exhalations penetrating her whole system produced the prophetic mania. In this abnormal state she delivered oracles. She was sometimes called ventriloqua vates,* the ventriloquist-prophetess. The ancients placed the astral soul of man, ŋ, or his self-consciousness, in the pit of the stomach. The Brahmans shared this belief with Plato and other philosophers. Thus we find in the fourth verse of the second Nabhanedishtka Hymn it is said: "Hear, O sons of the gods (spirits) one who speaks through his navel (nâbhâ) for he hails you in your dwellings!" Many of the Sanscrit scholars agree that this belief is one of the most ancient among the Hindus. The modern fakirs, as well as the ancient gymnosophists, unite themselves with their Âtman and the Deity by remaining motionless in contemplation and concentrating their whole thought on their navel. As in modern somnambulic phenomena, the navel was regarded as "the circle of the sun," the seat of internal divine light. Is the fact of a number of modern somnambulists being enabled to read letters, hear, smell, and see, through that part of their body to be regarded again as a simple "coincidence," or shall we admit at last that the old sages knew something more of physiological and psychological mysteries than our modern Academicians? In modern Persia, when a "magician" (often simply a mesmerizer) is consulted upon occasions of theft and other puzzling occurrences, he makes his manipulations over the pit of his stomach, and so brings himself into a state of clairvoyance. Among the modern Parsis, remarks a translator of the Rig-vedas, there exists a belief up to the present day that their adepts have a flame in their navel, which enlightens to them all darkness and discloses the spiritual world, as well as all things unseen, or at a distance. They call it the lamp of the Deshtur, or high priest; the light of the Dikshita (the initiate), and otherwise designate it by many other names. SAMOTHRACES.-A designation of the Fane-gods worshipped at Samothracia in the Mysteries. They are considered as identical with the Kabeiri, Dioskuri, and Korybantes. Their names were mystical-denoting Pluto, Ceres or Proserpina, Bacchus, and Esculapius or Hermes. SHAMANS, or Samaneans.-An order of Buddhists among the Tartars, especially those of Siberia. They are possibly akin to the philosophers * See Pantheon: "Myths," p. 31; also Aristophanes in "Vostas," i., reg. 28. The oracle of Apollo was at Delphos, the city of the deλpus, womb or abdomen; the place of the temple was denominated the omphalos or navel. The symbols are female and lunary; reminding us that the Arcadians were called Proseleni, pre-Hellenic or more ancient than the period when Ionian and Olympian lunar worship was introduced. anciently known as Brachmanes, mistaken sometimes for Brahmans.* They are all magicians, or rather sensitives or mediums artificially developed. At present those who act as priests among the Tartars are generally very ignorant, and far below the fakirs in knowledge and education. Both men and women may be Shamans. It can be found neither SOMA. This Hindu sacred beverage answers to the Greek ambrosia or nectar, drunk by the gods of Olympus. A cup of kykeon was also quaffed by the mysta at the Eleusinian initiation. He who drinks it easily reaches Bradhna, or place of splendor (Heaven). The somadrink known to Europeans is not the genuine beverage, but its substitute; for the initiated priests alone can taste of the real soma; and even kings and rajas, when sacrificing, receive the substitute. Haug shows by his own confession, in his Aytareya Brahmanan, that it was not the Soma that he tasted and found nasty, but the juice from the roots of the Nyagradha, a plant or bush which grows on the hills of Poona. We were positively informed that the majority of the sacrificial priests of the Dekkan have lost the secret of the true soma. in the ritual books nor through oral information. the primitive Vedic religion are very few; these are the alleged descendants from the Rishis, the real Agnihotris, the initiates of the great Mysteries. The soma-drink is also commemorated in the Hindu Pantheon, for it is called the King-Soma. He who drinks of it is made to participate in the heavenly king, because he becomes filled with it, as the Christian apostles and their converts became filled with the Holy Ghost, and purified of their sins. The soma makes a new man of the initiate; he is reborn and transformed, and his spiritual nature overcomes the physical; it gives the divine power of inspiration, and develops the clairvoyant faculty to the utmost. According to the exoteric explanation the soma is a plant, but, at the same time it is an angel. It forcibly connects the inner, highest "spirit" of man, which spirit is an angel like the mystical soma, with his "irrational soul," or astral body, and thus united by the power of the magic drink, they soar together above physical nature, and participate during life in the beatitude and ineffable glories of Heaven. Thus the Hindu soma is mystically, and in all respects the same that the Eucharistic supper is to the Christian. The idea is similar. By * From the accounts of Strabo and Megasthenes, who visited Palibothras, it would seem that the persons termed by him Samanean, or Brachmane priests, were simply Buddhists. "The singularly subtile replies of the Samanean or Brahman philosophers, in their interview with the conqueror, will be found to contain the spirit of the Buddhist doctrine," remarks Upham. (See the "History and Doctrine of Buddhism;" and Hale's "Chronology," vol. iii., p. 238.) means of the sacrificial prayers-the mantras-this liquor is supposed to be transformed on the spot into real soma-or the angel, and even into Brahma himself. Some missionaries have expressed themselves very indignantly about this ceremony, the more so, that, generally speaking, the Brahmans use a kind of spirituous liquor as a substitute. But do the Christians believe less fervently in the transubstantiation of the communion-wine into the blood of Christ, because this wine happens to be more or less spirituous? Is not the idea of the symbol attached to it the But the missionaries say that this hour of soma-drinking is the golden hour of Satan, who lurks at the bottom of the Hindu sacrificial cup.* SPIRIT.—The lack of any mutual agreement between writers in the use of this word has resulted in dire confusion. It is commonly made synonymous with soul; and the lexicographers countenance the usage. This is the natural result of our ignorance of the other word, and repudiation. of the classification adopted by the ancients. Elsewhere we attempt to make clear the distinction between the terms "spirit" and "soul." There are no more important passages in this work. Meanwhile, we will only add that "spirit" is the vous of Plato, the immortal, immaterial, and purely divine principle in man—the crown of the human Triad; whereas, SOUL is the ux, or the nephesh of the Bible; the vital principle, or the breath of life, which every animal, down to the infusoria, shares with man. In the translated Bible it stands indifferently for life, blood, and soul. "Let us not kill his nephesh," says the original text: "let us not kill him,” translate the Christians (Genesis xxxvii. 21), and so on. THEOSOPHISTS.-In the medieval ages it was the name by which were known the disciples of Paracelsus of the sixteenth century, the so-called fire-philosophers or Philosophi per ignem. As well as the Platonists they regarded the soul (vyn) and the divine spirit, nous (vovs), as a particle of the great Archos-a fire taken from the eternal ocean of light. The Theosophical Society, to which these volumes are dedicated by the author as a mark of affectionate regard, was organized at New York in 1875. The object of its founders was to experiment practically in the occult powers of Nature, and to collect and disseminate among Christians information about the Oriental religious philosophies. Later, it has determined to spread among the "poor benighted heathen" such evi In their turn, the heathen may well ask the missionaries what sort of a spirit lurks at the bottom of the sacrificial beer-bottle. That evangelical New York journa}, the Independent," says: "A late English traveller found a simple-minded Baptist mission church, in far-off Burmah, using for the communion service, and we doubt not with God's blessing, Bass's pale ale instead of wine." Circumstances alter cases, it seems! dences as to the practical results of Christianity as will at least give both sides of the story to the communities among which missionaries are at work. With this view it has established relations with associations and individuals throughout the East, to whom it furnishes authenticated reports of the ecclesiastical crimes and misdemeanors, schisms and heresies, controversies and litigations, doctrinal differences and biblical criticisms and revisions, with which the press of Christian Europe and America constantly teens. Christendom has been long and minutely informed of the degradation and brutishness into which Buddhism, Brahmanism, and Confucianism have plunged their deluded votaries, and many millions have been lavished upon foreign missions under such false representations. The Theosophical Society, seeing daily exemplifications of this very state of things as the sequence of Christian teaching and example-the latter especially-thought it simple justice to make the facts known in Palestine, India, Ceylon, Cashmere, Tartary, Thibet, China, and Japan, in all which countries it has influential correspondents. It may also in time have much to say about the conduct of the missionaries to those who contribute to their support. THEURGIST. From eos, god, and epyov, work. The first school of practical theurgy in the Christian period was founded by Iamblichus among the Alexandrian Platonists; but the priests attached to the temples of Egypt, Assyria, and Babylonia, and who took an active part in the evocations of the gods during the Sacred Mysteries, were known by this name from the earliest archaic period. The purpose of it was to make spirits visible to the eyes of mortals. A theurgist was one expert in the esoteric learning of the Sanctuaries of all the great countries. The Neoplatonists of the school of Iamblichus were called theurgists, for they performed the so-called "ceremonial magic," and evoked the "spirits" of the departed heroes, "gods," and Daimonia (Sayovia, divine, spiritual entities). In the rare cases when the presence of a tangible and visible spirit was required, the theurgist had to furnish the weird apparition with a portion of his own flesh and blood—he had to perform the theopœa, or the "creation of gods," by a mysterious process well known to the modern fakirs and initiated Brahmans of India. This is what is said in the Book of Evocations of the pagodas. It shows the perfect identity of rites and ceremonial between the oldest Brahmanic theurgy and that of the Alexandrian Platonists: "The Brahman Grihasta (the evocator) must be in a state of complete purity before he ventures to call forth the Pitris." After having prepared a lamp, some sandal, incense, etc., and having traced the magic circles taught to him by the superior guru, in order to keep away bad spirits, he "ceases to breathe, and calls the fire to his help to disperse his body." He pronounces a certain number of times the sacred word, and "his soul escapes from his body, and his body disappears, and the soul of the evoked spirit descends into the double body and animates it." Then "His (Grihasta's) soul reënters into his body, whose subtile particles have again been aggregating, after having formed of their emanations an aërial body to the spirit he evoked." And now, that he has formed for the Pitri a body with the particles the most essential and pure of his own, the grihasta is allowed, after the ceremonial sacrifice is over, to "converse with the souls of the ancestors and the Pitris, and offer them questions on the mysteries of the Being and the transformations of the imperishable." "Then after having blown out his lamp he must light it again, and set at liberty the bad spirits shut out from the place by the magical circles, and leave the sanctuary of the Pitris." * The school of Iamblichus was distinct from that of Plotinus and Porphyry, who were strongly against ceremonial magic and practical theurgy as dangerous, though these two eminent men firmly believed in both. "The theurgic or benevolent magic, the Goëtic, or dark and evil necromancy, were alike in preeminent repute during the first century of the Christian era." But never have any of the highly moral and pious philosophers, whose fame has descended to us spotless of any evil deed, practiced any other kind of magic than the theurgic, or benevolent, as Bulwer-Lytton terms it. "Whoever is acquainted with the nature of divinely luminous appearances (paoμara) knows also on what account it is requisite to abstain from all birds (animal food), and especially for him who hastens to be liberated from terrestrial concerns and to be established with the celestial gods," says Porphyry. † Though he refused to practice theurgy himself, Porphyry, in his Life of Plotinus, mentions a priest of Egypt, who, "at the request of a certain friend of Plotinus (which friend was perhaps Porphyry himself, remarks T. Taylor), exhibited to Plotinus, in the temple of Isis at Rome, the familiar daimon, or, in modern language, the guardian angel of that philosopher." § The popular, prevailing idea was that the theurgists, as well as the magicians, worked wonders, such as evoking the souls or shadows of the heroes and gods, and doing other thaumaturgic works by supernatural powers. YAJNA." The Yajna," say the Brahmans, exists from eternity, for "Book of Brahmanical Evocations," part iii. |