Heavenly Bridegrooms (1918)/May 1917
HEAVENLY BRIDEGROOMS[1]
By Theodore Schroeder
and Ida C.
"The Sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all that they chose."
Genesis 6:2.
The Mohammedan Idea of the Evil Church Yard Lilith Crops Up in Ireland
THE ancient Churchyard of Truagh, county Monaghan, is said to be haunted by an evil spirit, whose appearance generally forebodes death. The legend runs, writes Lady Wilde (Ancient Cures, Charms and Usages of Ireland, p. 84), "that at funerals the spirit watches for the person who remains last in the graveyard. If it be a young man who is there alone, the spirit takes the form of a beautiful young girl, inspires him with ardent passion, and exacts from him a promise that he will meet her that day month in the churchyard. The promise is then sealed by a kiss, which sends a fatal fire through his veins, so that he is unable to resist her caresses, and makes the promise required. Then she disappears, and the young man proceeds homewards; but no sooner has he passed the boundary wall of the churchyard than the whole story of the evil rushes on his mind, and he knows that he has sold himself, soul and body, for a demon's kiss. Then terror and dismay take hold of him, till despair becomes insanity, and on the very day month fixed for the meeting with the demon bride the victim dies the death of a raving lunatic, and is laid in the fatal graveyard of Truagh." (T. F. Thiselton Dyer's "The Ghost World", 344–345.)
In Capt. Richard F. Burton's translation of the Arabian Nights occurs a story of a female desert-monster, called Ghulah, who devours human flesh. Captain Burton, in a footnote, remarks:
"The Ghulah (fern, of Ghul) is the Hebrew Lilith or Lilis; the classical Lamia; the Hindu Yogini and Dakini; the Chaldean Utug and Gigim (desert-demons) as opposed to the Mas (hill-demon) and Telal (who steal into towns); the Ogress of our tales and the Bala yaga (Granny-witch) of Russian folklore. Etymologically 'Ghul' is a calamity, a panic fear; and the monster is evidently the embodied horror of the grave and the graveyard."
In its more usual spelling of "Ghoul," this graveyard monster will probably be familiar to most readers.
"The female Ghul * * * * appears to men in the deserts, in various forms, converses with them, and sometimes prostitutes herself to them * * * *
Here we see the (l) spirit bride, degraded to the level of a harlot, (2) vague and unreasoning terror, (3) loathing and horror of the spirits of the deceased all meeting under one name. So far has Lilith, the Borderland bride, fallen from her rightful estate by reason of the befogged imaginations of mankind.
"The Shiqq is another demoniacal creature, having the form of a half human being (like a man divided longitudinally) and it is believed that the Nasnas is the offspring of a Shiqq and a human being * * * * The Nasnas is described as having half a head, half a body, one arm, and one leg, with which it hops with much agility." (A Dictionary of Islam [article Genii] by Thos. Patrick Hughes.)
This is another form of the giant progeny of Borderland unions a form so fantastic as to show that its origin is a subjective hallucination, and not an objective reality. In other words, the Mohammedan, Shiqq and Nasnas are both of them probably the subliminal invention of some imperfect earthly psychic in the centuries agone, who broke the Borderland law in his or her relations with a spirit bride, or a spirit husband and who was grossly misled, in consequence, by his or her own subliminal self. That others since then claim from time to time to see these fantastic creatures does not prove that they exist In psychical matters nothing is more common than for people to see ghosts at a given time and place when their imaginations have been worked up to the expectation of seeing one then and there, of a certain predetermined type.
The Mohammedan Paradise as well as its Borderland recognizes love between the sexes. And in this it differs from the Christian Paradise as popularly conceived although as I have elsewhere shown, the statement by Jesus that we shall be after death, as regards marrying, like "the angels in heaven," when taken in connection with the next in Genesis about the sons of God who wedded earthly women, shows pretty conclusively that the Christian Scriptures admit the existence of sex and marriage in the world beyond the grave. Nevertheless, the Church has chosen to flatly contradict the teaching of both the Old and the New Testament in this, with the result of blinding Christians utterly to these potent Scriptural truths. Mohammed, on the other hand, was sufficient of a seer to venture on restoring the ancient doctrine.
Heaven, as is well known, abounds in love-making, beautiful women called Houris attending upon the risen soul of the male Mohammedan as he reclines at feast. It is true that apologists have suggested a figurative sense in which the accounts of Mohammed's Paradise are to be taken.
On the contrary, it is not at all remarkable. It was precisely because Mohammed was at that time living a fairly well ordered and self-controlled life, that he was enabled to learn sufficient of the world beyond the grave to assert that love between the sexes survives death and is one of the potent factors in social life there, as here. It is true that, being an Oriental, his "revelations' ' would inevitably conform to his cast of mind, so that the glitter and luxurious abandon of a feast presided over by Houris might seem to him the acme of ideal bliss. But beneath and permeating all this voluptuous imagining breathes the mighty truth of sex-love in Paradise.
That love which mutually strengthens and mutually uplifts as no other love in all the world can strengthen and uplift. I take it is the chief reason for its existence the propagation of the species being of necessity incidental, therefore, secondary. But there is, also, a third reason which, unfortunately, is known to but few. Nor is it likely to be understood as it should be. The third reason for the marital union is that for those who are worthy, it is whether on the Borderland or the earthly plane, the surest and safest method of seeking union with the Divine Heart of the Universe and becoming one with all God's world. Only in giving joyful thanks to God, indeed, should that relation ever be entered upon. This, not only because it is fitting to give thanks to God, but because it is beautiful at that time, and because only those who have experienced the bliss of taking God into the marital partnership in its most intimate relation can be said either to be truly wedded or to truly realize what it is to love God and be in return beloved by Him. This applies in earthly as well as Borderland wedlock.
Trite and commonplace as may seem this suggestion to give thanks to God in this relation and share one's joy with Him, it nevertheless appears to be the inner, sacred truth of all religions on their esoteric side, and of all mysticisms and forms of occult teaching, the world over a truth which has been jealously hidden away from the masses. It has been concealed for several reasons, probably.
First, it is not a matter to be attained at once, but requires systematic and careful training in self-control. And some degree of intellectual and spiritual insight is necessary to rate this training at its just value, as well as to respect the sacredness of the idea which underlies it. There are three degrees to be passed in this training, of which I will speak later on.
Second, inasmuch as it enhances, instead of extinguishing, connubial pleasure, while at the same time it puts the begetting of children absolutely under the control of parents, and this, without violation of either civil or natural laws, its initiates evidently feared lest it be turned to base uses by the unscrupulous and licentious. A needless fear, this, however; as to the libertine, the game will never seem worth the candle; while, should he persevere in the training so as to become an adept in the third and last degree, he will he no longer a libertine.
Third. There is a belief among some occultists that an earnest wish breathed at that time, when husband and wife are one, it will not fail to be granted. This opens, it is said, the door to those who practice what is called %lack magic," and enables them to work harm upon other human beings. What foundation there is for this belief as applied to the magicians I do not see. If it really be that a wish is granted then more readily than when the seeker is in any other mood, it is probably because the occultist who attains the second degree has to exercise such supreme self-control at that moment that he is complete master of his sub-consciousness, and if he has attained the third degree he is in rapport with Spirit throughout the universe, so that his desire is granted because he desires only what is in harmony with Good and Right. That a black magician should be able at such a moment to enter upon harmonious relations with the universe by breathing a curse, seems to me very unlikely. I am of the opinion that this belief is due to the mistaken idea that correct living and clear thinking are unnecessary to establish lines of accurate communication with the unseen world. And, because occultists have usually assumed the nearness of a world of devils, rather than of a world of angels, and because they have assumed that depravity and prejudice offer no bar to communication with the unseen, whether good or evil, it was a most natural conclusion that it would be dangerous to entrust the secret of the third degree to a "black magician." But, so long as a man is a black magician, he will fail to enter upon the third degree. This last degree is, I am firmly convinced, impossible, whether in earthly or Borderland wedlock, for either man or woman who does not live a pure life in self-control and aspiration to the Divine. And the occultist who seeks to attain to the third degree must first become a white magician.
Nevertheless, as I have said, the initiates in the third degree have guarded this secret most jealously, and apparently for the reasons I have assigned.
The first and second degree, however, seem to have been taught publicity in symbolic rites such as for instance in that much misunderstood dance at the Columbian Exposition the Danse du Ventre. It was noticeable that the Oriental men, one and all, viewed that dance with serious and at times reverant gaze. This fact was brought to my notice by two ladies (school teachers) who knew absolutely nothing of the Sex Worship symbolism of the dance, but who had concluded, simply from thoughtful observation, that there must be some religious and pure-minded motif back of it all. Nevertheless, most Americans and Europeans, whether men or women, failed to penetrate beneath the surface of this markedly symbolic dance, owing to the occidental habit of thought which sees naught but impurity in the most important and sacred function of our nature. In Oriental countries, however, despite their being "heathen" sex is looked on as holy; in this connection, our phrase, "Give God the glory," takes on itself a vaster significance than is ever taught from our pulpits.
It is no wonder, then, the Oriental occultists should have penetrated at an early date to the underlying principles of marital relations on the Borderland. From their lifelong habits of thought, they viewed sex as simply and naturally as we should view the circulation of our own blood as a curious phenomenon of absorbing personal interest. With no false shame to overcome, they were fitted to receive the higher truths concerning this subject, whereas our Occidental mediums, for the most part, receive words of impurity or are misled into a loose life. The difference is due to the exact antipodal standpoints of Occidental and Oriental psychics on the subject of the holiness of sex.
I have said that the initiates of the third degree seem to have made this the inner secret of their mysteries, the world over and, that they have always jealously guarded this secret from the masses I am inclined to think that in the beginning it may not have been so, but that this jealous care may have been the result of a bitter lesson learned of the unwisdom of throwing pearls before swine, not because the swine turn and rend one for the earnest teacher of truth never gives his own danger a second thought but because the swine are too apt to soil the pearls by trampling them in the mire.
If it be asked in amazement, how this teaching of "Giving God the Glory" and sharing with Him the supreme joy of the marital relation could become so degraded by swinish human beings as to cause its teachers to withhold it in future from the masses, I answer:
By turning it into a commercial transaction with God.
The piggish, greedy man, learning by hearsay of the connubial bliss attending the Triune partnership with God, pressed eagerly forward with one thought uppermost: "I will pay God cash down for so much of my pleasure, and I mean to drive a close bargain with him."
The voluptuary, seeking to enhance his physical sensations, likewise pressed forward, saying to himself in an outburst of generosity: "God shall receive from me every whit as much as He gives me."
The sentimental, but selfish mystic, ever yearning for a new subjective experience, likewise pressed forward, thinking, "I shall get acquainted with God on intimate terms by dividing up my pleasure with Him."
Be not deceived: God is not mocked: Whatsoever a man soweth he shall reap. And each of these types failed to get what they expected in pleasure, because it cannot be secured by any means but by love.
Now, these would-be initiates not only failed (to get so much physical pleasure for so much tithing paid over to Him), but they tempted by that very failure to enter upon what we may call (to put it euphemistically) a bargain.
The nervous system had been wrought to too high a pitch not to insist upon a purchase in some market if not in God's market, then in the Devil's. Hence, I fancy too often abnormal vices and abominations of ancient Sodom and Gomorrah of the Orient today and the Roman Empire, when Christianity first turned its purifying (though salty) current through the Augean stables of latter-day sex-worship. For this the initiates who held the whole truth, among other reasons no doubt, usually shrank from revealing even glimpses of it to any one who had not passed a long probation. According to the Talmud, the ancient Hebrews had three names to express the idea of God, the first of which was interdicted to the great number. Sages taught it once a week to their sons and their disciples. The second was at first taught to everybody. "But," said Maimonides "when the number of the ungodly had increased, it was intrusted only to the most discreet among the priests, and they repeated it in a low tone to their brethren, while the people were receiving the benediction." The third name for God "contained", says Jacolliot, "the great secret of the universal soul, and stood for, if we may so express it, the highest degree of initiation." Regarding this last, Maimonides says:
"It was only taught to a man of recognized discretion, of mature age, not addicted to anger or intemperance, a stranger to vanity, and gentle and pleasant to all with whom he was brought in contact."
"'Whoever,' says the Talmud, 'has been made acquainted with this secret and vigilantly keeps it in a pure heart, may reckon upon the love of God and the favor of men; his name inspires respect; his knowledge is in no danger of being forgotten, and he is the heir to two worlds, that in which we live and the world to come.'" (Franck's "La Kabbale.")
All of which applies to the earthly partner of a celestial bride or bridegroom, when the laws of correct living and clear thinking are obeyed. Those who know this secret and vigilantly keep it in a pure heart are indeed the heir of both worlds, for they dwell upon the Borderland, harmoniously adapting their lives to both planes of existence and, being at one with God, they can each say, "If God be for me, who can be against me?" Nor is the reward for making a proper use of this Great Secret confined to Borderland wedlock; its Kingdom may come on the earthly plane itsell to worthy neophytes.
It was probably to keep the knowledge of this secret from the unworthy, that the ancient mysteries of Isis and of Eleusis were designed. For this purpose, also, the sacred scriptures of all religions not excepting the Hebrew and the Christian seem to have introduced stories and aphorisms which should convey one meaning to an outsider, and quite another to an initiate.
"Woe to the man, who looks upon the law as a simple record of events expressed in ordinary language, for, if really that is all it contains, we can frame a law much more worthy of admiration. If we are to regard the ordinary meaning of the words, we need only turn to human laws and we shall often meet with a greater degree of elevation * * * * Every word of the law contains a deep and sublime mystery."
(A. Franck's "La Kabbale.")
"If the law were composed of words alone, such as the words of Esau, Hagar, Laban, and others, or those which were uttered by Balaam's ass or by Balaam himself, then why should it be called the law of truth, the perfect law, the faithful witness of God himself? Why should the sages esteem it as more valuable than gold or precious stones?
"But every word contains a higher meaning; every test reaches something besides the events which it seems to describe. This superior law is the more sacred, it is the real law." (Jewish Cabalists, quoted by Jacolliot Oc. Sci.) The following occurs in the Book of the Pitris (Pitris, according to Jacolliot, is the name applied in India to the spirits of the dead) with whom communication has long been held, after the fashion of modern Spiritualism, and with the same attendant phenomena.
"The sacred scriptures ought not to be taken in their apparent meaning, as in the case of ordinary books. Of what use would it be to forbid their revelation to the profane if their secret meaning were contained in the literal sense of the language usually employed?
"As the soul is contained in the body, "As the almond is hidden by the envelope.
"As the sun is veiled by clouds,
"As the garments hide the body from view,
"As the egg is contained in the shell,
"And as the germ rests within the interior of the seed,
"So the sacred law has its body, its envelope, its cloud, its garment, its shell, which hide it from the knowledge of the world. * * * *
"You who, in your pride, would read the sacred scriptures without the Guru's assistance, do you even know by what letter of a word you ought to begin to read them do you know the secret of the combination by twos and threes do you know when the final letter becomes an initial and the initial becomes final?
"Woe to him who would penetrate the real meaning of things before his head is white and he needs a cane to guide his steps." (Quoted by Jacolliot Oc. in India.)
The closing paragraph becomes significant, when we reflect upon the danger which the initiates feared would accrue to those still in the heyday of manhood's passions, if they proved unworthy of the Great Secret. The expression "The secret of the combination by twos and threes" has probably a double meaning here the esoteric meaning turning upon the two kinds of marital partnership; known to the initiates; husband and wife being the "combination by two" (in the second degree); and husband, wife and God, three in one, a sacred trinity in unity, being the "combination by three" (in the third and highest degree), and they who have once realized the blessedness of this triune partnership, will move heaven and earth to make it renewable at will so much sweeter and more helpful in every way is it than the mere "combination by two."
Now, because sex is distinctly emotional in its manifestations, there is always a tendency, with failure to reach the highest, to allow the emotions to slump down, as it were, to a lower level. Few natures are so supremely self -controlled as to say, at a critical moment, "the highest or nothing. I will wait for that! And so, the types I have mentioned above as failure, the piggish man. the voluptuary and the sentimental, selfish mystic when, because of the delicate balance required of the initiate who would enter on the third degree, they slipped off their pivot, fell quite outside the circle of what is lawful, sure and normal, to chaotic, unlawful and horribly vile. From this, dates much of the black magic. And this was the controlling subjective influence which made witchcraft a very real, objective terror to the victims of the witches during the Middle Ages. There is little doubt that many of the witches did practice a sorcery of the most diabolical type a sorcery based upon the principles of hypnotic suggestion, and of the willful projection of the astral or double; a sorcery, whose object was to cause evil, and which did cause evil in many cases where the victims were not protected from occult mischiefworking by living pure and upright lives; a sorcery, finally, whose impelling motive was due to insane hallucinations resulting in a very large number of cases from having violated the laws of right living in sex relations on the Borderland. It is probable that many of these witches passed the second degree, while few, if any, gained the third the inner degree where aspiration in mingled purity and passion to union with God is chief factor. Some of the attributes of a witch (we need not enumerate them all: the literature of the subject is voluminous) were: 1st, that she sustained or was supposed to sustain occult sex relations with the Prince of the Powers of the Air, Yclept the Devil.
2. That she received on some part of her body a devil's mark or stigma, which was his seal of authority over her and which seems to have been hypnotically rendered insensible to pain. There were men, who did a business in discovering witches by pricking a suspected woman's body all over with a pin until they found some place insensible to the pain of the prick, when they would triumphantly announce this to be the "Devil's Mark;"
3. That the Devil or one of his imps at times visited her in the guise of some animal a dog, a cat, even a huge butterfly, to suck some part of her body, and that, whatever the part of her body chosen, it and no other spot was always resorted to by the impish creature thereafter Sometimes witnesses testify to seeing these animals familiar as in the case of a witch ill in bed who was being closely watched. The witness, who was on guard testified with much detail of circumstance, to having seen a huge "fly," like a miller, which buzzed in among the hair of the sick woman and after a while flew away, when the witch called to the witness to lift up her hair, that she might show a sore place on the scalp which she said, was where the Devil, in the form of a fly, was wont to suck her.
4. That she could work harm to people .at a distance by what appears to have been hypnotic suggestion and that she usually was wickedly and viciously inclined to do this, at will.
5. That she could appear in what seems to have been her double, or astral form, to her victims.
Now, regarding this last, the extremely critical and level-headed Society for Psychical Research have collected some three thousand cases of apparitions of living doubles at the present day, all of them well attested by witnesses. Most of these apparitions (some of which were so like real flesh and blood as to be taken for the person himself) according to the Society's records, were spontaneous, only a few being deliberately self-induced a fact which indicates that the projection of the double is probably a normal power and that it ought to be, therefore, not so very difficult for an illiterate old woman to acquire. A few apparitions of doubles seem to be due mostly to one of the following causes:
1. Violent shock, as a runaway accident, danger of drowning.
2. A state of health indicative of approaching death, so that the astral form t (is this the soul, the body of the immortal spirit?) seems already poised for flight.
3. The moment of separation of soul and body, especially if caused by drowning, suffocation, contusion on the head, wounds received in battle, etc.
4. Falling into "a brown study": gazing fixedly at an object in an abstracted way (self-hypnotization); listening abstractedly to a continuous and monotonous sound.
5. Falling asleep with an earnest desire fixed in one's mind to visit such or such a person or place.
Any of these may be induced accidentally and, so far as we know, without the conscious will of the ego.
6. Deliberately willing, under some of the above circumstances, to have one's double appear at such and such a place. This act may or may not include according to the extent of the psychic's training an after memory of the event.
From the above it will be seen that the apparition of the double, whether spontaneously or deliberately induced, seems to be brought about by a sudden focusing of mental force. I am inclined to think that some of the surest vouchers for the material objective substantiality of the world beyond the grave will be found among the phenomena attending the appearance of the double; inasmuch as the double, when most clearly manifesting, comforts itself like an earthly being, with earthly necessities, and if this double be, as appears, identical with the soul-body which quits our mortal frame at death, we have only to collate and compare instances of the earthly double, and acquire the art of projecting our own double intelligently and without loss of memory while in earth-life, and we shall know beyond all doubt what its habits of ..thought, its appetites and necessities are likely to be beyond the grave.
In the witchcraft days, what is called repercussion was a common phenomenon. That is, the witch who appeared in astral form to her victims, if wounded with a knife, might be afterwards found to have sustained a similar wound in her physical body. This carries out the idea of the Theosophists and other occultists, that thought has power over matter, and that our physical frame is in reality moulded by the spirit and soul which inhabit it. Col. Olcott gives an interesting account of repercussion in his own case.
Instances are not wanting where fthe .'earthly double has shown that its sex capacity remains apparently unaffected by temporary separation from the body. The following case, though probably founded on the falsehood of a clever woman (S. V. Fécondité), shows with what serious respect the phenomenon of the double was viewed some three hundred and fifty years ago.
In the "Dictionaire Infernal," there is a report of a trial before the Parliament of Grenoble, in which the question was, whether a certain infant could be declared legitimate which was born after the husband had been absent from his wife four years. The wife asserted that the baby was the offspring of a dream, in which she had a vivid idea that her wandering spouse had returned to love and duty. Midwives and physicians were consulted, and reported on the subject. As a result, the Parliament ordained that the infant should be adjudged legitimate, and its mother should be regarded as a true and honourable wife. The judgment bears date 13th of February, 1537. (Inmen's "Ancient Faiths and Modern," p. 285, footnote.)
The following incident was told to me by a gentleman who had heard it from the lips of one of the parties. For obvious reasons, I suppress localities:
"A gentleman who was intensely dark, of a Spanish type, was in love with a girl of the true blonde type. They never married but later on she married someone else and moved to another part of the country. One night this gentleman had a very vivid dream, in which he fancied himself to be her husband. So real seemed the experience that he could scarcely convince himself on waking, that he had not actually just come from her presence. Several years later, he happened to be in that part of the country, and bethought himself of hunting up his former ladylove. He found her husband to be a decided blonde, like herself. A little child, a decided brunette, ran up to him, exclaiming joyfully, "Papa, Papa!" "Well!" laughed the host, "I am glad that she has found someone to call "Papa", for she steadfastly refuses to recognize me as such." Whereupon the lady appropriately fainted. The visitor learned afterwards by making inquiries of her, that she had had a dream similar to his at the same time, and just nine months previous to the birth of the child."
Was this a case of repercussion? Did his double meet her double (but not her physical self) on the astral plane and was that thought-world more powerful in moulding her child than was her physical environment as a wife? Or was it merely a telepathic impression conveyed from his mind to hers with sufficient vividness to "mark" the child? I may here remark, that I do not consider the theory that he was the physical father of the child, as it seems to me that that would be a violation of the natural laws of Borderland. Nevertheless, if he really was the physical father, the stories would only be in keeping with the stories of the giant progeny from angelic fathers, and the stories of women confined in high towers and yet becoming pregnant by a celestial visitor. In the case of Danae, her visitor materialized as a shower of gold—quite after the fashion of modern apparitions of spiritualistic seances where the spirits often materialize as floating masses of radiant mist. At recent seances, too, trained scientific observers have perceived the medium's double (I now speak of mediums who are not fraudulent and who are willing to submit to experimental tests) partially or wholly dissociated from the medium's physical self. Col. Olcott gives an interesting account of his double oozing through the walls of Mrs. Blavatsky's room on its way to the sitting-room to add three words to a MS. on which he had been busily writing just before retiring. Both the earthly double and the celestial spirit appear to possess this faculty of oozing through blank walls. May they not be one and the same? In that case, we see how easy it may be to confound spirit bridegrooms from the world beyond the grave (who cannot beget children on the Borderland because this would be a violation of natural law), and astral doubles of earthly lovers who can stimulate the begetting of children upon the astral double of an earthly woman so vividly as to mark the child of her lawful husband and herself with the likeness of the astral lover.
At this point it may be objected that such information as I am here giving should not be spread broadcast, lest unscrupulous libertines take advantage of this power of projecting the double to get innocent girls into their power, since high towers and bolted doors appear to offer no barrier to the double's entrance. It is precisely for this reason that this information should be widely circulated, in order that these possibilities may be made known to the general public and guarded against. The present flood of Theosophic and other popular occult literature as well as the published records of the S. P. R. have already placed the knowledge of this power within the reach of the libertine, if he chooses to avail himself of it. When he can have this for the asking, it is high time that the general public know something of it also, as well as of the fact that correct living and clear thinking will always protect us from evil induced by occult means. It is an interesting question, however, as to whether children could really be begotten by a double upon a virgin, or, as in the case tried before the Grenoble parliament upon a married woman whose husband is away; I am inclined to think not, since the double is for the time being on a different plane of matter from the physical body of the woman, being, in fact, in the same world as it will be after death; so that it must obey the law of the Borderland quite as much as if it were an angelic bridegroom, which it to sow no seed, inasmuch as no harvest can be reaped therefrom. But in this case, what becomes of the scientific basis of such stories as Danae and other virgins who become the mothers of children by a Borderland lover whether earthly double or heavenly angel? There is but one way so far as I see, by which a Borderland bridegroom could beget a child by an earthly woman. The woman must live each moment in strict obedience to the laws of her earthlife and also of his heavenly life. She must be capable of appreciating the intellectual thought of his advanced world. She must understand and live in accordance with the higher code of ethics current in his realm. She must neglect no earthly duty; she must be conversant with the intellectual thought- world of her earthly associates; she must not crush out a single instinct of her nature but properly use every physical appetite and passion to round out a symmetrical earthly life. When emergencies arise on either the earthly plane or on the Borderland, she must never make a mistake, for to do so, will cause the lines of communication to waver and presently to part. In short, her life, judged not only by the highest earthly standing but by the more advanced standard in the world beyond the grave, must be absolutely perfect, if she is to conceive, gestate for nine long months and give birth to a child begotten by a Borderland father, that is, she must be psychically on the same plane with him, and at the same time fulfill the laws of both planes and that without a single break. Only thus were the laws on the Borderland obeyed.
The Roman Catholic Church in its dogma of The Immaculate Conception, claims perfection for the blessed Virgin Mary. In so doing, it shows its wisdom. Though I am by no means a Romanist, I emphatically say, that from the occult standpoint, the immaculate life of Mary for a long period prior to the Annunciation and until at least the birth of Jesus, is the only foundation upon which the possibility of the mysterious conception of Jesus as a Borderland child can rest. Having once attained this high plane, it is unlikely that she would ever descend to a lower plane afterward: so that, accurately speaking, the Roman Catholic doctrine of her immaculate life must have been absolutely perfect on all points, or she could not have conceived a child by the spirit of God; for God does not break his own laws. Nor is it likely that the heavenly bridegroom would break his laws in order to beget a child upon an earthly woman provided that woman were suitably trained for sometime for the occult espousal, and provided that God has a tangible form, as He appeared to Moses to have when he had Moses remain in the cleft of a rock while he passed by. (Exodus XXXIII, 21, 23.) This is the strength of the one Catholic doctrine concerning Mary's stainlessness of life; and from the Apocryphal Gospels, it appears that Mary had had the advantage of being brought up as an orphan in the temple under the eyes of the priests. It was customary for her to see and talk with angels and to receive food from them before her espousal to Joseph. My own idea of it, however, is that such a conception if conception there were would require Mary's mentality to rise not only to the standard of an angel but to the omniscience and all pervading tenderness of God, in order for her to be so thoroughly his spouse on the Borderland as to conceive and bear a child to him * * * * On the other hand, it is interesting to note in connection with this, the record in the Apocryphal Gospels as to the appearance of an angel visitor to Mary in the guise of a handsome youth, and the opinion expressed to Joseph by the virgins left in charge of her during Joseph's absence, that it was the angel who had made her pregnant.
Perhaps when we come into harmonious rapport with the mystical theory, popularized by the school of divine science and other mystics, that each one of us is a part of the universal mind, and that that mind may know all things in the universe we might allow even this on the Borderland. However, the Roman Catholic Church has seemingly provided for the high standard of mentality required from a spouse of Divine Science on the Borderland by ascribing to Mary not only the name, but the attributes of "Mother of God."
In "The perfect way, or the Finding of Christ," written by Anna Kingsford and Edward Maitland, occurs a remark about "the notion far from uncommon, that by abjuring the ordinary marriage relation, and devoting herself wholly to her astral associate, a woman may, in the most literal sense become an immaculate mother of Christs." It is needless to add that the authors deprecate this, but their remarks show their total misapprehension of Borderland sex-relations, since it is only between husband and wife that those relations can exist objectively, all else is but subjective illusion. And, therefore, the command of Mary's Heavenly Bridegroom that Joseph was not to approach her as a husband until after the birth of the mysteriously begotten child would be strictly in keeping with Borderland laws, because it is the highest ideal of both worlds.
The mediaeval witch, as well as the Blessed Virgin, had her chance of Borderland nuptials on a high plane; but, unlike Mary, she failed to pass those ordeals which require correct living and clear thinking on the part of the earthly psychic. In the first place, the witch (poor woman) lived in days when the physiological relations of husband and wife occupied a far lower place in popular estimation than it did in the days of Mary, and moreover, in the Orient, Mary's home, the relation of husband and wife had then and still has, a holiness on its physiological side which is foreign to European or American habits of thought. When the peculiar psychical experiences of the witch set in, therefore, she naturally jumped to the conclusion that, first they were sinful; second, that, being sinful, they were the work of Satan. These assumptions were a departure from clear, unprejudiced thinking, and from that moment began her diabolical illusions, and she saw monsters, hobnobbed with imps, was lashed by scorpions, etc., etc., to the full extent of her willingness to receive these illusions as objective realities. The poor creatures indeed, had not our advantages in the perusal of records of hypnotism and of the Society for Psychical Research, and would have been sadly puzzled to draw the line between subjective illusion and objective materialization. Nevertheless, her angel lover was with her when she thought him the Devil. He comforted her in her poverty and loneliness (many of these witches, remember, were old women, whose lives had been the bare, dreary, lives of the terrible poor) and he promised her such influence among her neighbors as she longed for most. This was an ordeal, had she but known it, which, if passed successfully, would have brought her a higher and sweeter pleasure. Some there were, here and there, who seem to have chosen the better part, and to have become "white witches," capable of clairvoyance, of healing human beings and cattle of strange diseases, forecasting the future and the like. But usually, these poor old women had been so embittered against selfish or heedless neighbors, that the influence they longed for most was to pay back their wrongs (real or supposed) with interest. Here again, they broke the occult law which calls for correct living on the part of the psychic, and trod the downward path of hatred and diabolism. In many cases, no doubt the psychical experiences of a witch started from this fierce desire to be revenged upon those who had slighted her. She probably began with some simple form of self-hypnotization imparted to her by a neighbor who had already acquired some proficiency in the art. Once she had accomplished this, the astral world lay open wide before her with all its illusions or all its realities, according to how she proved worthy of one or the other. Sometimes, no doubt, she struggled upward to benevolent thoughts and prayers for help in resisting temptation and was accordingly rewarded with true occult power and with union with her angelic mate who was both her husband and her guardian. That she thought him the Devil, partially interfered with the physical strengthening and psychical happiness which that union brought; while he, on his part, kept steady watch over her infirmities, always ready to help the slightest impulse of her spirit to rise to higher things, seeing as only angels see, beneath that misshapen earthly body, the soul, the astral body, which, despite the temporary disfigurements caused by evil thoughts, is ever young and fair, and waiting patiently throughout her poor, stumbling, sinful life, as only a man who truly loves a wife can wait, for the time when she will live down her mistakes, and see as clearly as himself.
If it be objected that this occult wedlock with an angel whom she ignorantly mistook for a Devil, brought her misfortune, I answer: Not unless she broke the law of correct living by trying to turn her occult powers to base purposes, or failed to keep clear-headed.
But in that case?
In that case, also, her guardian angel took her through the deep waters and along the rugged, toilsome mountain path for her evolution, that she might be made perfect through suffering. Are we not all convinced that that is what God means by putting us, who are not witches, in a world where each of us has to wrestle with adverse circumstances in betterness of spirit? In our inmost being we recognize God's wisdom in our being taken through sorrows, temptations and conflicts, for thus only can we grow strong and rise to our full stature as made in His likeness. And to the witch, Heaven was no less merciful than to us, in that it forced ordeals upon her which, when she passed them, brought her happiness, but which, when she failed to pass them, brought her suffering.
It is noticeable that most of the witches who came to grief, and who confessed to intercourse with the Devil, referred to certain ceremonies customary at each "Sabbath" although records of witchcraft point rather to subjective illusion of performing abominable rites, which symbolized abnormal vices. For details, the reader may refer to almost any work on witchcraft. He will there see, that with all the fuss made by the judges and persecutors about this intercourse with Satan, there was very little of real impurity, and what there was, seems to have been entirely subjective the illusion of an insane imagining. In short, the witch, as well as other brides of angelic lovers, was evidently far from impure-minded by nature at the start, and this, too, in an age of vulgar expressions, coarse ideas and from which even the genius of a Shakspeare did not escape without contamination. Yet these women were mostly illiterate and miserably poor. It is probable that their poverty, however, had been their educator in ascetic deprivation and in bearing up under slights from more fortunate neighbors, and so had laid the foundations of that stern control of self which is absolutely necessary in the true occultist. That this feature their feelings under slights received from neighbors played an important part in their thoughts and consequently in their development, is shown by the fact that many of their attempts (real or supposed) at bewitching, date from an unkind refusal of a neighbor to give them a bowl of soup or an old shirt. Ill-temper, then, morose broodings over wrongs, general sourness of spirit, were not the least important of the causes which turned those earthly partners of angelic bridegrooms into devil-handed witches.
Another cause seems to have been their failure to think clearly and without prejudice. Poor creatures! They were nearly all of them prejudiced (i. e., "pre-judgers") from beginning to end. They pre- judged angels to be the Devil; they pre-judged the monsters imagined by their own sub-consciousness to be real; they pre-judged the wedlock into which they entered on the Borderland to be sinful; they pre-judged their mysterious visitor to be a tempter to lead them away from religion and the church; they prejudged him as requiring unhallowed rites dimly remembered survivals from the ancient Sex Worship, too often on its vilest side; they pre-judged him, as the means of ignoble satisfactions of their hatred and their animal desires. And thus they sank to diabolism.
There was yet another cause not so much of evil as of illusions. This was the "Devil's mark" that special mark of his with which they supposed themselves stamped on some part of their bodies. With this, we may classify the spot at which the Devil or one of his imps was said to suck them, and also the peculiarity that their bridegroom in his marital relations, chilled them as though with ice.
There are many phases of occult sensitiveness. The ear for the clairaudient, the eye for the clairvoyant, the easily swayed arm and hand for the writing medium, are the three physical organs through which communications usually reach us. But for the wife of a heavenly bridegroom, the nerves of touch, it is evident, must be the chief focuses of occult sensitiveness. Now, in order that the delicate balance of nerve sensation be maintained, it is important that such a psychic distinguish readily between real touches and illusory touches, between objective realities impinging upon the ends of her nerves and hypnotic suggestions, either selfinduced or induced by an outside intelligence, say by her spirit bridegroom. And not only must she learn to distinguish thus between real and unreal sensations, but she must also learn to resist all hypnotic suggestion to feel sensations which do not exist or which are unlawful. No psychic can be considered thoroughly self-controlled who has not acquired this power of resistance to hypnotic suggestion of unlawful touches or of unreal things as real. No psychic's testimony can be considered reliable so long as she fails to distinguish between genuine and illusory touches. So long as she is lacking in any of these essentials to the wife of a heavenly bridegroom, just so long will her guardian persist in putting her through a course of training a training which she must undergo until she passes her examination and is promoted into a higher class, there to take up still more advanced lessons in psychic discrimination and psychic self-control.
Now, the "Devil's Marks" and the "sucking" were both, so I hold, illusory sensations which the witch failed either to classify or to conquer, but to which she mistakenly succummbed. When the supposed Devil's imp showed non-sensitiveness to pin-pricks, it was probably a case of auto-suggestion or, in the case of some, a hypnotic dulling to pain caused (oftentimes in mercy) by the angel guardian.
Of the same illusory character is that phenomenon which has so puzzled all the writers on witchcraft the icy chilliness of the sperm. This experience is entirely subjective; because it is forbidden by Borderland laws; to evoke a nervous energy for no definite result and as a harvest in offspring on the Borderland cannot be produced, it is breaking Borderland laws to sow the seed. The very fact that the Devil, who is supposed to be a deity of fire, cold in the Borderland marital union, ought to have shown his earthly partner that it was an illusion. And the psychic who expects or thinks to enact a forbidden experience on the Borderland, has only her own ignorance to thank for the illusion.
Incubi and Succubae, evil spirits who were supposed to force themselves as lovers upon both men and women, played an important part in witchcraft days. Deformed children were supposed to have sprung of such a union. Luther believed implicitly in this. Virtuous women seemed to be especially subject to the attacks of incubi, and this was looked on as attesting the cunning of Satan, who thus aimed at those noted for purity of life. It rarely, if ever, seems to have occurred to people in those days that a virtuous woman, reasonably clear-headed, is a being who is under especial angelic protection, and that when such a woman was persistently singled out by a spirit for lover-like attentions, it must have been owing to the favor of Heaven, and not to the malignity of devils. That these attentions became a great annoyance at last was only because the woman either broke the moral law in some way, or because prejudiced against every such being as an emissary of Satan. In time by the workings of the laws of Borderland, she who through natural curiosity and romantic sentiment at first hearkened to the angel lover, and afterward through the failure to live aright or think clearly felt bound to reject him as a devil became subject to hallucinations and also in some cases, to annoying physical manifestations. Some picturesque stories have been told of such women to whom the spirit lover has appeared in the guise of a handsome youth vainly wooing his earthly love night after night. The stories usually wind up with an account of fearful persecutions at the hands of the rejected lover, who thus by his malignity reveals himself as the Devil. But the cases of a spirit lover who has once been received (whether as husband or only communicating spirit), it would seem as though his hypnotic suggestions often outweighed those of the priest. Sometimes the priest is appealed to but not always successfully. The Roman Catholic Church has a regular rite to exorcise demons and is probably successful with the psychic through hypnotic suggestion. But in the case of a spirit lover who has once been received (whether as husband or by communicating spirit) it would seem as though his hypnotic suggestion often outweighed that of the priest to still exorcise the fiend in cases of demoniacal possession. But I am inclined to think that the very lingering of these subjective experiences indicates that her psychic hallucinations were often not only due to hypnotic suggestions by her spirit lover, but were also the result recorded in her subliminal consequences of a veridical phenomena which she at first encourages, whether through harmless curiosity, or through the romantic and tender sentiment of a pure heart, or through the grosser impulses arising from a luxuriant and untrained imagination, matters not. When her season of ordeals set in and she was obliged to distinguish between the illusory and the real, in order to maintain communication with her interesting visitor, she either grew alarmed at the phenomena of the ordeals or else rashly assumed the whole thing to be diabolical. From this time on, it were indeed strange if she should fail to see subjectively what she expected i. e., the Devil. All in vain now was it for her to exclaim in terror or indignation, "I will have nothing to do with you!" Her angelic lover had indeed ceased to communicate; but her subconsciousness had not ceased to vibrate along the lines of psychical illusion; and unless she possessed great self-control and had her subconscious nature well in hand, time and time only, could work a cure unless, indeed, she should implicitly submit her inner self to the priest or to some other earthly human being as her hypnotizer, in which case, it was a change from the hypnotic control of a clearseeing angel, to that of a more or less blind fallible earthly man, who may or may not take undue advantage of the power placed in his hands over her mainsprings of action. When one (1) considers that every woman who enters a convent is pledged to a mystic union with a heavenly bridegroom, denominated Christ; (2) that the union more often than the public is aware, becomes so objectively real that the confessor feels obliged to term it "Congresus cum daemonis"; (3) that ignorance on the men's part of Borderland laws will render her experience fantastic or diabolical; (4) that her deliverance from these experiences may be secured by a change in the hypnotizer, from an unseen angel to a visible earthly priest: We see what a power resides with confessors to mould the minds of the nuns to carry out his hypnotic suggestions for the glory of the church. For the person who has been hypnotized by spirits, and who has not acquired the power of resisting hypnotic suggestion, will more readily yield to an earthly hypnotizer. That the angelic lover should force himself upon her as an incubus against her will is contrary to Borderland laws; for in the world beyond the Borderland (the world beyond the grave), it is reckoned a sin for a woman to have aught to do with husband or lover save for love's sake; and hence the idea that women may be forced into a marital union on the Borderland is totally incorrect inasmuch as the highest standards of social and ethical duty in both worlds must be lived up to by the two who meet upon the borders of the two worlds. Rationalists have tried to explain the spirit bride and spirit bridegroom as a nightmare arising from a plethoric condition of the body. An explanation which has force only when the spirit is an incubus and not a succubus and when the earthly psychic (man or woman) is asleep or dozing. But the clearest and most convincing manifestations of the objectivity of the heavenly bridegroom always come when the psychic is most clearheaded. It seems, indeed, that it is not even in a trance but only when the psychic is wide awake that the marital union takes place objectively. And this I think will be found to be the case with the witches. When their union with the supposed Devil was based on the faithful tender love of one woman for one man, and its reciprocity, in accordance with high moral standards, then was the union objective and natural. The gross rites of the Witches' Sabbaths with their abnormalities and absurdities, were evidently the illusion of an insane imagination in great part although it is also doubtless true that as Professor Wilder says, there is little reason to doubt that these "witches' sabbaths" were formerly celebrated, and that they were, in some modified form, a continuation of the outlawed worship of the Roman Empire.
- ↑ Continued from November, 1916.