communicable by a casual touch or shake of the hand, whilst the "royal touch" for curative and the “laying on of hands" for consecrational purposes are still relics of a science which has long passed beyond the recognition of our cheap modern wisdom. From the mural decoration of ancient temples it is evident that batteries of hands were employed in the course of theurgic work, just as in a less intelligent way the same practice is nowadays applied in promoting spiritistic experiments. Egyptian frescoes, Indian idols, and Gnostic and early Christian art also contain many allusions to manual influence and display arms and hands in magnetic postures; each finger, even, having its different hieroglyphic, suggesting that the application of the projected influence was modifiable, like the stops of a musical instrument, by skilled operators; the whole hand being generally extended for healing or blessing, the thumb and two first fingers only being employed when the image suggests rather will or power.. Strabo and Diodorus relate the fame of the mystical and healing cults called the Dactyli Idæi, literally the "fingers of Mount Ida," whilst alike in pagan, Hebrew and Christian literature references to the mystical power of the hand continually crop up. "Palmaque nobilis terrarum dominos evehit ad deos"; "Prosper Thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, prosper Thou our handiwork"; "He teacheth my hands to war and my fingers to fight"; Thou shalt learn that thy own right hand can save thee"; "Pull not upon thyself destruction with the work of your hands ; 'If I forget thee, Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its cunning," and so on in scores of passages ordinarily supposed to be but figurative yet alluding to a literal manual exercise of an occult nature. And in the chief office of the Latin Church is not still the initial requirement of him who would serve the altar and minister in the things of the spirit that he be of "clean hands and a pure heart"? Mind (manas, mens) and hand (manus) are intimately and organically connected, the latter being the executive instrument of the former ard the subtle purveyor of its secret motives and intentions. The degree of intelligence in the natural world, physiologists tell us, is indicated by that of the development of the prehensile organ, and in man alone is to be found the 66 fully developed hand. "Nature has no hands," say the Hermetists, implying that she can never regenerate herself or her offspring but must in the long run be assisted to that end by the only one of her children who possesses them. And, Mrs. Atwood adds, "the hand outward is an image of the invisible hand, its clothing, which according to its attainment (i.e., the perfection of its own nature) works effects. The hands of the ether are its transverse poles, which are formed by the divine differentiation everywhere, and are in man natural fire,' i.e., the fire. of the Ether in our life organism."* By the manuductive art alluded to in this volume, therefore, the ether universally diffused in Nature but individualised in the human organism was polarised, nucleated, and finally elicited into objective form; the consciousness of the subject operated upon was awakened upon the plane of it by inhibiting the sense activities and exalting his attention to the plane of the pure magnetic element, the world of cosmic ideation. There, according to the power by which it could be held and the degree to which it was lifted, it would function in transcendence of every physical limitation and with a range of vision and a lucidity of perception into the interiors and causes of thingst, co-extensive with that supra-natural Light with which it had become identified. From that high level, too, the epopt would be able to give his perceptions utterance, to speak oracularly, and to proclaim divine truths and monitions; to which source and method are to be ascribed the Oracles of antiquity (e.g., the well known Chaldean Oracles), the Platonic myths, and the inspired pronouncements or "prophecies" collected in the Hebrew Scriptures and prefaced by "Thus saith the Lord," the formula indicating their oracular origin. Striving ever after greater purification in himself and his co-operators, so that his own perviousness to the Divine Light and the measure of their understandings might correspondingly be enhanced, the epopt would be able clearly to discern whatever obstructive imperfections and etheric disorder Appendix p. 596 post. As alluded to in the well-known Lucretian lines Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas," etc. 46 still lingered in them or in his own grosser organism, to give directions for improving the interior conditions of his collaborators, to clarify and rearrange the ethers composing them,-to "take out the mote from his own eye (or interior mirror of spiritual perception) and pull out the beam from his brother's," as a well-known text explicitly alludes to the process we are describing ; for, as it is also written, the light of the body (i.e., the sense-consciousness) being the " eye" (or soul), if the eye" were single (a pure mirror to the Divine principle) the bodily consciousness also would become correspondingly full of the supernal illumination. Further, the epopt could discriminate (as we find the Apocalyptic seer doing in addressing the seven "churches," or assemblies of Hermetic adepts) as to the measure of spiritual fervour, torpor, disinterestedness or self-centredness characterising a particular group of workers at the regenerative science, and give advice as to including or excluding individuals with a view to perfecting the purpose to which they aspired and securing the conditions best suited to achieving it. But when himself sufficiently integrated in the supernatural principle,-being "in the spirit in the Lord's day" (or supreme degree of consciousness)—— under the magnetising control of the operator, it became possible also (and here is a great wonder) for the patient to reverse the process and himself to act as the agentforce, to re-act upon, magnetise and entrance his magnetiser, and call him up into co-consciousness and identic relations with himself in the supreme Light. It came to be the view of the learned authoress of this volume (though she developed it after the book was composed*) that no utterance or revelation to physical * It is much to be regretted that Mrs. Atwood's life-long studies, reflections and insight into the subject mentioned in this paragraph were never reduced by her into form for publication. They would have contributed perhaps the most enlightening volume of theological instruction and biblical exegesis of our time. She refrained from doing so from the same reasons as have been given for wishing to suppress this present volume and because, as her life advanced, she despaired of finding a sympathetic audience for considerations she held too profound and sacred for the public thought and superficiai criticism of the day. Her private utterances and papers (the latter now in my care) provide, however, material from which one day, perhaps, her ideas may be reconstructed, at least in outline. Only her own deep knowledge and grasp of the subject couid do it adequate justice. 66 ,, man from the true plane of Divine Spirit (with which of course astral communications or manifestations must in no way be confused) has ever been made, or is even capable of reception by our normal benighted brainintelligence, save in conditions, such as are here referred to, of entrancement on the part of individuals segregated and dedicated for that purpose, and whose sense-liberated consciousness has been intromitted by the Hermetic method to the Mount of vision, whence have been proclaimed those sermons on the mount" (as in the Gospels and the dialogues of Hermes Trismegistus and his "son or pupil in the treatise known as the "Divine Pymander") and prophetic books to which, under the names Holy Scripture" and "Oracles of God," supreme authority and reverence have always been accorded. Indeed she concluded that our Scriptures are almost wholly records of visions and utterances derived from these methods and that they contribute a collection of oracles" uttered in secret sanctuaries which for centuries laboured to establish effective relations between the Divine Principle and this fallen corrupt external plane, and at last, after prolonged attempts and many failures, testified to in the narratives themselves and easily discernible to instructed perception, succeeded in establishing conditions in which became possible the manifestation of Christ Jesus our Lord, the prototypal reintegrate Man, the second and regenerate Adam and first-fruits of them that sleep in that deep torpor of spiritual nescience into which the primal and generic Adam fell, but from which in the fulness of time, the faithful promise ran, he should be awakened. Such, then, in outline, was the Hermetic "Great Work" of human regeneration and the finding of that philosophical stone and elixir, that root of immortal being by the appropriation of which the simulation of life constituting our present precarious existence can be transmuted and made whole. It was occultism in its highest and only safe, wise and justifiable form. Contrast it with the spurious occultism, the psychic vivisection and astral trafficking, the magic, hypnotism, and "spiritualistic" mediumism, which in all ages have dogged it as its shadow, and one realises the deprecation with which an informed mind. must needs regard irresponsible experimentation with Nature's and our own hidden potentialities undertaken by those uninstructed in their operation and without that basis of religious philosophy and personal sanctification which alone justifies the pursuit of the subject. Alike in intention and method the true science was constructive, reintegrative; founded on sure, traditional wisdom and sound principle, and applied to the highest of interests. It was under the control of masters enlightened in regard to the conditions in which the experiment might be attempted and the limits to which it might be proceeded with in individual cases. To magnetise a duly prepared patient and intromit him into interior planes is easy; to control him when there and know how far he might go with safety to his organism as a whole, to recall him from the bliss of pure being through the astral region, "the valley of the shadow of death," to the prosaic sense-world, is another matter, and inability to preserve the patient's vital bond and organic integrity involves no small moral responsibility; Facilis descensus Averni ; Sed revocare gradus, superasque evadere ad auras, The spurious occultism of to-day, on the other hand, is de-individualising, disruptive of the human personality and consciousness as hermetically sealed by the providential order. It deals not with the plane of the One pure Element, but with that fluidic region biblically called "the waters under the earth" because it is infraterrestrial in the cosmical order and of a lower stage of development than even physical matter. It creates lesions in the psychic nature, opening gates-which who shall shut ?-admitting into the organism the adulterate ether and its illusions, and resulting in infestment and obsession by any intelligent or quasi-intelligent denizen of that turbid, densely populated sphere. Not there or by such methods is the Stone of the Philosophers to be discovered, any more than it is by physical methods. But we commend the reader again to the words of the enlightened Boehme: Therefore. sir, do not trouble and toil yourself in the manner and way you mention, with any gold or minerals; it is all false. The best in 66 |