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every mortal being but over whole generations and tribes, being the genii of the people."

The idea of guardian angels of men, races, localities, cities, and nations, was taken by the Roman Catholics from the prechristain occultists and pagans. Symmachus (Epistol, I. X) writes: "As souls are given to those who are born, so genii are distributed to the nations. Every city had its protecting genius, to whom the people sacrificed." There is more than one inscription found that reads: Genio civilates—" to the genius of the city."

Only the ancient profane, never seemed sure any more than the modern whether an apparition was the eidolon of a relative or the genius of the locality. Enneus while celebrating the anniversary of the name of his father Anchises, seeing a serpent crawling on his tomb knew not whether that was the genius of his father or the genius of the place (Virgil). "The manes1 were numbered and divided between good and bad; those that were sinister, and that Virgil calls numina larva, were appeased by sacrifices that they should commit no mischief, such as sending bad dreams to those who despised them, etc:

Tibullus shows by his line:—

Ne tibi neglecti mittant insomnia manes. (Eleg., I. II.)

"Pagans thought that the lower Souls were transformed after death into diabolical aerial spirits." (Leloyer p. 22.)

The term Eteroprosopos when divided into its several compound words will yield a whole sentence, "an other than I under the features of my person."

It is to this terrestrial principle, the eidolon the larva, the bhoot—call it by whatever name that reincarnation was refused in Isis.

The doctrines of Theosophy are simply the faithful echoes of Antiquity. Man is a unity only at his origin and at his end. All the Spirits, all the Souls, gods and demons emanate from and have for their root-principle the Soul Of The UNIVERSE--says Porphyry (De Sacrifice). Not a philosopher of any notoriety who did not believe (i) in reincarnation (metempsychosis), (2) in the plurality of principles in man, or that man had two Souls of separate and quite different natures; one perishable, the Astral Soul, the other incorruptible and immortal; and (3) that the former was not the man whom it represented—" neither his spirit nor his body, but his reflection, at best. This was taught by Brahmins, Buddhists, Hebrews, Greeks, Egyptians, and Chaldeans; by the post-diluvian heirs of the prediluvian Wisdom,

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by Pythagoras and Socrates, Clemens Alexandrinus, Synesius, and Origen,

1 From manus-"good," an antiphrasis, as Festus explains.

2 Page 12. Vol I. of Isis Unveiled" belief in reincarnation is asserted from the very beginning, as forming part and parcel of universal beliefs. "Metempsychosis" (or transmigration of souls) and reincarnation being after all the same thing.

the oldest Greek poets as much as the Gnostics, whom Gibbon shows as the most refined, learned and enlightened men of all ages ("See Decline and Fall," etc.). But the rabble was the same in every age: superstitious, selfopinionated, materializing every most spiritual and noble idealistic conceрtion and dragging it down to its own low level, and ever adverse to philosophy.

But all this does not interfere with that fact, that our "fifth Race" man, analyzed esoterically as a septenary creature, was ever exoterically recognized as mundane, sub-mundane, terrestrial and supra mundane, Ovid graphically describing him as—

"Bis duo sunt hominis; manes, caro, spiritus, umbra
Quatuor ista loca bis duo suscipiunt.

Terra tegit carnem, tumulum circumvolat umbra,
Orcus habet manes, spiritus astra petit."

Ostende, Oct., 1886.

Poetical Occultism.

SOME ROUGH STUDIES OF THE OCCULT LEANINGS OF THE POETS.

II.

Perhaps no passage in Light on the Path is more forcible than that which warns the disciple against allowing the idea of separateness from any evil thing or person to grow up within him. He is bidden to, "be wary, lest too soon you fancy yourself a thing apart from the mass." The Bagavad-Gita utters the same truth in other words by picturing man as led astray by the pride of self-sufficiency and the great danger underlying the desires and passions of the individual soul. Throughout life the student of occultism daily renews the struggle of soul against flesh, of faith against desire. This combat is finely pictured in Tennyson's Palace of Art. It is truly an occult palace. Four courts are made, east, west, south and north, with a squared lawn in each, and four great fountains "stream in misty folds." Here we are reminded of the Garden of Eden with its four rivers, of which Eliphas Levi says: "this description of the terrestrial paradise is resumed in the figure of a perfect pentacle. It is circular or square, since it is equally watered by four rivers disposed in a cross." The square, answering to the number four was indeed the great kabbalistic figure, representing the Trinity in Unity. Nor is the mystic circle wanting in our occult palace, for there are "cool rows of circling cloisters" about the squares, and a gilded gallery that "lent broad verge to distant lands," and "incense streaming from a golden cup," another mystic symbol, representing the passive or negative side of nature. Full of sumptuousness was this palace, built for the soul that she might dwell in sensuous luxury, remote from the struggling world. Then the poet shows us further into the recesses of his sweet thought, and we see in the pictures with which the palace was hung, a portrayal of the various life experiences of the soul as it passes from phase to phase, from room to room of this great palace which is human life.

"Full of great rooms and small the palace stood,

All various, each a perfect whole
From living nature, fit for every mood
And change of my still soul.

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From high estate to low the soul thus passes, from a "glimmering land" to "iron coast and angry wave;" from uplands of toil and harvest, to the "high bleak crags of sorrow, from Greece and Sicily to India or the North, until every landscape, as fit for every mood was there, not less than truth designed, a rich panorama of re-incarnations. Amongst all these the soul moves joyful and feasting, "Lord of the senses five, communing with herself that all these are her own in the "God-like isola. tion which is hers."

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"Then of the moral instinct would she prate,
And of the rising from the dead,
As hers by right of full-accomplished Fate,
And at the last she said:

I take possession of man's mind and deed.
I care not what the sects may brawl.
I sit as God, holding no form of creed
But contemplating all."

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So three years she throve and prospered, but in the fourth year, (mark again the occult number of perfection,) a great dread came upon her, she was plagued in "the abyssmal deeps of personality with a sore despair. The moment of choice, the turning point had come, that period of which Esoteric Buddhism speaks as occurring for the race in the fifth round but to which some exceptional personalities have forced themselves in this our fourth round. Many occultists will see their own experience mirrored in that of this tormented and lonely soul, contemplating her "palace of strength whereof the foundation stones were laid since her first memory, " only to see in its dark corners, "uncertain shapes, horrible nightmares, white-eyed phantasms and hollow shades enclosing hearts of flame." Do we not seem to see all the elemental world, led on by the dread Dweller of the Threshold here confronting us? The struggle is even more powerfully depicted but the lesson is learned; the soul may retrieve herself by a lowly life; she throws aside her royal robes, and recognizing the need of mixing with her kind, begs for a "cottage in the vale.

The poet reserves for his last verse the final lesson that only when we lead others to the heights and share these with our kind, can we ourselves stand steadfast there :

"Yet pull not down my palace towers, that are
So lightly, beautifully built;
Perchance I may return with others there
When I have purged my guilt."

A footnote in the September Path states :- "After all, the whole process of development is the process of getting back the memory of the past. And that too is the teaching found in pure Buddhism, etc." Sometimes we are conscious of vague callings to do a certain thing, and critically regarding ourselves, we cannot see in this life any cause. It seems the bugle note of a past life blown almost in our face: it startles us; sometimes we are overthrown. These memories affect us like the shadows of passing clouds across our path, now tangible; then fading, only a cloud. Now they start before us like phantoms, or like a person behind you as you look at a mirror, it looks over the shoulder. If they are indeed reminiscences of other lives, although dead and past, they yet have a power. Hear what Lowell whispers in "The Twilight" of these mysterious moments :

"Sometimes a breath floats by me,
An odor from Dreamland sent,
Which makes the ghost seem nigh me
Of a something that came and went,
Of a life lived somewhere, I know not
In what diviner sphere :

Of mem'ries that come not and go not;
Like music once heard by an ear
That cannot forget or reclaim it;
A something so shy, it would shame it

To make it a show.

A something too vague, could I name it,
For others to know:

As though I had lived it and dreamed it,
As though I had acted and schemed it

Long ago.

And yet, could I live it over,

This Life which stirs in my brain;
Could I be both maiden and lover,
Moon and tide, bee and clover,
As I seem to have been, once again,
Could I but speak and show it.

This pleasure more sharp than pain.

Which baffles and lures me so!

The world would not lack a poet,
Such as it had
In the ages glad,
Long Ago."

Emerson, who saw further into the world of nature than any poet of

our race, gives us this :

"And as through dreams in watches of the night,
So through all creatures in their form and ways,
Some mystic hint accosts the vigilant,
Not clearly voiced, but waking a new sense,
Inviting to new knowledge, one with old,"

The hermetic maxim, "As above so below," sends us indeed to nature for initiation, and the Gita follows up this nail with a hammer by saying: "The man, O Arjoona, who, from what passeth in his own breast, whether it be pain or pleasure, beholdeth the same in others, is esteemed a supreme Yogi." Analogy, Harmony, Unity, these are the words traced over and over for us, the shining rays of the one Law. These are the thoughts in which the poets delight. Emerson speaks again with still clearer voice :

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The Biblical verse :- “ It is more blessed to give than to receive, is a great occult teaching. As we strengthen the muscles by exercise, so we enlarge the intelligence and the heart by constantly dispensing our means, whether these be golden thoughts, or time, or affections, all along the line of Brotherhood. Not because of a sentiment, but because Life is made up of vibrations which our scientists, cautious as they are, admit may affect the farthest stars.

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