at that—knows anything of the perils which await the developing psychic on the Borderland. The Middle Ages are strewn with wrecked lives—mainly those of illiterate women who, beginning by dabbling with magic in an empirical fashion, ended by confessing themselves as witches, devil-haunted in body as well as in mind, and pledged to sins against nature. Within the sheltered precincts of the most conservative of all Christian churches—the Roman Catholic—"Congressus cum daemonis". And among the non-churchly practisers of modern occultism we too often find a tendency, on the one hand, not only to justifiable freedom, but also to unjustifiable looseness of life; or on the other hand, to a rigid asceticism and unnatural suppresion of the sex instinct as impure. All these things point to the necessity for some teaching as to the fundamental principles of sex morality on the Borderland—all the more, as spirit bridegrooms and spirit brides are much more frequent than is generally supposed. Between the witch who held diabolic assignations as a devil's mistress, and the psychic who has been trained to self-control and reverent wedlock with an angel, it must surely be admitted, there is a wide stretch of road. Nevertheless, both are on the same road, and the downward grade is very slippery. In so far as I have been able to explore this road, therefore, I think it my duty to map out its perils and its safeguards, as to help my fellow occultists. For, no matter on what obscure by-path a psychic starts, he or she can never be sure of not coming upon this road unexpectedly, since it is, as I have said, one of the main thoroughfares of occultism.
To all three classes, then—to Occultists, Freethinkers, and Christians—I respectfully offer this treatise for consideration in the hope that each may find in it something of interest and, mayhap, of profit.
