus Capella: “Hymn to the Sun,” i., ii.; Movers: “Phiniza,” 266.

[942] Plutarch: “Isis and Osiris.”

[943] Virgil: “Eclogues,” iv.

[944] Ovid: “Fasti,” ii., 451.

[945] Knorring: “Terra et Cœlum,” 53.

[946] Anna is an Oriental designation from the Chaldean _ana_, or heaven, whence Anaïtis and Anaïtres. Durga, the consort of Siva, is also named Anna purna, and was doubtless the original St. Anna. The mother of the prophet Samuel was named Anna; the father of his counterpart, Samson, was _Manu_.

[947] The virgins of ancient time, as will be seen, were not maids, but simply almas, or nubile women.

[948] Kircher: “Œdipus Ægypticus,” iii., 5.

[949] From θεραπευω, to serve, to worship, to heal.

[950] E. Pococke derives the name _Pythagoras_ from _Buddha_, and _guru_, a spiritual teacher. Higgins makes it Celtic, and says that it means an observer of the stars. See “Celtic Druids.” If, however, we derive the word _Pytho_ from פתה, _petah_, the name would signify an expounder of oracles, and Buddha guru a teacher of the doctrines of Buddha.

[951] In the Secret Museum of Naples, there is a marble bas-relief representing the _Fall of Man_, in which _God the Father plays the part of the Beguiling Serpent_.

[952] First Epistle to the Corinthians, x. 11.: “All these things happened unto them for _types_.”

[953] Epistle to the Galatians, iv. 24: “It is written that Abraham had two sons, the one by a bond-maid, the other by a freewoman ... which things are an allegory.”

[954] See “Job,” by various translators, and compare the different texts.

[955] See Kerr Porter’s “Persia,” vol. i., plates 17, 41.

[956] The expression “of the kindred of Ram” denotes that he was an Aramæan or Syrian from Mesopotamia. Buz was a son of Nahor. “Elihu son of Barachel” is susceptible of two translations. Eli-Hu--God is, or Hoa is God; and Barach-Al--the worshipper of God, or Bar-Rachel, the son of Rachel, or son of the ewe.

[957] xxxvi. 24-27.

[958] ix. 5-11.

[959] xxxviii. 1, _et passim_.

[960] Job xxxviii. 35.

[961] Ibid., xli. 8.

[962] Ibid., xli. 34.

[963] _Atum_, or At-ma, is the Concealed God, at once Phtha and Amon, Father and Son, Creator and thing created, Thought and Appearance, Father and Mother.

[964] Molitor, Ennemoser, Henman, Pfaff, etc.

[965] Schopheim: “Traditions,” p. 32.

[966] W. Williams: “Primitive History;” Dunlap: “Spirit History of Man.”

[967] Plutarch: “Isis and Osiris,” p. 17.

[968] “Sibylline Oracles,” 760-788.

[969] Euripides: “Bacchæ.”

[970] We doubt the propriety of rendering κορη, virgin. Demeter and Persephoneia were substantially the same divinity, as were Apollo and Esculapius. The scene of this adventure is laid in _Krete_ or _Koureteia_, where Zeus was chief god. It was, doubtless, _Keres_ or Demeter that is intended. She was also named κουρα, which is the same as κωρη. As she was the goddess of the Mysteries, she was fittest for the place as consort of the Serpent-God and mother of Zagreus.

[971] Pococke considers Zeus a grand lama, or chief Jaina, and Kore-Persephone, or Kuru-Parasu-pani. Zagreus, is _Chakras_, the wheel, or circle, the earth, the ruler of the world. He was killed by the Titans, or Teith-ans (Daityas). The Horns or crescent was a badge of Lamaic sovereignty.

[972] Nonnus: “Dionysiacs.”

[973] See Deane’s “Serpent Worship,” pp. 89, 90.

[974] Creuzer: “Symbol.,” vol. i., p. 341.

[975] The Dragon is the _sun_, the generative principle-- Jupiter-Zeus; and Jupiter is called the “Holy Spirit” by the Egyptians, says Plutarch, “De Iside,” xxxvi.

[976] In the original it stands _Æons_ (emanations). In the translation it stands _worlds_. It was not to be expected that, after anathematizing the doctrine of emanations, the Church would refrain from erasing the original word, which clashed diametrically with her newly-enforced dogma of the Trinity.

[977] See Dean’s “Serpent Worship,” p. 145.

[978] Ecclesiasticus xxiv. 3.

[979] See Dunlap’s “Spirit History of Man,” the chapter on “the Logos, the Only Begotten and the King.”

[980] Translated by Buckley.

[981] “Select Works on Sacrifice.”

[982] Typhon is called by Plutarch and Sanchoniathon, “Tuphon, the _red_-skinned.” Plutarch: “Isis and Osiris,” xxi.-xxvi.

[983] “Conflict between Religion and Science,” p. 269.

[984] Rahu and Kehetty are the two fixed stars which form the head and tail of the constellation of the Dragon.

[985] E. Upham: “The Mahâvansi, etc.,” p. 54, for the answer given by the chief-priest of Mulgirs Galle Vihari, named Sue Bandare Metankere Samanere Samayahanse, to a Dutch Governor in 1766.

[986] We leave it to the learned archæologists and philologists to decide how the _Naga_ or Serpent worship could travel from Kashmir to Mexico and become the Nargâl worship, which is also a Serpent worship, and a doctrine of lycanthropy.

[987] Michael, the chief of the Æons, is also “Gabriel, the messenger of Life,” of the Nazarenes, and the Hindu Indra, the chief of the good Spirits, who vanquished Vasouki, the Demon who rebelled against Brahma.

[988] See the Gnostic amulet called the “Chnuphis-Serpent,” in the act of raising its head crowned with the _seven vowels_, which is the kabalistic symbol for signifying the “gift of speech to man,” or _Logos_.

[989] “Tamas, the Vedas.”

[990] Thomas Aquinas: “Somma,” ii., 94 Art. 4.

[991] See des Mousseaux; see various other Demonographers; the different “Trials of Witches,” the depositions of the latter exacted by torture, etc. In our humble opinion, the Devil must have contracted this disagreeable smell and his habits of uncleanliness in company with mediæval monks. Many of these saints boasted of having never washed themselves! “To strip one’s self for the sake of _vain_ cleanliness, is to sin in the eyes of God,” says Sprenger, in the “Witches’ Hammer.” Hermits and monks “dreaded all cleansing as so much defilement. There was no bathing for a thousand years!” exclaims Michelet in his “Sorcière.” Why such an outcry against Hindu fakirs in such a case? These, if they keep dirty, besmear themselves only after washing, for their religion commands them to wash every morning, and sometimes several times a day.

[992] Lermontoff, the great Russian poet, author of the “Demon.”

[993] “Les Hauts Phénomenes de la Magie,” p. 379.

[994] “Movers,” p. 109.

[995] Hercules is of Hindu origin.

[996] The same as the Egyptian _Kneph_, and the Gnostic Ophis.

[997] “Serpent Worship,” p. 145.

[998] “Movers,” p. 397. Azazel and Samael are identical.

[999] Saturn is Bel-Moloch and even Hercules and Siva. Both of the latter are _Harakala_, or gods of the war, of the battle, or the “Lords of Hosts.” Jehovah is called “a man of war” in Exodus xv. 3. “The Lord of Hosts is his name” (Isaiah li. 15), and David blesses him for teaching his “hands to war and his fingers to fight” (Psalms cxliv. 1). Saturn is also the Sun, and Movers says that “Kronos Saturn was called by the Phœnicians _Israel_ (130). Philo says the same (in Euseb., p. 44).

[1000] “Blessed be Iahoh, Alahim, Alahi, _Israel_” (Psalm lxxii.).

[1001] Hardy’s “Manual of Buddhism,” p. 60.

[1002] Cousin: “Lect. on Mod. Phil.,” vol. i., p. 404.

[1003] Movers, Duncker, Higgins, and others.

[1004] “Hæres,” xxxiv; “Gnostics,” p. 53.

[1005] Wine was first made _sacred_ in the mysteries of Bacchus. Payne Knight believes--erroneously we think--that wine was taken with the view to produce a false ecstasy through intoxication. It was held _sacred_, however, and the Christian Eucharist is certainly an imitation of the Pagan rite. Whether Mr. Knight was right or wrong, we regret to say that a Protestant clergyman, the Rev. Joseph Blanchard, of New York, was found drunk in one of the public squares on the night of Sunday, August 5, 1877, and lodged in prison. The published report says: “The prisoner said that he had been to church and taken a little too much of the communion wine!”

[1006] The initiatory rite typified a descent into the underworld. Bacchus, Herakles, Orpheus, and Asklepius all descended into hell and ascended thence the third day.

[1007] King’s “Hist. Apost. Creed,” 8vo, p. 26.

[1008] Justice Bailey’s “Common Prayer,” 1813, p. 9.

[1009] “Apostle’s Creed;” “Apocryphal New Testament.”

[1010] “On the Creed,” fol. 1676, p. 225.

[1011] Lib. 1, c. 2; “Lib. de Princ.,” in “Proœm. Advers. Praxeam,” c. ii.

[1012] “De Fide et Symbol.”

[1013] “Preller:” ii., p. 154.

[1014] Nicodemus: “Apocryphal Gospel,” translated from the Gospel published by Grynæus, “Orthodoxographa,” vol. i., tom. ii., p. 643.

[1015] Euripides: “Herakles,” 807.

[1016] “Æneid,” viii., 274, ff.

[1017] “Frogs;” see fragments given in “Sod, the Mystery of Adonis.”

[1018] See pages 180-187, 327.

[1019] Aristophanes: “Frogs.”

[1020] See Preface to “Hermas” in the Apocryphal New Testament.

[1021] In the “Life of Buddha,” of Bkah Hgyur (Thibetan text), we find the original of the episode given in the Gospel according to Luke. An old and holy ascetic, Rishi Asita, comes from afar to see the infant Buddha, instructed as he is of his birth and mission by supernatural visions. Having worshipped the little Gautama, the old saint bursts into tears, and upon being questioned upon the cause of his grief, answers: “After becoming Buddha, he will help hundreds of thousands of millions of creatures to pass to the other shore of the ocean of life, and will lead them on forever to immortality. And I--I shall not behold this pearl of Buddhas! Cured of my illness, I shall not be freed by him from human passion! Great King! I am too old--that is why I weep, and why, in my sadness, I heave long sighs!”

It does not prevent the holy man, however, from delivering prophecies about the young Buddha, which, with a very slight difference, are of the same substance as those of Simeon about Jesus. While the latter calls the young Jesus “a light for the revelation of the Gentiles and the glory of the people of Israel,” the Buddhist prophet promises that the young prince will find himself clothed with the perfect and complete _enlightenment_ or “light” of Buddha, and will turn the wheel _of law_ as no one _ever did before him_. “Rgya Tcher Rol Pa;” translated from the Thibetan text and revised on the original Sanscrit, _Lalitavistara_, by P. E. Foncaux. 1847. Vol. ii., pp. 106, 107.

[1022] The sign of the cross--only a few days after the resurrection, and before the cross was ever thought of as a symbol!

[1023] Payne Knight shows that “from the time of the first King Menes, under whom all the country below Lake Mœris was a bog (Herod., ii., 4), to that of the Persian invasion, when it was the garden of the world”--between 11,000 and 12,000 years must have elapsed. (See “Ancient Art and Mythology;” cli., R. Payne Knight, p. 108. Edit. by A. Wilder.)

[1024] Seth or Sutech, “Rawlinson’s History of Herodotus,”