P.B.randolph - Seership-TheMagneticMirror 1870
P.B.randolph - Seership-TheMagneticMirror 1870
P.B.randolph - Seership-TheMagneticMirror 1870
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SEERSHIP!
CLAIRVOYANCE-ABSOLUTE,
BOSTON:
RANDOLPH AND COMPANY.
1870 .
... v
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1870, by
P. B. RANDOLPH.
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the District of Massachusetts.
[Notick. — There being but a limited demand for a work of this charac-
ter, only avery small edition has been printed, and the cost thereof has
been divided among its purchasers equitably. If the ivork should ever be
enlarged and reprinted, it will be circulated at a price barely covering cost of
printing, binding, and advertising, as in the present case.~]
f\0 H
THE INNER SENSES.
the nerves, nervous matter, and ganglia, situate along and within
the backbone. If tractors or magnets are u-sed, their points should
be placed just as would be the mesmerizer's hands* and the experi-
ment be continued as before.
INTERIOR VISION. .
3
foul with scrofula, pork fat, rum, venereal, suspended menses (by
nursing, cold, or, perchance, pregnancy), don't attempt clairvoy-
ance till you are free from it. Artists prepare their paints, — you
must prepare your body else no good picture comes, no lucidity
;
A INTERIOR VISION.
the air, food, drink, love, passion, light, sleep, health, rest, sun-
shine, joy, music, labor, exercise, lungs, liver, blood, quite as much
as of mesmerism and magnetic coma, for all mental operations are
physically conditioned.
Clairvoyance is an art, like any other. The elements exist, but
to be useful must be systemized. It has hitherto been pursued,
not rationally, but empirically, — as a blind habit, a sort of gym-
nastics, a means to swindle people, and scarce ever under in-
telligent guidance like the logical or mathematical or musical
faculties of the soul, albeit more valuable than either, and like
edges, without the use, and independent of, the ordinary avenues
of sense. It is produced or attained in various degrees, by dif-
ferent methods, and is of widely diverse grades and kinds, as
A.Pyschometry, or nervous sensitiveness, wherein the subject
does not see at all, but comes in magnetic contact with, first, the
eke out a living by dint of a very little good guessing, and a great
deal of tall lying. The majority are females of lax principles,
who keep a lounge and drawn curtains, — pestilent vampyres, red-
olent of filth moral, intellectual, and physical, who are loaded with
the exuviae of death, and charge a man or woman with the very
vapor of ruin itself.
INTERIOR VISION.
examinations, —
in short, any special thing cultivate that thing and
;
no other, else you will spoil your sight, dim your light, and become
a sort of Jack-at-all-trades, master of none. You cannot excel in
finding lost property, reading the love-life of amorous people, and
also describe and prescribe for sick folks. No ; the rule is, One
thing, and that thing well. Let the rest alone.
Again people are too impatient. They push a somnambule
;
too fast and too far. Be careful, if you look for success. Go
short journeys, at a slow pace, if you expect to hold out. While
laboring for the French doctors, and others, in New York, I
frequently not only examined fifty cases of disease a day, but
made all sorts of explorations in as many different directions ; the
consequence of which was a chronic lassitude, dyspepsia, angu-
larity, and great irritability of temper, by reason of the unwise
many pretenders to all these, nine in ten of whom are rank im-
postors.
There is a clairvoyance of Introspection, Inspection, and Pro-
jection, and these have their appropriate fields in the past,
present, and the future; all of which are easily developed and
perfected.
There is the common somnambulic or mesmerically induced lu-
cidity. comes through the coma or trance, however pro-
It also
duced and yet it is by no means necessary that the patient be
;
sciousness for a moment. But such cases are from being com-
far
mon or usual. This first kind of vision exhausts itself on material
objects alone, — a mere perception of things without penetrating
power. The next stage it reaches is that of mind-reading. In
1853, 4, 5, the writer hereof had this power to a remarkable
degree used to play cards, chess, and read books, blindfold and
; ;
I. Very few persons will fail who strictly conform to the gener-
al rules here laid down, and fewer still who follow the special
plans determined upon. As a rule, I find it safe to declare, that
in every one hundred cases seventy-five can become partly lucid ;
mesmeric coma on the first trial. The circle must wish, will,
desire, and favorable results are almost sure to follow. Have pa-
tience, if they do not.
Note. —
All clairvoyants should, to be useful, successful, and
enduring, cultivate the habit of deep breathing for all brain power ;
depends upon lung power, nor can continued ability exist if this
be neglected. All clairvoyants should feed on the best things
attainable. Again, all clairvoyants must use great caution in
matters of sex. Abstinence is good totally so, is better, for an
;
utes, sparks, flashes, streaks of quick and lingering light are seen,
or phosphor clouds float before the face, then one of two things is
immediately probable. First, that the party by continuance and
repetition can be clairvoyant ; or, second, if not too scary, these
clouds and sparks may resolve themselves into beatified forms of
friends long gone, but unlost.
Forty-eight out of fifty mesmeric experiments fail because the
operator wastes, not saves, diffuses, instead of focalizes, the mes-
meric force that streams from the eye and fingers. Rules. Sub- —
ject and operator must be of opposite sex, temperament, complex-
ion, size, stature, hair, eyes, build, and so on throughout, in order
to bring about the best results, without reference to all the talk
about positive and negative, which is mostly nonsense ; for I
have known a sweet miss only six years old, to thoroughly and
effectively mesmerize her great burly uncle, a man capable of —
knocking a bull down with one stroke of his ponderous fist, and
who was one of the roughest sea-tyrants that ever trod a quarter
deck, and yet the little lady rendered him not only helpless, but
INTERIOR VISION. 11
your head and hands over it from right to left, left to right. Re-
peat the process at the same time, daily, for one hour, till the
sleep is thoroughly induced. When and you are perfectly
it is,
exist between operator and subject. And here let me state that
no woman should allow herself to be mesmerized by a man whose
principles she cannot fully trust to, for any man can seduce any
woman whom he sits by, in magnetic rapport.
L. For some purposes I prefer the Oriental methods of clair-
voyance to the full magnetism of European and American prac-
tice. These are first, the mesmerist places a few drops of ink
:
bids the subject gaze also. Presently, the subject will behold a
vision in it, and will see pictures of whatever is desired.
take care that he or she sits so that the reflected ray of light
(magnetism) from the operator's eye will strike the back of his or
her head, the subject receiving the reflected ray, — or, operator,
demonstrated.
It is equally well established, however fools may sneer, that for
ages men of the loftiest mental power have used various agents as
a means of vision, either to bring themselves in contact with the
supernal realms of the ether, or to afford a sensitive surface
upon which the attendant dead could, can, and do, temporally
photograph whatever they choose to, or conditions permit.
During my travels through Africa, Egypt, Turkey, Arabia,
Syria, and my intercourse with the Voudeaux of New
Orleans and
Long Island, I became thoroughly convinced of the existence of
14 INTERIOR VISION.
two kinds of magic one good and beneficent, ruled and gov-
:
ful, and malignant. They antagonize each other. The one revels
in the saturnalia of the passions ; the other, the true Eosicrucian,
moves in the light-producing Shadow of the Over Soul. In the
one, the adept is surrounded by an innumerable host of viewless
powers, who lead him on to great ends and power, but finally sap
out his life, and utterly ruin and destroy him or her. And this ac-
counts for much of ill seen and experienced by modern sensitives.
The other leads its votaries through the glimmer toward the
light,and unfolds at length that Final and Crowning Clairvoy-
ance, which consists in a clear perception of relations, causes,
connecting links, effects, and uses, by far the noblest and highest
attainable while embodied, and this it is that I aim to enable oth-
ers to reach. But take notice the true clairvoyant in
:
•
THIS SUBLIME DEGREE MOVES AND ACTS ABOVE AND BEYOND THE
TEMPESTUOUS REALM OP THE PASSIONS DEFIES THEIR UTMOST
power. Passion dims the soul's best vision. To reach this
lofty eminence, the subject's physical system ought to be purified
and proper preparation be made. Food, raiment, habits, thoughts,
impulses,all must be modified, for it is idle for any one to expect
twenty years ; ago and the universal complaint and testimony are
that as soon as a subject is once fairly inducted into the Irypnotic
condition, he or she immediately passes from under the mesmerist's
control,and either announces a determination to "go it alone," or
become the " subject " of some unknown power, at once enter-
ing the domain of mediumship, and thenceforth becoming wholly
useless in a -mesmeric point of view. Now, I think there is no
real necessity for such a state of things, nor do I believe would
it
happen were it not that the operator is deficient in the prime ele-
ments of resolution and will, —
without both of which, the matter
had better not be undertaken at all. Another reason for these fre-
quent failures to produce magnetic states and the concurrent pow-
ers of lucidity results from the fact that men who mesmerize fe-
males become too susceptible to the powers and influences of lust,
and during the operation of magnetizing are too full of lascivious
imaginings and hopes to pay strict regard to the matter in hand,
and hence the subject spurns the control and acts independently,
or the invisible forces that hover about incontinently clap a stop-
per over all, and forthwith veto and annul the whole affair ; for
which kindly providence they merit and receive my most hearty
thanks, and those of all other well-wishers of his kind, here or
over there.
Not all invisible onlookers, however, are to be counted in along
with seraphs and angels, nor do they always take a subject away
from the mesmerist for that subject's good ; but it may happen
that obsessing forces of the " Voodoo" grades step in to serve
their own peculiar ends. People may laugh as much as they
please at the idea of wicked, mean, obsessing, tantalizing, tempt-
ing beings, or at the old notions of the alchemists and others of
that ilk ; but my researches and experience tell a far different
story. When it is asserted that there is no inner world of mystic
forces under the sun ; — that there are no mysterious means whereby
ends both good and ill can be wrought at any distance ; that the
so called "spells," "charms" and "projects"
mere notions, are
having no firmer foundation than superstition or empty air alone, —
then I flatly deny all such assertions, and affirm the conclusions ar-
rived at are so reached by persons wholly ignorant of the invis-
ibleworld about us, and of the inner powers of the human mind.
Although I am not called upon here to explain the rationale
16 INTERIOR VISION.
throw a spell upon another, and affect them favorably, or the re-
verse, at any distance ! Hundreds are living witnesses to-day of
my public exposure and defiance of the whole tribe of Voudeaux
'
INTEEIOR VISION. 17
called hoodoo men or women, and are held in great dread by the
negroes, who apply to them for the cure of diseases, to obtain
revenge for injuries, and to discover and punish their enemies.
The mode of operations is to prepare a fetich, which being placed
near or in the dwelling of the person to be worked upon (under the
18 INTERIOR VISION.
from graves, egg-shells, beads, and broken bits of glass. The clay
is made into a ball with hair and rags, bound with twine, with
" Some months since the only child, a little daughter of Mrs. A.,
who had been left a widow by the war, was taken ill with what was
then thought a slow malarious fever. The family physician was
called in and prescribed for her, but in spite of his attentions she
grew gradually worse, and seemed to be slowly but surely sinking
and wasting away. Everything that medical skill could think of
was done, but in vain.
" One evening, while Mrs. A. was watching by the bedside of
the little sufferer, an old negro woman, who had been many years
in the family, expressed her belief that the child had been hoo- '
INTERIOR VISION. 19
that he could not come into his district hoodooing without his per-
mission.
"
He then called the servants and every one about the place up,
and ordered them to appear one by one before him. So great was
the respect and terror with which they regarded him, that, although
many of them obviously did so with reluctance, not one failed to
obey the summons. He regarded each one closely and minutely,
and asked if he or she had seen either a strange rooster, dog, or
cat around the house in the past few days to which questions they
;
20 INTERIOR VISION.
'
than the buckra
" This was late at night, and, after making his i
reconnoisance,'
he picked up his conches and the cock, and prepared to go, telling
Mrs. A. to move the little sufferer into another room and bed.
Promising that he would be back early in the morning, he left the
house. At an early hour next morning he returned with a large
bundle of herbs, which, with peculiar incantations, he made into a
bath, into which he placed the child, and from that hour it began
to recover rapidly.
" He, however, did not stop here. He determined to find out
the hoodoo, and how
had been used so, after asking permis-
it ;
sion, he ripped open the pillows, and the bed in which the child
had lain, and therein he found and brought forth a lot of fetiches
made of feathers bound together in the most fantastic forms,
which he gave to Mrs. A., telling her to burn them in the fire, and
to watch the chambermaid carefully, saying that as they had
burned and shrivelled up, so she would shrivel up. The girl, who
had displayed from the first the most intense uneasiness, was
listening at the keyhole of an adjoining room, and heard these
injunctions. With a scream she rushed into the room, and, drop-
ping on her knees at Mrs. A.'s feet, implored her not to burn the
fetiches, promising, if she would not, to make a clean confession
of her guilt.
"Mrs. A., by this time deeply impressed with the strangeness
and mystery of the affair, was prevailed upon by the entreaties of
the girl, and kept the 'fetiches' intact, and the chambermaid
confessed that she had been prevailed upon by the other hoo- <
doo man' to place these fetiches in the bed of the child. She
protested she did not know for what reason, and that afterward
she wished to take them out, but did not dare to do so for fear of
him.
" As soon as the family physician came in, Mrs. A., completely
bewildered, told him the whole affair, showing him the fetiches,
and making the girl repeat her story to him. He, being a practi-
cal man, and having withal considerable knowledge of chemistry,
took the bunches of feathers home with him, and on making a
INTERIOR VISION. 21
22 INTEEIOR VISION.
finer ones imported into this country by the Armenian seer, Cuilna
Vilmara, — many of which I have used myself, and selected for
others. I think I never so deeply regretted the loss of any material
object so much as I did the accidental breaking of a splendid first-
who could not see curious clouds moving at will, and phantoramas
strangely beautiful and interesting, clear as noonday, and brilliant
as polarized light ! To all these classes of persons I say : Your
power depends upon your health, cleanliness, freedom from doubt,
irritability, and above all, impatience. You must, if you would
succeed in penetrating the dark pall which hangs between this
world and the under and over realms of light, yet mystery, culti-
ualism is now an accredited fact why not, then, depend upon the
;
makes the very best possible preparations for the certain and abso-
lute life beyond the grave, which awaits us all when this " fever
called living is over at last."
Fifth. Clairvoyance necessarily subtilizes and refines the mind,
body, tastes, passions, and tendencies of every one who possesses
and practises it.
24 INTERIOR VISION.
tell events that must inevitably come to pass, either in the gen-
impede its sway. We know that the sick are healed by its
strength that homes are made happy by its power that love it-
; ;
self comes to man through its divine agency that woman can ;
that God
Will, and whoso hath it fullest and finest, most re-
is
soul! By it, also, those who love or would, love may find. Es-
pecially is this true of that large class who seek the occult, and
strongly desire to reach the cryptic light beneath the floors of the
waking world, —
I mean the sons and daughters of Sorrow, An-
guish, and the Light the loving, unloved ones of the earth
;
ye that are weary and heavy-laden, and I will point the road to
rest !
" — clairvoyance I mean — not automacy In any shape.
What a man or woman eats, drinks, is clothed with, inhales, or
INTERIOR VISION. 25
is surrounded by, has a direct effect upon the entire being. V 'iat
terrible trial hour? Have you been wrecked on life's journey, and
seek dry and solid footing? Do you seek communion with the
dead, and to know the higher magic of Power? Here is Rhodes,
and here leap Hope
! Persistence
! Is it worth while to know
!
what your faults of character are, and how the defect may be rem-
edied ? to know the reasons why you fail in many of your under-
takings? and what will lead you on to success? If man or woman
hath lost hope, and love and passion are smouldering wrecks, is it
worth while to know how they may be resurrected from their pre-
mature graves ? All this true clairvoyance will instruct you how
to accomplish.
26 INTERIOR VISION.
voyance, judging from art relics yet remaining, were, as now, used
practically. Then probably, as now, a large class of learned men
affirmed diseases mainly to spring from bad states of the blood and
organs, totally ignoring what clairvoyance then, as now, asserted,
that they were (and are) frequently the result of deeply hidden
causes, albeit there is some doubt whether they even distantly
glimpsed the recently discovered fact, that every disorder bears its
yond all cavil, as it also, and it alone, can indicate the universal
remedy.
Most people are sick because there's trouble in the love nature,
and that trouble demoralizes the man or woman, destroys the fam-
ilycompact, and, disorganizing the foundations of society, engen-
ders multitudinous hells on earth, and makes crime abound like
locusts in a plague !
world, and come up, as it were, upon the other side. often see We
what we take to be sparks or flashes of light before us in the
night ; but they are not really what they seem, but are instanta-
neous penetrations of the veil that, pall-like, hangs between this
outer world of Dark and Cold, and the inner realm of Light and
Fire, in the midst of which it is embosomed, or, as it were, en-
shrouded ; and true clairvoyance is the lengthened uplifting of that
heavy pall. It is not the insane raving of obsession, possession,
of a puling sickly somnambule ! It is not a lure, to win a man or
woman from correct practices, or their ideas and standard of Virtue,
— the Latin word for strength ; it is not a trap to bait one's sen-
ses ; nor the mere ability to make a sort of twilight introspection
of your own or some one else's corpus; nor a thing calculated to
undermine the religious principles of any human being, nor to sap
one's moral nature in any way, or to exhaust the strength. But
it is a rich and very valuable power, whose growth depends upon
the due observance of the normal laws which underlie it. The
price of power is obedience to law. If we would be strong, clear-
seeing, powerful, the rules thereof must be observed ; and the adept
and acolyte alike be ever conscious that no earthly fame gained,
or place reached, or wealth accumulated, will, or probably can,
avail them or any human being, when, passed over the river of
death, we take our places in the ranks of the vast armies of the
dead, as they by the Halls of Destiny, past the gates of God.
file
No one with eyes can help seeing the notorious fact that infanti-
cide is becoming quite too common, nor, if he has a heart as it
should be, avoid regretting that it is so. Not only does the evil
exist among unmarried females, but to a far greater extent among
the "married," — as that term is generally understood. Why is
this so ? The last sad fact, I mean. The answer is all too easily
reached. It is because so many married women live, not in the an-
ticipated heaven of wedlock, but in an unmitigated opposite thereof.
"Women who love their husbands, delight in the sweet, fond cares,
and deep, full joys of maternity ; and happy wives never stain
their souls with murder, for such it is, at any stage of actual preg-
nancy, no matter what sophistry may be called into play to explain
the thing away. Such casuistry of no avail at the bar of final
is
Just at this point Love comes in and says : — All these murders
INTEEIOR VISION. 31
are done because I, Love, do not reign in the household, but Lust
has taken my place. Four-fifths of the children, dead and living,
are begotten of sick mothers, in a storm of lust, by thoughtless
fathers, generally just after a family quarrel, by way of " making
up " and cooling down the tempest. Husbands are, if anything,
more to blame for such a state of things, than are the wives, —
for a loved woman never kills I
covered, provide, if need be, for the youngling, and repeating the
sweet words of the dear Jesus, say, " Let them who are without
sin cast at thee the first stone." " Sister, neither do I condemn
"
thee, go thy way and sin no more !
seemed darkest, the golden sun shone out bright and fairly, and
albeit I, like all frail creatures of God's infinite love and mercy,
have erred, yet never once from the heart, ever from the head, —
angular head, —
which the world will one day forget, but, I hope
32 INTERIOR VISION.
not the soul behind it, for have never fairly made myself under-
stood. It will not always be so, for,
there will be found full many an angel where devils only have
been looked for. I, for one, believe this, and have abounding
lenity towards all people on God's earth, except the Slayers of
the Innocents.
And now I end my task with a bit of advice, hoping that the
matter of this book, original and selected, may benefit all. To
everybody the poet sa}^s, and I repeat :
— f
It may chance that you, reader, may have enemies ; and if so,
do but as they desire, and open the way for more abuse. Let
them talk there will be a reaction if you perform but your duty,
;
and hundreds who were once alienated from you will flock to you
and acknowledge their error. Keep right on the rough or even
tenor of your own way.
Why look back to the past, when you should be gazing forward
to the future ? why hurry to the old haunts, when you see the
whole world hastening the other way? A little generous pru-
dence, a little forbearance of one another, and some grains of char-
ity, might win all to join and unite into one general and brotherly
search after truth we but forego
; could this prelatic tradition of
crowding free consciences and Christian liberties into canons and
precepts of men, I doubt not, if some great and worthy stranger
were to come among us, wise to discern the mould and temper of
a people, and how to govern it, observing the high hopes and aims,
the diligent alacrity Of our extended thoughts and reasons, in pur-
suance of truth and freedom, but that he would cry out as Pyrrhus
did, admiring the Roman docility and courage, " If such were my
Epirots, I would not despair the greatest design that could be
attempted to make a church or a kingdom happy." Have you
faith in the great spirit of our mighty people ? Can you discern
the instinct of its immortal longing? Do you hope to stem the
tide of its irresistible advance, any more than to take the swallows
from the sky and stop their flight toward summer? Is it possible
j'ou can believe that tradition will serve for anything but men's
couch dreams, or that the shadows of antiquity will stand for
the substance of Now ? The President, Congress, and Supreme
Court of to-day are not, do not mean, the same powers of fifty
years ago. We call our Constitution the same ; but laws vary in
their effect with the tendencies of their administrators, as com-
pletely as if they were repealed, or altered in their substance.
Public opinion consigns some to the cobwebs of the obsolete ;
34 INTERIOR VISION.
will be impregnable to all assaults, and stand firm amidst the wild-
est tempest :
—
'*' Allah! Allah! ' cried the sick man, racked with pain the long night through,
Till with prayer his heart grew tender, till his lips like honey grew.
But at morning came the tempter ; said, ' Call louder, child of Pain,
See if Allah ever hears, or answers, " Here am I" again.'
Like a stab the cruel cavil through his brain and pulses went;
To his heart an icy coldness, to his brain a darkness sent.
Then before him stands Elias: says, 'My child, why thus dismayed?
Dost repent thy former fervor ? Is thy soul of prayer afraid ?
' Ah! ' he cried, ' I've called so often; never heard the " Here am I; "
And I thought God will not pity; will not turn on me his eye.'
V Then the grave Elias answered, ' God said, " Rise, Elias, go
Speak to him, the sorely tempted ; lift him from his gulf of woe.
That his prayer, " Come, gracious Allah! " is my answer " Here am I "' !
to understand himself, his wife, and his neighbor; and thus will seership
banish crime, and bring peace on earth and good-will among men. So
may it be. Let us now turn to another branch of the great subject of
seership.
INTERIOR VISION. 35
PART SECOND.
THEORY AND PRACTICE — THE MAGNETIC MIRROR.
INTRODUCTORY.
subject the attention it so richly deserves. The task of bringing its scat-
tered ends together has been imperfectly performed herein perhaps yet ;
are skilful jugglers, without the slightest real spiritual power about any
of their performances, save it be " ardent spirits." I am free to confess
that for years the brothers deceived me. I acknowledge the fact. ''Why
did you not apply certain occult power you are said to possess, to the in-
vestigation ? " I reply : Never thought of it for a long time but event- ;
ually became convinced it had been better to have clone so years ago.
The famous Dr. Dee, of London, and thousands of others, since and
before him too, used a plate of polished cannel coal (which identical plate
I have myself seen in the British Museum), and other instrumentalities
also, as a means whereby to scan and cognize mysteries otherwise wholly
unreachable. Some sturdy matter-of-fact people in these material clays,
wherein a great deal of pseudo-miracleism is current, along with a very
little that is real and genuine, are apt to ridicule and laugh at the idea
that a mere physical agent can ^enable one to penetrate the floors of the
INTERIOR VISION. 37
waking world, and come up, all brilliant and keen, upon the other side.
Such scout the notion that an oval, concave, black-white mirror, or a crys-
tal, or even a splotch of ink in a virgin's hand, are really such instrumen-
talities; and yet I know that such is, incont rove rtibly, the fact; and there
are thousands in this country who can testify to the startling truth of
what Dee and others claimed in that regard :
—
The mystical hath been to me a more familiar face than that of friends
on In its solemn school of dim and solitary discipline, learned I
earth.
the languages of other peopled worlds.
Unquestionably immortality is a truth, sublime as Creation, more solid
than the granite hills and it has been demonstrated in a thousand ways,
;
beiu«- ten false to every single true one in the land. The thing itself is
older than any civilization now on the globe, yet nevertheless, like genuine
mediumship, is constantly being counterfeited. Indeed, turn whichever
way you will, a great and deep-seated discontent prevails in the house-
hold of the spiritual faith. It is not so among Eosicrucians, albeit their
belief in spirits is as strong as strong can be; not fanatical but strong. —
The people are getting tired of modern spiritualism, for they accept, as I
do, its real facts, but discard its jargon and crudities. Interested parties
try to hide its blotches, but they will show themselves. The reason is
that there's too much theorizing and too little religion ; too much head,
and a great sparseness of heart. Carlyle wrote to a friend of mine that a
certain given form of modern spiritualism was the " liturgy of Dead Sea
apes." Much of it is; but out of what is good and true in it will, I hope,
spring glorious things of heart and hope in the good time coming.
Madame George Sand gives an account of the famous Count St. Ger-
main, one of the most remarkable magic-mirrorists that ever lived this
side the hills of India, and of whom it was claimed that he had lived for
centuries, despite the wear and tear of time, and the surging revolutions
of decaying empires :
—
" What makes this Count de St. Germain an interesting and remarkable
personage, to say the least, in my opinion is the number of new and ingen-
ious claims by which he unravels the doubtful points of the obscurer his-
tory of States. Question him about any subject or epoch of history, and
you will be surprised to hear him unfold or invent an infinity of probable
and interesting things, which throw a new light on what has been doubt-
ful and mysterious. Mere erudition does not suffice to explain history.
This man must have a mighty mind and great knowlege of humanity.
. . . It is with great difficulty that he can be made to talk of the won-
derful things. . . . He
aware that he is treated as a charlatan and
is
Frederick the Great ordered him to quit Berlin, that he left it, in his car-
riage, in propria persona, at twelve exactly, passing at the same time
through each of the gates; at least twenty thousand people will swear to
that. The guards at every gate saw the same hat, wig, carriage and
horses, and you cannot convince them that on that day there were not at
least six Cagliostros in the field." That same Cagliostro fashioned and
owned a magic mirror, now in Florence, Italy, in which whosoever he
permitted to gaze, could, and did, see any three things or persons they
desired to, no matter whether living or dead And thousands as sacredly !
believe this as they do that two and two make four. Nor is this belief
any part or parcel of spiritism, so-called nor superstition but it is per-
; ;
INTERIOR VISION. 39
to have faith in sorcerers . My story is true ; for I have it from the per-
son towhom it happened last year."
"Is the story terrible? " asked La Mettrie.
" Perhaps," said Frederick.
" Then I will shut the door; for I cannot listen with a door gaping."
La Mettrie shut the door, and the king spoke as follows :
—
" Cagliostro, as you know, had the trick of showing people pictures,
or rather magic mirrors, on which he caused the absent to appear. He
pretended to be able to reveal the most secret occupations of their lives
in this manner. Jealous women went to consult him about the infidelities
of their husbands, and some lovers and husbands have learned a great deal
about their ladies' capers.The magic mirror has betrayed mysteries of
iniquity. Be that as it may, the opera-singers all met one night and
offered him a good supper and admirable music, provided he would perform
some of his feats. He consented, and appointed a day to meet Porporino,
Conciolini, the Signora Astrua, and Porporina, and show them heaven or
they pleased.
hell, as
" The Barberini family were also there. Giovonna Barberini asked to
see the late Doge of Venice, and as Cagliostro gets up ghosts in very good
style, she was very much frightened, and rushed completely overpowered
from the cabinet in which Cagliostro had placed her, tete-a-tete with the
doge. La Porporina, with the calm expression which, as you know, is so
peculiar to her, told Cagliostro she would have faith in his science, if he
would show her the person of whom she then thought, but whom it was
not necessary for her to name, for if he was a sorcerer, he must be able to
read her soul as he would read a book.
" What you ask is not a trifle,' said our count
< yet I think I can sat-
;
c
isfy you, provided that you swear, by all that is holy and terrible, not to
speak to the person I shall evoke, to make no motion nor gesture, to utter
no sound, while the apparition stands before you.'
" Porporina promised to do so, and went boldly into the dark closet.
" I need not tell you, gentlemen, that this young woman is one of the
most intellectual and correct persons to be met with. She is well edu-
cated, thinks well about all matters, and I have reason to know no narrow
or restricted idea makes any impression upon her.
" She remained in the ghost-room long enough to make her companions
very uneasy. All was silent as possible, and finally she came out very
40 INTERIOR VISION.
pale, and with tears streaming from her eyes. She immediately said to
her companions, 'If Cagliostro be a sorcerer, he is a deceiving- one:
Have faith in nothing that he shows you.' She would say no more. Con-
ciolini, however, told me a few days after, at one of my concerts, of this
'
place, monsieur,' said she, *
I wish to understand it. Will you explain ?
— ' That surpasses my power. Be assured that your friend is well, and
usefully employed.' To this the signora replied, 'Alas! sir, you have
done me much wrong you showed me a person of whom I did not think,
;
and who is, you say, now living. I closed his eyes six months ago.' "...
" All this is very fine," said La Mettrie "but does not explain how your
;
majesty's Porporina saw the dead alive. If she is gifted with as much
firmness and reason as your majesty says, the fact goes to disprove your
majesty's argument. The sorcerer, it is true, was mistaken, in producing
a dead rather than a living man. It, however, makes it the more certain
that he controls both life and death. In that respect, he is greater than
your majesty, which, if it does not displease your majesty, has killed many
men, but never resuscitated a single one."
" Then we are to believe in the devil," said the king, laughing at the
comic glances of La Mettrie at Quintus Icilius."
" To conclude. . Your Porporina is either foolish or credulous,
. .
and saw her dead man, or she was philosophical, and saw nothing. She
was frightened, however."
" Not so she was distressed," said the king, " as all naturally would be,
;
at the sight or portrait which would exactly recall a person loved, but
know we no more. But if I must tell you all, I will say, that she
shall see
subsequently was afraid, and that her moral power after this test was not
in so sound a state as it was previously. Thenceforth she has been liable
to a dark melancholy, which is always the proof of weakness or disorder
INTERIOR VISION". 41
. . . " And
I confess I am under the influence, if not under the power
of Cagliostro. Imagine, that after having promised to show me the person
of whom I thought, the name of whom he pretended to read in my eyes,
he showed me another. Besides, he showed me a person as living, whom
he did not know to be dead. Notwithstanding this double error, he resus-
citated the husband I had lost, and that will ever be to me a painful and
inexpressible enigma."
" He showed you some phantom, and fancy filled up the details."
"I can assure you that my fancy was in no respect interested. I ex-
pected to see in a mirror some representation of Maestro Porpora, for I
had spoken often of him at supper, and while deploring his absence, had
seen that Cagliostro paid no little attention to my words. To make his
task more easy, I chose in my mind the face of Porpora, as the subject of
the apparition, and I expected him certainly, not having as yet considered
the test as serious. Finally, at perhaps the only moment in my life in
which I did not think of the Count, he appeared. Cagliostro asked me
when I went into the magic closet, if I would consent to have my eyes
bandaged, and follow him, holding on to his hand. As he was a man of
good reputation, I did not hesitate but made it a condition that he would
;
that I would make no gesture nor exclamation, but remain mute and silent
during the whole of the experiment. He then put on his glove, and hav-
ing covered my head with a hood of black velvet, which fell over my
shoulders, he made me walk about five minutes without my being able to
hear any door opened or shut. The hood kept me from being aware of
any change in the atmosphere, therefore I could not know whether I had
gone out of the room or not, for he made me make such frequent turns,
that I had no appreciation of the direction. At last he paused and with ;
one hand removed the hood, so lightly that I was not even aware of it.
My respiration having become more free, he informed me that I might
look around. I found myself, however, in such intense darkness that I
could ascertain nothing. After a short time, I saw aluminous star, which
at first trembled, and soon became brilliant before me. At first, it seemed
most remote but, when at its brightest, appeared very near me. It was
;
produced, I think, of a light which became more and more intense, and
which was behind a transparency. Cagliostro made me approach the star,
which was an orifice pierced in the wall. On the other side of that wall
I saw a chamber, magnificently decorated, and filled with lights regularly
arranged. This room, in its character and ornaments, had every air of a
place dedicated to magical operations. I had not time, however, to
42 INTERIOR VISION.
will see the light again.' I had strength enough to follow him, and walk
for a long time amid the zigzags of an unknown space. Finally, when he
took away the hood again, I found myself in his laboratory, which was
dimly lighted as it had been at the commencement of this adventure.
Cagliostro was very pale, and still trembled, for, as I walked with him, I
became aware of a convulsive agitation of his arm, and that he hurried me
along as if he was under the influence of great terror. The first thing he
said was to reproach me bitterly about my want of loyalty, and the terri-
ble dangers to which I had exposed him by wishing to violate my promises.
' I should have remembered,' said he, that women are not bound by their
'
word of honor, and that one should forbear to accede to their rash and
vain curiosity.' His tone was very angry.
" Hitherto I had participated in the terror of my guide. I had been so
amazed at Albert's being alive, that I had not inquired if this was possi-
"
INTERIOR VISION. 43
ble. had even forgotten that death had bereft me of this dear and pre-
I
cious friend. The emotion of the magician recalled to me that all this
was very strange, and that I had seen only a spectre. My reason, how-
ever, repudiated what was impossible, and the bitterness of the reproaches
of Cagliostro caused a kind of ill-humor, which protected me from weak-
ness. You feign to have faith in your own falsehood,' said I, with
«
vivacity ah, your game is very cruel. Yes you sport with all that is
;
'
;
vain,' added he, what are his thoughts and actions in life.
' I am ignorant
even of his name. When you desired and asked to see it, there was
formed between you two a mysterious communication, which my power
was capable of making able to bring you together. All science goes no
farther.'
" 'Your science,' said I, 'does not reach that far even; I thought of
Porpora, and you did not present him to me.'
" Of that I know nothing,' said he, in a tone serious and terrible.
' I do '
not wish to know. have seen nothing, either in your mind, or in the
I
magic mirror. My mind would not support such a spectacle, and I must
maintain all my senses to exercise my power. The laws of science are
infallible, and consequently, though not aware of it yourself, you must
have thought of some one else than Porpora, since you did not see the
latter.'
" Such is the talk of madmen of that kind," said the princess, shrugging
her shoulders. "Each one has his peculiar mode ; though all, by means
of a captious reasoning, which may be called the method of madness, so
44 INTERIOR VISION.
contrive, by disturbing the ideas of others, that they are never cut short,
or disturbed themselves."
"He certainly disturbed mine," said Consuelo; "and I was no longer
able to analyze them. The apparition of Albert, true or false, made me
more distinctly aware that I had lost him forever, and I shed tears.
" Consuelo,' said the magician in a solemn tone, and offering me his
<
hand (you may imagine that my real name, hitherto unknown to all, was
an additional surprise, when I heard him speak it), you have great errors
'
to repair, and I trust you will neglect nothing to regain your peace of
mind.' I had not power to reply. I sought in vain to hide my tears from
my companions, who waited impatiently for me in the next room. I was
more impatient yet to withdraw, and as soon as I was alone, after having
given a free course to my grief, I passed the night in reflections and com-
mentaries on the scenes of this fatal evening. The more I sought to un-
derstand it, the more I became lost in a labyrinth of uncertainty and I ;
must own that my ideas were often worse than an implicit obedience to
the oracles of magic would have been. Worn out by fruitless suffering, I
resolved to suspend my judgment until there should be light. Since then,
however, I have been impressionable, subject to the vapors, sick at heart,
and deeply sad."
. .
u You are about to tell me that he died during the conclusion of
.
the marriage ceremony. I will,however, tell you that he is not dead, that
no one, that nothing, dies, and that we may still have communion with
those the vulgar call dead, if we know their language and the secret of
their lives."
. . . " While waiting for the miracles which are about to be accom-
plished, God, who apparently mingles in nothing, who is eternal silence,
creates among us beings of a nature superior to our own, both for good
and — angels and demons — hidden powers. The latter are to test
evil
the just, the former to ensure their triumph. The contest between the
great powers has already begun. The king of evil, the father of ignorance
and crime, defends himself in vain. The archangels have bent the bow of
science and of truth, and their arrows have pierced the corslet of Satan.
Satan roars and struggles, but soon will abandon falsehood, lose his
venom, and, instead of the impure blood of reptiles, will feel the dew of
pardon circulate through his veins. This is the clear and certain explana-
tion of all that is incomprehensible and terrible in the world. Good and
evil contend in higher regions which are unattainable to men. Victory
and defeat soar above us, without its being possible for us to fix
them. . Yes I say it is clear that men are ignorant of what occurs
. . ;
on earth. They see impiety arm itself against fate, and vice versa. They
suffer oppression, misery, and all the scourges of discord, without their
prayers being heard, without the intervention of the miracles of any relig-
ion. They now understand nothing; they complain, they know not why.
They walk blindfolded on the brink of a precipice. To this the Invisibles
"
INTEEIOR VISION. 45
'
If your soul be as pure as yon crystal, you will see yourself in it always —
young and beautiful. But if vice has withered your heart, be fearful of read-
ing in me the stern reflection of moral deformity. ,'
... . "If the thought of evil be in your heart, you are unworthy of con-
templating the divine spectacle of nature ; if your heart be the home of virtue,
look up andbless God, ivho opens to you the door of a terrestrial paradise."
The loftiest spiritualism the world ever saw — that of ancient Jewry —
recognized the truth of such mirrors, for they — the " Urim and Thum-
min "-polished breast-plates — were used for purposes of a celestial
divination, and are still so used to-day. Even many of the modern spir-
itualists recognize the same truths, for their papers frequently contain
articles on crystal-seeing, and the magical uses of various jewels and
precious stones; while one of their noblest " Psalms of life" contains this
beautiful verse :
—
" But most the watching angels guide the thought,
If in the mortal's heart be wrong or error,
Soon by the pure and viewless influence taught,
He sees his wrong as in a Magic Mirror ! —
He sees the end where leads the tortuous path, —
Its darkness and its dangers; and, awaking,
He finds within his soul a holier faith,
And turns, with willing heart, his sin forsaking."
The chief Rosicrucian of all England says, in his recent work on " Fire,"
"When the mind is surrendered up, as a clear glass (or in, and to it),
— shows of the magical world roll in." Again "The gauge is according
:
gence takes into the worlds not about us. . . We are as the telescope
46 INTERIOR VISION.
ing things are, really, taken to live. The first magician, who is
. . .
as such recorded, and who gave distinct teachings on the subject of magic,
is Zoroaster. The genius of Socrates, Plotin, Porphyrius, and Iamblichus,
of Chichus and Scaliger and Cardanus, is placed in the first rank, which
included inward (or magic) sight. In later times Robert Fludd (1638-53)
and the great magnetist and mirror-seer, Paracelsus." We have records
of over three thousand grand masters of the art, —
all dead and of scores ;
— all living —
right in our land, —
ay, within rifle-shot of where these
lines are penned. The plane of the mirror is before us, within so few feet
or inches but its lanes lead down the ages, and its roads up the starry
;
square he formed the magic mirror, and desired the boy to look steadily
into it, without raising his head. In this mirror, the boy declared that he
saw, successively, a man sweeping, seven men with flags, an army pitch-
ing its tents, and the various officers of state attending on the Sultan.
" The rest must be told by Mr. Lane himself. 'The sorcerer now ad-
dressed himself to me, and asked me if I wished the boy to see any person
who was absent or dead. I named Lord Nelson of whom the boy had
;
evidently never heard, for it was with much difficulty that he pronounced
the name after several trials. The magician desired the boy to say to the
Sultan, "My master salutes thee, and desires thee to bring Lord Nelson.
Bring him before my eyes, that I may see him speedily." The boy then
said so, and almost immediately added: "A messenger has gone and
brought back a man dressed in a black (or, rather, dark-blue) suit of
European clothes the man has lost his left arm." He then paused for a
;
moment or two, and, looking more intently and more closely into the
mirror said, "No; he has not lost his left arm, but it is placed to his
breast." This correction made his description more striking than it had
been without it, since Lord Nelson generally had his empty sleeve
attached to the breast of his coat. But it was the right arm that he had
lost. Without saying that I suspected the boy had made a mistake, I
asked the magician whether the objects appeared, in the mirror, as if
actually before the eyes, or as if in a glass which makes the right appear
left. He answered that they appeared as in a common mirror. This ren-
dered the boy's description faultless. Though completely puzzled, I was
somewhat disappointed with his performances, for they fell short of what
he had accomplished, in many instances, in presence of certain of my
friends and countrymen. On one of these occasions, an Englishman pres-
ent ridiculed the performance, and said that nothing would satisfy him
but a correct description of the appearance of his own father of whom ;
he was sure no one of the company had any knowledge. The boy, accord-
ingly, having called by name for the person alluded to, described a man. in
a Frank dress, with his hand placed on his head wearing spectacles and
; ;
with one foot on the ground and the other raised behind him, as if he were
stepping down from a seat. The description was exactly true in every re-
;
48 INTERIOR VISION.
spect ; the peculiar position of the hand was occasioned by an almost con-
stant headache, and that of the foot or leg, by a stiff knee, caused by a
fall from a horse in hunting. On another occasion, Shakespeare was de-
scribed with the most minute exactness both as to person and dress and ;
I might add several other cases in which the same magician has excited
astonishment in the sober minds of several Englishmen of my acquaint-
ance.' So far, Mr. Lane, whose account may be compared with that
given by Mr. Kinglake, the author of Eothen.' '
" Are there intelligent things, of which we know nothing, dealing with
the world? Is all a wondrous mechanism, a perfect play of solids which
proceeds unerringly, and of whose laws the scientific people are the only
interpreters? Are there no such things as miracles? Is the progress of
things never changed ? And, once out of the world, do the departed never
return ?
"Is all chance? Cannot the future ever be foreseen? Are all the
strange matters told us mere fables or inventions? the forgery of the
imaginative mind, or the self-belief of the deluded?
" Whence came that fear which has always pervaded the world? How
comes it that, in all times, spirits have been believed? Cannot history,
cannot science, cannot common sense conjure this phantom of spiritual
fear, until it really resolve into the real? Cannot the apparition be laid?
Cannot we eject this terror of invisible thinking things — spectators of us
— out of the world ? Nothing is really done until this be done, if it can
ever be done. Man is absolutely not fairly in his world, until this other
thing is out of it.
"It cannot be done. And why? Because this fear lies buried in the
truth of things. Man's interest lies quite the other way of believing it.
This dread of the supernatural is the clog upon his boldness the mistrust —
which spoils his plans —
which interferes with his prosperity which —
brings a cloud over the sunshine of his certainties. Man, then, is afflicted
with this fearful mistrust, that, after all, perhaps, his life may be the
1
dream,' and that unknown future (which is filled with those whom he
knew) is the waking.' Where have our friends gone ? Where shall toe
<
go? Are there well-known faces about us, though we see them not?
Are there silent feet amidst our loud feet? And is it possible to come
INTERIOR VISION. 49
"Men secretly tremble. But they hide their fears under the supposed
defiance and in the boastful jest. In company they are bold. Separately
they reflect, 'in their own secret minds, that, after all, these things may be
true. True from such and such confirmatory surmises of their own; true
from, perhaps, some personal unaccountable experiences, or from the
assurance of some friend whom they are disposed to believe. But only
disposed to believe. Modern times reject the supernatural; are supposed
to have no superstition. Superstition? When this modern time is full of
superstition
"But, unfortunately, man has restless curiosity; he loves real truth;
he solicits that which he can finally depend upon. He would believe if he
could. But the evidence of supernatural things is so evasive so fantas- —
tic — so, in one word, unreliable, that he will hold by the ordinary scien-
tific explanations. All mystery, he says, is that only partially known.
When that which constitutes a thing is understood, man declares, the
mystery ceases. He only finds nature. Unknown nature before now —
known nature.
"The faculty of wonder is a gift; by wonder we mean that highest ex-
haustive knowledge of the things of this world, upon which to set up, or
to construct, the machinery of converse with another. By the ladder of
the several senses, we climb to the top platform, the general sense. In
most men's minds this bridge of intelligence is not stretched. And this
knowledge of the supernatural is rejected like precious gems to grasp
which there are, literally, no hands. A compliant cowardice, and an
ashamed, merely half-belief have pervaded writers who, really, ought to
have known better —
who believed while they denied." . . .
" We feel a sensation of surprise and shame, that some writers who, out
of the secret strength of their minds, and not out of its weakness, saw that
there is more in that which is called superstition than meets the eye,
should, because they hesitated and were afraid to deal with it seriously,
condescend to disparage and to treat it with ridicule. Superstition is
degrading; a sense of the supernatural is ennobling. Walter Scott —
although from the constitution of his mind he could not fail to be a be-
liever —
has surmised and supposed, and apologized for, and toned into,
commonplace and explained, until he has resolved all his wonders —
we
may say, stripped all his truths — into nothing. Will never be seen that
it
island in Whether, indeed, he did not designedly deal with the mar-
it.
vellous, and chip and pare, amidst his superstitions, and trim all up with
the instincts of a romancist, and the eye to a balance in his favor of the
50 INTERIOR VISION".
ers, he was not secretly bowing, all the time, before the very thing he
thought it allowable to barter. This, if true, was disingenuous, if not
something worse.
--^j. " Nearly all the writers who have treated of the marvellous have done
/ so in the disbelieving vein. It is the fashion to seem to sneer. All of this
acting before the world comes from the too great love of it ; arises out of
the fear of that which may be said of us. There prevails a too great com-
pliance with convention ; too great a meeting of the universal prejudice.
Men are too apologetic, even in their faiths. In the face of standards, few
men have the boldness to be singular. Habit dictates our form of thought,
as equally as it legalizes our dress. We dreadfully fear the world.
"Other narrators and exponents of the supernatural — though aware
of the always powerfully interesting material which they have at com-
mand — instead of being imbued with the strong sense of the latent truth
in them — may be said, indeed, almost with one consent — though longing
to tell — to begin to parade a sort of shame at their revelations. And
pray wherefore? They are already met more than half-way in every sen-
sible man's mind. There are few families —
nay, there is scarcely an
individual —
who has not had something naturally unexplainable in his
history. The supernatural tale always finds an echo in every breast.
"Now, if discredited by writers, the 'supernatural' should not be
treated of by them. There are plenty of subjects at which they may play,
but that — if they believe any life but their ordinary life — so serious one.
If the possibility of the supernatural be believed, and its instances be
accepted, they are bound, as candid men and honest men, to make the
avowal that they believe. The explanations which are frequently offered
of things appearing as supernatural, are greatly more difficult to credit
than the extra-natural matters themselves. They are often infinitely
clumsy. Somewhat roughly examined, they will continually fall to pieces
of themselves. Of some unaccountable things, in fact, nobody credits the
'explanations.' The uncomfortable fact is got rid of. The subject is dis-
missed, to make way for the next soliciting object. The wonder is given
up as unexplainable. And that is the whole process. This is a very easy,
though not a very conclusive or satisfactory, method of disproving. We
suppose we disbelieve." . . .
they have invariably been invested with the attributes of the magical.
set,
rather the single ring, upon a sheet of water circumvolve from about a
stone suddenly dropped in. The exterior, magnetic, unconscious rings
may become intelligent, from which motived circles — obeying laws of
' '
having much to do with it, it is mainly the invisible microscopical,' un- ' '
necessary work to the world' of man's own other nature; real spirit being
in the majority of cases still as far off as ever, and outside and transcended
of all of it All the grave gossip and delusion, therefore, of religious com-
!
these things, into a wide field of vital magnetism. And also into mind-
contagion." . . .
" To reduce the question into the narrowest limits do spirits exist? —
Is there anything apart from the solid, the tangible, the senses of man, the
bulk of nature? Can intelligences exist without a body? Is the world
of soul within the world of flesh, or is the world of flesh within the world
of spirit? Which is the real thing, the material or the immaterial? AH
the speculation — all the purposes of life may be confined within these
circumscribed bounds. Either this world is all, or it is almost, nothing.
For if the senses are all of the man; if Nature is just the mere solids
52 INTERIOR VISION.
common sense the true guide and the only guide; why, then, if all that —
the world tells us be really true, —
the sooner we close the account with
this outside phantom-world the better! In this case away with it!
And away with all the spiritual tales which are told us The quicker tha.t !
" True magic lies in the most secret and inmost powers of the mind.
Our spiritual nature is still, as it were, barred within us. All spiritual
wonders, in the end, become but wonders of our own minds.
"In magnetism lies the key to unlock the future science of magic, to
fertilize the growing germs in cultivated fields of knowledge, and reveal
the wonders of the creative mind.
"Magic is a great, secret, sudden, and disbelieved-in wisdom (out of
therefore is the other, in the world-judgment, false and a lie, and a juggle,
since man is contradicted in it. So says Paracelsus." . . .
"The crystal seers and mirror viewers use their talent in telling love-
sick girls their fortunes, and," — tenscore more such things are said.
What of it? God gave all men brains, but some put them to swindling
uses. Are brains, per se, bad things to possess? Barbers use leaves of
literature to wipe their razors on yet essays nor the art of printing had
;
that end in view. Trunks are lined with sheets of the Bible, but the
books were printed to fatten souls upon. " But all people can't success-
fully use these crystals and mirrors ? " No one knows till they try. A
gentleman of Cambridge left me ten minutes ago, who had stopped a
little time, while floating down the river of life, at Spiritualists' Island,
but grew tired of the fruit, — religious, social, philosophic, and so on,
reputed to grow there; just as I did, and thousands more have, and still
more thousands do and will and he owned a very valuable trinue glass.
;
in the glass rises or falls, so inevitably will the market. All he wants is
capital to buy, or a sensible man to follow his magneto- commercial ba-
rometer. He will soon have both. I know a woman who never fails to
tell correctly all that others want to know. She is getting rich. But I
deprecate this sort of thing it borders close upon a mere prostitution of
;
tegrity and watchfulness while at the same time there is no strain what-
;
the visions rapidly pass away; never again can they be reproduced or
recalled but, in the mirror, any given face, place, picture of any locality,
;
ceedingly difficult to obtain, seeing that only coal of a peculiar shade and
grain will answer the purpose and even then is utterly useless unless of
;
things seen appear, and not upon or in the surface or substance of the
mirror itself, as is apparently the case; but mostly above and in front of
it. Sometimes, indeed, the seer sees through the mirror, which, in that case,
serves precisely the same ends and uses to the spirit of the out-looker, that
the eye-pieces and object-glasses do to the external senses of thetelescopist
and microseopical investigator. In mesmeric vision there is a necessary
and unget-rid-of-able rapport and magnetic sympathy between the opera-
tor and the subject, which latter is, therefore, quite as likely to give forth
the pictures, images, memories, and fancies of the former, as he or she is
to reveal the actual truth of and from the outside world. "But spirit-
ual or spirits' magnetisms are not so likely to intrude fantasies and, ;
therefore, what a medium sees must be true and real." To which I reply,
— the objections against human magnetism are tenfold stronger against
the spiritual, or the spirits, so-called, even when it is real and true, which
it is not, over once in at least two hundred times for beyond all cavil,
;
what passes for spiritual trance is, in the vast majority of cases, either sim-
ulated, delusive, the effect of mental habit, the effect of the physico-
mental influence of the parties present, or the result of a diseased con-
dition of the nerves and brain. But suppose, for argument's sake, a real
and bona fide case of spiritual magnetism. How is the medium or by-
stander to know whether the thing seen is a real photograph of the un-
seen by mortals, or a transcript from the playful fancy of a disembodied
wag or experimenter ? The medium cannot tell, because the very term
and service both indicate a person played upon, —
an instrument actual in
unseen hands a machine worked by unknown forces,
; a mere automaton, —
made to move, do, act and say, at the will of a power of which neither
they or the bystanders know literally anything whatsoever ! There is no
standard of comparison. The medium is a nobody in the matter, while
INTEKIOR VISION. 55
the invisible, and necessarily totally unknown, operator, is all in all ! The
difference, therefore,between positive seership and mediumship in any
form is the difference of a whole species or that between hearing a de-
;
scription of Paris, and seeing Paris one's self; that is to say, it is the differ-
ence between act and experience, and the merest hearsay. These opin-
ions are based upon over twenty years' experience and observation of both
classes of phenomena. ,
The second class or order of mirrors (the first embracing all the
coals, light-colored metallic mirrors, and crystals, none of which are of
much worth, as compared with the perfected instrument of the last cen-
tury, and the present) are those made upon strictly scientific principles
as to form, in the first place. After innumerable experiments, it was
found that upon removing the skull, and slicing the brain of dead human
beings horizontally, just above the ear, that all heads of all the human
races were shaped precisely alike, and that all differences of external con-
tour depended upon the volume of matter on the periphery or outside
surface of the brain, —
the cortical matter. It was found, also, that the
brain, at that foundation-point, was of the same general form or shape
as the earth on which we dwell that is to say, an oblate spheroid,
;
impinged upon a perfectly plane surface, it would bound back, and the re-
sult of its action would be merely the magnetization of the organs in the
fore-brain beside which, much of the fluid would penetrate the surface,
;
mirror, which of course would never do. And now months were spent in
that particular research, until at last a concave was adopted for the glass
itself; a thin film of gold was placed close to it on the edge of a pecu-
liarly constructed compound concavo-convex frame, made in con-
formity with the known laws governing the motion of rare fluids, ethers,
and gaseous bodies.
The next step was to find an insulating substance, and one having elec-
tive, electricand chemical and magnetic affinity to and with the finest
form of magnetism known to science and to human experience. It had
already been demonstrated that what would insulate and hold electricity
was but an open sieve to that same element in its higher forms and modes
hence, recourse must be had to something else. And so experiments were
made, separate and combined, with the alkaline metals, Lithium, Sodium,
Potassium, and the hypothetical substance, Ammonium, but without com-
plete success. Then came the metals of the alkaline earths, Magnesium, —
Calcium, Barium, and Strontium, but without avail. Then experiments
were made with the proper earths, —
Didymium, Cerium, Lanthanum,
Zirconium, Norium, Erbium, Beryllium, Thorium, Yttrium, Terbium, and
Aluminum; but still the proper thing was not found. Attention and trial
was next turned to the oxidable metals proper, whose oxides form pow-
erful bases, and these are Copper, Uranium, Lead, Cobalt, Zinc, Cadmi-
um, Nickel, Bismuth, Iron, Chromium, and Manganese; but you might as
well try to hold sunlight in a basket, as to confine magnetism within walls
made of any, or any combinations of these metals. Therefore the next
series of tests embraced the oxidable metals proper, whose oxides form
weak bases, or acids, namely, Arsenic, Tin, Vandium, Osmium, Niobium,
Antimony, Titanium, Molybdenum, Tetherium, Tantalum, and Tungs-
ten : a nearer approach, but still not the thing required, albeit much
time, a deal of money, and more patience, had been expended. Then
came the noble metals, whose oxides are reducible by heat, namely,
Ehodium, Kuthenium, Silver, Platinum, Iridium, Mercury, Palladium, and
Gold. Of course the isomorphous groups of substances, embracing
Sulphur, Selenium, Chlorine, Cyanogen, Phosphorus, Fluorine, Iodine
and Bromine, were also called into play, and a few of them, as some of the
others, were found partially, but not wholly, applicable to the purpose
sought to be attained, not even by the aid of others of the non-metallic
elements, viz., Oxygen, Nitrogen, Carbon, Boron, Hydrogen, and Silicon,
albeit it was found that fusible combinations of fifteen of these score or
two of substances, associated with Phthalic acid and Paranapthalene, con-
stituted just the thing required, namely, a compound with strong elective
and electric characteristics, presenting a perfectly even, white-black sur-
face, and sensitive in the highest possible degree. Of course this sub-
stance is very difficult to make, and well it is that such is the case, else
the land would be flooded with counterfeit or very imperfectly constructed
mirrors. As it is, it is impossible to make them properly in this country,
INTERIOR VISION. 57
and only one man ever imports them, and that man is Cuilna Vilmara,
from whose lips I am now reporting, in as plain English as I can com-
mand, this exhaustive monograph upon a very difficult subject for it is —
not easy to correctly catch the meaning of a man whose speech is part
English, French, German, Italian, Armenian, and Arabic, and yet by cliut
of great patience, chemical information, two linguists, and half-a-dozen
lexicons, I have succeeded in getting the pith and marrow of all he had'
to say, as himself agreed was the case when reading the French transla-
tion. Hence, it will be understood that I herewith give the views of this
great master of the subject, as well as, and interspersed with, my own and
others' beliefs and knowledges of the matters under consideration.
The man whose experiences are wholly confined to things of the prac-
every-day life, is a mere shell, floating on the sea, totally ignorant of
tical
the amazing wealths lying scattered beneath the surface, and piled up in
mountains on the ocean floors ; for there's more real worlds under this
outside life of ours, than human brain can number. Bream-life, so won-
derful, vivid, oftentimes strangely prophetic, is but one of these; and
there is a real state even behind that life and we reach its
of Dreams ;
mystic borders by the mesmeric roads, while we gaze into its very depths
by the mysterious lens I am here writing about. There is no accident,
no chance, only such seem to be to our outer senses; but when the veil-
pall that hangs over the inner senses is removed, we at once glance down
the mystic lanes, and are in the street of chances hence the future as the
;
present —
and the past is a fact, and all their events are now ! Wherefore
not difficult to foretell what shall be, if we but get beneath the veil
it is
and glance along the floors of the world. God's numbers never change.
They are perpetual Fixedness, —
scannable by whoever has the sciences !
num, in Sicily, was celebrated as the place where the goddesses (disem-
bodied heroines) exhibited themselves to mortals." Iamblichus informs
us that the ancient magicians caused the gocls to appear among the vapors
disengaged from fire and the conjurer, Maximus, terrified his audience
;
and supernatural, of a severe aspect, but mixed with gentleuess, and ex-
tremely beautiful. According to the institutions of a mysterious religion
the Alexandrians honored it as Osiris and Adonis.
58 INTERIOR VISION.
produced in, or by, and through, a magic mirror. The plea in this case,
of imposture, is absurd.
Mr. Eoscoe, in his life of Benvenuto Cellini, gives a thrilling account of
that famous artist's adventure with spectres raised by magical means, and,
what is more to the purpose, neither Roscoe, Brewster, or Smith, pretend
to claim that they, the spectres, were mere figments of fancy. On the
contrary, all three admit the thing was real I True, they attempt to stave
off the supernatural conclusion; but do it very lamely indeed, for it is pre-
tended by them that the magic lantern, playing upon volumes of smoke,
accounts for the whole terrific affair, totally forgetful of the fact that
Cellini's experience took place in the middle of the sixteenth century,
whereas Kircher did not invent that instrument till a hundred years later !
The paragraph in italics on page 154, of Smith's edition of "Brewster's
Magic," is too puerile and contemptible to merit notice. Such hard-headed
people would fain make us believe that all ghostly appearances are phas-
mas — even that of Jesus after his death; and that all that's knowable
they know; when, aside from the multitudinous impostures, there are
enough real spiritual visitations and visions to base the hopes of a million
worlds upon. In no case, whether the objects viewed are physical or
mental — as in dreams, etc., is it the eye which sees, but the faculty of con-
sciousness within the eye, brain, soul, of the observer; and as man is a
spiritual being, it follows that he has a series of inner senses underlying
and subtending' his external ones, and which series of internal senses are
adapted to his natural-born spiritual nature and all that he requires is a
;
bridge to help him span the thick matter and reach the spiritual ether.
This the mirror enables many, though not all, to do.
The condition of death is mental activity and physical quiescence. If
the activity can be had without the quiescence of death, our greatest aim —
a new avenue or means of knowing — is attained. This is all the mes-
merist and the mirrorist claim to achieve ;and both have proved and
made good that claim in numberless instances.
The spiritual, therefore the substantial reality of all being, is above and
beyond the other senses, and it is only either by his rising to it, through
the floors of the outer world beneath which he sinks, or by its descent to
him, that he can cognize the actualities of that superior world. In
either case, if his motive be good, he ascends toward God. If evil, then
his account must be rendered for his act.
When a man, his organs of perception, his intelligent principle, is sus-
pended from its matter-bounded exercise he can enter the domain of the
;
INTERIOR VISION. 59
real, through the gates, of the inner senses; catch glimpses of the for-
ward world, and therefore cognize the events not yet born of time, but
which are already begotten of God on the body of Necessity and, there- ;
ends for, although unquestionably these things have been, are, and can
;
be done, with rare and marvellous success and efficiency by their means,
yet it is like causing a first-class race-horse to draw a butcher's cart, or,
donning rich plough the land. Hence the caution and advice,
attire to
simply because the mirror is the gate to another world, another field,
another department of the " Inside World."
Says one of the master Rosicrucians of fingland, a man whose writings —
on " Fire " rank him high among the true genii of the world of letters,
and one from whom I have largely quoted in this monograph, a man who —
deservedly occupies a lofty place in the esteem and affection of every
true brother of the Arch Fraternity of Rosicrucians, in his last great —
work concerning the "Curious Things of the Outside World": "The
Phantasmagoria of real things are revealed to us only when we escape
the outer world." In other words, when we elude by mental swiftness
these cast-iron, outward-seeming senses of ours and when we take a ;
God-bath in the rivers that flow by our souls. There is a light of slum-
brous beauty beneath this world-light of ours, and the spaces are thronged
with aerial intelligences, unseen by material man. They, to him, wait in
darkness, but his darkness is theirs and " our " effulgent light, because it
illumines the waste of whatThat realm is no shadow-
to him is mystery.
country, no phantom-land. without sound and noise yet
It is a country ;
the fulness of melody echoes through its gorgeous halls, and the wing-
less cherubim are there in effulgent majesty, to guard its mystic splen-
dors ; hence, none but true, brave, feeling souls can wholly enter therein.
It is a regal domain where our under life is topmost. Gautama Buddha,
seer of all seers of the olden time, and equalled only now, if ever, tried,
to stupid man, these sublime mysteries to reveal and in that land he has ;
waited six thousand years for the advent of understanders, just as that
other king, the lonely Man of Nazareth and Bethlehem, waited nineteen
hundred years to find a score of Christians ! Are they found?
It is only in deep absorption that the soul can outwit the body. Thus,
when a man is tempted to waste his manhood in the lap of lust, his
senses ever urge him to the deed, albeit he knows it is pollution and
death which invite him to the horrid banquet, death-charged and dread-
ful! But the very instant he sets his soul to gaze upon the temptress, he
sees her hollow heart, and realizes the danger to his soul and body ;
and
the sight and the knowledge frees him, that moment, from his thrall; his
!
60 INTERIOR VISION.
boilmg blood cools ; recedes back to its proper channels ; his tempestuous
passion subsides, and, though weak and exhausted, he still remains a
man! which is never the case when lust extinguishes its fires in the arms
of wanton passion. Lo, here, what a truth
Its sequel, " The Master Passion; The Curtain Raised." And their antecedent,
or,
"After Death; or, Disembodied Man." Also " The Rosicrucian's Story."]
bitrary laws, but according to the state of the mind. This light unites
with exterior light in the eye, and is thus drawn into a sensuous or imag-
inative activity ; but, when the outward light is separated, it reposes in
its own serene atmosphere. It is, then, in this state of interior repose
that all really inspired and correct visions occur. It is the same light so
often spoken of in ancient books and modern experiences. It is the light
revealed to Pimander, Zoroaster, and the sages of the East. It is Boeh-
men's Divine Vision or Contemplation; Molinos' Spiritual Guide, and
the inner life of all true men few, and women — —
many. ^It is the —
foundation-fire upon which all things whatever are builded; am-
bushed everywhere; bursting out when least expected; slumbering for
ages, yet suddenly illuminating an inebriate's brain, so that he shall see
the moral snakes and larvae of his perversion assume physical propor-"
tion and magnitude to fright him back to temperance, virtue, and his
forsakenGod !
'
netic character have, in ages past, and may again and in ages yet to be,
proved immense aids to the true seer. There are hundreds who visited the
INTERIOR VISION. 61
ture left for that purpose, andyou have a very good substitute for a mag-
netic mirror. Else take a glass saucer filled half full of black ink, and you
will have as good a mirror as Lane saw so successfully worked in Egypt.
A crystal glass of pure water has often served a good purpose to the
same end and, in fact, there are numberless forms of substitutes for the
;
genuine mirror, some of which are very good, but of course not equal to
even an ordinary trinue glass. The rules and laws governing these sub-
stitutes are precisely the same as those of genuine glasses.
"It will never do to urge that these things lie beyond us. A fruitful
source of the spiritual lowness of the modern time is the resolute avert-
ing of the face from deep thoughts, which, of course, give trouble. That
all the lifting of the mind, that all the sublimest speculation, that all the
occupancy of the thoughts by these intensely noble and refining investiga-
tions; that all these high ideas, and great ideas, about God's providence,
and his purposes in the world, end, when pushed to answer, just where they
began —
that is, where they first opened, and in no wise attaining to definite
result —
this is, of course, as true as that men cannot help their specula-
tions and their wonder. But we unconsciously pass higher, and become
something better, in such thoughts. We teach ourselves to place the world
at a distance. We grow spiritualized and the very amount of our pleasures
;
62 INTERIOE VISION.
ourselves as into ingots for the devil's golden Hades, should we make all
this hypocritical fuss about moral improvement ? Surely we might as well
become stumps — blocks — turn into dead, hard wood, as mean and un-
handsome as Lapland idols, when all our foolish pity, and all our human
sympathies, are being most convincingly argued and demonstrated out of
us; and when the very affections are strangled —
oh, think me not too
direct and plain-spoken, my dear, contented, but, perhaps, too compliant
reader — like irregular children; those which are only sure to bring their
parents into discredit. Children of no town, since they belong not to a
town, where money abounds Owning no love, since they cannot claim
!
"We have forgotten the inside of the cup in the burnishing of the
exterior. — —
Nor after all do we live half our life. Our triumph in the
—
common conveniences of life spite of our vaunting of our perfection in
them — go not great lengths. We can forge an anchor. But we cannot
cook a dinner. We can spin thousands of yards of calico in two or three
revolutions of a wheel. But we, personally, curve so indifferently, that
we can scarcely make a bow. The banks groan with our gold. And yet
—
we have not the knowledge profitably by which we here mean towards
our soul's advantage — to expend a single dollar. In this universal Plutus-
conversion, our heads — so to speak —
are growing into gold, while our
hearts are fast becoming but as the merest blown paper-bag inside of us
" Is this Dutchlike life of toys and trifles right? Is this all of nature;
and all of us? Oh, this wilderness of flowers, and, oh, the eternal forests I
Let the mind, for a moment, glance at that inexpressible microcosm far —
from the vulgar disturbances of the pavements, and out of sight of the
! !; -
INTERIOR VISION 63
glare of the city — in which are the thin, spiry stalks, in whose invisibly
minute veins course up the bright-green blood. What a neglected treasury
is this world of ours, in which lie undreamed-of riches for the seeking
scatter spells, as of the fruitful magic, through all this most invisibly
populous universe; this universe, whether of man's mind or of the larger
macrocosm! Pronounce, ye that know, whether evil, meanness, or
wresting to false purpose —
whether aught of bad should profane a —
theatre of grandeur so immense? Is not man himself who ought to be —
the arch-glory, as the recognition of it —
but as he would seem so desirous
of making himself —
the blot upon this excellence, the lie to all this over-
powering sublimity? Is he not, himself (to speak to him the language
which he may best understand), the bankrupt in this myriad of banks,
whence thought can —
and virtue might — draw their inexhaustible sup-
plies?
" Were gold-ribs the very framework of the world, and were they torn
out of their mighty sockets ; were even the Genius of its Riches shown,
barless and central, throned at the very heart of this so detestably, because
so for material glory, worshipped globe
its —
would the sight (or the pos-
session) match against thine immortal chance ? Were the spirit of the
material world exposed, in a single revelation, in all his blasting splen-
dors, would —
O thou miserably merchandising heart! thou seller of thy
seat amidst the star-girt saints thou wretched contemner of the chance
!
offered thee, for thy salvation, by thy God! would all this compensate—
for the averting, for one moment, from thee, of the face of the rulers of
thine immortal destinies? Confess, thou mad and besotted man!—
avouch, thou less defiant than hypocritical rebel to God's heavenly care of
thee ! —
would thy very hugest heap of dross match in value with the
tiniest flower, into whose thirsty cup the heaven-missioned spirit poured
his eternal clew ? Christening to immortality
" Boastest thou of thy world, and of thy dignity in thy science out — —
of it? Art ! —
what is art to the reticulation of a fungus ? What is it to
the fine-spun tracery of the meanest moss? Labor what is thy labor, —
that thou shoulclst pride thyself upon it —
when the whole frame of stars
be nightly moved? Pride —
why, what a shallow thing is this pride, when
to the lily of the field even Solomon, in all his glory, has been declared not
equal! What be thy stars and ribbons thy rings and spots— when, —
than all, the snake hath more splendid? What be thy braveries, and all
thine ingenious adornment, when the summer insect less than thee the —
'painted child of dirt ' — surpasseth thee at them? What be thy money,
'
64 INTERIOR VISION.
when, with whatever assurance thou reliest upon it, it may not spot for
thee, as gold nails, thy final melancholy, and, for thy body, long-lasting
house? Hoarder for that day of enjoyment which shall Dever come to
thee, in thy last earthly house, all thy tenfold fences of precious metal
useless, art thou content to put-up with most ignoble lead! Thou leavest
all thy wealth, all '
thy goods and chattels,' and, for aught thou knowest,
thou forfeitest thy very soul and at that, perhaps, terribly sudden sum-
;
mons, thou stand'st not even solitary For is there not thy misspent life
!
thee to confront? Thou hast bargained away thine heritage, and hast
spent the price. And, now, as that as which to be it hath been thy great-
est boast —
a good man of business ' —
thou must, in rendering up thy-
'
self, perform thine own half of the obligations. If the real law be that
life to come be alone purchasable by good deeds as any lawyer will tell —
thee, friend, if thou consultest him —
thou hast miscalculated the law.
In thine own interest's sake, then, better a single virtuous act than a
reiteration of money
victories Better, for thee, the prayer of the poor
!
man, and the blessings of the fatherless and of the widow, than a whole
shipload of plate, an avenue of bowing menials, and a whole court of
flatterers Remember that the reckoning, with thee, must come. Disen-
!
cumber yourself in time. Perhaps the very conveyances of thy lands '
may not be contained in that box, in which there will be found, at last,
but too much room for the possessor himself!
" Art thou wise — even in this world's sense
Art thou sagacious as to ?
testeth that these things which I have written concerning inner worlds
and the methods of admission thereto, are true, shalt thou, then, perse-
vere in so hopeless a chase of phantoms —
of fine false things which flee
from thee ? Shalt thou, with this knowledge, strain for an imagined good,
which, even in thine own hand, meltcth? Shalt thou, with all these
results which experience avoucheth as imminent, still sleep the sleep of
fools? Still, with no alarm, fold the accustomed hands, and acquiesce
because we see all the world doing so likewise? Shalt thou waste thy
precious hours in the pursuit of those anticipated fine things, which, for
all thy knowledge to the contrary, are to prove as daggers to thee ? If
missing thee, perhaps to prove nets to the feet to trip up, or pits of selfish-
ness, or of mistake, into which they shall fall, to those to whom thou
leavest thine accumulation That for which thou canst have no farther
!
use, keep it as tenaciously as thou mightest want Those that thou fan- !
ciest best beloved, may but inherit direct ruin in heiring thy riches.
That which might have been as a gold mosaic pavement for thee to walk
over in thy lifetime, may, in the sinking under thee in thy final disappear-
ance out of this slippery world, convert as into a devil-trap to thy chil-
dren !
"Love not money, then, other than 'wisely;' and not 'too well.'
Grow back into the simplicity of thy childhood. Time hastens from thee.
' !
INTERIOR VISION. 65
between body and spirit, which thou, sometimes, art taught to believe!
—
Look out into the universe important as thou thinkest thine own globe
— and imagine what innumerable mansions thy Father's house hath
'
'
'
'
By how many ways may the hope (which may be all of thee) travel into
the celestial spaces! By how many natural and ethereal wickets the
blessed may, according to their natures, enter! Are not the stars as
ing, " Come thou hither, and see the glory of my house." And to the
servants that stood around his throne he said, " Take him and undress
him from his robes of flesh ; cleanse his vision, and put a new breath into
his nostrils arm him with sail-broad wings for flight. Only touch not
;
with any change his human heart —the heart that weeps and trembles."
" It was done and, with a mighty angel for his guide, the man stood
'
;
66 INTEKIOB VISION.
ready for Ms infinite voyage; and from the terraces of heaven, without
sound or farewell, at once they wheeled away into endless space. Some-
times with the solemn flight of angel-wing they fled through Zaarrahs of
darkness, through wildernesses of death, that divided the worlds of life;
sometimes they swept over frontiers, that were quickening, under pro-
phetic motions, towards a life not yet realized. Then, from a distance
that is counted only in heaven, light dawned, for a time, through a sleepy
film. By unutterable pace the light swept to them, they by unutterable
pace to the light. In a moment the rushing of planets was upon them in ;
a moment the blazing of suns was around them. Then came eternities of
twilight, that revealed, but were not revealed. To the right hand and to
the leffc towered mighty constellations, that by self-repetitions and by
answers from afar, that by counter-positions, that by mysterious combi-
nations, built up triumphal gates, whose architraves, whose archways —
horizontal, upright — rested, rose — at
by spans, that seemed
altitudes,
ghostly from infinitude. Without measures were the architraves, past
number were the archways, beyond memory the gates. Within were
stairs that scaled the eternities above, that descended to the eternities
below. Above was below, below was above, to the man stripped of grav-
itating body. Depth was swallowed up in height insurmountable, height
was swallowed up in depth unfathomable. Suddenly as thus they rode
from infinite to infinite, suddenly as thus they tilted over abysmal worlds,
a mighty cry arose —
that systems more mysterious, worlds more billowy
— other heights, and other depths —
were dawning, were nearing, were at
hand.
" Then the
'
man sighed, stopped, shuddered, and wept. His overladen
heart uttered itself in tears; and he said, "Angel, I will go no farther!
Tor the spirit of man aches under this infinity. Insufferable is the glory
of God's house. Let me lie down in the grave, that I may find rest from
the persecutions of the Infinite! For end, I see, there is none." And
from all the listening stars that shone around issued one choral chant:
"Even it is Angel, thou knowest that it is. End there is none that
so !
ever yetwe heard of." — "End is there none?" the angel solemnly de-
manded. " And is this the sorrow that kills you? " But no voice answered,
that he might answer himself. Then the angel threw up his glorious
hands to the heaven of heavens, saying, " End is there none to the uni-
verse of God ? Lo, also, there is no beginning " . . . ! '
" If the bond of the whole visible world be the universal magnetism,
then the immortal, unparticled Spirit, of which this Magnetism be the
shadow, may be that ineffable potentiality in which the real religion shall
be, alone, possible. In this manner shall Sainthood be true of all time.
In this '
new world of the old world,' shall miracle be possible. In this
manner out of the familiar shall come the wonderful. In this angelic
medium shall Heaven be And alone be."
! . . .
" In my book I have sought to cast loose the chains which men think
:
INTERIOR VISIOJN. 67
hope that, now, to the reflecting reader, such light of probability shall
shine from our arguments, as# that he, too, shall '
almost see ' that the
Supernatural may be possible about him even in his own familiar hours,
and in this our modern and present day ? " , . .
" In the work now in the reader's hand, the author proposed to himself
these certain objects. First : to the best of his power, to establish the
possibility of the supernatural. This science denies. Next, to prove the
present existence of the supernatural. This faith rejects. Lastly, to
show that all religion is only possible, not in the thinking that we believe
(which means miracle, per se), but in the actually believing. For mankind
may be divided —
in the subject of belief in divine matters, or, rather, in
the crediting of anything out of this world into three great sections. —
First, into those who believe nothing secondly, into those who would;
believe if they could; lastly, into those who think that they believe. In
this last large class, are included — as to believe impossible things is im-
possible —
all the conscientious and good of all the various' orders.
'
'
People can only believe according to the best of their power; and their
common sense stops short of the conviction of miracle in which, as I con- ;
" It will only be thoughts which arise out of what the author has said,
that will set the reader musing. He will see that there lie other things
beyond, farther reference to which in a work of this nature indeed, in —
any work —
would be improper. Those who will accept, as clear illumina-
tion out of the fogs and the delusions of this world, are those who, by
intelligence and by knowledge, are fitted to recognize. Ordinary readers,
of whom, out of curiosity and the natural vivacity of mind, the author
feels assured he will have many, will accept the same pages as most
amusing matter, certain things in which will stimulate the profoundest
thoughts in those who have the higher gift. For, in reading, there are
two views." . . .
68 INTERIOR VISION.
" Respecting the real meaning and purpose of the extraordinary philoso-
phy of the Rosicrucians — some slender portion of which this book con-
tains, as also clo all of Dr. P. B. Randolph's works indeed they are, —
from first to last, wholly Rosicrucian —
there is the profounclest general
ignorance. All that is supposed of them is that they were a mighty sect,
whose acquirements — and, —
were involved, in so much
indeed, practice
mystery that the comprehension of them was scarcely possible. And this
famous secret society has been not only the problem, but the amusement,
and converted into the romance, of modern times. On the principle —
usually a very true one —
that all of the unkriown must, therefore, be im-
posing, the story of these Cabalists has served the turn of those who
sought to impress. If modern writers have made use of their history, it
has been to weave up the materials into romance. The name of the Rosi-
crucians has been a word of might with charlatans they have been the ;
means of exciting, with the dealers in fiction. The character of the mystic
fraternity —its designs and objects —
have been a potent charm with all
those who thought that they possessed, through it, a power of stimulating
curiosity. Members of the Society of the Rosy Cross have been intro-
duced, as heroes, in novels : have mysteriously flitted as the dens ex
machina, through tales of the imagination. From want of knowledge of
what they were, they have been supposed everything. They have been
—
wondered at laughed at —
feared —
set down as magicians, and as ex-
empted from the common lot of the children of men. Fanaticism, dream-
ing, imposture, and, in the milder form of accusation, self-delusion; all
this has been assumed of them. From the curious forms in which they
chose to invest their knowledge because of the singular fables which they
;
elected as the medium in which their secrets should be hidden, they have
been looked upon as quite of another race —
as scarcely men. But they
have been much mistaken.
"Justice is so late of arrival to all original thinkers— the terms of
prejudice, and of astonishment (not in the good sense), are so long in fall-
ing off from profound searchers — that, even now, the Rosicrucians in —
other words, the Paracelsians, or Magnetists —
are totally ignored as the
arch-chemists to whose deep thoughts and unrelaxing labors modern
science is indebted for most of its truths. As astrology (not the juggles
of the stars, but the true exploration, seeking the method of being, and of
working, of the glittering habitants of space) as astrology was the ;
; '
By the Philosopher's * Stone 'we acknowledge that we mean the magic
'
70 INTERIOR VISION.
" Those who take up these volumes will see, by what is advanced in this
concluding chapter, that they deal with no crude or inconclusive fancies
of merely enthusiastic, imaginative, theorizing people. Nor that they are
to be defrauded in the unconscientious work, sought to be diverted from
solid judgment in the flimsy attractions, nor simply seduced in the plausi-
bilities of the book-making tribe; traitors —
compelled or lured to the —
great commonwealth of letters !
C, from which copious extracts have been made herein), in which will be
found some very original and interesting speculation, points, as its key-
note, as it were, to the following well-supported though surprising asser-
tion :
'
That extraordinary race, the Buddhists of Upper India (of whom
the Phoenician Canaanite, Melchizeclek, was a priest), who built the Pyra-
mids, Stonehenge, Carnac, can be shown to have founded all the
etc.,
in 1851. It was in October, 1858, that I first commenced upon these vol-
umes. Except a certain interval from December, 1859, until the succeed-
ing March, when. I was otherwise occupied, the task has held me, unin-
terruptedly, down to the present. Twenty years of metaphysics are ex-
hibited in the conclusions of this book. They have, thus, the guarantee
of delay and of thought. Much thinking produces good acting."
. . .
" Distributed as over the wide and heaving sea of history, most numer-
ous fragments, evidently of a mighty wreck —
most wonderful the ship,
and of materials and of design portentous and superhuman have floated —
as to the thinker's feet. Chips as of strange and puzzling woods pieces —
that, dissevered, bore no meaning— contradictory objects diverse mat- —
ters, only, through keenness, with suspected relation —
a beam, portions
;
INTERIOR VISION. 71
of rope, the angle of the prow, items that, by long guessing, could alone
be discovered to have once constituted a fabric; these have been, as it
were, gathered up, and built, into a whole Argo, humbly, in my book.
And have sought to reconstruct a majestic ship, and* have traced a celes-
I
tial and the sublimest story, which we have heired, unknowingly, through
There are seven distinct magnetic laws, which, when obeyed and en-
forced, cannot possibly fail of producing given effects or results and the ;
first of these, and without which but little can be done, either with refer-
central pivot about which all the others rotate, and receive their impul-
sion toward the ends aimed at.
The fifth law is that of Intensity, which needs no explanation. The
sixth law is that of Polarity, —
the most important one of all. because
without it not much can be done with it, there is no human being but
;
Mrs. A., for instance, having heard that I sometimes give lessons of a
psychical character, comes to me with the old story, that her husband's
love has grown cool, that he is attracted elsewhere, and she is wretched
in consequence, and wants to draw him back by magnetic, or any other
illy sure, innocent and certain means. If she already possesses a good
magnetic mirror, all the better if not, I tell her to borrow one from a
;
faults in herself to begin with, for such a man with such a temperament will
be quick, impulsive, passionate, restive, and full of angles; yet, armed with
love, the blonde wife can not only subdue him, but win him from any
brunette woman under the sun. How? Blondes are electric, brunettes
magnetic, and very susceptible to influences steadily brought to bear upon
them. His weakest point, and therefore greatest want, is caressive love.
Let the blonde wife play that card, and her game is won and that's what;
is meant by Polarity. Let her sit before the mirror, bring up his image
before her therein, and when it is steadily fixed before the soul's eye, let
her bring all the other six laws to bear upon it —
him crowning all, as she
looks upon him with true, pure, wifely desire; the seventh law, which
all understand.
But suppose both parties are blondes. It is evident that caressive love
won't do there, because both are of the same electric temperament, and the
straying husband, nine chances in ten,, has become fascinated with some
clark-eyed, dark-haired, olive-hued; passional woman, whose warm, mag-
netic nature is altogether fascinating, and chains him with bands of triple
steel. Well, in that case, the wife must attack him through the door of
his higher nature, and prove to him by her steady, unchanging treatment
of him, that soul is superior to body, mind to mere beauty, solicitude and
interest in his affairs of more worth than whole oceans of mere passioual-
ism. His brain and sense, then, is the point d'appui in that case is the —
polar point. Eeverse the sexes and circumstances, if you choose to do so,
yet the law is still the same.
But there is another principle here, that is of equal importance, in all
cases where a love-sundering is the result of a third party's intrusion, in-
fluence, and power. Bepulsion is precisely as powerful as Attraction, and
we will suppose that the fault lies neither in the wife nor husband, but in a
female rival of the former, who of course is just as susceptible to magnetic
influences, hatred, dislike, etc., as any other human being. Well, to illus-
trate this very important point : Once in Cairo, Egypt, I conversed with
INTERIOR VISION. 73
an educated Arab on this very topic, and learned that it was a com-
mon custom for an injured wife to bring before her the image of the
recreant husband —
by force of will —
frequently using, for want of a
better, either a glass of water, or such a magic mirror as 'is described
in Lane's "Modern Egyptians," and in Mrs. Poole's ''English Wo-
man in Egypt " but as there are plenty of Wulees, Kutbs, and der-
;
vishes all over Egypt, it is quite an easy matter for such to gain an hour's
use of a genuine glass or jewel. In this mirror, no matter whether a com-
mon one or a diamond, she invokes the Simulacrum, or magnetic image
of the woman who has stolen her husband's affections. "But suppose
she don't know who the woman is? " That makes not the slightest differ-
ence; all she has to do is to will the woman, and no earthly power can
prevent her image, wraith, picture, or spiritual form and face from appear-
ing. When she does so :
" Back on thy head, all the misery thou hast
heaped upon mine ! Back to thy heart the pangs thou hast made me endure !
In the name of love, whom thou hast disgraced in the name of Him who
;
is omnipotent, I turn the love my (husband or lover) bears thee, into its
opposite — dislike and hatred ; and in Allah's name I change thy mutual
passion into foul disgust and horror. In the name of God so may it be " !
the good powers of the universe are in sympathy therewith. Nor do I be-
lieve it possible for a failure to occur, provided the woman be in dead
earnest, and follows up her blow day by clay, till her (magnetic) vic-
tory is achieved.
But injured wives are not the only ones in Syria, Egypt, Turkey,
and Arabia, who have recourse to magnetic means in love affairs for ;
fore grant that I may (herein) behold one suited to me." This, supposing
she has no special man for a husband
in view. If she has, then she
brings up his image, and directs her force upon him. I have heard of
manysuccesses I have known of no failures nor do I see any reason why
; ;
the white women of Western Europe and North America should not be
quite as powerful and successful in these matters as their Arabian and
Egypto-Syriac sisters, or the quadroons of the South, who notoriously prac-
tise the same things to the same ends. If one of these women has no special
man in view whom she desires to have for a husband, then she continues
74 INTERIOR VISION.
means ; for the lucidity has often revealed localities, places, names.
Seldom, however, is there a case like the above for generally the woman ;
already knows of the man she wants, and then her object is to inspire
him, and the meeting afterward is a very easy affair.
Of course this whole thing is nothing but clairvoyance, pure and sim-
ple, entirely magnetic from first to last, only that it is Oriental, instead
of Western, and is reached by methods differing from those in practice
of gold around the eye-centre? then into a lighter ring of blue, resem-
bling an eye. I first saw this object two or three weeks after I bought
the mirror. The first object I saw was in the evening when sit-
at all
INTERIOR VISION. 75
ting back toward the bright lamp-light. I had sat about twenty minutes,
impatient and discouraged at seeing nothing but a black mirror, when
suddenly the appearance described above showed itself near the left-
hand lower corner of the disk, slowly passing upward two-thirds the
way toward the right-hand upper corner, when it suddenly disappeared.
This has been repeated several times, with variations. Its size was that
of a silver dime. I thought it was a usual thing, hence paid but little at-
tention to it I am certainly not a seer, but thought I was tending that
;
way. I was not satisfied, because I could not get a likeness when I
wished to. I can get answers enough, but not always reliable, though
the future may reveal something more satisfactory.
"Yours, etc.,
Now I know cases wherein that identical spot of golden light has re-
solved itself into an ethereal lane through which magnificent supernal
realitieshave been seen and other cases wherein full faces have grown
;
out from it, and the perfect forms and features of the dead been fully be-
held and recognized. More than that I have known three persons, at
:
the same time, in broad daylight, see the same things, a magnificent —
living picture, embodying the most splendid and arabesque scenery and ;
I am satisfied that whoever can see even a single cloud pass across the
mirror's face can, if they but pursue the matter, very soon develop their
latent powers of clairvoyance or seership. But not all can do so, for I
have known persons to try for quite a length of time without succeeding,
owing to some organic difficulty born with them; persons who will
probably never become clairvoyant while in the body. At this point I
will state, that in any case of difficulty in developing the psycho-vision,
the wearing of the magnetic bandage on the head at night, and the mag
netic plate on the body by day, will go far toward removing the disturb-
ance and obstructions, besides exerting a positive curative effect, if the
party be at all ailing. ...
Again, while reading the printer's proofs of this work, another letter,
from a lady in Oswego, N. Y., reaches me, pertinent to the matter of the
volume. I quote :
—
" Oh, let me tell you that my dear father has gone home since I left Bos-
ton. ... was far, far away from him.
I I was looking in my ...
mirror, not even knowing he was ill. ... I saw my father's face, his
beautiful face and it seemed as white as snow, and his reverend hair as
;
see him long, long years agone, in the splendid prime of perfect man-
hood. And he conveyed to me these blessed words,— My child, I am '
white cones into the heavens; yon glorious landscapes sweeping into the
distant horizon the murmur of myriads of sentient existences swarming
;
the air and earth around ; the eternal roar of old ocean, and the seolian
melody of the morning and the evening breeze ; the songs of woodlands,
INTERIOR VISION. 77
and the whistling of hurricanes the waves and tides sweeping around
;
derful mechanism of our being these minds within us, anon making us
;
feel like heroes, martyrs, gods facing fire, flood and fiercest battle;
these hearts of our ours pulsating with hopes bounded only by eternity,
— all these are revelations of Almighty God, and prophets of the soul's
unending destiny."
A finer peroration, or a grander one, I never yet heard fall from human
lips. Yet this is called defection, and treason against the truth. It may
be so, but if it is, then set me down as loving all such defection, and
glorying in just such treason. If there were more of it, this were a
great delal better world. . . .
by any manner of means, for which reason I fully justify any and every
woman in getting a husband by any art or means within her power, —
magic, magnetic, sympathetic, or, if she can do it, by the magnetic love-
charms, —
amulets, or the mysterious magnetic powders, not of the —
modern tricksters, but of "La Petite Albert," which, however, the wise
ones may laugh and sneer at, have, for one hundred and fifty years demon-
strated their astonishing magnetic power in affectional directions. On my
table lies a copy of that work, in old French, printed at Lyons in 1758,
full of strange secrets on the points here mooted and which book it ;
would take a large sum to buy from me. I fully agree with that author,
that any man or woman is fully justified in resorting to any crimeless
means in order to retain or regain the love of wife, husband, or friend
hence advice in this book, but more especially that contained in my
my
works on "Love and its Hidden History," "The Master Passion; or,
The Curtain Raised," and the forthcoming reprint of" The Grand Secret;
or, Physical Love, its Mysteries Revealed," which I intend to incorporate
in the two first-named books in future editions, this present year, 1870.
Meanwhile, those who want special information can enclose a fee and
write me for it.
opathy, to say nothing about haunted houses, etc., and the startling facts
of spiritual mediumship). The substances thus chargeable are few, rare,
and costly ;
yet such do exist, andtakes two persons of opposite sex
(it
to do it) they can not only be with the specific magnetism of a per-
filled
son, but can be filled with the aura of hadean lust and passion, just as
the Voudoos effect their incontestible magnetic spells or they can be ;
seen a deserted wife bring to her feet her recreant lord I have seen a ;
great actor re- win the love of his wife, wiiom another member of the same
opera troupe stole from him, and I have seen a betrayed and almost
ruined girl arrest the career of him who first betrayed, and then left her
out in the cheerless cold of an infernally hypocritical world. To save
people from being victimized by charlatans, it is as well to inform them
that in no case can anything be charged with the power by one person
alone ; hence, money worse than thrown away.
sent for such things is
Tioo persons, of opposite gender, one of whom must be the party who de-
sires to affect a third one, must conjoin in the process of infiltrating, by
will, by hope, by the breath and finger-tips, the neutral substances with
the specific power and magnetic quality designed nor can it be done in ;
any other way whatever, because there can be no magnetic evolution unless
the magnetic law of minus and plus, positive and negative, magnetic and
electric, be observed.
But what are the materials that can be charged with a specific human
magnetism? I reply, —
The negroes of Africa and our own land know
of and use hundreds, —
herbs and roots mainly but science, in the hands;
of the late Baron Van Riechenbach, whose researches into the mysteries
of light, heat, odics, chemism, and magnetics cannot be overvalued,
has thrown a flood of light on the subject, so that now we know what
substances are the best and fine steel-filings, iron by hydrogen, sugar of
;
even a dumb animal, much less a human being. Perhaps it is well that
such a preparation is very costly, requiring much time, trouble, and ex-
pense, else wrong uses might be made thereof. And, besides that, it is
absolutely essential that certain ingredients must be furnished from the
person of the individual who proposes to be benefited by its use and ;
without this the thing is useless, because the specific magnetism will es-
cape. It is to be sewed in the garment, or worn by the party to be
effected; not swallowed, or taken inwardly. Albeit there are substan-
. ces that may be, to the same end. I do not propose to name the some-
thing else, unless I know to whom it is imparted. To rakes, seducers,
INTERIOR VISION. 79
mense value and importance of children, nor of the principles which sub-
tend the laws of their proper and normal generation. They are too
much absorbed in dimes and dollars, political, and other perishable am-
bitions; too fond of place, power and eclat; their love for woman is
tempestuous, sensual, intermittent, superficial, based on physical organ-
ization mainly, without either a mental or moral elan to give it soul and
substance. They win easily but wear badly; to correct which evils, so
far as possible, is why I write, and publish edition after edition of my
works " Love and its Hidden History," " The Rosicrucian's Story," " The
:
Master Passion; or, The Curtain Raised," "After Death," " Ravalette,'*
and others bearing upon the general subject, any, or all of which, if the
lessons they convey be well observed, will smooth the surface of Mar-
riage-land.
Eor the benefit of those who specially require cerebral or brain mag-
netization^ Ihave made arrangements with an artisan here to furnish an
invention admirably calculated to exert a specific and positive electro-
magnetic power on the brain, directly above the eyes, and right on the
frontal region of the head. There can be not the slightest doubt that
these plates will prove extremely useful in the direction indicated, and
serve as an electric curative power as well, in catarrh, headache, neu-
ralgia, sleeplessness, and general nervous unrest. The cost of these fine
head magnets, as well as those alluded to elsewhere, will be five dol-
lars. The head-plates should be bound over the eyes and forehead at
night on retiring, and be worn there an hour or two, or all night long.
The body magnetic plates may be worn over the breast, sides, back,
abdomen, or limbs and these especially are a curative agency for all
;
80 INNER VISION.
To such as have faith in the things underlying outer sense, who real-
we
ize that are floating in a sea of mysteries, that the reality of all things
lies deeply hidden behind a thick veil, which only the strong and patient
soul can raise or penetrate to those especially who have provided them-
;
selves during the last twelve years with good and perfect instrumental-
ties and to those who have demonstrated their importance in the deeper
;
ever hath a strong will, and purity of purpose, may, if they elect, unbar
the doors of mystery, enter her wide and strange domain* and revel in
knowledge denied to baser souls."
De Novalis says " The fortuitous is not unfathomable it, too, hath a
: ;
regularity of its own. He or she that hath a right sense for the fortuitous,
hath already the signet and seal of a royal power, naturally to know and
use, not all mystery, but much that lies very, very far beyond the ken of
mortals who are not thus endowed by nature, or have not grown thereto
by experience and choice. Such persons can readily determine truly that
which to others less gifted, or with less courage, will, persistence,
patience, and quietude, must forever remain unknown. For one with
these qualities necessarily commands both information and obedience
from the viewless intelligences and subordinate powers and agencies of
the universe. Such can seek destiny for others, in her own halls solve ;
her riddles by her own laws and read, as in an open book, the future,
;
—
the things that shall befall an inquirer in all that pertaineth to body, soul,
health, affections, and possessions; and, still casting forward and upward
the soul's keen glance, can discern the final result and summing up of
being, and all by means of the phasoul and phantorama, as revealed to
;;
INNER VISION. 81
the Searcher's vision on the surface of the Symph, the magic mirror, the
peerless disk of La Trinue."
II. There are glasses of three grades: the mule, or small, neuter; the
female and the male. The first is small, but fine more a philosophic toy
;
than of practical use has two foci, is good for clouds and flame, symbols
;
and shadows but the magnetic filament is very thin, and the two foci not
;
always mathematically true; they are quite easily warped and broken,
cost but little, and are mainly used by fortune-telling, vagrant gypsies of
the lowest class, and who are not able to procure a higher and better
grade trinue.
The mirror next in size to the imperfect sort just described, is, in
mirrorists' parlance, called well-sexed, or female, because its foci are
true, its polish superb, itspower great, and sensitiveness most remarka-
ble. There are magic mirrors in existence really not much superior to
these last, valued at fabulous sums. For instance, the one that covers
the back of the Sultan's watch, for Abdul Aziz, of Turkey, possesses one
of rare beauty, seeing that it consists of a single diamond concaved out
ajid its value is something over $ 400,000. The late Maha-rajah Dhuleep
Singh possessed three one an immense diamond, the other an enormous
:
ruby, and the third composed of the largest emerald known in the world
and yet, despite the enormous pecuniary difference in value between these
and a trinue of the second order, it is doubtful if the former, for special
uses, can ever equal the latter. For a glass of that grade will hold a
magnetic film nearly eight inches in thickness, flattened on the top, quite
as good as a first grade male mirror for seeing all things, and only in-
ferior thereto in not affording a magnetic surface sufficiently extended to
admit of the finer and grander phantoramic displays; and not thick
enough to enable the seer to readily affect distant persons, or to fix the
called-up images or simulacra of distant persons, or the locality of the
absent living or dead. But, for all ordinary purposes, it serves admira-
bly, and, in my judgment, is altogether superior to the celebrated crystal
globe, belonging to Charles Trinius, of San Francisco, California, for
which $3,000 was offered and refused. They are more expensive than the
male-glass more of them are made and imported and they are the kind
; ;
umn to prove the reality of precisely the same thing. For both the prin-
ciples, rationale, methods and results, are identical; namely, spiritual
photography. But, in reality, the man only objected to the one, because
it didn't originate among the faithful of his peculiar household, and com-
mended another form of the same thing, because it did thus originate, and
was backed up by wealthy lawyers, doctors, judges, and moneyed men,
most of whom, judging from their style of argument, possessed more
greenbacks than brains. I and my friends are poor, and can't afford to
g2 INNER VISION.
buy up the proprietors of papers, which, you -see, makes all the difference
in the world; and hence there is a marked contrast in regard to the
claims of wealthy Tweedledee, and impecunious Tweedledum, who are,
after all, precisely right, because exactly on the same ground. Spiritual
and electric photography is, and ever was and will be, true and crystal ;
seership, and mirror visions, and such photography, are one and the same
thing, operated by the same laws and principles, and underlaid and sub-
tended by precisely the same wonderful esoteric chemistry and the only ;
difference, if any, lies in the fact that but few persons can get spiritual
photographs, while a great many can obtain very satisfactory, but eva-
nescent, pictures, by means of a differently sensitized plate, — a fact I have
seen demonstrated hundreds of times, as thousands of others have whom
I never saw, heard, or knew.
The male mirror is superior to either of the others. Its foci are four
inches apart. The basin is over seven inches by five in the clear ovoid, and
of course its field is immense. They are better adapted to professional
use than private experiment, because they are capable of, and frequently
do, exhibit three separate and distinct vivoramas, at one and the same
time, to as many distinct on-lookers. I have often wished I could make
these mirrors ; but that is impossible, as three continents furnish the
•
materials composing them. And even the frames and glasses must be
imported from beyond the seas; as must also the strangely sensitive
concerning which
material wherewith the sympathetic rings are filled;
rings and their brightening, when the future is well,and their strange dark-
ening, when evil impends, or friends fall off, and lovers betray, the quad-
roons of Louisiana, as well as the women of Syria, could tell strangely
thrilling tales. And in consequence of the importance attached to thes'e
rings and mirrors, counterfeits of them have been, in times past, put
forward, albeit the parties who obtained them were themselves to blame,
seeing that but one person — Vilmara — ever imported either to this
country.
III. No mirror or ring must be allowed to be handled much, if at all,
by other than the owner thereof; because such handling mixes the mag-
netisms and destroys their sensitiveness. Others may look into them,
holding by the box in which the frame is kept, but never touching either
frame or glass.
IV. When the glass surface becomes soiled or dusty, it may be cleaned
with fine soap-suds, rinsed well, washed with alcohol, or rubbed with a
little fluoric acid, and then polished with soft velvet or chamois leather.
XII. The proof of the proper focus or position of the glass is when no
image or thing whatever is reflected in it. Change its inclination, or
move the head, till a clear, plain, whitish-black, deep-watery volume is
seen, which be till the magnetism has time to collect. That sur-
will not
face is the magnetic plane of the mirror and in and upon it all things
;
ror, but in reality are not so, but on the upper surface of the magnetic field
above it. That magnetic plane collects there from the eyes of the onlooker.
Persons of a magnetic temperament, —
brunette, dark-eyecl, brown-
skinned, and with dark hair, —
charge it quicker, but no more effectually
than those of the opposite temperament, —
blonde or blondette, who are —
electric in temperament.
XIV. The male is not so easily developed into seership as the female
sex; but become exceedingly powerful and correct when they are so.
Virgins see best next to them are widows.
;
XV. In all cases the boy before puberty, and the girl in her pucilage,
make the quickest and sharpest seers. Their magnetism is pure, unmixed,
unsexed and purity means power in all things magnetic and occult.
;
surer than, if the seer's purpose be evil, it will react upon him or herself
with terrible effect, sooner or later wherefore all are strictly cautioned to
;
possess Power. reach the good ones, the heart must correspond. In
To
many ways will they respond, when invoked with prayerful feelings and ;
they will protect and shield from the bad, — and there are countless hosts
" ,
£4 INNER VISION.
of the bad on the serried confines of the two great worlds, Matter and —
Spirit myriads of grades of them, whereof the puling, phenomenal spirit-
:
ualist never yet has even dreamed. These malign forces are many and
terrible but they can never reach or successfully assault the soul that
;
its careful sealing. So also are extremes of heat and cold injurious to
them, because either will destroy the parabolic-ovoid shape of the glass,
which done, it is thenceforth useless, for it will no longer retain its hold
upon the magnetic effluvium from the eyes, —
the sensitive sheet upon
which its clouds and other marvels are mirrored; but it will roll off like
water from hot iron, and, in the words of Vilmara, " be good never no —
more !
symbolical.
XXV. Ascending clouds or indistinct shadows are affirmative replies to
questions thatmay be asked, — if silently, it makes no difference.
XXVI. Descending clouds are the negations to all such questions.
XXVII. Clouds or shadows moving toward the seer's right hand are
signals from spiritual beings, indicative of their presence and interest.
XXVIII. When they move toward the left hand of the seer, it means
" Done for this time," — the seance is ended for the present.
To conclude I neither import, manufacture, have made, or keep these
:
mirrors and rings. for sale. The small ones are of but little value; the
next size it is almost impossible to procure, although occasionally one can
be obtained. The large, professional, but more expensive and immense-
ly better ones, are much easier to get hold of, but must be handled very
tenderly. When I want either mirrors or rings, for myself or a friend, I
either go to head-quarters and select them personally, or procure the
services of an expert. The members of the FratemiU de la Bosecroix, are
hereby informed that they must procure these things also, at head-quarters,
as I have no time to spend for those who know the true points of the com-
pass ; and all such must travel straight towards the setting sun, and at the end
of the journey the Light will be seen ! I write this, because desirous to
avoid unnecessary correspondence, being fairly deluged with letters on
the subject, very few of which contain a clerk's fee, or even return pos-
INNER VISION. 85
forecasting the future by Plato's Numbers and the Oriental Pfal? The
answer is, Yes, when paid for it; not without. And the fee for replies to the
meaning of any series of seven numbers, simple or compound, chosen at
random from any figures from 1 to 408, is fifty cents each reply. But if
there be seven numbers sent, chosen from between the figures 1 to and
above 408, up to 1000, the fee for replies to any seven such numbers is
seventy-five cents. If chosen from between 1001 and 2000, the fee is one
dollar. If from between 2001 and 3010, the replies often occupy whole
sheets of paper, and the fee is two dollars and fifty cents upward. The
numbers 1 to 408 are simple from 408 to 1000 double from 1000 to 2000
; ;
had but little more to long for in that specific direction. To all, I say,
If you think you have the latent quality, by all means seek to strengthen
and develop it. But if not, then save yourself unnecessary waste of
time and trouble.
P. B. E., Boston, Mass., P. O. Box 3352.
LOVE!
ITS HIDDEN HIS TORY ! !
A BOOK FOR
WOMEN, YOUNG AND OLD; FOB THE LOVING; THE MABBIED,
SINGLE, UNLOVED, HEABT-BEFT PINING ONES;
ESPECIALLY FOR
an's prayer — Love well and marry early — Beauty and Art — The chemistry of love and
beauty — How increase love-power — Aspasia, Diana de Poictiers and the bath of
to
beauty — Peter of Lornbardy, the Rosicrucian, and the of — What was —
elixir life it
Ninon D'ljEnclos, young at ninety years, and how she did — Strange secret of it life-
prolonging! — Vilmara and his mysterious cordial — Curious method of Madame Tallien
for preserving her youth and beauty — The whole art of adornment — Skin, eyes, hair,
teeth — Protozone — This section alone worth the price of ten such
is every bo(Jks to
female in the land, be she old or young contains the whole secret of magnetic
for it
female beauty — The magnetic plate for«nervous ladies — Turkish Harems — how they
;
of the eyes — Very singular, and true — A certain cure dyspepsia, page 100, second
for
part — Whom not to marry — A philosophic caution those who love — The essence of
to
marriage consent — What the Rosicrucians are — The rights of a lover and husband
is
are the same — A and brother's not
lover's — The true rule of divorce — Legislators,
so
take notes of — Heart, not mind, carries sex along with — Marriage not depend-
this it
ent on a ceremony — A fashionable woman's prayer — Prayer of the Girl of the Period
Why some people marry — A Hottentot's picture of heaven — To physicians especially
— An entirely new theory of nervous and methods of cure — Prompt, certain,
diseases,
and complete — Trouble in the love nature the cause of untold sickness — Means
of cure — The use and abuse of amatory passion — Change of nervous centres — Frightful
consequences thereof — Discovery of the philosopher's stone — Magnetic exhaustion,
and the remedy — Voodoo John, of New Orleans, who completely subjugated woman —
!
BOSTON, MASS.
lutely pure, the most perfect nervous invigorant in the world, for
physicians' and druggists' use, in pound flasks, $5 each Phosodtn, ;
$5.00 and $7.00. None of these celebrated agents are in any sense
" Patent Medicines," but a series of well-tested medical agents,
believed to be superior to all others in existence for their peculiar
specialities.
DISEMBODIMENT OF MAN.
The Publishers are happy to announce a new edition of this masterly-
work, — the most thrilling and exhaustive book on the subject ever
printed.
BE VISED, CORRECTED AND ENLARGED.
Price, $2 ; Postage free.
BOSTONT:
RANDOLPH AND COMPANY.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
Why? Is there any God?— Are Souls created here ? — Certain very Important
Questions . . .
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
Analysis of a Human Spirit and Soul— Why it is Proof against Death— Singular
Disclosures about the Parts and Organs of a Spirit — The Sex Question
settled — Coquettes and Dandies in the other Life — Spirits' Dress and
Clothing — The Fashions among Them — Do we carry Deformities with us
there — What they do in Spirit Land — The Soul, and where
? Seat in its is
the Body — Idiots, Thieves, " Stillborns," Cyprians, Maniacs, Insane, Mur-
derers, Ministers, Suicides, when in the Spirit World — Monstrosities — Why
Human Beings resemble Beasts — A Curious Revelation — Some Stillborns
Immortal — Others not — Why — " Justification " of Suicide — Consequences
?
V
—
$5.00 and $7.00. None of these celebrated agents are in any sense
"Patent Medicines," but a series of well-tested medical agents,
believed to be superior to all others in existence for their peculiar
specialities.
DISEMBODIMENT OF MAN.
The Publishers are happy to announce a new edition of this masterly-
work, — the most thrilling and exhaustive book on the subject ever
printed.
REVISED, CORRECTED AND ENLARGED.
Price, $2 Postage free.
;
BOSTON:
RANDOLPH AND COMPANY.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
Why? Is there any God? — Are Souls created here ? — Certain very Important
Questions , . . , . G
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
Analysis of a Human Spirit and Soul— Why it is Proof against Death— Singular
Disclosures about the Parts and Organs of a Spirit — The Sex Question
settled — Coquettes and Dandies in the other Life — Spirits' Dress and
Clothing — The Fashions among Them — Do we carry Deformities with us
there — What they do in Spirit Land — The Soul, and where
? Seat in its is
the Body — Idiots, Thieves, " StiUborns," Cyprians, Maniacs, Insane, Mur-
derers, Ministers, Suicides, when in the Spirit World — Monstrosities — Why
Human Beings resemble Beasts — A Curious Revelation — Some StiUborns
Immortal — Others not — Why — " Justification " of Suicide — Consequences
?
V
VI CONTENTS.
CHAPTEE V.
PAGK
Are Animals Immortal ? — The
Absorption-into-God Question Settled Phan- —
tomosophy —AWonderful Spirit Power —
Its Rationale Kationale of —
Delirium Tremens —A
Singular Fact —
How Thoughts are Read The —
Explanation of Memory —A
New Revelation Genius —
New Faculty— —A
Animals of the Spiritual World 70
CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VIII.
CHAPTER IX.
The Heaven of Savages —First Grand Division of the Spirit Land — Music up
there, and how made —
Houses, Towns, Cities, in the Upper World How —
Built, and of what Material — Breath up There —
The Female Thermometer
— Curious, but True — A Wonderful Spiritual Fact — Jewels there — Schools
in Heaven 118
-
CONTENTS. VII
CHAPTER X.
PAGE
The Question of Sex and Passion in Spirit Life —
An Astounding Disclosure
Thereanent —Are Children Born in the Upper Land ? —
New and Strange
Uses for the Human Organs when we are Dead —
The Philosophy of Con-
tact— Curious —
Still more so —
Loves of the Angels 132
CHAPTER XI.
Certain Organic Functions in the Spirit World — Eating, etc., there — Analysis
of a Spirit — Its Bones, Organs, etc.— The Actual Existence of the Trees
of Life and Knowledge —
Heaven as seen May 22, 1866 Institutions, —
Employments, and Pleasures of the Upper Land —
Description of the People •
there dead 10,000 years ago 141
CHAPTER XII.
CHAPTER XIII.
Why "Eternal Affinity" is not true — Effect of a Bad Marriage on the Victim,
after Death — How Souls are Incarnated — Why Souls Differ — The Second
Grand Division of the Spirit Land — Seas, Ports, Vessels, Sailors, in Spirit
Land— Hunting Scenes there — The Presbyterian Heaven . , 169
CHAPTER XIV.
Sectarian Heaven, and the Strange Discussions there —
The Mahometan Heaveu
— The Third Grand Division of Spirit Land —
Sanitoria —
Hospitals for the
Sick, and who they are —
The Wonderful Herb, Nommoc-Esnes Its Uses — —
The Fourth Grand Division of Spirit Land - The " Spheres" The Heaven —
of Half-Men —
Fifth Division 174
CHAPTER XV.
Origin of the SpiritWorld —
The first two Spirits —
The Terrific Impending
Danger of the Destruction of this Earth —
A Fearful and Actually Exist-
ing Possibility —
An Approaching Change in the Earth's Axis — A New
Planet near the Sun —
A New King about being thrown off from it, and
the Formation of other Planets by Cometic Condensation Uprising of —
a New Continent —
Destruction of the Asteroids —
Gold Hills How the —
First Spirits discovered the Spiritual Land and went to it The Rev. —
Charles Hall's Arrival in Spirit Land —
His Surprise The Earth a —
Living Organism
VIII CONTENTS.
CHAPTER XVI.
PAGE
The Sixth Grand Division of Spirit Land — Things Taught there — The Origin of
all Matter — The Lost Pleiad Found —A Lightless Sun — The Law of Period-
icity— Soul-storms — Credo — A New Revelation of a most astounding Char-
acter — The Seventh Grand Division of Morning Land — Its Superlative
Glories — Will Man lose his Identity in the Godhead — A Mournful, yet
?
CHAPTER XVII.
APPENDIX.
Part II. A. — Discoveries — The Grand Secret of Life 227
Part II. B. — New Discoveries — Things Worth Knowing
Part II. C. — New Discoveries — Things Worth Knowing .....
. . • • • 245
257
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